Need a replacement Character, Gestalt game.

[Lorddenorstrus]

So, playing in a Gestalt game. Need to create a new character, to replace my current one in the near future. My "role" was buffer in the party. I was Cleric/Dreadnecro, but it just wasn't really working out. (Currently lvl 6, I know the DM has plans for at least to lvl 15, maybe more.)

We have a Warblade, who specialized vs Evil things. *shrug* I haven't looked at his sheet I just know he has some bane of evil on the weapon or something. I think its something the DM gave him.

A Ranger... no the morphing kind the regular ranger. No idea what it's gestalted with, archery built.

Last slot has been filled by DM NPCs, rotating as the 4th player hasn't shown up.

So, I'm kind of the only caster in the group. Focusing on minionmancy with so many martials.. was kind of outclassing them often and while everyone appreciated the DMM Persistomancy buffs. I can't have minions out class the martials gimmick.

My first idea, was combining Sorc/ with either Favored Soul or Cleric still. Maybe Incantantrix for bonus MM feats so I can hit both Blaster and Extend/Persist for buffing. Maybe a dip for a 2nd Turning pool to fuel more Persists.

Any suggestions, I'm trying to think of what best to do to assist the party and not over shadow the Martials.. well shtick. And, the generic God Wizard style doesn't suit me sadly, although it might be the most optimal thing currently. Also, I'm hesitant to be a low defense character of any kind due to the DM. A Succubus disguised as a village girl we saved in a cave almost TPKd us. (The WB/Ranger are.. very good good kind of players they didn't like the suggestion to kill the mystery person)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Go with a Spellscale, Bard//Spirit Shaman. Trade your Suggestion bardic music for Song of the Heart. I'd trade Countersong for Spellbreaker Song and Fascinate for Healing Hymn, and consider swapping Bardic Knowledge for Bardic Knack.

Take two flaws (Love of Nature (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?258440-The-quot-Best-quot-Flaws#30) for sure), get Dragonfire Inspiration, Wild Cohort (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a), Ashbound, Melodic Casting, and Greenbound Summoning.

Plan to keep Spirit Shaman single-classed, take Bard to 8th and then dip one level of Dragon Devotee and one level of anything else (Sorcerer gets draconic heritage as a bonus feat to switch your damage type, and allows you to use wands like Nerveskitter and Wings of Cover). At 11th+ level start taking Sublime Chord, and find a prestige class that will advance it, such as Divine Oracle (get the prerequisite feat from the Frog God's Fane).

Items should include a Badge of Valor, and Bard spells known should include Inspirational Boost. Your Inspire Courage adds 4d6 fire damage to everyone's attacks, including ranged attacks and your animal cohort's attacks.

Your animal cohort should be a riding dog with trip, preferably with warbeast and magebred added. Per the ECS, only druids and rangers are prohibited from having magebred animal companions, and you have no levels in either of those classes.

Favorite Bard spells should include Grease, Silent Image, Glitterdust, Cloud of Bewilderment, and in one more level Haste. Favorite Spirit Shaman spells should include Wall of Smoke, Summon Nature's Ally I (Greenbound Dire Rat can use Wall of Thorns), Kelpstrand, Mass Snake's Swiftness, and Sleet Storm.

Use an Elvencraft Shortbow, that counts as both a shortbow and a club so it should be able to have two wand chambers. Your shots will benefit from Dragonfire Inspiration and you can get a free shot when you cast Mass Snake's Swiftness. Get a Ring of the Beast if possible. Keep a Wand of Lesser Vigor on hand for healing up your party between encounters.

Try to use your spells conservatively. You'll spend a 1st level Bard spell on Inspirational boost every encounter. You can get some seriously good mileage out of SNAI to make a rat that drops one of the most durable barriers on top of up to four opponents that lasts for ten minutes. Wall of Smoke can be cast on top of opponents to force an immediate saving throw, same for Cloud of Bewilderment. You don't need to overdo it on spells unless in a given encounter, you can still fire your bow for decent damage each round with dragonfire inspiration.

