Gestalt Artificer 3.5

[Gruumbish]

Hello! I'm new to the forum but not new to 3.5 whatsoever. I'm looking to do a non-optimised gestalt artificer that has a bit of a theme behind it for a solo Eberron campaign.

ECL 15 to start, going into Epic levels
40 point buy
2 flaws
2 traits
LA buy off is up in the air
Any 3.5 and dragon mag content is allowed

Human artificer15//prodigy (LA+2, DMG2)/????10/heir of siberys 3(mark of making)

I need a few levels of something "evil" or necromancy based for lore and background reasons and i honestly have no idea what to do in those levels! Im set on a few things for the build:
Max INT, mid cha, low Wis
Leadership, willing deformity and willing deformity madness

Any help would be great! Im not looking to optimise super hard but good functionality is needed!

[InterstellarPro]

Hello! I'm new to the forum but not new to 3.5 whatsoever. I'm looking to do a non-optimised gestalt artificer that has a bit of a theme behind it for a solo Eberron campaign.

ECL 15 to start, going into Epic levels
40 point buy
2 flaws
2 traits
LA buy off is up in the air
Any 3.5 and dragon mag content is allowed

Human artificer15//prodigy (LA+2, DMG2)/????10/heir of siberys 3(mark of making)

I need a few levels of something "evil" or necromancy based for lore and background reasons and i honestly have no idea what to do in those levels! Im set on a few things for the build:
Max INT, mid cha, low Wis
Leadership, willing deformity and willing deformity madness

Any help would be great! Im not looking to optimise super hard but good functionality is needed!

Divine casters gain access to Animate Dead earlier than arcane casters, so I would recommend a divine approach to necromancy. Cleric is obviously out, as you already said low Wisdom. How about Archivist (Heroes of Horror)? The low wisdom would only limit your bonus spells per day, but not your ability to cast spells or DCs (both would be based on Int).

[Eloel]

Archivist sounds like it could be very useful to you. Read about obscure magic items in books with Archivist, make them real with Artificer.

[unseenmage]

With access to every spell finding some necromancy or evil should be easy enough.
A lot of Artificer builds incorporate early access Animate Dead for minionmancy.

If you want less mechanical evil and more flavorful evil-like Animate Objects on some corpses is a pretty socially ambiguous thing to do.

The Create Crawling Claw spell from Monsters of Faerun animates severed left hands into Constructs. The 3.5 update of this 3.0 book exists. However, whike the Crawling Claw creature was updated into a Swarm in Lost Empires if Faerun the Create Crawling Claw spell was never changed so it arguably still creates the 3.0 Crawling Claw creatures.
Evil to the NPCs whose hands you're animating AND to whatever GM has to unravel that RAW confusion knot.

[Gruumbish]

Divine casters gain access to Animate Dead earlier than arcane casters, so I would recommend a divine approach to necromancy. Cleric is obviously out, as you already said low Wisdom. How about Archivist (Heroes of Horror)? The low wisdom would only limit your bonus spells per day, but not your ability to cast spells or DCs (both would be based on Int).


Archivist sounds like it could be very useful to you. Read about obscure magic items in books with Archivist, make them real with Artificer.

I do like the idea behind archivist. It fits pretty well with the theme but I'm curious if dumping wis will hurt me a lot. Without bonus spells would it still be viable? My DM might be willing to let me craft items to store spells/replicate the effects without carrying 1000+ wands and scrolls

[InterstellarPro]

I do like the idea behind archivist. It fits pretty well with the theme but I'm curious if dumping wis will hurt me a lot. Without bonus spells would it still be viable? My DM might be willing to let me craft items to store spells/replicate the effects without carrying 1000+ wands and scrolls

You will be casting as a 12th level caster. That gives you access to 6th level spells. You would need a Wisdom score of at least 22 before you would get a bonus 6th level spell. With a wisdom of 22, you would get an extra 2 1st level spells, 2 2nd level spells, and 1 each of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th levels: Table of Bonus Spells (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#tableAbilityModifiersandBonusSpells) . Without any bonus spells, you will already be able to cast 5x 1st, 5x 2nd, 5x 3rd, 4x 4th, 4x 5th, 3x 6th. So, you will be able to cast 26 spells per day as is. Do you really need the extra 8? If you were going for an optimized build, yeah, every single bonus helps. But, you will still have plenty of power without those 8 extra spell slots.

[Gruumbish]

Thanks for the help! Another question: what would you recommend for feats? I've made artificers before but never an archivist so im not sure about what feats are good for them. I'm set on four: willing deformity, willing deformity madness, leadership and heroic spirit (for heir of siberys).

[Eloel]

If you can access it, get Academic Priest (it's in a bit of an obscure source). Now you're an only-Int kind of caster.
Practiced Spellcaster is great, especially since you're losing a ton of caster levels.
Draconic Archivist so your knowledge is useful vs Dragons and Constructs.
Knowledge Devotion. If you ever will roll attack rolls, get this feat.