The Mindbender, Caster Level and Save DCs

[Albions_Angel]

So I was reading the Mindbender class from CAr, and while it wasnt what I was looking for, something struck me:


Enchantment Spell Power (Ex): At 6th level and higher, a mindbender casts more powerful enchantment spells:
he adds +2 to his caster level when casting any enchantment spell.

And this got me thinking. That doesnt actually make the spell "more powerful" in what most people would consider the phrase to mean. Thats because enchantment spells generally dont have abilities tied to caster level, but DO have a save to negate them, which is tied to SPELL level.

So all that ability does is sometimes make an enchantment spell slightly longer. Right?

And that then got me thinking. Theres a lot of abilities, items and things that buff caster level. Which is great for Evocation spells and the like, with nice pools of dice. But there is next to nothing for boosting your save DC beyond 2 feats and trying to pump your primary caster attribute. On the other hand a lot of those thing that pump caster level seem to be written as though they should pump save DC.

Of course, I might just have gone mad from stress over the last week or so and be reading everything wrong.

Anyway, thought it was interesting.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Yep. Caster level and save DC both correspond to power, but sometimes you get one when you want the other. For example, Spell Focus (Conjuration) is useless to summoners.

Some augmentable psionic powers have the clause "for every 2 pp you spend to augment this power, the save DC increases by 1". It doesn't matter what the augment is (more damage, more targets, different targets), you get the save DC as a bonus. It's a bit like +2 Heightening a fireball also increases the max damage dice by 5 (which should totally be a thing, actually).

[Psyren]

So all that ability does is sometimes make an enchantment spell slightly longer. Right?


Actually no, CL has two more pretty important effects:

1) Overcoming SR: the vast majority of enchantments are SR: Yes, so this ability helps you punch through that.

2) Resisting Dispels: The higher the CL of your enchants, the tougher they will be to remove, thus letting you keep your minions longer in a fight that has enemy casters.


The latter is particularly relevant since almost every spellcaster in the game can dispel magic, and a dispel at the wrong time can leave you with a very angry former minion/melee bruiser standing right next to you.

[Sagetim]

I mean, that's okay, but the problem for the mindbender is that it's a 5/10 casting prestige class. So if you had gone straight enchanter 20, you'd have a higher caster level baseline, and 9th level spells.

Even if you grab practiced spellcaster to have your caster level keep pace better with your character level, you're looking at a net gain of 3 caster level's...but the trade off is having only maybe 8th level spells if you were a wizard going into the prestige class.

That said, Warlock can get a lot out of the class if all you want is power over people's minds. The caster level progression isn't as much of an issue, because your eldritch blast will advance with the 5/10, and as far as I know, Practiced Spellcaster would work with that as well, giving you a nearly full potency eldritch blast while offering you entirely different abilities instead of the normal warlock class abilities. As far as I can tell, they effectively lose less than a wizard or sorcerer would by taking the prestige class (as those classes would get kicked in the spell slots).

You would think the Mindbender might get something to increase their dc's, or failing that, at least that their prestige class granted effects would have a higher baseline dc or something to make up for the whole 5/10 thing.

Also their charm and dominate seems to have a weird limitation of Large and smaller creatures. I don't recall that being a limitation in charm or dominate spells normally, so aside from the potential permanent durations (and needing break enchantment against the charm effect), their mind control class abilities seem to be less versatile and of about the same dc as someone who just went, say...Enchanter. Except the full base class character would have full progression of spell slots on their side and have a variety of not enchantment they could use to solve problems that the Mindbender would be locked out from due to lack of spell slots of that level.

[Psyren]

Indeed, the lost CL more than offsets that class feature, which is why most people don't advance in Mindbender.

If you're okay blending 3.5 and PF material, you can use Prestigious Spellcaster (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/prestigious-spellcaster/) to paper over the lost caster levels in Mindbender. It would cost a lot of feats, but it could be worth it for the permanent minions and other goodies the PrC contains.