[Maat Mons]

War Weaver can buff your buffing. And if you go arcane//divine, Eldritch Tapestry doesn't care which type of spell you're casting into it.

[Falontani]

Binder/Paladin (evil)
Binder/paladin
Binder/paladin
Binder/paladin
Binder/thrall of orcus
Tenebrous Apostate/thrall of orcus
Tenebrous Apostate/Thrall of Orcus
Tenebrous Apostate/Thrall of Orcus
Tenebrous Apostate/Thrall of Orcus
Tenebrous Apostate/Thrall of Orcus
Knight of the Sacred Seal/Thrall of Orcus
Knight of the Sacred Seal/Contemplative
Knight of the Sacred Seal/Bone knight...

Far as I got then I fell asleep

[schreier]

How about something like this:

beguiler warblade
beguiler warblade
beguiler warblade
beguiler warblade
beguiler warblade
rainbow servant divine oracle
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant loremaster
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant sacred exorcist
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant Eldritch master
rainbow servant archmage
dweomerkeeper Eldritch master
dweomerkeeper Eldritch master
dweomerkeeper Eldritch master
dweomerkeeper Eldritch master
dweomerkeeper monk

First 5 levels gives good bab and hp and iron heart surge ... Then you build towards getting cleric spells as divine (through rainbow servant), sorcerer, and druid spells through Eldritch master, then get turn undead from sacred exorcist (and divine metamagic) faerie mysteries initiate through loremaster, archmage gets ranged touch, and monk gives int to ac through Kung Fu genius

You'll be a level 30 spontaneous caster with sorcerer, cleric, druid and beguiler lists

Take rapid metamagic to apply them without going full round .. get iron will through the otyugh hole to qualify for loremaster

And supernatural spell from dweomerkeeper

[Calthropstu]

First, play a druid. Their ability to work with plants is second to none.
Next, acquire numerous different types of mint.
Use druidic magic to grow the mints after someone takes one.

Because it is gestalt, I also advise taking ranks in wizard so you can use creation spells. This way, you can also replace manufactured mints with ease.

[MisterKaws]

If you go Incantatrix you will outshadow the Ranger very, very fast. My advice is to make a full controller character, just grab a lot of area modification, restriction, mind control, buffs, all that, and stack up on divinations as well.

If you want some defense, maybe do a Duskblade/Wizard. Arcane Channeled Dimension Hop with a (wraithstrike'd)whip is a pretty good way to mess up the battlefield placement, especially at low levels against dumb brutes with low will.

Plus you can absolutely wreck the living hell out of everything with Thunderlance at level 7, though you should leave that trick hidden until a time comes where the Fighter can't go on any longer.

Also to note that a Duskblade's familiar is pretty tough too.

[RNightstalker]

If you go Incantatrix you will outshadow the Ranger very, very fast. My advice is to make a full controller character, just grab a lot of area modification, restriction, mind control, buffs, all that, and stack up on divinations as well.

If you want some defense, maybe do a Duskblade/Wizard. Arcane Channeled Dimension Hop with a (wraithstrike'd)whip is a pretty good way to mess up the battlefield placement, especially at low levels against dumb brutes with low will.

Plus you can absolutely wreck the living hell out of everything with Thunderlance at level 7, though you should leave that trick hidden until a time comes where the Fighter can't go on any longer.

Also to note that a Duskblade's familiar is pretty tough too.

I'll second the Incantatrix. The Cooperative Metamagic will help you save your turn attempts from DMM for other things.

[Particle_Man]

It is hard not to overshadow martials. Maybe a bard//healer? Buff the others in combat and heal them between combats? Note I am not going for high optimization since you specifically want not to overshadow tier 3-4 types.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Crusader is one of my favorite classes for support, and has great defenses. A high-op combination would be Crusader/Bard with Dragonfire Inspiration and Song of the White Raven (and the usual Inspire Courage tricks); dropping Dragonfire still leaves you with some pretty good bonuses.

