Ultimate Magus Build Help

[PanosIs]

Hello playground,

Vacations are over and the D&D hype is back on, for start I'll be playing in a short adventure with some friends, I decided to play an Ultimate Magus after pondering Spellwarp Sniper, Unseen Seer and Incantatrix (They let me play it, but I didn't feel good about it).

The build is as follows:

Illumian, naturally, plus I've always wanted to play one and it fits nicely with the backstory

Sorcerer 1/Wizard 3/Master Specialist 1/Ultimate Magus 10/Archmage 1 (Arcane Reach)

Feats:
Elven Spell Lore
Practiced Spellcaster
Scribe Scroll*
Chain Spell*
Quicken Spell*
Skill Focus: Spellcraft*
Easy Metamagic: Chain Spell
Easy Metamagic: Quicken Spell
Spell Focus: Conjuration
Spell Focus: Transmutation

Alternate Class Features:
Immediate Magic: Abrupt Jaunt
Impromptu Metamagic: Chain Spell
Specialist Wizard (Conjuration) banning (Enchantment, Illusion)

Some questions regarding the build:
1) Will Impromptu Metamagic (DR357) prohibit me from using Quicken Spell via the Augment Casting feature of Ultimate Magus?
2) Can I cast Illusion and Enchantment spells via Sorcerer?
3) Does anyone know of any good Wizard buff spells besides the standard (Greater Magic Weapon, True Seeing, Brilliant Blade, Haste, Disobedience) and/or any good spells to use versus undead?

[Kobold Esq]

Re #2: yes, you can use them. They are only barred for wizard casting.

[DeTess]

Have you considered taking a beguiler instead of a sorcerer? The beguiler has a good spell list (especially if you want him to fill in the illusion and enchantment side of things), it is INT instead of CHA based, and it gets far more skill points than a sorcerer, which makes it very good for first level.

Regarding buffs, It's not a straight buff, but dimension step is very useful if you're playing on a grid, as it basically allows you to reshuffle the battlefield to a more favourable condition. Greater invisibility is fantastic when used on people with sneak attack, and polymorph of course has many possible uses.

[ATHATH]

Have you considered taking a beguiler instead of a sorcerer? The beguiler has a good spell list (especially if you want him to fill in the illusion and enchantment side of things), it is INT instead of CHA based, and it gets far more skill points than a sorcerer, which makes it very good for first level.

Regarding buffs, It's not a straight buff, but dimension step is very useful if you're playing on a grid, as it basically allows you to reshuffle the battlefield to a more favourable condition. Greater invisibility is fantastic when used on people with sneak attack, and polymorph of course has many possible uses.
Seconding Beguiler.

[lothos]

Thirding Beguiler.
(is thirding a thing ?)

It's such a great choice for level 1. As has already been said, 6 skill points instead of 2 (x4 for first level) and you are INT based, so you can probably neglect CHA. But also, it has Use Magic Device and lots of other nice skills as class skills. UMD is a class skill for ultimate magus, so this helps a lot to max it out.

I'd bar Evocation and Enchantment on the Wizard side. You would get pretty much all the Enchantment back via Beguiler. A few notable exceptions would be things like Geas, Mass Charm Monster, but that's probably not critical.

You would be doubling up on Illusion from both sides, but your Wizard Illusion would be a long way ahead of the beguiler (or Sorcerer) levels and getting Invisibility and later Greater Invisibility early would be very helpful.

Assuming you do play an Illumian with the right power sigil to have +2 level (up to hit dice) and then the Practiced Caster (Beguiler) feat (or of course Sorcerer, if you stick with that), you can have all 10 levels add to Wizard, which means you end up with 19 wizard levels out of 20. The downside is you only end up with 8 levels of Beguiler (or Sorcerer).

Beguiler has the spell level progression as Sorcerer - that is, 1 behind Wizard / Cleric / Druid. So you need Beguiler (or Sorcerer) level 4 to get Invisibility.

