Uses for a More Real than Reality Shadowcraft Mage

[flappeercraft]

So I’ve seen the TO builds and seen one can with relative ease reach more than 100% on a shadowcraft mage. I want to make a build based around that, but what then. Ok it can make stuff that is more real than real but what would benefit the most from it, what is viable?

So far I’ve seen that summons are pretty good with this and the Orb line of spells has a nice damage boost with this.

Bedevil if I’m not misinterpreting it would be pretty good as it gives ASF that could easily be boosted quite a bit.

Any other ideas?

[ColorBlindNinja]

Maybe you could use it to summon monsters with more health, higher stats, ect.?

[AvatarVecna]

Don't get distracted with large quasireality scores. Reaching 100% is useful for making sure you don't get your spell ruined by a good Will save, but being realer than real isn't going to save blasting spells from sucking across the board unless it's significantly better than normal. Unless you were already considering a direct-damage blasting spell, or a summon that attacks directly rather than casting spells itself (and by 10th level when most ScMs get this ability, that's probably not very often), you should use the slot for something else instead. The primary benefit of the ScM 3rd lvl ability is versatility, being able to cast any blasting spell or summoning spell on the fly, so you can get whatever effect you need to slip past the enemy defenses. Dealing more damage than normal is nice, but making sure the kind of damage you're dealing (and how you're dealing it, for that matter) won't get ignored is far more important if you're going the direct damage route, and mages often have better things to do with their slots. How much damage would Meteor Swarm have to deal before it was competitive with other Wizard 9ths? Probably a good deal more than 200%, and that's already higher than you could feasibly get any ScM altered spell. There are a still a couple major benefits to the ScM approach beyond just versatility, though.

1: Spell Level Reduction

Metamagic Reduction normally just makes metamagic more competitive than it was before by changing the spells it's competing for slots with. By applying metamagic reduction to Heighten Spell in conjunction with one of the listed figments, you can theoretically get spell effects out of a lower slot than their default level (for instance, if you use Metamagic Reduction to Heighten "Silent Image" to 5th level, but you're casting it out of a 3rd level slot, you're getting a 4th level effect out of the deal). This is primarily useful for making already-good spells cost even less than normal (making them an even better use of resources than they already were), and also allows you to use your highest level slots to cast spells higher than you could normally cast.

2: Ability Damage

So yeah, all that stuff I said about how dealing more than 100% normal damage isn't all that big a damage buff? That goes out the window when we change the damage away from HP. Spells of the appropriate schools/sub-schools dealing ability damage aren't super-common but there's a few out there, and increasing the damage makes them much better than they were. Dealing enough non-Constitution ability damage renders the target helpless, while dealing enough Constitution ability damage renders them dead; these are two of the most debilitating conditions in the game. :smalltongue: Any way you have of increasing the chances of forcing those conditions on people is at least worth considering. Also, while I've listed some example spells that could take advantage of this below, my gut says that you'll have better luck scouring the summons lists to find creatures with poisons or spells that deal ability damage, rather than searching for "sor/wiz spells of the evocation/conjuration (summoning/creation) school that deal ability damage" (since that's rather niche).

"Parboil" from Sandstorm looks like a nice candidate: Sor/Wiz 4 spell that affects a 20 ft radius; everybody in the area takes 6d6 fire damage and 2d4 Intelligence damage (Fort save for half fire/no Int damage). A little quasireality and maybe some damage-enhancing metamagicks will make this much more effective. You'll generally be targeting two groups with this spell: one, creatures with low enough Int that this spell has a chance to render them helpless (although at this level, creatures like that probably have a pretty good Fort save), or Int-based casters, who probably have poor Fort saves and will suffer greatly for lowing several points of Intelligence (and because a high Will save/Mind Blank/True Seeing basically guarantees they'll face the "you made your save" percentage, getting a high quasireality makes their defenses work against them a bit, as long as they're not immune to ability damage).