[schreier]

Your concern with outclassing the martials was just the minions outclassing them, right?

BTW - the beguiler build I listed was based on the assumption of DM reading Rainbow servant as 6/10 caster class (which is what is stated in an FAQ I think as the intent, but the text over table argument is more correct from a RAW perspective). If you were going on the 10/10 rainbow servant, you would just go straight through all 10 rainbow servant levels with eldritch master instead. That would impact your last 5 levels obviously. Another option would be to go Wizard / Archivist (although that likely skews towards the god build)

Could do simple:
Wizard 5 / Cleric 5
Incantatrix 10 / Dweomerkeeper 10
Archmage 5 / Radiant Serant of Pelor 5

[Tytalus]

Often overlooked gestalt rule: "A gestalt character can’t combine two prestige classes at any level."

[OgresAreCute]

You could do Persist Cleric/Inspire Courage Bard to make some sort of auramancer support guy, then just throw some BFC spells every now and then like glitterdust. This way you can also bring some restoration and resurrection abilities that might be scarce in your party.
It might be very tight on feats though, especially if you don't play with flaws.

[MisterKaws]

"Hey guys I wanna make a caster but I'm overshadowing my party ma-" "You should do Incantatrix/Dweomerkeeper. It's really OP"

"We're currently level si-" "Yo, here's a level 20 build for ya"

Love how some people focus on the real objective.

[Rebel7284]

I love eldritch master, that was mentioned before, and if it intrigues you, here is a thread on it that I created a while back with several gestalt builds if you want to explore that idea more: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?323862-Brainstorming-Eldrich-Master

As folks pointed out, Incantatrix is an amazing class so if you chose to go that way, proceed with caution and focus on persisting spells on your allies instead of becoming nearly immortal yourself.

War Weaver is great and made for buffing. The fact that you can't spellweave higher level spells isn't as much of an issue if you game ends at 15 or before.

Factotum makes for a great passive side to an Int focused caster. The ability to add your Int to everything and take an extra action at level 8 is amazing. Adds a fair amount to survivability too!

[AnimeTheCat]

Out of curiosity, does Gestalt prevent classes like Mystic Theurge? If not, you could make something like:

Favored Soul/Stalwart Battle Sorcerer
Favored Soul/Stalwart Battle Sorcerer
Favored Soul/Stalwart Battle Sorcerer
Favored Soul/Stalwart Battle Sorcerer
Mystic Theurge/Swordsage or Crusader
Mystic Theurge/Swordsage or Crusader

That puts you at level 6 with casting as a level 6 sorcerer and favored soul and maneuvers from a level 4 crusader or swordsage. Stick to light armor (or pick up the feat that lets you cast in medium armor from Complete Mage I think). If you're a crusader, see if you can get the feat and a set of mithral full plate and you'll be coasting really nicely as far as AC goes. If you're a Swordsage, see about getting a mithral breatsplate. You're pretty Charisma focused, so you can fill a diplomatic role as well (Bluff from Sorcerer/Diplomacy from Favored Soul). You're not going to overshadow the other characters because you're limited in your magic selection so you won't be as efficient as anything a cleric or wizard can do, but you'll still be meaningfully contributing in every way without being a liability in terms of survivability.

I almost recommended being a Favored Soul of Wee Jas then later prestige into Ruby Knight Vindicator, but then I remembered that Favored Souls don't get innate access to Turn Undead (for some really silly reason) and that I houseruled them to have it as a cleric... If your DM is cool do that and then RKV when you have the maneuvers, then switch back to Sorcerer for your other class when progressing. you'll delay your Favored soul casting (I think RKV has delayed casting) but it will be ok because it will be fun, and that's what's important.

