Magic jar on a willing cohort

[ericgrau]

I was just thinking about how far you might take this tactic: Rather than casting magic jar on an enemy, cast it on a willing cohort. As a sort of fusion team-up. I'd even do it on a fellow PC if it weren't so boring for him to play. Maybe in a game with more than 1 PC per player. Carry the jar and your body around. Use the cohort for physical ability scores, HP, natural abilities and automatic abilities. You might try this on a sort of gish build, overcoming MAD and getting the best of both worlds. It also could be good to get permanent flight (with hover unlike overland flight) and other nice abilities. Your physical ability scores could also be far higher than normal by taking a cohort with RHD/LA but without any RHD/LA on your main character.

What other abilities/tricks could you exploit? Or what gish or other build can you think of? After the initial LA/RHD, how might you advance the cohort in a useful way? Ability score PrCs maybe? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255377-3-5-PrCs-that-grant-Ability-Score-Bonuses)?

[icefractal]

It works pretty great, IME. In addition to a cohort, you can use it on:
* Your familiar (for a very stealthy body)
* A simulacrum of something with good physical qualities.
* A planar bound creature, although many wouldn't agree to it unless compelled.

It has a number of benefits over an unwilling vessel:
* Jump back into the gem (which the vessel is wearing) and temporarily possess some foes.
* Possession temporarily blocked / dispelled - not as much a problem.
* Last few foes aren't worth casting spells on? Hop back into the jar for a minute and let the vessel melee them with superior BAB.

Carrying your body around is the tricky part, since having it in a bag of holding would make dispel fatal. A Glove of Storing isn't extradimensional though, IIRC. Or Shrink Item and have the vessel put you in a pocket. PaO too, if you're high enough level.

[Eldariel]

You can leave Personal buffs on the Jar'd target too. This enables e.g. a Barbarian to get the rather significant benefits of Shapechange and in general, any self-only spells can be used on anyone. Anthrowhale did a thread on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?538815-Magic-Jar-Buffing) a while back.

[ericgrau]

All of these are really cool and I could see making a caster focused on magic jar in multiple ways.

Now I want to make a necromancer that finesses all of the various tricky necromancy spells properly. Ray of enfeeblement/enervation beefy targets. Follow with double ray of exhaustion to completely disable if needed. Command/halt/control any undead we fight, false life for survivability, ghoul touch for coup de grace if and only if fighting low fort humanoids (and doesn't give a new save each round like hold person), fear BFC, later quicken spectral hand for touch spells. Familiar with vampiric touch for free damage without quickly dying. Animate dead/create undead servant army of course. Both for mundane tasks and to run interference tactics. Heck magic jar created undead too. Round it out with regular spells for other situations.

Btw, can I magic jar a shadow or other incorporeal creature, like a shadow I create? The magic jar text seems to imply they are souls rather than contain souls. Would be cool to phase into a room, cast spells, get destroyed, rinse, repeat. At high level 150 gp a shadow is chump change. Continue until the enemy group comes out of their trap laden room and through the choke point door to my ready party. Magic jar says "the magic jar must be within spell range and you must know where it is, though you do not need line of sight or line of effect to it" and "If the host body is slain, you return to the magic jar, if within range". I'm guessing this doesn't work though since incorporeal literally means "without a body". Still something to try on corporeal minions.

I really like necromancy in general for clever spells like these and I hate when people ban it. Evocation has a lot too. Enchantment is just the red headed stepchild and usually pretty useless. Well, except when you charm an army and as they build and build they get out of hand. Ok but abjuration is pretty useless. A party divine caster can do it all for you, and with 1 day's rest can get anything needed. And while in theory the ability to remove all magic seems super powerful, precisely matching a defense to an attack is rare. Ah but dispel hits almost anything... except it only works half the time and still takes an action. And most buffs are so bad they must be cast with zero combat actions to be worth it. So the target needs several buffs just for dispel to be barely worth it, still niche. Divination is niche too, except when you pull tricks like spontaneous divination and days of real world time make elaborate plans. But regardless you can't ban it. Illusion, transmutation and conjuration have at least as many cool tricks as necromancy, if not many more general purpose spells too. So yeah, screw you abjuration. I just got whammied, please tell me we have a party cleric to fix me. /tangent.