Elemental Swarm Optimization ideas?

[magicalmagicman]

Hellish Horde, Abyssal Army, and Armageddon is fine too.

I need the following.

1. Early Access to the spell. Cheese is fine as long as I get one extended casting of it per day. It's a Domain and Druid spell so there's gotta be something. No custom items or traps but other than that anything should be fine as long as it's RAW.
2. Ways to make the elementals combat capable. I'm thinking souped up magic items for each and every one of them. Like a +5 composite bow with Heroics cast on the elementals to give them proficiency and whatnot.

Any ideas? Trying to brainstorm this and I need something to work with. Shadowcraft Mage with Heighten Spell metamagic reducer shenanigans?

[Silva Stormrage]

Well for #2, the Rashemi Elemental Summoning feat works. It gives them all cone of cold 3/day at CL = their HD. Plus some other bonuses but thats pretty good.

As for getting it early...

Artificer using the cheesy CL interpretation and grabbing it off of the beholder mage or ur priest spell list? I am not sure though. If you are going for shadowcraft mage shenanigans why not just duplicate it with shadow magic though? That seems far easier.

Edit: Also for what level combat is this? At level 20 air elementals with composite bows won't do anything to anything remotely CR appropriate.

[Thurbane]

Elemental Swarm is a 9th level spell on all lists it seems to appear on: Air 9, Drd 9, Dwarf 9, Earth 9, Fire 9, Ocean 9, Shu 9, Water 9, Wmg 9

To get it earlier, best option may be Ur-Priest and try to get the relevant Domain access somehow, since Ur Priests access 9th levels spells early.

Another option would be Warmage 16 with Versatile Spellcaster.

[magicalmagicman]

If you are going for shadowcraft mage shenanigans why not just duplicate it with shadow magic though? That seems far easier.

That is the shenanigan I'm thinking about. 1st level silent image boosted to 9th level via some kind of metamagic heighten shenanigan for duplication.


Edit: Also for what level combat is this? At level 20 air elementals with composite bows won't do anything to anything remotely CR appropriate.

Hopefully 20th level. I'm just brainstorming and seeing how far I can get before i run out of 3.5 cheese to boost this playstyle's strength further.

[Saintheart]

Elemental Swarm is a 9th level spell on all lists it seems to appear on: Air 9, Drd 9, Dwarf 9, Earth 9, Fire 9, Ocean 9, Shu 9, Water 9, Wmg 9

To get it earlier, best option may be Ur-Priest and try to get the relevant Domain access somehow, since Ur Priests access 9th levels spells early.

Another option would be Warmage 16 with Versatile Spellcaster.

I might be missing something, but why would he need access to the domain as such? The Ur-Priest's list is the cleric spell list, and all the domain spells are therefore on the cleric list, aren't they?


On the issue of souping up the elementals, only things I can think of are multi-target spells which buff your allies like Righteous Wrath of the Faithful and Sakkratar's Triple Strike. There are Runecaster item setups to make the party buff up if they step within 30 feet of you, but I'm not going there just yet.

[magicalmagicman]

I might be missing something, but why would he need access to the domain as such? The Ur-Priest's list is the cleric spell list, and all the domain spells are therefore on the cleric list, aren't they?

Domain Spells are not cleric spells. They are on no class's spell list, not even Divine Crusader's.

[flappeercraft]

Divine Crusader could access Elemental Swarm by its 9th level meaning that you could access it at ECL 16 rather than 17 as normal.

Likely your best choice to get access to it would be Artificer cheese, this is what I would reccomend.

The first thing is to get 11 levels of Artificer. Easy enough. Now you need to get the feats Leadership and Improved Cohort. As your Cohort you will select a Nightmare, which you are able to at your level due to Improved Cohort. Now you will need a scroll of Wall of Iron, a scroll of Greater Plane Shift from the Cleric list, a scroll of Simulacrum and a scroll of Elemental Swarm which will cost you a total of 15,075 gp, out of 66,00 of your WBL. Make a simulacrum of yourself, then make your Simulacrum take the scrolls to a ride your nightmare cohort who willl use Astral projection and with your scroll of Greater Plane shift it goes back to wherever you start and activate the scroll of Wall of Iron. You sell all of the iron which assuming minimum CL gets you 45.83 cubic feet of Iron. Each cubic foot of iron translates to 491lb which by 3.5 standards each lb of iron is equivalent to 1 sp (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm). This means that with this you generated 2,250 gp, 4 sp and 1 cp. Now your simulacrum decicates to use the Retain Essence class feature on the scroll of Elemental swarm which after a day will be unmade (8 hours if you count it as a magic item crafting day) and after its done it will then with your 2,250gp and 153 acquired xp leave the Astral Projection back to the original bodies, will craft an Elemental Swarm scroll at CL 17 and make a profit of 337 gp, 9 sp, and 1 cp. Now since only the Astral versions of the scrolls were used up, by how Astral projections work nothing happened to the real ones so you can repeat this process infinitely. The only problem with this is that it would take five days per scroll but you can set it up to have multiple of these going at a time if you get scrolls of simulacrum to make more nightmares since getting pieces of one would be rather easy if you have one as a cohort.

Note: You could technically do this at level ten if you were to have access to a Nightmare part to make a simulacrum of one instead of getting one as a cohort however those are not nceessarily always available, what was above is just a detailed way of how to do it in general.