Assuming you go:
Beguiler (or Sorcerer) 1 /Wizard 3/Master Specialist 1/Ultimate Magus 10/Archmage 1 (Arcane Reach)

You don't get your Beguiler (or Sorcerer) level up to 4 in terms of spells known until you add your 5th level of ultimate magus, which is character level 10. You don't get up to Beguiler (or Sorcerer) spells of known to level 8 until the last level of ultimate macus, charachter level 15.

So I think it's worth keeping Illusion on the wizard side, even though you get most of the good stuff eventually as a beguiler.

A fried of mine did a very interesting build as follows. It was a campaign in which pretty much anything other than psionics or gestalt builds were allowed. The concept was a super stealthy ray specialist.

Race: Whisper Gnome (from Races of Stone) No Level adjustment
Template: Dark Creature (from Tome of Magic, P161) +1 Level Adjustment, but buy off (from Unearthed Arcana) was allowed.

Hide Bonus: Dexterity Modifier + 4 for Small Size + 4 for Whisper Gnome Racial Bonus + 8 from Dark Creature Template + Hide is a class skill for beguilers, so he dumped 4 ranks in at 1st level and no more ever. I think he had 14 DEX (whisper Gnomes get +2 dex), so at first level +22 to hide... Oh, and Dark Creature lets you hide in plain sight, unless in total daylight.

Move Silently Bonus: Dex Modifier of +2 I think + 4 for Whisper Gnome Racial Bonus + 6 for Dark Creature + 4 Ranks at level 1 (again, it's a class skill for beguilers) = +16 move silently modifier at level 1. Oh and whisper gnomes get silence 1/day as an SLA. He didn't get the other racial abilities, because he had dumped CHA... most of those SLAs were available as beguiler spells anyway several times a day at level 1.

I think he also maxxed out Use Magic Device, Spellcraft, Concentrate and then added languages like auran / terran / aquan etc. at 1st level, plus some spot and listen.

Because he wasn't Illumian, he only got 9 levels out of 10 from Ultimate Magus for Wizard, but got 8 levels of Beguiler instead of 7. It wasn't quite as good as Illumian, but at low levels he was more stealthy than anyone else in the party by a large margin and had more hit points with the whisper gnome's CON bonus.

Oh, also he had a move speed of 40 ft, because despite being small, whisper gnomes have 30ft movement and dark creature template adds +10 ft movement.

He did a lot of Ray spells and later took Archmage to get arcane reach, like you are planning to. The small size +1 to hit and the extra DEX from the whisper gnome could help with that a lot.

Oh and despite dumping CHA down to 6 (started with 8, no points spent on it, -2 racial for Whsiper Gnomes), he maxxed out use magic device and had a familiar that could talk (raven I think) that was soon able to use wands quite effectively. Beguiler really helped with ranks in that compared to Sorcerer.

EDIT: and I should add that he actually went:

Beguiler 2 / Wizard 3 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Master Specialist 2/ Archmage 3
Or it might have been MS3 / Archmage 2 at the end... I can't remember.

I do remember he had at least 2 archmage because he had arcane reach and traded in his 5th level and 9th level Conjurer spell slots for 2 * Time stop per day as an SLA.

Because he wasn't Illumian, he wanted to have a 2nd level of beguiler which meant he still got 10 levels of ultimate magus adding to Wizard levels. He wanted an extra level of 6 skill points and crucially, because unlike Illumian, whisper gnomes don't have a favoured class that's helpful here, he needed to keep the beguiler level and wizard level within 1 of each other, to avoid multi classing XP penalties.

For your build, If you go whisper gnome, I'd go:

Beguiler 2 / Wizard 3 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Master Specialist 4 / Archmage 1

EDIT2:
Oh yes, regarding the familiar. He had traded it away for the conjurer immediate magic ability that let's you teleport 10ft a few times a day as an immediate action - abrupt jaunt. It was part of the whole "I'm super stealthy and can go anywhere undetected and get out of things slyly" theme. But then he took the "Obtain Familiar" feat. The big advantage there (aside from having abrupt jaunt) was that his caster level (rather than wizard class level) determined his familiar special abilities.