"Conjure Greater Midnight Construct" from Magic Of Incarnum might be a good candidate if you're able to invest essentia in the spell on this build. It's an 8th level spell that creates a weird construct for 1 round/CL, and most of what it does isn't all that interesting, but you can invest essentia in it for a number of possible extra effects, including Soulburning Aura: "The aura deals 1 point of Strength damage per point of essentia invested (Will negates, DC 10 + 1/2 construct's HD + essentia invested) to all creatures adjacent to the construct at the end of the construct's turn." If you can get this spell cast with a ton of essentia dumped into it for enhancing speed and this aura, and maybe target the creation with a size-increasing effect, extra quasireality can mean a sizable amount of Str damage you can deliver to a number of targets every turn, which can litter the battlefield with helpless Str 0 targets.

"Contagious Fog" from Spell Compendium is another nice choice: Sor/Wiz 3, 20 ft radius, 1 round/CL, Fort save vs contracting Shakes disease immediately (so 1d8 Dex damage now, and more in the days to follow). Because this interacts with the disease rules, effects speeding up how often they have to save against the disease could be fun if you can find them, but that's about the most you could do. This is an AoE save-vs-ability-damage with a non-instantaneous duration, and while all of that's pretty cool, barring disease effect shenanigans you're only ever gonna deal 1d8 Dex damage per target with it...unless you use quasireality to increase that further.

"Cloudkill" from the Player's Handbook can be nice in the right circumstances (Sor/Wiz 5, 20 ft radius, 1 round/CL, Fort save vs death/Con damage), but that it only ever deals 1d4 Con damage at most means you're gonna be hard-pressed to get even a single extra point out of quasireality bumps. Still, if you can combine it with Empower/Maximize/other percentage-affecting metamagicks, the boost will be one of many making that small amount of Con damage that much more damaging.

"Incarnum Bladestorm" from Magic Of Incarnum is another good candidate for those who play with essentia: it creates a 20 ft radius/40 ft tall cylinder for 1 round/CL that you can move very slowly; everybody in the area at the end of your turn or who enters the area takes {1d6+essentia invested} Wis damage (Will save for half). That it lasts awhile, creates a decent area, and you can push people in to deal the Wis damage to them means you've got a good shot at reducing their Wis if they're not immune to ability damage. And lucky you, one thing the Evocation school you mimic has an abundance of is spells that push people around! A solid essentia investment in this spell, combined with realer-than-real illusions, can make for a solid hit to the target's Wis.

[flappeercraft]

Don't get distracted with large quasireality scores. Reaching 100% is useful for making sure you don't get your spell ruined by a good Will save, but being realer than real isn't going to save blasting spells from sucking across the board unless it's significantly better than normal. Unless you were already considering a direct-damage blasting spell, or a summon that attacks directly rather than casting spells itself (and by 10th level when most ScMs get this ability, that's probably not very often), you should use the slot for something else instead. The primary benefit of the ScM 3rd lvl ability is versatility, being able to cast any blasting spell or summoning spell on the fly, so you can get whatever effect you need to slip past the enemy defenses. Dealing more damage than normal is nice, but making sure the kind of damage you're dealing (and how you're dealing it, for that matter) won't get ignored is far more important if you're going the direct damage route, and mages often have better things to do with their slots. How much damage would Meteor Swarm have to deal before it was competitive with other Wizard 9ths? Probably a good deal more than 200%, and that's already higher than you could feasibly get any ScM altered spell. There are a still a couple major benefits to the ScM approach beyond just versatility, though.

1: Spell Level Reduction

Metamagic Reduction normally just makes metamagic more competitive than it was before by changing the spells it's competing for slots with. By applying metamagic reduction to Heighten Spell in conjunction with one of the listed figments, you can theoretically get spell effects out of a lower slot than their default level (for instance, if you use Metamagic Reduction to Heighten "Silent Image" to 5th level, but you're casting it out of a 3rd level slot, you're getting a 4th level effect out of the deal). This is primarily useful for making already-good spells cost even less than normal (making them an even better use of resources than they already were), and also allows you to use your highest level slots to cast spells higher than you could normally cast.

