Jervis
2020-07-19, 12:46 AM
Hello. I'm planning on rebuilding a level 6 wizard gish character soon and i was wanting to keep the mounted Gish theming (Wiz 5, Knight Phantom 1) so i was looking at Zhentarim Skymage. For those unfamiliar, Skymage is a pretty interesting 3.0 Fearun class from Lords of DankDarkness. It gives you a kinda familiar, kinda animal companion, special flying mount. This mount can be any creature with a fly speed so long as it's large size (or at least 1 bigger than you), can logically be ridden as a mount, and has hit die equal to or less than Skymage level + Charisma mod (unfortunately not casting mod) + 1. The class is a 1-5, so the most you'll be able to get with a standard race and no cheese like Uncanny trickster, bloodline, legacy champion, etc is 11 (with cheese, 19 + charisma) or so. This does let you get a young Gold dragon as a mount so that's not bad. With 26 Charisma you can get a Linorm (MM2)... yeah a CR 20 huge dragon mount that casts as a level 17 cleric is a good long term goal for epic but i'm trying not to get my build banned before i even get to play rocket tag. Id like to get some advice on mount choice and what classes pair well. Stats unmodified are 17, 16, 15, 14, 14, 15, and can only be moved during a rebuild, not lowered to raise another. I'm currently a human but race, feats, etc can be swapped during rebuild.
Build Goals. Mounted Gish with 9th level spells pre-epic and good enough bab. Preferably 16+ but i'm not against lower and taking arcane disiple for divine power, possibly with some persistomancy. This is for a westmarsh server with a lot of optimized builds so i'm hoping to aim for a good midrange where i'm not overshadowing anyone but still contribute. I'd like a dragoniod mount of some kind, probably a Wyvern before i get more levels and swap out. Though true dragons are definitely a plus, so far gold dragons are the only easily accessible large one. And i'm planning on going to mounted combat, ride by attack, charge line to get stupid lance damage.
So i was going to ask about what would work better. As it stands i have two good options for caster entry, Sha'ir and Wizard. Wizard is the less fiddly of the two and benefits from one of the skymage's weirder features, free scrolls. At every level you get 2 free scrolls from your list of a level you can cast. Ive never been a fan of the loot as class feature abilities like the Ruathar weapon, but it has a second use. You can instead choose to add these spells to your spellbook free of charge. 4 free spells on level up instead of 2 is great for a wizard. If i go this route i could use things like UT or LC level up cheese, assuming it's allowed, to get more spells on levelup for a while and make up for only having a +2 charisma mod. Sha'ir on the other hand is much more fiddly, but has a hell of a lot of synergy. Skymage has Diplomacy as a class skill and gets skill focus as a bonus feat to help pump those diplomacy checks, also helped by a item i got as a reward that gives +2 diplomancy. The charisma synergy also helps me get better mounts, bringing my first steed from a 4 hit die to a 6-7 hit die and letting me grab a better mount later on. It also opens up Paladin/PrC Paladin (the organization ties in this setting doesn't conflict) dips to get Charisma to saves and various other divine PrCs that were never meant to work together with abjurant champion. This is all temping but depending on how a DM interpret's the rules a Sha'ir can go from a more fiddly wizard with a somehow even higher skill cap if you can deal with it's nonsense to truenammer levels of bad.
I plan on staying good aligned for abjurant champion's Luminous armor synergy (and Nymph's kiss if i go Sha'ir). I can, and did, take up to two flaws for feats so human isn't as important. I'm also probably getting Iron Will from the Otyug Hole if possible.
So far the builds are looking something like this.
Human Wizard: Human paragon 1/ wizard 1/ HP 2/ Wiz 2/ Skymage 5/ Ab Champ 5/ x 4(maybe LC to make up for bad charisma on my mount)
Pretty boring but usable. I probably won't get much better than a Wyvern or Dragonnel with this. I can't use temp boosts like items because lowering your charisma gets the mount too leave if it goes too low.
Illumian Sha'ir: Cleric 1/ Sha'ir or PrC to boost casting 5 (not sure what ratio)/ Skymage 5/ PrC Paladin 2/ Ab Champ 5/ x2 (ordaned champion maybe? I should probably work that in earlier)
This is kind of a Gish focused on Persistomancy divine power from something like arcane disciple and haste. It's mount would be quite a bit better though i'm not sure on this one. Alliteratively i know there's one build focused on this in the Sha'ir handbook but i felt like i needed to make something myself instead of copy pasting so here it goes.
I'd love to hear anyone else's take on this.
Build Goals. Mounted Gish with 9th level spells pre-epic and good enough bab. Preferably 16+ but i'm not against lower and taking arcane disiple for divine power, possibly with some persistomancy. This is for a westmarsh server with a lot of optimized builds so i'm hoping to aim for a good midrange where i'm not overshadowing anyone but still contribute. I'd like a dragoniod mount of some kind, probably a Wyvern before i get more levels and swap out. Though true dragons are definitely a plus, so far gold dragons are the only easily accessible large one. And i'm planning on going to mounted combat, ride by attack, charge line to get stupid lance damage.
So i was going to ask about what would work better. As it stands i have two good options for caster entry, Sha'ir and Wizard. Wizard is the less fiddly of the two and benefits from one of the skymage's weirder features, free scrolls. At every level you get 2 free scrolls from your list of a level you can cast. Ive never been a fan of the loot as class feature abilities like the Ruathar weapon, but it has a second use. You can instead choose to add these spells to your spellbook free of charge. 4 free spells on level up instead of 2 is great for a wizard. If i go this route i could use things like UT or LC level up cheese, assuming it's allowed, to get more spells on levelup for a while and make up for only having a +2 charisma mod. Sha'ir on the other hand is much more fiddly, but has a hell of a lot of synergy. Skymage has Diplomacy as a class skill and gets skill focus as a bonus feat to help pump those diplomacy checks, also helped by a item i got as a reward that gives +2 diplomancy. The charisma synergy also helps me get better mounts, bringing my first steed from a 4 hit die to a 6-7 hit die and letting me grab a better mount later on. It also opens up Paladin/PrC Paladin (the organization ties in this setting doesn't conflict) dips to get Charisma to saves and various other divine PrCs that were never meant to work together with abjurant champion. This is all temping but depending on how a DM interpret's the rules a Sha'ir can go from a more fiddly wizard with a somehow even higher skill cap if you can deal with it's nonsense to truenammer levels of bad.
I plan on staying good aligned for abjurant champion's Luminous armor synergy (and Nymph's kiss if i go Sha'ir). I can, and did, take up to two flaws for feats so human isn't as important. I'm also probably getting Iron Will from the Otyug Hole if possible.
So far the builds are looking something like this.
Human Wizard: Human paragon 1/ wizard 1/ HP 2/ Wiz 2/ Skymage 5/ Ab Champ 5/ x 4(maybe LC to make up for bad charisma on my mount)
Pretty boring but usable. I probably won't get much better than a Wyvern or Dragonnel with this. I can't use temp boosts like items because lowering your charisma gets the mount too leave if it goes too low.
Illumian Sha'ir: Cleric 1/ Sha'ir or PrC to boost casting 5 (not sure what ratio)/ Skymage 5/ PrC Paladin 2/ Ab Champ 5/ x2 (ordaned champion maybe? I should probably work that in earlier)
This is kind of a Gish focused on Persistomancy divine power from something like arcane disciple and haste. It's mount would be quite a bit better though i'm not sure on this one. Alliteratively i know there's one build focused on this in the Sha'ir handbook but i felt like i needed to make something myself instead of copy pasting so here it goes.
I'd love to hear anyone else's take on this.