Sorcerer Ultimate Magus

[PanosIs]

Hello playground :)

I've been recently searching for some Ultimate Magus builds only to come to the conclusion that all of them focus on the Wizard side of the coin which is understandable give the power of wizard yet I ponder, how would you go about building a Sorcerer based Magus? I am thinking we're going to be doing some metamagic shenanigans, with access to the Metamagic Specialist ACF, Arcane Thesis and both Practical and Easy Metamagic to go along the awesome sorcerer only Arcane Fusion and Greater Arcane Fusion. Add some Arcane Spellsurge and we've got some serious machine gun action with the versatility offered by a prepared secondary caster class.

Whatsa think?

[AlanBruce]

Hello playground :)

I've been recently searching for some Ultimate Magus builds only to come to the conclusion that all of them focus on the Wizard side of the coin which is understandable give the power of wizard yet I ponder, how would you go about building a Sorcerer based Magus? I am thinking we're going to be doing some metamagic shenanigans, with access to the Metamagic Specialist ACF, Arcane Thesis and both Practical and Easy Metamagic to go along the awesome sorcerer only Arcane Fusion and Greater Arcane Fusion. Add some Arcane Spellsurge and we've got some serious machine gun action with the versatility offered by a prepared secondary caster class.

Whatsa think?

Despite Complete Mage using a wizard/sorcerer as the UM NPC sample, many here will tell you to go Beguiler instead of Sorcerer and stick to wizard, since both work off Intelligence.

But you probably already knew that, and want to get the sorcerous side working, which is fine.

Off the top of my head, base classes that require a spell book to prepare arcane spells:

Wizard

Wu Jen

And I think that's it for base classes, but there must be more out there, I am sure. If you can enter the Chameleon PrC, they get a spellbook which can help fulfill the UM requirement.

And for some reason, I thought the Assassin had a spellbook (maybe 3.0 mentioned one), but not in 3.5. If you want to stray off wizard, get Wu Jen- they have some unique spells that not even a wizard can cast and if you focus on sorcerer, you'll have a bunch of flavorful tools at your disposal.

[xkroku]

Also Death Master gets a spellbook

[Menzath]

Funny enough sha'ir technically qualifies for prepared spells, and cast off charisma, prestige bard and one level of sublime chord gives you spontaneous casting as a bard while still stacking caster level, and then ultimate magus applies to both 😁.

Believe it.

[noob]

Funny enough sha'ir technically qualifies for prepared spells, and cast off charisma, prestige bard and one level of sublime chord gives you spontaneous casting as a bard while still stacking caster level, and then ultimate magus applies to both 😁.

Believe it.

Technically sublime chord fix the caster level in the class you progress to (level in that class+level in sublime chord) which means that then you can no longer progress that base class caster level(but you can still progress the rest like spell slots) without taking levels in sublime chord or in the class itself.
and sublime chord caster level is based on sublime chord(and thus of the classes progressing it) and of the level of the caster class you did chose.
So you can do that but you will not be as awesome as you could be if sublime chord was written in a way that made sense.

[PanosIs]

Is there a way to qualify for Ultimate Magus without either loose a caster level of sorcerer nor doing single class qualification shenanigans? That would be, is there a prestige that grants its own spellcasting while increasing spellcasting for sorcerer?

And in a similar vein, is there a list out there or PRCs that grant separate spellcasting?

[Menzath]

Technically sublime chord fix the caster level in the class you progress to (level in that class+level in sublime chord) which means that then you can no longer progress that base class caster level(but you can still progress the rest like spell slots) without taking levels in sublime chord or in the class itself.
and sublime chord caster level is based on sublime chord(and thus of the classes progressing it) and of the level of the caster class you did chose.
So you can do that but you will not be as awesome as you could be if sublime chord was written in a way that made sense.


A sublime chord's caster level for both her sublime chord spells and the spells she gains from other arcane spellcasting classes is determined by adding her sublime chord level to her level in another arcane spellcasting class.

Emphasis mine.
I think that seems pretty clear on caster level to me.
Edit- sorry in advance if I misinterpreted what you are/were saying, a little sleep deprived.

Especially with ultimate magus increasing both caster levels separately.

As for a good full sorc Ult mag. Build...
Is there a cha prepared caster besides sha'ir and a good prestige to add for filler levels to make the spontaneous side better?

The best I can think of is that race that gives your sorc casting based on your HD, with maybe an actual level in sorc to make the CL increase legit.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Sublime Chord adds your Sublime Chord level to your level in another class, NOT your caster level for that class. It doesn't even count levels in "+1 level of existing spellcasting class" for that.

If you want to use caster level shenanigans, get Master Spellthief and Theurgic Specialist.

[Fouredged Sword]

Here is my two bits

Let's get into the class without losing spellcaster levels. So, we need to be able to cast 2nd level spells from a spellbook. Well, you can get this with one wizard level with precocious apprentice, so level 1 wizard is the way to go. Your main levels are sorcerer levels, so take 4 of those. Now you need to enter the class, so let's take practiced spellcaster at 3rd level to balance out your CL's so you don't lose out on sorcerer progression as you level UM. Draconic right of passage give you back the sorcerer level you lost to that wizard level, so you should be able to hit 19/20 sorcerer casting by level 20 (-1 to wizard level, -1 to an unavoidable level where sorcerer is higher than wizard CL at level 4 of UM, +1 from greater DRoP).

Boom you have 9 levels of wizard casting and 14 levels of sorcerer casting at level 15. Use your wizard casting as MM fuel and utility and save your sorcerer casting for things you want to spam.

[MHCD]

Seconding here that Sha'ir goes well with Sorcerer, and Master Spellthief + Sublime Chord can do fun things with Ultimate Magus.

I would also suggest taking a look at the "Adaptation" section of Ultimate Magus:


Another variant might be one that melds two spontaneous casting arcane characters, such as a sorcerer and a warmage, allowing the two to blend their spell lists in a manner similar to the benefit of the expanded spell knowledge class feature.


Blending your spell lists that way still gives you much of the versatility of having a prepared caster on one side, letting you go with Warmage (or even Dread Necromancer) on one side, and cherry-picking the best Sorcerer spells on the other, since you have one shtick already covered. And of course, you can move spells between lists to increase your already impressive spontaneous versatility, and you stay SAD the whole time.