2: Ability Damage

So yeah, all that stuff I said about how dealing more than 100% normal damage isn't all that big a damage buff? That goes out the window when we change the damage away from HP. Spells of the appropriate schools/sub-schools dealing ability damage aren't super-common but there's a few out there, and increasing the damage makes them much better than they were. Dealing enough non-Constitution ability damage renders the target helpless, while dealing enough Constitution ability damage renders them dead; these are two of the most debilitating conditions in the game. :smalltongue: Any way you have of increasing the chances of forcing those conditions on people is at least worth considering. Also, while I've listed some example spells that could take advantage of this below, my gut says that you'll have better luck scouring the summons lists to find creatures with poisons or spells that deal ability damage, rather than searching for "sor/wiz spells of the evocation/conjuration (summoning/creation) school that deal ability damage" (since that's rather niche).

"Parboil" from Sandstorm looks like a nice candidate: Sor/Wiz 4 spell that affects a 20 ft radius; everybody in the area takes 6d6 fire damage and 2d4 Intelligence damage (Fort save for half fire/no Int damage). A little quasireality and maybe some damage-enhancing metamagicks will make this much more effective. You'll generally be targeting two groups with this spell: one, creatures with low enough Int that this spell has a chance to render them helpless (although at this level, creatures like that probably have a pretty good Fort save), or Int-based casters, who probably have poor Fort saves and will suffer greatly for lowing several points of Intelligence (and because a high Will save/Mind Blank/True Seeing basically guarantees they'll face the "you made your save" percentage, getting a high quasireality makes their defenses work against them a bit, as long as they're not immune to ability damage).

"Conjure Greater Midnight Construct" from Magic Of Incarnum might be a good candidate if you're able to invest essentia in the spell on this build. It's an 8th level spell that creates a weird construct for 1 round/CL, and most of what it does isn't all that interesting, but you can invest essentia in it for a number of possible extra effects, including Soulburning Aura: "The aura deals 1 point of Strength damage per point of essentia invested (Will negates, DC 10 + 1/2 construct's HD + essentia invested) to all creatures adjacent to the construct at the end of the construct's turn." If you can get this spell cast with a ton of essentia dumped into it for enhancing speed and this aura, and maybe target the creation with a size-increasing effect, extra quasireality can mean a sizable amount of Str damage you can deliver to a number of targets every turn, which can litter the battlefield with helpless Str 0 targets.

"Contagious Fog" from Spell Compendium is another nice choice: Sor/Wiz 3, 20 ft radius, 1 round/CL, Fort save vs contracting Shakes disease immediately (so 1d8 Dex damage now, and more in the days to follow). Because this interacts with the disease rules, effects speeding up how often they have to save against the disease could be fun if you can find them, but that's about the most you could do. This is an AoE save-vs-ability-damage with a non-instantaneous duration, and while all of that's pretty cool, barring disease effect shenanigans you're only ever gonna deal 1d8 Dex damage per target with it...unless you use quasireality to increase that further.

"Cloudkill" from the Player's Handbook can be nice in the right circumstances (Sor/Wiz 5, 20 ft radius, 1 round/CL, Fort save vs death/Con damage), but that it only ever deals 1d4 Con damage at most means you're gonna be hard-pressed to get even a single extra point out of quasireality bumps. Still, if you can combine it with Empower/Maximize/other percentage-affecting metamagicks, the boost will be one of many making that small amount of Con damage that much more damaging.

"Incarnum Bladestorm" from Magic Of Incarnum is another good candidate for those who play with essentia: it creates a 20 ft radius/40 ft tall cylinder for 1 round/CL that you can move very slowly; everybody in the area at the end of your turn or who enters the area takes {1d6+essentia invested} Wis damage (Will save for half). That it lasts awhile, creates a decent area, and you can push people in to deal the Wis damage to them means you've got a good shot at reducing their Wis if they're not immune to ability damage. And lucky you, one thing the Evocation school you mimic has an abundance of is spells that push people around! A solid essentia investment in this spell, combined with realer-than-real illusions, can make for a solid hit to the target's Wis.

If you’re a player in my campaign, do not read the following. Spoilers ahead.








Actually this is for a game I’m running in high TO currently, going to use it for one of the main villains. I might or might not have gone a bit over board and managed to get 10,000% reality. So that stuff with not being feasible or optimal unless the percentage is really high is irrelevant. The dude is already built, I only need uses for this because when I finished I realized I had zero idea what I would do with this guy in combat.

Still, a pretty nice list overall, very helpful. Might have to change some stuff but it will be for the better if I can get it to work.