Note 2: The only problem with this method is that you need to be able to make UMD checks DC 37 consistently by level 5 (your simulacrum) but that can be solved easily via 8 ranks, +7 cha (18 +2 racial via lesser Aasimar +4 item), +3 skill focus, +20 Guidance of the Avatar scroll.

[magicalmagicman]

Divine Crusader could access Elemental Swarm by its 9th level meaning that you could access it at ECL 16 rather than 17 as normal.

Likely your best choice to get access to it would be Artificer cheese, this is what I would reccomend.

The first thing is to get 11 levels of Artificer. Easy enough. Now you need to get the feats Leadership and Improved Cohort. As your Cohort you will select a Nightmare, which you are able to at your level due to Improved Cohort. Now you will need a scroll of Wall of Iron, a scroll of Greater Plane Shift from the Cleric list, a scroll of Simulacrum and a scroll of Elemental Swarm which will cost you a total of 15,075 gp, out of 66,00 of your WBL. Make a simulacrum of yourself, then make your Simulacrum take the scrolls to a ride your nightmare cohort who willl use Astral projection and with your scroll of Greater Plane shift it goes back to wherever you start and activate the scroll of Wall of Iron. You sell all of the iron which assuming minimum CL gets you 45.83 cubic feet of Iron. Each cubic foot of iron translates to 491lb which by 3.5 standards each lb of iron is equivalent to 1 sp (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm). This means that with this you generated 2,250 gp, 4 sp and 1 cp. Now your simulacrum decicates to use the Retain Essence class feature on the scroll of Elemental swarm which after a day will be unmade (8 hours if you count it as a magic item crafting day) and after its done it will then with your 2,250gp and 153 acquired xp leave the Astral Projection back to the original bodies, will craft an Elemental Swarm scroll at CL 17 and make a profit of 337 gp, 9 sp, and 1 cp. Now since only the Astral versions of the scrolls were used up, by how Astral projections work nothing happened to the real ones so you can repeat this process infinitely. The only problem with this is that it would take five days per scroll but you can set it up to have multiple of these going at a time if you get scrolls of simulacrum to make more nightmares since getting pieces of one would be rather easy if you have one as a cohort.

Note: You could technically do this at level ten if you were to have access to a Nightmare part to make a simulacrum of one instead of getting one as a cohort however those are not nceessarily always available, what was above is just a detailed way of how to do it in general.

What's stopping me from
1. Artificer 8
2. Planar Bind a Nightmare using concurrent infusions
3. Craft a Scroll of Elemental Swarm using the Divine Crusader's CL9 Elemental Swarm.
4. Whenever I want my army I just have the nightmare cast astral projection to duplicate that one scroll and then have him recast astral projection for re-duplication?

[flappeercraft]

What's stopping me from
1. Artificer 8
2. Planar Bind a Nightmare using concurrent infusions
3. Craft a Scroll of Elemental Swarm using the Divine Crusader's CL9 Elemental Swarm.
4. Whenever I want my army I just have the nightmare cast astral projection to duplicate that one scroll and then have him recast astral projection for re-duplication?

I completely forgot that concurrent infusions could planar bind a nightmare. I feel stupid for having wasted 30 minutes when I read about that infusion being used with spell storing item yesterday. At least this method also gets you more scrolls to share around, and money.

[Saintheart]

Domain Spells are not cleric spells. They are on no class's spell list, not even Divine Crusader's.

Learn something new everyday!

EDIT: On a semi-related topic -- how would you rule a Divine Crusader's abilities interact with a Domain Draught? Would that allow them to shift their spell list around for 24 hours?

[magicalmagicman]

EDIT: On a semi-related topic -- how would you rule a Divine Crusader's abilities interact with a Domain Draught? Would that allow them to shift their spell list around for 24 hours?

Yes. I fail to see anything in both RAWs that would say otherwise.

[Darrin]

Stub: Warlock 1/Bard 5.
Feats: Skill Focus: Speak Language, Dark Speech, Sudden Extend.

1. Invoke summon swarm to conjure a swarm of bats.
2. Cast an extended sonorous hum to take care of the concentration.
3. Use Dark Speech to create a hivemind with 87 caster levels of sorcerer.
4. Suggest that the hivemind shapechange into a Siabrie (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20020817a) and use Awaken Desert (Su).
5. Profit.

[magicalmagicman]

Forgot about Heavenly Host.

Also found a new spell... HUNTER OF HADES. Freaking awesome. Now I want to change the build idea to revolve around early access of Hunter of Hades and just summon an army of Retrievers. They're good enough at level 20 if I have an army of them.

[magicalmagicman]

Ok, I'm giving up.

I found the early access. Naenhoon specifically says it works with Heighten Spell, so there is without a doubt in my mind metamagic reducers work with heighten spell, which means I can get early access to a 9th level silent image to replicate a 9th level summoning spell as a shadowcraft mage.

Problem is... ALL THESE SPELLS ARE FREAKING DIVINE. If Hunter of Hades was a sor/wiz spell I would've been so, so happy and made an entire build around it. But alas, all I got is Hellish Horde and Abyssal Army, which are horrible. I mean seriously? A freaking Vrock? Or a Bone Devil? Bone Devil is nice for the at-will wall of ice but these guys got 0 damage. Absolutely no damage.

So unless someone here can gives me alternate early access methods for Hunter of Hades that doesn't rely on top level cheese like astral projection, I'm a call it quits.