Help with a dwarven chanter/noctumancer build

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm working on a build for fun, but have hit a sort of wall.


wild dwarf or fireblood dwarf
str 8, dex 15, con 14, int 16, wis 8, cha 14
1: bard 1: great fortitude
2: shadowcaster 1
3: shadowcaster 2: still mystery, melodic casting
4: Bard 2:
5: Bard 3
6: dwarven chanter (archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20061128a) 1 (Shadowcaster +1): master pickpocket
7: dwarven chanter 2 (bard +1)
8: Noctumancer 1 (bard/sc +1)
9: dwarven chanter 3 (noctu +1): Soultouched spellcasting
10: dwarven chanter 4 (noctu +1):
11: dwarven chanter 5 (noctu +1):
12: dwarven chanter 6 (noctu +1): feat?
13: dwarven chanter 7 (noctu +1):


Spells:
1: sticky fingers, improvization
2: Sonorous hum, harmonize
3:
4: greater harmonize (ROS)

Mysteries
F: umbral hand x2, sight obscured
1:quicker than the eye (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070307a), steal shadows
2: trail of haze, sight eclipsed
3: sharp shadows
4: warp spell

Skills,
max sleight of hand, hide, perform, and move silently if possible

Tactics
This build has two tricks.
Sleight of hand
+20 to sleight of hand checks that can be made at a distance, using sonorous hum/continuous spellcasting to maintain concentration on all those free action theft at a distance checks.

My first rendition was nature bard with the animal companion swapped for an urban companion to get a huitzel (dragonmagic) which grants +3 to sleight of hand checks as a familiar as well as being another source of sleight of hand checks from a distance, assuming that the share spells ability of a familiar works with fundamentals/mysteries. But you give up too many good bardic music abilities for it to make sense, especially if you have to survive those early levels.

Capture magic's shadow
Countering spells with the dwarven chanter's counter chant which acts as a dispel magic (with a suppression caveat) and stealing the energy for spellcasting using noctumancer's catch magic's shadow. Use harmonize and greater harmonize to dispel effects as move actions to get bonus spellcaster levels for the standard action. Melodic casting allows you to cast spells during this. dispel magic tops out at +10 to your caster level check, but soultouched spellcasting grants you some bonus to your dispel checks. Improvisation spell grants extra bonuses on dispel checks.

Help I need
Gear: I'm sure that there is gear that can help along the way here. Gloves of essentia theft? I would love to fill up that soultouched spellcasting with essentia but can't find easy sources of lots of essentia that won't sacrifice too many level/feat resources. is there anything that can help with dispel checks?

Spell choices: there are so many and I got swamped.

Feats: any insights

Rules: A close reading of chanter's +1 to existing spells + the clause about choosing what class to advance at each level leads me to believe that dwarven chanter can progress noctumancer.

do you get separate bardic music and chanting pools?

[Zaq]

I don’t think you can advance Noctumancer with another “+1 spellcasting” PrC, since Noctumancer advances casting rather than granting it. I’d be interested in a counterargument, but I really don’t think it’s something that works.

I don’t think you have a separate pool of Bardic Music uses and Chanting uses. I see the poorly written sentence saying “Dwarven chanter levels stack with bard levels for purposes of determining the number of daily uses of bardic music and chanting,” but the rest of the class is pretty consistent about Chanting effects costing a unit of Bardic Music rather than a unit of Chanting.

Extra Music is a good feat. It’s not very sexy, but it’s effective. Music uses can run out really fast if you’re using them as currency, which you kinda are. Less so than certain other builds, but still.

You can still spend a feat on a familiar. Familiars are still useful.

Would it be worth the resources to get daze immunity (probably a dragonmark + Mark of the Dauntless) to cheese around Timing Chant’s drawback? Not sure if there’s a way to share the immunity with your allies (or to absorb the daze from them onto yourself), though.