[MisterKaws]

Out of curiosity, does Gestalt prevent classes like Mystic Theurge?

Yuppers. They do.

[AnimeTheCat]

Yuppers. They do.

whelp... been doing that "wrong" in games I've run and played in. Oh well, just add it to the list of things I think is OK in the game.

OP, disregard what I said. It would be cool, but it apparently rides on one misunderstanding the rules. Really lame rules, but I guess rules none the less.

[schreier]

"Hey guys I wanna make a caster but I'm overshadowing my party ma-" "You should do Incantatrix/Dweomerkeeper. It's really OP"

"We're currently level si-" "Yo, here's a level 20 build for ya"

Love how some people focus on the real objective.

He did say this:

My first idea, was combining Sorc/ with either Favored Soul or Cleric still. Maybe Incantantrix for bonus MM feats so I can hit
both Blaster and Extend/Persist for buffing. Maybe a dip for a 2nd Turning pool to fuel more Persists.

I read that as not wanting to have a minion overshadow the martials - but he even mentioned Incantatrix and blaster/persist buffs.

And I think it is important to have both a plan for the current level (6), and long-term (15+ as he says)

That being said - I have always missed the "no combining prestige class" rule. Of course, I have only theorycrafted gestalts, never played them in reality. I knew the no-theurge restriction, but not the no-prestige at all!

What about artificer, if you want to be support?

Could go artificer 20 on one side, then the other pick a spellcasting class and run with it (Sorcerer / Incantatrix / Archmage?)

[Ramza00]

(I am not recommending this for you, but I am currently preparing work on a Psion Seer / Divination Wizard in a Pathfinder Gestalt with the Wizard Side going Exploiter Wizard followed by Divine Oracle, and the Psion Side is a Pact Psion. I am not recommending this for it will be using houserules, is pathfinder+3.5, and it does not seem to mix well with the other players in game you are making. I am still sharing it for it may give you inspiration fuel. This Psion Seer will be inspired by Melisandre from Game of Thrones.)

-----

What makes more sense for what you are playing would be a

Archivist 20 / Wizard 3 + War Weaver 3 with using something like Improved Sigil Krau to get early entry with only 3 levels of Wizard instead of 5 levels.

Use the Archivist + Wizard Spellcasting for buffs and battlefield control. After throwing up your buffs via Quiescent Weaving (up to 3 3rd level buffs with War Weaver 3) as a move action and a battlefield control fog / sight reducer then let your allies just kill things as a Warblade Melee and a Ranger Ranged.

But here is the cool thing. See the 3rd level Spell Dimension Step. Use ready actions where you ready an action to cast Dimension Step and when an enemy tries to attack you or your two party members you teleport them out of danger but you can also set up your Warblade next to an enemy to lay down the hurt for the next round with a full round attack or one of their warblade maneuvers. You are playing defensive and offensive chess with ready action Dimension Step for you can move any of your 2 allies up to their move distance. Oh Dimension Step also stacks real nicely with Haste in the Quiescent Weaving. Instead of having a 30 ft teleport due to a base land speed of 30 ft. , it is now 60 feet for haste added an additional 30 ft. enhancement bonus to the person speed.

You can choose any Wizard 3 specializations but if it was me I would go focused specialist conjurer or focused specialist transmutation. This is because with Archivist not losing any spellcasting it is okay to sacrifice 3 schools for you can just cast those schools with your Archivist slots. It is okay to give up Abjuration if you can cast dispel magic from the Archivist side. So on and so on. Yes it is giving up spell versatility but the extra 2 + spells means more buffs with Transmutation, or more Dimension Steps with Conjuration.

Dragon Magic 348 has an interesting alternative class feature instead of a familiar. Choose a school of magic to become a focus caster, each school of magic has a different benefit. With Transmutation you have a masterwork item you use as a focus when you cast a spell.

Character Level 1st. When you cast a transmutation that is a buff, that is not personal another person benefits from the spell (thus caster level haste instead of affecting 2 targets affects 3 targets.) This additional target only gets the duration for half the normal length.

Character Level 7th This additional target gets the full duration.

At Character Level 15th. When your spell gives a bonus to physical or mental scores you get double the scores. Thus Bull Strength is +8 instead of +4. Note this 15th level ability is only once per day, but it would be awesome with Bite of the Werebear for +32 to Str plus associated other benefits instead of +16 to Str. Now if you prestige out at Wizard 3 you will only get the extra target but that is still nice at affecting 3 targets at character level 6 with haste instead of just 2.

[Lorddenorstrus]

He did say this:

My first idea, was combining Sorc/ with either Favored Soul or Cleric still. Maybe Incantantrix for bonus MM feats so I can hit
both Blaster and Extend/Persist for buffing. Maybe a dip for a 2nd Turning pool to fuel more Persists.

I read that as not wanting to have a minion overshadow the martials - but he even mentioned Incantatrix and blaster/persist buffs.

And I think it is important to have both a plan for the current level (6), and long-term (15+ as he says)

That being said - I have always missed the "no combining prestige class" rule. Of course, I have only theorycrafted gestalts, never played them in reality. I knew the no-theurge restriction, but not the no-prestige at all!

What about artificer, if you want to be support?

Could go artificer 20 on one side, then the other pick a spellcasting class and run with it (Sorcerer / Incantatrix / Archmage?)

Yes, my worries was that as I'd already gotten a few decent undead. They were doing comparable or greater damage just clonking around melee than my martials, on top of my throwing Arcane or Divine spells around. It looked to much like the me party with witnesses. I don't mind being a strong caster. I just can't reasonably be a necromancer it seems, as well what is the point of martial companions? If the warblade.. was played to a T properly (It isnt) it would've been a strong contender to stay equal with minionmancy on a Damage Per Round basis. But the Ranger is just always going to be lacking. The WB being played improperly puts it par with ranger here. I'm playing with 2 T4s and a DM who expects T3/2 play. I know he's pulling his punchs a tad, hoping those 2 will learn and improve. But eventually he wont, and it's gonna be a TPK. It's something of a headache being the strategist as it isn't the role I've found success playing as. Not to say I haven't found fun expanding on my repertoire and learning new roles or aspects I hadn't played before, but I really would prefer not to wipe. So, yeah my plan was look at Incantantrix, I need a longterm plan. Shortterm if I can squeeze War Weaver levels into the build, it's cheesing efficiency of Buff spells will hopefully put extra oomph on the martials.

If this was about flavor and being what I enjoyed, I'd do Warlock / something just because I freaking love Eldritch Blast as an auto attack inbetween strategically placed spells probably. But, I'm looking at having to bring to bear at least a decently optimized DMM Cleric to put power onto martials and simultaneously have some level of usefulness as the Arcane caster. Which I doubt I will be able to play at full capacity my experience range so far is mostly Gishes or Warblades honestly. Although once I did to a weird Troll (Savage species) Monk for lolz. Besides the point, Casters beyond a Gish level is new territory for me honestly. This was my first time trying out a Necromancer to actually. So looking at the battlefield never intending to do any real kind of damage (God wizard) sounds honestly boring to me. Which is why I looked into having some blaster optimization in there. I don't want to have to trust the martials to kill it if it is threatening to my characters life, but when able just let them do their own thing and enjoy their own smashing of things.

[Calthropstu]

Favored soul/Sorcerer combines very very well.
Rather than specialize in buffs, specialize in divination with the Favored Soul. Then specialize in blaster abilities with the sorc half. You can use the Favored Soul powers to divine people you rescue (detect evil, know alignment etc) or otherwise deal with.

Take some utility, defensive and specialty (Divination for FS, Attack with Sorc) spells wit both and it should work incredibly well.

[MisterKaws]

Blub that I won't add to a quote cause walls

Well, you don't want to outclass them, but you're planning a blaster that'll clearly outclass them in their main schtick. You have a clear conflict of interests... with yourself?

My previous advice stands, though you're right on wanting some DMM goodness on that team.

Let me change my advice a bit in that case. Have you heard of the Sha'ir? It's a pretty versatile class, in that you have a limited list of known spells, but you can prepare, with a little bit of extra effort, any spell you have ever seen and identified with a Spellcraft check. Plus some divine spells. And you can prepare every single spell individually. It's not very famous because prepared spells only stay memorized for 1 hour/level, but in your case, since you're starting at level 6, it's long enough, and, if you have an off-day, you can cast some divine spells from your Sha'ir list to lighten up your Cleric side(Sha'ir divine spells take a few hours to prepare, each).

Also, Sha'ir technically qualifies by itself for pretty much every single Theurge class ever made, if your DM somehow lets you do that.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Well, you don't want to outclass them, but you're planning a blaster that'll clearly outclass them in their main schtick. You have a clear conflict of interests... with yourself?

My previous advice stands, though you're right on wanting some DMM goodness on that team..

Yes, I'm aware I'm kind of in conflict with myself. The reality is we need a Cleric player, and a Wizard player who enjoys battle field control. I don't mind being the cleric, so long as half the gestalt I can also do something i find more interesting than a Cleric and have my own thing. And Wizards don't suit me. What options am I left with at that point? I'm assisting to fulfil one of the roles we need, but also still have half a build so to speak of room to create something I find actually interesting to play. I think Sorc, and a ton of metamagic feats with a selective spell list would have great utility. Not every spell has to be a blasting spell. I don't want the extreme tedium of preparing 2 different spell lists a day. Majority of cleric is pre decided w/ 24 hour duration buffs (DM banned 48h buffs didn't want us to adventure every other day due to keep a full available spell list) being refreshed. Then a couple choice utility picks here and there, I basically never change when playing. Unless we need something niche.

Honestly if I could find someone else to fill in Arcane caster, I'd probably do like Warlock/Crusader(or Warblade) and then change warlock into Ur Priest and hit up Eldritch Disciple. Cleric spells Warlock utility and an Initiator to smack things with maneuvers like a freight train sounds riiight up my alley. But, then the party would be SOL on Arcane spells. Frankly I don't want to play a game where in a few levels we won't have teleport just because the other party members are optimization level potato.

[Maat Mons]

How would you feel about Archivist? You'd have all the Cleric spells, and you could probably acquire enough non-Cleric spells to cover your "arcane caster" needs.

If you can cover the necessary spell access on just one half of the gestalt, that leaves the other half free for whatever you actually want to do.

[Lleban]

I'd suggest a mix of Archivsit//Beguiler, Archivist gives you access to nearly all of the divine spells while beguiler gives you tons of fun illusions and lets you play skill monkey.

[SirNibbles]

If you go Incantatrix you will outshadow the Ranger very, very fast. My advice is to make a full controller character, just grab a lot of area modification, restriction, mind control, buffs, all that, and stack up on divinations as well.

If you want some defense, maybe do a Duskblade/Wizard. Arcane Channeled Dimension Hop with a (wraithstrike'd)whip is a pretty good way to mess up the battlefield placement, especially at low levels against dumb brutes with low will.

Plus you can absolutely wreck the living hell out of everything with Thunderlance at level 7, though you should leave that trick hidden until a time comes where the Fighter can't go on any longer.

Also to note that a Duskblade's familiar is pretty tough too.

Agreed. If you do area control and debuffs your contribution will be vital to the team's success but your martial players will be able to feel like they're also getting to do something.

Since it's gestalt and
the other party members are optimization level potato you can probably get away with stuff that wouldn't usually be very powerful, like an Ascetic Mage (Monk/Sorcerer) and still be effective, especially compared to the rest of the party.