[AvatarVecna]

If you’re a player in my campaign, do not read the following. Spoilers ahead.








Actually this is for a game I’m running in high TO currently, going to use it for one of the main villains. I might or might not have gone a bit over board and managed to get 10,000% reality. So that stuff with not being feasible or optimal unless the percentage is really high is irrelevant. The dude is already built, I only need uses for this because when I finished I realized I had zero idea what I would do with this guy in combat.

Still, a pretty nice list overall, very helpful. Might have to change some stuff but it will be for the better if I can get it to work.

In regards to that, I will mention one other thing that should be very important to you: there are two percentage values for every shadow spell: the value they have to deal with if they "makes their save" (through whatever means they make the save; this is the percentage you achieve via feats and class features and the like), and the value they have to deal with if they "fail their save" (which is always 100%). A player/character who has reason to believe they're dealing with a mage who employs "realer than real" illusions (in-universe, the equivalent of "things man was not meant to know", presumably), they can significantly impact your DPR by just refusing to look deeper. Your job, as a Shadowcraft Mage, is to make an effect powerful enough to really screw your enemies over, while also making sure they'll "make their save" against it and suffer the increased damage. This is part of why ScM can be really good - high Will saves, and effects that normally let you auto-succeed on saves against illusions, are turned into weaknesses to be exploited. But it also means that an ScM would do well to avoid abilities letting them pierce such auto-succeed abilities - and, if the enemy doesn't have such abilities, the ScM would do well to avoid setting the DC too high. Doing such things could cause the enemy to fail their save and take less damage. Of course, in such situations, the enemy (if they're genre-savvy or get an inkling of what's going on) could choose to intentionally fail their save when they see you cast one of the prerequisite figments-turned-shadows.

TL;DR That gigantic percentage is the damage they take if they make their save, otherwise they take 100%. Don't optimize so hard they can't make their save, or all that extra damage potential will go to waste. I'll do some more spell research and get back to you in PMs.

You should probably avoid summons. While your TO might get their HP and damage appropriate for the game you're summoning them into, the rest of their stats will be far too low to be of any assistance: barring extreme buffing, their attributes will be too vulnerable to ability damage, their AC and saves are laughable, any save DC they force will only work if the players roll a nat 1 (and sometimes not even then), they'll be too slow to keep up if the players decide to kite them, and their attack bonuses are so low they basically only hit on a crit (which the players are probably immune to anyway). That gigantic percentage will probably only really come up in spells where you deal the damage yourself (so the save DCs and attacks bonuses are tied to your stats rather than some weak summon's stats).

[CactusAir]

Isn't the official ruling that you can't exceed 100 quasireality?

[ColorBlindNinja]

Isn't the official ruling that you can't exceed 100 quasireality?

No, actually, because the game designers never planned for that eventuality.

[flappeercraft]

Isn't the official ruling that you can't exceed 100 quasireality?

That's just a house rule, it was never stated or implied anywhere that you can't. It's just RAW being dumb and the designers never expecting it to be possible. However it's an incredibly reasonable house rule and one that all tables played at a reasonable unoptimized level should use, but that is not my case.

[Sleven]

I might or might not have gone a bit over board and managed to get 10,000% reality.

I'm going to go with "might not have." :smallsmile:

[ColorBlindNinja]

I'm going to go with "might not have." :smallsmile:

I'm curious how he achieved 10,000%, actually.

[flappeercraft]

I'm curious how he achieved 10,000%, actually.

I achieved it by limiting myself and deciding getting more than that at ECL 20 was too much even for that game. :smallbiggrin:

[Sleven]

I'm curious how he achieved 10,000%, actually.


I achieved it by limiting myself and deciding getting more than that at ECL 20 was too much even for that game. :smallbiggrin:

It looks like you'll never get an answer. There probably isn't a RAW-valid one anyways.

[flappeercraft]

It looks like you'll never get an answer. There probably isn't a RAW-valid one anyways.

Actually I sent it via PM, I just didn't want to risk having my players peek in case they didn't see the notice that they shouldn't.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Actually I sent it via PM, I just didn't want to risk having my players peek in case they didn't see the notice that they shouldn't.

Thank you for that, I appreciate it. I'm always eager to learn new optimization tricks. :smallsmile: