Piggy Knowles
2019-07-18, 12:24 PM
Welcome back!
INTRODUCTION
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.
The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger and WhamBamSam, with a couple of other folks hopefully on their way. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product. I’ll list the build’s main author whenever I showcase a particular build.
Buffsader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?559259-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Buffsader) (ToB/Gish/Party Support)
The Utility Belt (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560988-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Utility-Belt) (Psionics/Stealth/Utility)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless War Mind (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569004-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-War-Mind) (ToB/Psionics/Melee Damage)
The Melding Pot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?579458-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Melding-Pot) (Incarnum/Utility)
That’s So Raven (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?581950-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-That%92s-So-Raven) (Gish/Ranged/Debuff)
Dancing in the Dark (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?582528-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Dancing-in-the-Dark) (ToB/Stealth/Lock-down)
Gladys Knight and the Pips (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?583657-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Gladys-Knight-and-the-Pips) (Arcane/Face/Utility)
I Choose You! ("]Zen in the Art of Archery[/URL]
https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.624393553.1886/flat,550x550,075,f.u5.jpg[/IMG]
Big Brother is Watching
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed - no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.
BACKGROUND
Some classes are obviously amazing: it doesn’t take a genius to look at something like planar shepherd or abjurant champion or ruby knight vindicator and see its potential. But then there are classes that break the rules, classes that completely defy the most basic tenets of optimization but that have really fascinating abilities buried in them.
Void disciple is one such class. This one is just bizarre. It’s a class that was ported over from Lo5R without much thought, and it stands out like a sore thumb among the other classes in the Complete line. Everything from the odd choice of pre-reqs to the awkward number of class levels (13 levels, only 8 of which progress casting? OK, buddy) just raises eyebrows. But those abilities… uber-scrying, granting feats or skill ranks to allies with a touch, letting people sub in one ability score for another, they’re all really fascinating. The class pops up occasionally in TO builds, but after poking around a bit, we decided we had to find a way to make this class work for a more practical character.
The most obvious answer to making the class palatable was to use a fast-progression prestige class to rebuild casting and make up for those many lost caster levels. For that we turned to the tried and true bard into sublime chord. Bard has popped up several times in these showcases already. While previous bards focused on damage or on social roles, this one goes for a different theme entirely: the seer. The intent here is a character that knows and sees everything, and uses that knowledge to facilitate the rest of the party.
The basic concept here is a timeless one: find your opponent, scry on them, divine their weaknesses, then teleport the whole party in to deal with that. To keep from outshining the rest of the party we decided to dig deep into the support side of things, and to stick to a theme. Most of the spells (both offensive and defensive) focus on divination, augment the senses or work with spatial and planar manipulation.
Also for a final note, credit where credit is due. As soon as we decided to dabble in Truespeak-related magic, there was only one place to go for ideas: Zaq’s absolutely fantastic handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214115-In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Word-and-the-Word-Was-Suck-A-Guide-to-Truenamers). Even though this build isn’t a truenamer, that handbook was a great source for ideas on how to keep Truespeak checks high enough to reliably use spells with Truespeak components, and also gave us the idea for the Delay Potion + quick potion trick.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. As always, it’s all about the feats, though this is also a high-skill build.
Build Stub: Bardic Sage 5/Mindbender 1/Void Disciple 5/Sublime Chord 1/Urban Savant 8.
ACFs: Bardic sage (spellcasting requires Int, no good Reflex save, shorter music duration, get bonus divination spells known, improved bardic knowledge and expanded bard spell list), healing hymn (replaces fascinate), inspire awe (replaces inspire courage), spellbreaker song (replaces countersong), planar inspiration (replaces inspire competence)
Alignment: Any non-lawful and neutral. This gives you a fair bit of wiggle room as far as alignment goes; TN, NE, NG and CN all work. Note that your alignment will end up mattering for your choice of improved familiar down the road, though all alignments have good options here.
Cold World
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Bardic Sage 1
Favored, Spell Penetration
Bardic knowledge, inspire awe, spellbreaker song, healing hymn
Detect magicsage, message, mage hand, prestidigitation, daze
It’s too bad bardic knowledge is just too useful here; we were this close from having a “replace all the things” bard. Our previous bard was primarily a face; here, we’re going instead for a know-it-all vibe. To that end you’ll use the bardic sage variant from UA, which gives you a boost to bardic knowledge and some extra divination spells. Since you’ll want a decent Int regardless, there’s very little drawback here, and it improves everything for you.
As for your other class features, inspire courage gets swapped for inspire awe, which in my opinion is always the better choice if you’re not fully progressing inspire courage. The save DC is based on your perform check, making it incredibly hard to beat, and shaken provides a -2 penalty to almost everything. Spellbreaker song is mostly a lateral move as compared to countersong, but I find it moderately more useful. Finally, healing hymn replaces fascinate, allowing you to supercharge your CLW spells. Since you’re all about party support, this is definitely a worthwhile trade.
Anyhow, you’re the know-it-all. Go ahead and take advantage of your above-average bardic knowledge checks and access to every knowledge skill. While you’re at it, give some attention to the perception skills as well. Bards get listen as a class skill, and you’re all about serving as the party’s early warning system, so go ahead and max it out.
For Favored, you’ll want to choose a guild or organization that qualifies for urban savant (which specifies “League of Eye or similar organization”). The League of Eyes is a group made up of scholars dedicated to preserving the city. If you stick with the League of Eyes, using Favored to boost a knowledge skill is always going to come in handy. However, if your DM opens it up beyond the League of Eyes, you’ve got some more options. If possible, see if you can make a case for the Paragnostic Assembly. While the League of Eyes is almost more akin to a secret militia than a religious organization, both have a thirst for knowledge that borders on zealotry. Joining up with the Paragnostic Assembly is a great flavor fit, and will also provide considerable boosts to your Truespeak checks, which will become an important component of the build down the road.
As for your other feat, you’ve got pre-reqs to fill, so you’re pretty much locked in. You probably aren’t running into a ton of enemies with SR at this point, nor do you much care when you do, but you can theoretically get more use out of this than Heighten Spell, and it’s required, so go ahead and take it.
2nd
Bardic Sage 2
Songbird, cure light wounds, sleep, ancient knowledgesage
It always feels cruel that bards have to wait a level before they get 1st-level spells. Anyhow, once you do, go ahead and make the most of them. Sleep is an incredible, encounter-ending save or lose spell. It’ll lose some of its luster in just a few levels, but for now it’s great. Cure light wounds gets supercharged by healing hymn, giving you a bonus equal to your ranks in perform to the hit points healed. This makes it scale fantastically (to put things into perspective, cure serious wounds caps out at healing an average of 28.5 damage per casting, while a healing hymn-boosted CLW caps out at an average of 32.5), allowing you to play a secondary healer without requiring much investment. As for your bonus bardic sage spell, ancient knowledge is a wonderful little buff spell. It lasts hours per level, and can be discharged for a solid +5 on any knowledge check.
3rd
Bardic Sage 3
Heighten Spell
Planar inspiration
Stick, improvisation
Inspire competence is pretty mediocre as far as bardic songs go. Planar inspiration, on the other hand, can definitely come in handy at later levels when you start plane hopping around, so it’s a nice swap. And as for new spells, improvisation is a fantastic catch-all boost to… well, almost anything. With a floating pool of “luck” that can improve a wide variety of checks by up to ½ CL, this is an incredible little spell that will stay good throughout the game.
Heighten Spell is another required feat, but at least this one should remain fairly useful for you. As a spontaneous caster, it allows you to increase spell DCs on the fly, letting you continue to get mileage out of your lower-level spells (which in turn frees up spell slots). Could do worse as far as throwaway feats go.
4th
Bardic Sage 4
Detect thoughtssage, glitterdust, dimension leap
With 2nd-level spells you’ve got some very nice options. Detect thoughts is a nice little addition to your information-gathering options. Glitterdust hardly needs any introduction, but it’s especially good for you considering your maxed-out Listen skill and alternative means of perception. Dimension leap is the bard’s first taste of teleportation magic, which will become a specialty of yours. It’s a nice bit of utility, and while I mostly tried to avoid selfish spells that can’t be used on your party, teleportation is such a nice trick to have in your back pocket that I thought it was worth it.
5th
Bardic Sage 5
Charm person, tongues, sleep -> scramble true position
More spells means more utility. Charm is always handy, and while you’re not a face-focused caster, it’s still a solid piece of utility to have. More importantly, it’s required for access to mindbender. Tongues at 2nd-level is just incredibly hard to pass up; you make it your business to know everything that goes on around you (and even quite a bit that doesn’t), and you can’t do that if you don’t speak the local lingo. And as you can swap out a spell at this level, go ahead and drop sleep (which has become increasingly less useful by this point) with scramble true position. I mentioned before you’d be dabbling in Truespeak, right? Here’s why. Believe it or not, this lowly little 1st-level spell is going to be one of the best offensive tools in your toolbox. It’s a fun spell: you scatter foes in an area, teleporting them off in random directions, and when they reappear they have to take a Reflex save or fall prone. Of course, you’ll need to make a Truespeak check (DC is 15+2xCR), meaning that until you get a bit better at making Truespeak checks you’ll probably want to focus this on mooks, but if you can hit the check there’s no save for the teleportation effect. It’s a fun spell and a nice alternative to the usual staple of grease, and it’ll get even better later.
6th
Mindbender 1
Mindsight
Telepathy
Poor mindbender. Everyone just jumps in, grabs telepathy and jumps the heck out. I hope you weren’t expect anything different here, because that’s exactly what I’m going to recommend you do, too.
The main reasons, of course, is so that you can pick up Mindsight, the grand-daddy of all alternate methods of detection. Mindsight benefits mightily from its lack of support; buried away in a Lords of Madness sidebar and more or less completely forgotten about by every other designer in the entirety of 3.5, there are almost no ways to stop it or become immune to it. (When I DM, I tend to houserule that immunity to mind-affecting also serves as an immunity to Mindsight, which is a significant but IMO necessary nerf.)
That said, telepathy is actually really valuable even without Mindsight. Intra-party communication that can’t be detected or eavesdropped on is huge. Telepathy means that in addition to being the party radar, you’re now also their dispatcher, keeping everyone apprised of the threats you locate, providing tactical advice and making sure everyone is on the same page.
7th
Urban Savant 1
Urban savvy (strengths)
Alter self, haste, dispel magic, arcane sightsage
I absolutely love the urban savant prestige class, which is chock-full of abilities that are flavorful, useful and otherwise hard to obtain. It doesn’t hurt that it also progresses spellcasting and provides excellent skills (including adding the much-missed spot to your skill list!).
Things start off strong with urban savvy, which is a great way to put those excellent knowledge skills to good use. Urban savvy allows you to make a DC 15 knowledge check as a move action to identify the strengths of any aberration, animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, ooze or vermin within 60’. This means learning some very specific and useful information, including base attack bonus, AC, combat-related feats and special attacks. You can then communicate this knowledge telepathically to your allies. This is one of my favorite abilities, and one that you can have a lot of fun with.
Oh, and you hit 3rd-level spells now, too. Haste and dispel magic are staples, and while haste doesn’t quite fit with your M.O. of the ultimate seer, it’s a nice party buff that doesn’t steal the show. You also get arcane sight as a special bardic sage spell, an incredibly useful divination spell that basically acts like detect magic on steroids, allowing you to ascertain a ton of useful information about ongoing spell effects at a glance. And as for your additional 2nd-level spell, go ahead and nab alter self. Like glitterdust, this hardly needs any justification - it’s just a great defensive buff and it’s super flexible, making it especially valuable for spontaneous casters.
8th
Void Disciple 1
Sense Void (physical senses, 1/day)
Void disciple is a really strange prestige class. Like really, really strange. All of its abilities from top to bottom are interesting. It rears its head in a few theoretical op builds for its unique void release ability, which allows an ally to sub in one ability score for another, but here we’re looking at another of its abilities entirely: sense void...
...and hoo-boy, sense void is a doozy. On the surface it seems like your basic scrying effect, and honestly, scrying is so good all on its own that it really takes some effort to substantially improve on it. But I’ll be damned if this one didn’t manage to do just that. Forgive me for the length, but this is something that deserves breaking down.
On its surface, it’s pretty straightforward: you make a spellcraft check with a scaling DC to transfer your senses to another location. The actual DC is laughably easy - even down here at level 8 you should have a spellcraft check in the neighborhood of +18, allowing you to sense anywhere within 100 miles on a 2 or better or anywhere within 1,000 miles on a 7 or better. Once there, you can perceive whatever you direct your attention to using all five senses. So fancy scrying, right?
Well, maybe not. First of all, it’s not a spell or SLA but a supernatural ability, which allows it to bypass any number of powerful blocking effects. Second, there is NO saving throw and NO way to block this: as long as what you’re perceiving is on this plane and within 1,000 miles and you can hit a DC 25 spellcraft check, you WILL succeed. Almost all of the typical anti-scrying defenses, from spending all your time in a bubble of lead to spells like mind blank won’t stop this. Third, your target has no way to detect that you are peering into the void. There’s no scrying sensor to spot or anything else your opponent can track. You simply need to direct your attention to an area, person or thing and you’ll perceive it.
Think on that for a bit. You don’t need to know where someone is to spy on them. None of the spells that will shield someone or something from scrying will help. Even sequester is helpless against void sense: while the sequestered item or creature won’t appear in your vision, it explicitly isn’t hidden from tactile senses, and you get those all through your void sense. There’s no duration on the ability, either; spend as long as you want examining an area with all five senses, feeling around for anything invisible or out of place, even tasting and smelling things.
There are some question marks with this ability, however. You can perceive “an area” that you put your attention to… how big is an area? Do you have to specify in advance? Can you choose “the area surrounding the lich’s phylactery for five miles in every direction” and spend some time carefully exploring that area in an effort to obtain a precise location? If you choose to perceive a room, can you see through a window beyond the room? It says your senses all work normally, so I’d assume so, but it’s definitely something to talk to your DM about. Still, even with a fairly restrictive reading, this is an impressive ability.
9th
Void Disciple 2
Truename Training
Beckon monster
Truename Training is a cute feat. Not only does it give you Truespeak as a class skill, but it also immediately increases your ranks in Truespeak as though it had been a class skill all along. I wish it was possible to fit this earlier in the build, since you still end up wasting some skill points by cross-classing Truespeak for 9 levels, but this does mostly make up for it. Scramble true position is basically never going to go out of style as an offensive option, and while you’re buffing your Truespeak checks, go ahead and take beckon monster, too. While you have other options for save-or-sucks, the flavor behind beckon monster is really fun, and you should have no trouble hitting the Truespeak DC at this point. Being able to draw off particular foes is always nice.
10th
Void Disciple 3
Sense Void (2/day)
An extra use of your voidsense ability will always come in handy.
11th
Sublime Chord 1
Bardic lore, bardic music
Quick potion, ruin delver’s fortune, dimension door, greater scrying
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise here: sublime chord comes on to rebuild your spellcasting. You have a few excellent options right off the bat. Quick potion may seem like an odd choice (after all, it means you’re giving up a 4th-level spell for a 2nd-level option), but it’s a nice little bit of action economy for you. This allows you to create potions out of flasks of water and then cast spells into them. You have a few nice options here: alter self, improvisation and arcane sight all come to mind. If you decide to dabble in UMD, you can even get a wand of guidance of the avatar for the ultimate in skill-boosting, then use quick potion to convert it into potion form for easy distribution or for Delay Potion abuse.
For the rest of your spells, ruin delver’s fortune is your basic “nope!” option that every build should have. Dimension door is your next big teleportation option. It’s the original short-range teleport, and for my money it’s still the best: decent range, verbal components only and capable of bringing along allies. And while your void sense already gives you a potent scrying option, you might as well take advantage of the fact that bardic sage adds greater scrying to your bard list as a 5th-level spell. With a standard action casting time and a duration of hours per level, this is a super potent way to spy on foes, and it succeeds even on foes that are outside of the range of your void sense.
12th
Void Disciple 4
Delay Potion
Moment of clarity (2/day)
Analyze dweomer, teleport
You’ll jump back into void disciple for a spell as you complete your casting. Moment of clarity is a really neat ability, letting you bestow skill ranks (not a bonus, [u]ranks) or feats to your allies with a touch. You don’t need to know these skills or feats yourself, and you can bestow trained-only skills as well. The short duration keeps this from becoming too abusable, but it still opens up some really interesting options. The number of ranks you apply is equal to the target’s ability score bonus for that skill, so you’ll get the most mileage out of playing to your allies’ strengths: give the fighter +Str ranks in jump, or the wizard +Int ranks in forgery and so on. It’s especially nice alongside creation and fabrication spells, since creating complex items with these spells generally requires a craft check.
As for the feat option, the sky’s the limit. Give people maneuvers with Martial Study or soulmelds with Shape Soulmeld. Let casters temporarily learn new spells with Extra Spell or help them beat that drow’s SR with Spell Penetration. Give the party brute Mage Slayer for the encounter.
Speaking of feats, Delay Potion is the main reason you went with quick potion as one of your sublime chord spells. This allows you to drink a potion and delay its effects for hours, only to activate them at your convenience as a swift action. Combined with quick potion, this lets you turn any 3rd-level or lower spell into a swift action buff. I’m especially fond of using this along with improvisation, which provides fantastic luck bonuses to just about everything but which suffers from a short duration and standard action casting time.
Oh, and you get more spells, too. Analyze dweomer gives you all the spells and magical properties of a dozen different objects or creatures at a time, and since bardic sages add it to the bard spell list two levels lower than an ordinary bard or wizard, it’s definitely worthwhile here. And with teleport you finally add on long-range teleportation to your build. Teleportation is a staple of high-level play and has amazing synergy with scrying.
13th
Void Disciple 5
Sense Void (magical senses, 3/day)
Greater anticipate teleportation
An extra use of your voidsense ability is always fantastic, and now you can also detect evil and detect magic at will while using the ability.
But let’s talk about spells. At this level, your main offensive trick comes online. Greater anticipate teleportation is a great piece of defensive utility in general, lasting all day long and preventing foes from performing scry and die tactics on you and your party by notifying you of anyone teleporting within range and giving you the option of delaying their arrival by up to three rounds.
Now, remember how I said that scramble true position was going to be a key offensive option for you? This is why. With greater anticipate teleportation up, you now can scramble your foes. If you hit the Truespeak DC (don’t be afraid to activate your delayed improvisation against higher-CR foes) they get no saving throw, and get teleported in a random direction. You can then delay their arrival by three rounds, completely removing them from combat with absolutely no recourse. And just in case that wasn’t good enough, you also know where they will land, and can telepathically communicate this to your party to properly prepare.
14th
Urban Savant 2
Urban empathy
Mass fly, hindsight
Unfortunately the remaining abilities of interest for the void disciple are gated behind multiple levels that don’t advance casting, so we’ll go ahead and say goodbye. Luckily, this means we can return to urban savant. Urban empathy is a neat way to expand the ways you can use your knowledge checks, allowing them to sub in for diplomacy against certain foes.
And for spells, mass fly is amazing party support that fits perfectly with your general theme of mobility and space manipulation, allowing your whole party to fly around the battlefield effortlessly. Meanwhile, hindsight can be downright campaign-breaking in the right hands, and at 6th-level it’s cheap enough to actually see some regular use.
15th
Urban Savant 3
Obtain Familiar
Continuing education +1
Plane shift
I’d have loved to get in Obtain Familiar earlier, but even at this level it’s still handy. In addition to being an extra set of eyes and ears (and one that shares your skill ranks), it also can effectively act as a +2 bonus to every skill check you might make thanks to Aid Other.
Urban savant gives you continuing education, which is a small boost to your knowledge skills. Not huge, but certainly not bad. And as far as spells, you complete the teleportation trifecta (tactical, long distance and extraplanar) with plane shift. In addition to being a generally useful dual threat spell that can serve as party transport or a quick offensive option, it also is nice alongside your scrying abilities. Since your void sense doesn’t cross planar boundaries, don’t be afraid to hop around as needed for information gathering.
16th
Urban Savant 4
Urban savvy (weaknesses)
Scry location, true seeing, greater teleport
The next upgrade to your urban savvy ability gives you your enemy’s weaknesses: hit dice, damage reduction, saving throws and any special vulnerabilities. This is just a very nice ability (and one that will likely frustrate your DM to no end).
For your spells, scry location is your final bit of scrying magic alongside void sense and greater scrying. At a glance this seems like it would be inferior to greater scrying, but it has one key difference: scry location offers no saving throw, instead giving you a scaling caster level check to succeed. While you could already perform no-save scrying with your (mostly superior) void sense, this ability can exceed the 1,000 mile or extraplanar limitations of void sense if necessary, and gives you a nice option to keep in your back pocket for when you run out of void sense uses. Meanwhile, true seeing is a must for any high-level play but especially so for a know-it-all, while greater teleport is a significant upgrade to teleport and allows your party to go crazy with scry and die tactics.
17th
Urban Savant 5
Eyes of the city (low-light vision)
Mind blank
I’m not going to pretend to be super excited about low-light vision at ECL 17, but it’s there, so enjoy it. More importantly, with 8th-level spells you get the defensive powerhouse that is mind blank.
18th
Urban Savant 6
Improved Familiar
Continuing education +2
Truename dispel, project image, moment of prescience
Now that you have a familiar, upgrading to an improved version is an obvious choice. Your options will be dependent on your alignment. There aren’t really many wrong answers here, but in general I’m a fan of the quasit for its free commune, the pseudodragon for its blindsense and dragon typing, the mirror mephit for simulacrum silliness or the beguiler for its constant true seeing. The beguiler is probably the best “neutral” option that should work regardless of your alignment, but there’s definitely merit in the other choices as well.
And you get three spells here. Project image is just a really fun option, allowing you to avoid attacks while your illusory double does the casting for you. Moment of prescience is a huge get out of jail free card, more or less guaranteeing that you make any one attack, save, ability or skill check, or allowing you to dodge any one attack. It’s a huge lifesaver and a significant improvement on ruin delver’s fortune.
As for the last spell… I mostly avoided spells that required a personal truename. You have the ability to research one, of course, and this type of research is something that is very much in-character for you. But the cost and time associated makes any spell requiring a personal truename very situational at best. However, what truename dispel offers might just make it worthwhile. Against any recurring foe (aka the only foes you’ll bother researching a personal truename for), truename dispel is outrageously good at shutting down entire buffstacks. It’s arguably even better than disjunction, as it requires no opposed caster level check, doesn’t destroy items and allows you to pick and choose what effects you dispel (meaning you can keep any debuffs that might be affecting them). Considering how important buffstacks are to high-level play, this is absolutely incredible, and since you’re already trained in Truespeak and have access to this as a 6th-level spell, you are one of the few builds able to actually eke some use out of this unique spell.
19th
Urban Savant 7
Urban savvy (methods)
Gate
Methods is actually pretty underwhelming compared to strengths and weaknesses as far as urban savvy goes. If you’re in a melee heavy party, being able to add +3d6 to the whole party’s attacks certainly isn’t bad, but it’s kind of boring. Still, it’s not totally useless, and honestly any ability you pick up is probably going to pale in comparison to the fact that you get 9th-level spells.
Gate is one of the Big 3 broken wizard spells (along with wish/shapechange), the ones that fundamentally alter the nature of the game by providing you access to abilities that were never intended for PCs. It also comes with a big honking 1,000xp cost every time you use it to call a creature, and while you’ll likely more than recover that in a single encounter and XP is a river and yadda yadda yadda, overusing the calling feature will likely both result in at least one or two sessions where you’re a level behind the rest of the party, and in your DM politely asking you to find something else to do. Basically, use it, don’t abuse it. It’s super useful as the ultimate transportation option even without calling down holy angels to rain divine fire on your foes, and that’s something it can do without burning through your XP.
20th
Urban Savant 8
Eyes of the city (pierce deception)
Reverse gravity, greater prying eyes, time stop
While the last couple of levels of urban savant were a bit underwhelming, eyes of the city’s pierce deception option is very nice, allowing you to make a knowledge check to see through any deception in appearance (whether magical or mundane). While you have true seeing, this is always on and works especially well with your see from afar abilities. It’s a nice little capstone and very on theme for the build.
And as far as spells go, you get a few more, so enjoy. Even at this level reverse gravity just completely shuts down some foes, and gives you a nice thematic option for when you’re bored with spamming scramble true position. Greater prying eyes is one of my favorite spells ever, letting you send out floating eyes with perfect vision and true seeing to scout for you. It’s also just a really cool visual. And finally, time stop is, well, time stop. Since most of your abilities aren’t offensive in nature, most of what you do can be performed while time is stopped.
0: Detect magic, message, mage hand, prestidigitation, daze, songbird, stick
1: Ancient knowledge, cure light wounds, sleep, improvisation, scramble true position, charm person
2: Detect thoughts, glitterdust, dimension leap, tongues, alter self, quick potion*
3: Arcane sight, haste, dispel magic, beckon monster
4: Ruin delver’s fortune, dimension door, analyze dweomer
5: Greater scrying, teleport, mass fly, scry location
6: Greater anticipate teleportation, hindsight, true seeing, truename dispel
7: Plane shift, greater teleport, project image, reverse gravity
8: Mind blank, moment of prescience, greater prying eyes
9: Gate, time stop
*Sublime chord spell, taken at a lower level
NOTE: Sublime chord states that if a spell is offered both by both bard and sorcerer, you learn it at the level it’s available to a bard. Bardic sage bumps analyze dweomer and greater scrying to 4th and 5th level bard spells, respectively. This spell list is assuming that this means you can therefore select these as 4th and 5th level sublime chord spells.
If your DM does not agree with this interpretation, it doesn’t require a great adjustment. In that case, drop analyze dweomer (which is nice as a 4th-level spell but likely not worth a 6th-level slot) entirely. There are several good 4th-level options that can replace it; you can’t go wrong with solid fog. Greater scrying is still worth taking even if it’s a 6th-level spell instead of a 5th-level spell. I’d either drop hindsight or take truename dispel as a 7th-level spell in place of reverse gravity.
Charisma and Intelligence, all the way. Charisma is your main casting stat, while Intelligence powers most of your skills. (It’s also a secondary casting stat for bardic sage, but you should never have a low enough Intelligence for this to be relevant.) Most of the other abilities are pretty irrelevant to you; don’t go into the negatives on Wisdom (since it powers Listen/Spot) or Con and you should be fine.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 8/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 14/Wis 10/Cha 16
32-point buy: Str 8/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 16/Wis 10/Cha 16
You’ll want spellcraft, Truespeak and every knowledge skill you can get your grubby little mitts on. Go ahead and max out listen while you’re at it, and perhaps spot, too (urban savant gets it as a class skill). UMD is not strictly required but definitely recommended if you can swing it, since it allows you to equip your familiar with wands for some extra actions and gives you the potential option of making quick potions of guidance of the avatar.
As for reqs, sublime chord has that odd profession (astrologer) requirement and mindbender will require you to pop some points into a few social skills in the early game, but other than that, your pre-reqs are all things you would want anyhow. Between Intelligence as your secondary stat, the human bonus skill and the fact that 13 of your levels are spent in 6+Int classes, you should have no issues with skill points.
You play more like a traditional caster than like a bard, so typical bardic equipment recommendations aren’t going to be as relevant for you. Make sure you’ve got all of the necessary foci for your scrying spells, of course, and work on keeping your CL as high as possible to get the most bang for your buck from spells like improvisation and scry location. You’ll also want to keep Charisma and Intelligence as high as possible.
If you decide to invest in UMD, you’ll definitely want a wand of guidance of the avatar. This is the main low level spell you don’t have access to that you’ll really want. (I actually strongly considered taking two levels in unseen seer just to get native access to this.) Wands in general will be handy even if your DM doesn’t like GotA, though, since your familiar shares your ranks and should have no problem activating them.
Because of your Truespeak requirements, you’ll absolutely want items to boost your check. This is good for anyone and downright essential if you can’t swing membership in the Paragnostic Assembly. Your requirements aren’t quite as bad as an actual truenamer, since you aren’t using utterances and therefore don’t need to worry about things like the Law of Resistance, but you’ll still want to be able to reliably use scramble true position, which requires a check of 15 + 2xCR. If you want to really optimize the hell out of this check, please check out Zaq’s guide, but at a bare minimum you’ll want the best version of the amulet of the silver tongue you can get your hands on. With a +10 amulet, an Int bonus of +8, max ranks, +2 from your familiar’s Aid check and a +10 luck bonus from improvisation (see the Delay Potion trick for effectively casting improvisation as a swift action) you’ll have a bonus of +53 on the check, meaning you’ll be able to hit CR 20 foes on a 2 and CR 23 foes on an 8. If you manage to swing membership in the Paragnostic Assembly or add on other boosts (masterwork tool, custom item, etc.), or if you replace improvisation with guidance of the avatar, you should auto-succeed against just about anything.
BUILD SUMMARY
This build is a bit harder to summarize than most, due to the nature of its abilities, but let’s give it a shot. First, you’re incredibly hard to surprise, between Mindsight and various detection spells (ranging from various detection spells and arcane sight to the powerful greater prying eyes) and maxed out perception skills, and you can relay positions telepathically to your allies or reveal hidden foes with glitterdust. When you’re aware of something’s presence (even if you can’t see it), if it’s an aberration, animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, ooze or vermin you also can learn its hit die, BAB, combat feats, special attacks, saving throws, damage reduction and special resistances with a simple knowledge check. You can also see through any disguises, mundane or magical, and with a high enough knowledge check can also determine the exact nature of the disguise.
You have a wide variety of scrying methods, most of which only require a standard action to use, including sense void, scry location and greater scrying. Sense void is particularly notable because it is a supernatural ability with no chance of failure (assuming you can make the spellcraft check), no saving throw, and no way to detect or avoid the ability short of being out of range. Considering that the range is 1,000 miles and you can teleport, being out of range is easier said than done. You simply think of a place, or a person, or an object, and you can see it, touch it, smell it, even taste it without anyone else knowing. You also have a number of other divination options (including some fun ones like hindsight), plus some extremely impressive knowledge skills.
Your specialty beyond just generally knowing everything and seeing everything is teleportation. You’ve got the full range of teleportation options, from the short range and tactical (dimension leap, dimension door) to the long range (teleport, greater teleport) to the extraplanar (plane shift, gate). You also have greater anticipate teleportation just in case someone else decides to try scry and die tactics on you. Oh, and speaking of greater anticipate teleportation, this is also the basis for your best offensive option: using it alongside the lowly level 1 scramble true position spell, which teleports creatures 10’ in random directions with no save, you can completely remove foes in a 10’ radius burst from combat for three rounds with no save and no real defense. You immediately learn where they will reappear, and can instruct your party accordingly.
And you have other interesting ways to augment your party, such as the ability to grant a feat with a touch, or to create potions of alter self or improvisation, or to provide such excellent insight into an enemy’s weaknesses that your allies all get +3d6 to their attacks.
VARIANTS
We made a few variants of the basic sublime chord/void disciple build. One version that we liked a lot used earth dreamer instead of urban savant, adding on even more divination utility and yet another vision method. One nice side effect of this was that it opened up Earth Spell, to eke a bit more usefulness out of the void disciple’s required Heighten Spell. Another thing we worked in for some versions was the Astral Tracker feat from Dragon Compendium. With this feat, you can use survival to track someone who has used a teleportation effect or even left the plane entirely, and then follow them with your own teleportation magic. And yet another option would be to replace 2-4 levels of urban savant with unseen seer, which would provide native access to GotA and some divination boosts.
On a more basic level, there’s a fair bit you can fiddle with on this build. If flaws are allowed, I highly recommend taking Truename Research early to free up skill points. The spell options can also be rearranged. In an effort to stick hard to a theme I built a fair bit of redundancy into some of the spell selection, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t branch out to more traditional wizard options. Some of them, such as planar binding, would even remain on-theme for the build overall.
SOURCES
Bardic Sage variant, Improved Familiar: SRD
Planar inspiration: Planar Handbook
Truespeak, Truename Research, scramble true position, beckon monster, truename dispel: Tome of Magic
Favored, urban savant: Cityscape
Void Disciple: Complete Divine
Mindbender, Sublime Chord, Obtain Familiar: Complete Arcane
Healing hymn ACF: Complete Champion
Inspire awe ACF: Dragon Magic
Spellbreaker song ACF, Delay Potion: Complete Mage
Mindsight: Lords of Madness
Scry location: Complete Scoundrel
All other spells: Spell Compendium
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases!
INTRODUCTION
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.
The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger and WhamBamSam, with a couple of other folks hopefully on their way. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product. I’ll list the build’s main author whenever I showcase a particular build.
Buffsader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?559259-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Buffsader) (ToB/Gish/Party Support)
The Utility Belt (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560988-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Utility-Belt) (Psionics/Stealth/Utility)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless War Mind (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569004-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-War-Mind) (ToB/Psionics/Melee Damage)
The Melding Pot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?579458-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Melding-Pot) (Incarnum/Utility)
That’s So Raven (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?581950-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-That%92s-So-Raven) (Gish/Ranged/Debuff)
Dancing in the Dark (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?582528-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Dancing-in-the-Dark) (ToB/Stealth/Lock-down)
Gladys Knight and the Pips (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?583657-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Gladys-Knight-and-the-Pips) (Arcane/Face/Utility)
I Choose You! ("]Zen in the Art of Archery[/URL]
https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.624393553.1886/flat,550x550,075,f.u5.jpg[/IMG]
Big Brother is Watching
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed - no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.
BACKGROUND
Some classes are obviously amazing: it doesn’t take a genius to look at something like planar shepherd or abjurant champion or ruby knight vindicator and see its potential. But then there are classes that break the rules, classes that completely defy the most basic tenets of optimization but that have really fascinating abilities buried in them.
Void disciple is one such class. This one is just bizarre. It’s a class that was ported over from Lo5R without much thought, and it stands out like a sore thumb among the other classes in the Complete line. Everything from the odd choice of pre-reqs to the awkward number of class levels (13 levels, only 8 of which progress casting? OK, buddy) just raises eyebrows. But those abilities… uber-scrying, granting feats or skill ranks to allies with a touch, letting people sub in one ability score for another, they’re all really fascinating. The class pops up occasionally in TO builds, but after poking around a bit, we decided we had to find a way to make this class work for a more practical character.
The most obvious answer to making the class palatable was to use a fast-progression prestige class to rebuild casting and make up for those many lost caster levels. For that we turned to the tried and true bard into sublime chord. Bard has popped up several times in these showcases already. While previous bards focused on damage or on social roles, this one goes for a different theme entirely: the seer. The intent here is a character that knows and sees everything, and uses that knowledge to facilitate the rest of the party.
The basic concept here is a timeless one: find your opponent, scry on them, divine their weaknesses, then teleport the whole party in to deal with that. To keep from outshining the rest of the party we decided to dig deep into the support side of things, and to stick to a theme. Most of the spells (both offensive and defensive) focus on divination, augment the senses or work with spatial and planar manipulation.
Also for a final note, credit where credit is due. As soon as we decided to dabble in Truespeak-related magic, there was only one place to go for ideas: Zaq’s absolutely fantastic handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214115-In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Word-and-the-Word-Was-Suck-A-Guide-to-Truenamers). Even though this build isn’t a truenamer, that handbook was a great source for ideas on how to keep Truespeak checks high enough to reliably use spells with Truespeak components, and also gave us the idea for the Delay Potion + quick potion trick.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. As always, it’s all about the feats, though this is also a high-skill build.
Build Stub: Bardic Sage 5/Mindbender 1/Void Disciple 5/Sublime Chord 1/Urban Savant 8.
ACFs: Bardic sage (spellcasting requires Int, no good Reflex save, shorter music duration, get bonus divination spells known, improved bardic knowledge and expanded bard spell list), healing hymn (replaces fascinate), inspire awe (replaces inspire courage), spellbreaker song (replaces countersong), planar inspiration (replaces inspire competence)
Alignment: Any non-lawful and neutral. This gives you a fair bit of wiggle room as far as alignment goes; TN, NE, NG and CN all work. Note that your alignment will end up mattering for your choice of improved familiar down the road, though all alignments have good options here.
Cold World
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Bardic Sage 1
Favored, Spell Penetration
Bardic knowledge, inspire awe, spellbreaker song, healing hymn
Detect magicsage, message, mage hand, prestidigitation, daze
It’s too bad bardic knowledge is just too useful here; we were this close from having a “replace all the things” bard. Our previous bard was primarily a face; here, we’re going instead for a know-it-all vibe. To that end you’ll use the bardic sage variant from UA, which gives you a boost to bardic knowledge and some extra divination spells. Since you’ll want a decent Int regardless, there’s very little drawback here, and it improves everything for you.
As for your other class features, inspire courage gets swapped for inspire awe, which in my opinion is always the better choice if you’re not fully progressing inspire courage. The save DC is based on your perform check, making it incredibly hard to beat, and shaken provides a -2 penalty to almost everything. Spellbreaker song is mostly a lateral move as compared to countersong, but I find it moderately more useful. Finally, healing hymn replaces fascinate, allowing you to supercharge your CLW spells. Since you’re all about party support, this is definitely a worthwhile trade.
Anyhow, you’re the know-it-all. Go ahead and take advantage of your above-average bardic knowledge checks and access to every knowledge skill. While you’re at it, give some attention to the perception skills as well. Bards get listen as a class skill, and you’re all about serving as the party’s early warning system, so go ahead and max it out.
For Favored, you’ll want to choose a guild or organization that qualifies for urban savant (which specifies “League of Eye or similar organization”). The League of Eyes is a group made up of scholars dedicated to preserving the city. If you stick with the League of Eyes, using Favored to boost a knowledge skill is always going to come in handy. However, if your DM opens it up beyond the League of Eyes, you’ve got some more options. If possible, see if you can make a case for the Paragnostic Assembly. While the League of Eyes is almost more akin to a secret militia than a religious organization, both have a thirst for knowledge that borders on zealotry. Joining up with the Paragnostic Assembly is a great flavor fit, and will also provide considerable boosts to your Truespeak checks, which will become an important component of the build down the road.
As for your other feat, you’ve got pre-reqs to fill, so you’re pretty much locked in. You probably aren’t running into a ton of enemies with SR at this point, nor do you much care when you do, but you can theoretically get more use out of this than Heighten Spell, and it’s required, so go ahead and take it.
2nd
Bardic Sage 2
Songbird, cure light wounds, sleep, ancient knowledgesage
It always feels cruel that bards have to wait a level before they get 1st-level spells. Anyhow, once you do, go ahead and make the most of them. Sleep is an incredible, encounter-ending save or lose spell. It’ll lose some of its luster in just a few levels, but for now it’s great. Cure light wounds gets supercharged by healing hymn, giving you a bonus equal to your ranks in perform to the hit points healed. This makes it scale fantastically (to put things into perspective, cure serious wounds caps out at healing an average of 28.5 damage per casting, while a healing hymn-boosted CLW caps out at an average of 32.5), allowing you to play a secondary healer without requiring much investment. As for your bonus bardic sage spell, ancient knowledge is a wonderful little buff spell. It lasts hours per level, and can be discharged for a solid +5 on any knowledge check.
3rd
Bardic Sage 3
Heighten Spell
Planar inspiration
Stick, improvisation
Inspire competence is pretty mediocre as far as bardic songs go. Planar inspiration, on the other hand, can definitely come in handy at later levels when you start plane hopping around, so it’s a nice swap. And as for new spells, improvisation is a fantastic catch-all boost to… well, almost anything. With a floating pool of “luck” that can improve a wide variety of checks by up to ½ CL, this is an incredible little spell that will stay good throughout the game.
Heighten Spell is another required feat, but at least this one should remain fairly useful for you. As a spontaneous caster, it allows you to increase spell DCs on the fly, letting you continue to get mileage out of your lower-level spells (which in turn frees up spell slots). Could do worse as far as throwaway feats go.
4th
Bardic Sage 4
Detect thoughtssage, glitterdust, dimension leap
With 2nd-level spells you’ve got some very nice options. Detect thoughts is a nice little addition to your information-gathering options. Glitterdust hardly needs any introduction, but it’s especially good for you considering your maxed-out Listen skill and alternative means of perception. Dimension leap is the bard’s first taste of teleportation magic, which will become a specialty of yours. It’s a nice bit of utility, and while I mostly tried to avoid selfish spells that can’t be used on your party, teleportation is such a nice trick to have in your back pocket that I thought it was worth it.
5th
Bardic Sage 5
Charm person, tongues, sleep -> scramble true position
More spells means more utility. Charm is always handy, and while you’re not a face-focused caster, it’s still a solid piece of utility to have. More importantly, it’s required for access to mindbender. Tongues at 2nd-level is just incredibly hard to pass up; you make it your business to know everything that goes on around you (and even quite a bit that doesn’t), and you can’t do that if you don’t speak the local lingo. And as you can swap out a spell at this level, go ahead and drop sleep (which has become increasingly less useful by this point) with scramble true position. I mentioned before you’d be dabbling in Truespeak, right? Here’s why. Believe it or not, this lowly little 1st-level spell is going to be one of the best offensive tools in your toolbox. It’s a fun spell: you scatter foes in an area, teleporting them off in random directions, and when they reappear they have to take a Reflex save or fall prone. Of course, you’ll need to make a Truespeak check (DC is 15+2xCR), meaning that until you get a bit better at making Truespeak checks you’ll probably want to focus this on mooks, but if you can hit the check there’s no save for the teleportation effect. It’s a fun spell and a nice alternative to the usual staple of grease, and it’ll get even better later.
6th
Mindbender 1
Mindsight
Telepathy
Poor mindbender. Everyone just jumps in, grabs telepathy and jumps the heck out. I hope you weren’t expect anything different here, because that’s exactly what I’m going to recommend you do, too.
The main reasons, of course, is so that you can pick up Mindsight, the grand-daddy of all alternate methods of detection. Mindsight benefits mightily from its lack of support; buried away in a Lords of Madness sidebar and more or less completely forgotten about by every other designer in the entirety of 3.5, there are almost no ways to stop it or become immune to it. (When I DM, I tend to houserule that immunity to mind-affecting also serves as an immunity to Mindsight, which is a significant but IMO necessary nerf.)
That said, telepathy is actually really valuable even without Mindsight. Intra-party communication that can’t be detected or eavesdropped on is huge. Telepathy means that in addition to being the party radar, you’re now also their dispatcher, keeping everyone apprised of the threats you locate, providing tactical advice and making sure everyone is on the same page.
7th
Urban Savant 1
Urban savvy (strengths)
Alter self, haste, dispel magic, arcane sightsage
I absolutely love the urban savant prestige class, which is chock-full of abilities that are flavorful, useful and otherwise hard to obtain. It doesn’t hurt that it also progresses spellcasting and provides excellent skills (including adding the much-missed spot to your skill list!).
Things start off strong with urban savvy, which is a great way to put those excellent knowledge skills to good use. Urban savvy allows you to make a DC 15 knowledge check as a move action to identify the strengths of any aberration, animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, ooze or vermin within 60’. This means learning some very specific and useful information, including base attack bonus, AC, combat-related feats and special attacks. You can then communicate this knowledge telepathically to your allies. This is one of my favorite abilities, and one that you can have a lot of fun with.
Oh, and you hit 3rd-level spells now, too. Haste and dispel magic are staples, and while haste doesn’t quite fit with your M.O. of the ultimate seer, it’s a nice party buff that doesn’t steal the show. You also get arcane sight as a special bardic sage spell, an incredibly useful divination spell that basically acts like detect magic on steroids, allowing you to ascertain a ton of useful information about ongoing spell effects at a glance. And as for your additional 2nd-level spell, go ahead and nab alter self. Like glitterdust, this hardly needs any justification - it’s just a great defensive buff and it’s super flexible, making it especially valuable for spontaneous casters.
8th
Void Disciple 1
Sense Void (physical senses, 1/day)
Void disciple is a really strange prestige class. Like really, really strange. All of its abilities from top to bottom are interesting. It rears its head in a few theoretical op builds for its unique void release ability, which allows an ally to sub in one ability score for another, but here we’re looking at another of its abilities entirely: sense void...
...and hoo-boy, sense void is a doozy. On the surface it seems like your basic scrying effect, and honestly, scrying is so good all on its own that it really takes some effort to substantially improve on it. But I’ll be damned if this one didn’t manage to do just that. Forgive me for the length, but this is something that deserves breaking down.
On its surface, it’s pretty straightforward: you make a spellcraft check with a scaling DC to transfer your senses to another location. The actual DC is laughably easy - even down here at level 8 you should have a spellcraft check in the neighborhood of +18, allowing you to sense anywhere within 100 miles on a 2 or better or anywhere within 1,000 miles on a 7 or better. Once there, you can perceive whatever you direct your attention to using all five senses. So fancy scrying, right?
Well, maybe not. First of all, it’s not a spell or SLA but a supernatural ability, which allows it to bypass any number of powerful blocking effects. Second, there is NO saving throw and NO way to block this: as long as what you’re perceiving is on this plane and within 1,000 miles and you can hit a DC 25 spellcraft check, you WILL succeed. Almost all of the typical anti-scrying defenses, from spending all your time in a bubble of lead to spells like mind blank won’t stop this. Third, your target has no way to detect that you are peering into the void. There’s no scrying sensor to spot or anything else your opponent can track. You simply need to direct your attention to an area, person or thing and you’ll perceive it.
Think on that for a bit. You don’t need to know where someone is to spy on them. None of the spells that will shield someone or something from scrying will help. Even sequester is helpless against void sense: while the sequestered item or creature won’t appear in your vision, it explicitly isn’t hidden from tactile senses, and you get those all through your void sense. There’s no duration on the ability, either; spend as long as you want examining an area with all five senses, feeling around for anything invisible or out of place, even tasting and smelling things.
There are some question marks with this ability, however. You can perceive “an area” that you put your attention to… how big is an area? Do you have to specify in advance? Can you choose “the area surrounding the lich’s phylactery for five miles in every direction” and spend some time carefully exploring that area in an effort to obtain a precise location? If you choose to perceive a room, can you see through a window beyond the room? It says your senses all work normally, so I’d assume so, but it’s definitely something to talk to your DM about. Still, even with a fairly restrictive reading, this is an impressive ability.
9th
Void Disciple 2
Truename Training
Beckon monster
Truename Training is a cute feat. Not only does it give you Truespeak as a class skill, but it also immediately increases your ranks in Truespeak as though it had been a class skill all along. I wish it was possible to fit this earlier in the build, since you still end up wasting some skill points by cross-classing Truespeak for 9 levels, but this does mostly make up for it. Scramble true position is basically never going to go out of style as an offensive option, and while you’re buffing your Truespeak checks, go ahead and take beckon monster, too. While you have other options for save-or-sucks, the flavor behind beckon monster is really fun, and you should have no trouble hitting the Truespeak DC at this point. Being able to draw off particular foes is always nice.
10th
Void Disciple 3
Sense Void (2/day)
An extra use of your voidsense ability will always come in handy.
11th
Sublime Chord 1
Bardic lore, bardic music
Quick potion, ruin delver’s fortune, dimension door, greater scrying
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise here: sublime chord comes on to rebuild your spellcasting. You have a few excellent options right off the bat. Quick potion may seem like an odd choice (after all, it means you’re giving up a 4th-level spell for a 2nd-level option), but it’s a nice little bit of action economy for you. This allows you to create potions out of flasks of water and then cast spells into them. You have a few nice options here: alter self, improvisation and arcane sight all come to mind. If you decide to dabble in UMD, you can even get a wand of guidance of the avatar for the ultimate in skill-boosting, then use quick potion to convert it into potion form for easy distribution or for Delay Potion abuse.
For the rest of your spells, ruin delver’s fortune is your basic “nope!” option that every build should have. Dimension door is your next big teleportation option. It’s the original short-range teleport, and for my money it’s still the best: decent range, verbal components only and capable of bringing along allies. And while your void sense already gives you a potent scrying option, you might as well take advantage of the fact that bardic sage adds greater scrying to your bard list as a 5th-level spell. With a standard action casting time and a duration of hours per level, this is a super potent way to spy on foes, and it succeeds even on foes that are outside of the range of your void sense.
12th
Void Disciple 4
Delay Potion
Moment of clarity (2/day)
Analyze dweomer, teleport
You’ll jump back into void disciple for a spell as you complete your casting. Moment of clarity is a really neat ability, letting you bestow skill ranks (not a bonus, [u]ranks) or feats to your allies with a touch. You don’t need to know these skills or feats yourself, and you can bestow trained-only skills as well. The short duration keeps this from becoming too abusable, but it still opens up some really interesting options. The number of ranks you apply is equal to the target’s ability score bonus for that skill, so you’ll get the most mileage out of playing to your allies’ strengths: give the fighter +Str ranks in jump, or the wizard +Int ranks in forgery and so on. It’s especially nice alongside creation and fabrication spells, since creating complex items with these spells generally requires a craft check.
As for the feat option, the sky’s the limit. Give people maneuvers with Martial Study or soulmelds with Shape Soulmeld. Let casters temporarily learn new spells with Extra Spell or help them beat that drow’s SR with Spell Penetration. Give the party brute Mage Slayer for the encounter.
Speaking of feats, Delay Potion is the main reason you went with quick potion as one of your sublime chord spells. This allows you to drink a potion and delay its effects for hours, only to activate them at your convenience as a swift action. Combined with quick potion, this lets you turn any 3rd-level or lower spell into a swift action buff. I’m especially fond of using this along with improvisation, which provides fantastic luck bonuses to just about everything but which suffers from a short duration and standard action casting time.
Oh, and you get more spells, too. Analyze dweomer gives you all the spells and magical properties of a dozen different objects or creatures at a time, and since bardic sages add it to the bard spell list two levels lower than an ordinary bard or wizard, it’s definitely worthwhile here. And with teleport you finally add on long-range teleportation to your build. Teleportation is a staple of high-level play and has amazing synergy with scrying.
13th
Void Disciple 5
Sense Void (magical senses, 3/day)
Greater anticipate teleportation
An extra use of your voidsense ability is always fantastic, and now you can also detect evil and detect magic at will while using the ability.
But let’s talk about spells. At this level, your main offensive trick comes online. Greater anticipate teleportation is a great piece of defensive utility in general, lasting all day long and preventing foes from performing scry and die tactics on you and your party by notifying you of anyone teleporting within range and giving you the option of delaying their arrival by up to three rounds.
Now, remember how I said that scramble true position was going to be a key offensive option for you? This is why. With greater anticipate teleportation up, you now can scramble your foes. If you hit the Truespeak DC (don’t be afraid to activate your delayed improvisation against higher-CR foes) they get no saving throw, and get teleported in a random direction. You can then delay their arrival by three rounds, completely removing them from combat with absolutely no recourse. And just in case that wasn’t good enough, you also know where they will land, and can telepathically communicate this to your party to properly prepare.
14th
Urban Savant 2
Urban empathy
Mass fly, hindsight
Unfortunately the remaining abilities of interest for the void disciple are gated behind multiple levels that don’t advance casting, so we’ll go ahead and say goodbye. Luckily, this means we can return to urban savant. Urban empathy is a neat way to expand the ways you can use your knowledge checks, allowing them to sub in for diplomacy against certain foes.
And for spells, mass fly is amazing party support that fits perfectly with your general theme of mobility and space manipulation, allowing your whole party to fly around the battlefield effortlessly. Meanwhile, hindsight can be downright campaign-breaking in the right hands, and at 6th-level it’s cheap enough to actually see some regular use.
15th
Urban Savant 3
Obtain Familiar
Continuing education +1
Plane shift
I’d have loved to get in Obtain Familiar earlier, but even at this level it’s still handy. In addition to being an extra set of eyes and ears (and one that shares your skill ranks), it also can effectively act as a +2 bonus to every skill check you might make thanks to Aid Other.
Urban savant gives you continuing education, which is a small boost to your knowledge skills. Not huge, but certainly not bad. And as far as spells, you complete the teleportation trifecta (tactical, long distance and extraplanar) with plane shift. In addition to being a generally useful dual threat spell that can serve as party transport or a quick offensive option, it also is nice alongside your scrying abilities. Since your void sense doesn’t cross planar boundaries, don’t be afraid to hop around as needed for information gathering.
16th
Urban Savant 4
Urban savvy (weaknesses)
Scry location, true seeing, greater teleport
The next upgrade to your urban savvy ability gives you your enemy’s weaknesses: hit dice, damage reduction, saving throws and any special vulnerabilities. This is just a very nice ability (and one that will likely frustrate your DM to no end).
For your spells, scry location is your final bit of scrying magic alongside void sense and greater scrying. At a glance this seems like it would be inferior to greater scrying, but it has one key difference: scry location offers no saving throw, instead giving you a scaling caster level check to succeed. While you could already perform no-save scrying with your (mostly superior) void sense, this ability can exceed the 1,000 mile or extraplanar limitations of void sense if necessary, and gives you a nice option to keep in your back pocket for when you run out of void sense uses. Meanwhile, true seeing is a must for any high-level play but especially so for a know-it-all, while greater teleport is a significant upgrade to teleport and allows your party to go crazy with scry and die tactics.
17th
Urban Savant 5
Eyes of the city (low-light vision)
Mind blank
I’m not going to pretend to be super excited about low-light vision at ECL 17, but it’s there, so enjoy it. More importantly, with 8th-level spells you get the defensive powerhouse that is mind blank.
18th
Urban Savant 6
Improved Familiar
Continuing education +2
Truename dispel, project image, moment of prescience
Now that you have a familiar, upgrading to an improved version is an obvious choice. Your options will be dependent on your alignment. There aren’t really many wrong answers here, but in general I’m a fan of the quasit for its free commune, the pseudodragon for its blindsense and dragon typing, the mirror mephit for simulacrum silliness or the beguiler for its constant true seeing. The beguiler is probably the best “neutral” option that should work regardless of your alignment, but there’s definitely merit in the other choices as well.
And you get three spells here. Project image is just a really fun option, allowing you to avoid attacks while your illusory double does the casting for you. Moment of prescience is a huge get out of jail free card, more or less guaranteeing that you make any one attack, save, ability or skill check, or allowing you to dodge any one attack. It’s a huge lifesaver and a significant improvement on ruin delver’s fortune.
As for the last spell… I mostly avoided spells that required a personal truename. You have the ability to research one, of course, and this type of research is something that is very much in-character for you. But the cost and time associated makes any spell requiring a personal truename very situational at best. However, what truename dispel offers might just make it worthwhile. Against any recurring foe (aka the only foes you’ll bother researching a personal truename for), truename dispel is outrageously good at shutting down entire buffstacks. It’s arguably even better than disjunction, as it requires no opposed caster level check, doesn’t destroy items and allows you to pick and choose what effects you dispel (meaning you can keep any debuffs that might be affecting them). Considering how important buffstacks are to high-level play, this is absolutely incredible, and since you’re already trained in Truespeak and have access to this as a 6th-level spell, you are one of the few builds able to actually eke some use out of this unique spell.
19th
Urban Savant 7
Urban savvy (methods)
Gate
Methods is actually pretty underwhelming compared to strengths and weaknesses as far as urban savvy goes. If you’re in a melee heavy party, being able to add +3d6 to the whole party’s attacks certainly isn’t bad, but it’s kind of boring. Still, it’s not totally useless, and honestly any ability you pick up is probably going to pale in comparison to the fact that you get 9th-level spells.
Gate is one of the Big 3 broken wizard spells (along with wish/shapechange), the ones that fundamentally alter the nature of the game by providing you access to abilities that were never intended for PCs. It also comes with a big honking 1,000xp cost every time you use it to call a creature, and while you’ll likely more than recover that in a single encounter and XP is a river and yadda yadda yadda, overusing the calling feature will likely both result in at least one or two sessions where you’re a level behind the rest of the party, and in your DM politely asking you to find something else to do. Basically, use it, don’t abuse it. It’s super useful as the ultimate transportation option even without calling down holy angels to rain divine fire on your foes, and that’s something it can do without burning through your XP.
20th
Urban Savant 8
Eyes of the city (pierce deception)
Reverse gravity, greater prying eyes, time stop
While the last couple of levels of urban savant were a bit underwhelming, eyes of the city’s pierce deception option is very nice, allowing you to make a knowledge check to see through any deception in appearance (whether magical or mundane). While you have true seeing, this is always on and works especially well with your see from afar abilities. It’s a nice little capstone and very on theme for the build.
And as far as spells go, you get a few more, so enjoy. Even at this level reverse gravity just completely shuts down some foes, and gives you a nice thematic option for when you’re bored with spamming scramble true position. Greater prying eyes is one of my favorite spells ever, letting you send out floating eyes with perfect vision and true seeing to scout for you. It’s also just a really cool visual. And finally, time stop is, well, time stop. Since most of your abilities aren’t offensive in nature, most of what you do can be performed while time is stopped.
0: Detect magic, message, mage hand, prestidigitation, daze, songbird, stick
1: Ancient knowledge, cure light wounds, sleep, improvisation, scramble true position, charm person
2: Detect thoughts, glitterdust, dimension leap, tongues, alter self, quick potion*
3: Arcane sight, haste, dispel magic, beckon monster
4: Ruin delver’s fortune, dimension door, analyze dweomer
5: Greater scrying, teleport, mass fly, scry location
6: Greater anticipate teleportation, hindsight, true seeing, truename dispel
7: Plane shift, greater teleport, project image, reverse gravity
8: Mind blank, moment of prescience, greater prying eyes
9: Gate, time stop
*Sublime chord spell, taken at a lower level
NOTE: Sublime chord states that if a spell is offered both by both bard and sorcerer, you learn it at the level it’s available to a bard. Bardic sage bumps analyze dweomer and greater scrying to 4th and 5th level bard spells, respectively. This spell list is assuming that this means you can therefore select these as 4th and 5th level sublime chord spells.
If your DM does not agree with this interpretation, it doesn’t require a great adjustment. In that case, drop analyze dweomer (which is nice as a 4th-level spell but likely not worth a 6th-level slot) entirely. There are several good 4th-level options that can replace it; you can’t go wrong with solid fog. Greater scrying is still worth taking even if it’s a 6th-level spell instead of a 5th-level spell. I’d either drop hindsight or take truename dispel as a 7th-level spell in place of reverse gravity.
Charisma and Intelligence, all the way. Charisma is your main casting stat, while Intelligence powers most of your skills. (It’s also a secondary casting stat for bardic sage, but you should never have a low enough Intelligence for this to be relevant.) Most of the other abilities are pretty irrelevant to you; don’t go into the negatives on Wisdom (since it powers Listen/Spot) or Con and you should be fine.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 8/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 14/Wis 10/Cha 16
32-point buy: Str 8/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 16/Wis 10/Cha 16
You’ll want spellcraft, Truespeak and every knowledge skill you can get your grubby little mitts on. Go ahead and max out listen while you’re at it, and perhaps spot, too (urban savant gets it as a class skill). UMD is not strictly required but definitely recommended if you can swing it, since it allows you to equip your familiar with wands for some extra actions and gives you the potential option of making quick potions of guidance of the avatar.
As for reqs, sublime chord has that odd profession (astrologer) requirement and mindbender will require you to pop some points into a few social skills in the early game, but other than that, your pre-reqs are all things you would want anyhow. Between Intelligence as your secondary stat, the human bonus skill and the fact that 13 of your levels are spent in 6+Int classes, you should have no issues with skill points.
You play more like a traditional caster than like a bard, so typical bardic equipment recommendations aren’t going to be as relevant for you. Make sure you’ve got all of the necessary foci for your scrying spells, of course, and work on keeping your CL as high as possible to get the most bang for your buck from spells like improvisation and scry location. You’ll also want to keep Charisma and Intelligence as high as possible.
If you decide to invest in UMD, you’ll definitely want a wand of guidance of the avatar. This is the main low level spell you don’t have access to that you’ll really want. (I actually strongly considered taking two levels in unseen seer just to get native access to this.) Wands in general will be handy even if your DM doesn’t like GotA, though, since your familiar shares your ranks and should have no problem activating them.
Because of your Truespeak requirements, you’ll absolutely want items to boost your check. This is good for anyone and downright essential if you can’t swing membership in the Paragnostic Assembly. Your requirements aren’t quite as bad as an actual truenamer, since you aren’t using utterances and therefore don’t need to worry about things like the Law of Resistance, but you’ll still want to be able to reliably use scramble true position, which requires a check of 15 + 2xCR. If you want to really optimize the hell out of this check, please check out Zaq’s guide, but at a bare minimum you’ll want the best version of the amulet of the silver tongue you can get your hands on. With a +10 amulet, an Int bonus of +8, max ranks, +2 from your familiar’s Aid check and a +10 luck bonus from improvisation (see the Delay Potion trick for effectively casting improvisation as a swift action) you’ll have a bonus of +53 on the check, meaning you’ll be able to hit CR 20 foes on a 2 and CR 23 foes on an 8. If you manage to swing membership in the Paragnostic Assembly or add on other boosts (masterwork tool, custom item, etc.), or if you replace improvisation with guidance of the avatar, you should auto-succeed against just about anything.
BUILD SUMMARY
This build is a bit harder to summarize than most, due to the nature of its abilities, but let’s give it a shot. First, you’re incredibly hard to surprise, between Mindsight and various detection spells (ranging from various detection spells and arcane sight to the powerful greater prying eyes) and maxed out perception skills, and you can relay positions telepathically to your allies or reveal hidden foes with glitterdust. When you’re aware of something’s presence (even if you can’t see it), if it’s an aberration, animal, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, ooze or vermin you also can learn its hit die, BAB, combat feats, special attacks, saving throws, damage reduction and special resistances with a simple knowledge check. You can also see through any disguises, mundane or magical, and with a high enough knowledge check can also determine the exact nature of the disguise.
You have a wide variety of scrying methods, most of which only require a standard action to use, including sense void, scry location and greater scrying. Sense void is particularly notable because it is a supernatural ability with no chance of failure (assuming you can make the spellcraft check), no saving throw, and no way to detect or avoid the ability short of being out of range. Considering that the range is 1,000 miles and you can teleport, being out of range is easier said than done. You simply think of a place, or a person, or an object, and you can see it, touch it, smell it, even taste it without anyone else knowing. You also have a number of other divination options (including some fun ones like hindsight), plus some extremely impressive knowledge skills.
Your specialty beyond just generally knowing everything and seeing everything is teleportation. You’ve got the full range of teleportation options, from the short range and tactical (dimension leap, dimension door) to the long range (teleport, greater teleport) to the extraplanar (plane shift, gate). You also have greater anticipate teleportation just in case someone else decides to try scry and die tactics on you. Oh, and speaking of greater anticipate teleportation, this is also the basis for your best offensive option: using it alongside the lowly level 1 scramble true position spell, which teleports creatures 10’ in random directions with no save, you can completely remove foes in a 10’ radius burst from combat for three rounds with no save and no real defense. You immediately learn where they will reappear, and can instruct your party accordingly.
And you have other interesting ways to augment your party, such as the ability to grant a feat with a touch, or to create potions of alter self or improvisation, or to provide such excellent insight into an enemy’s weaknesses that your allies all get +3d6 to their attacks.
VARIANTS
We made a few variants of the basic sublime chord/void disciple build. One version that we liked a lot used earth dreamer instead of urban savant, adding on even more divination utility and yet another vision method. One nice side effect of this was that it opened up Earth Spell, to eke a bit more usefulness out of the void disciple’s required Heighten Spell. Another thing we worked in for some versions was the Astral Tracker feat from Dragon Compendium. With this feat, you can use survival to track someone who has used a teleportation effect or even left the plane entirely, and then follow them with your own teleportation magic. And yet another option would be to replace 2-4 levels of urban savant with unseen seer, which would provide native access to GotA and some divination boosts.
On a more basic level, there’s a fair bit you can fiddle with on this build. If flaws are allowed, I highly recommend taking Truename Research early to free up skill points. The spell options can also be rearranged. In an effort to stick hard to a theme I built a fair bit of redundancy into some of the spell selection, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t branch out to more traditional wizard options. Some of them, such as planar binding, would even remain on-theme for the build overall.
SOURCES
Bardic Sage variant, Improved Familiar: SRD
Planar inspiration: Planar Handbook
Truespeak, Truename Research, scramble true position, beckon monster, truename dispel: Tome of Magic
Favored, urban savant: Cityscape
Void Disciple: Complete Divine
Mindbender, Sublime Chord, Obtain Familiar: Complete Arcane
Healing hymn ACF: Complete Champion
Inspire awe ACF: Dragon Magic
Spellbreaker song ACF, Delay Potion: Complete Mage
Mindsight: Lords of Madness
Scry location: Complete Scoundrel
All other spells: Spell Compendium
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And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases!