Help me build sand castles in the middle of combat

[NoHotDogBuns]

Whenever I'm playing 3.5 I always get this itch for terrain manipulation. Weather its trying to somehow justify earth dreamer levels or spamming oreads nonstop i just cant get enough of tunneling and building.
I'm really interested in playing a character devoted to these concepts rather than incidentally picking them up. The game this is for is high optimization, all WoTC products as well as Dragon mag are allowed. Additionally this campaign is Dark Sun, so rules from Athas.org products are also fair game. Currently starting ECL is 7.
If anyone has any specific recommendations as to how to play Minecraft while the rest of my group is playing dnd do let me know.\

Some general goals is to have access to terrain shaping spells and abilities, have tons of spell slots to cast those with, and to be relatively impervious to attack while doing so (e.g. earth glide)

[ExLibrisMortis]

I mean... Persistent undermaster is what you want, isn't it?

The easiest way to do it is probably as an artificer with the metamagic item infusion and a staff of undermaster. That works at level 12, as long as you borrow undermaster from the Sublime Chord list, setting its minimum caster level at 9. If you use a CL 12+ SLA to qualify for Craft Staff at level 6 or 8, you can move the combo up to level 7 or 8, respectively.

[NoHotDogBuns]

That'll work pretty great. Being an artificer will also be pretty nice sense the group is plenty evil to take advantage of dark craft xp

[liquidformat]

Could also go with wizard into sand shaper, could also take southern magician and walker in the waste then you could make your own sand golems too

[NoHotDogBuns]

Another note, New characters don't immediately have access to magic items. Could i still go about boosting my CL to 12 without them?

[Troacctid]

Earth Devotion lets you reshape the ground as an immediate action. Earthen grasp and stony grasp both let you form dirt into an arm that pops out and grapples enemies.

You could also take Spell Thematics (Terrain) to have all your spells pull material out of the surrounding area (and it gives a CL boost, too!).

[ExLibrisMortis]

Another note, New characters don't immediately have access to magic items. Could i still go about boosting my CL to 12 without them?
Yes. I was assuming you'd get a racial SLA with sufficient CL.

Artificer 5/dragonmark heir 4 gets you a CL 14 at level 9, allowing you to pick up Craft Staff at that level. You lose a fair bit of infusions, though. An alternative is to go artificer 7/dragonmark heir 1/artificer +1, use your 6th-level feat on Mighty Dragonmark, and then pick up Greater Dragonmark with your 9th-level feat. That leaves your artificer bonus feat free for Craft Staff. It costs an extra feat, and your dragonmark CL is lower, but your infusion-imbuing is much better.

[Troacctid]

You can qualify for Craft Staff at level 1 with Celestial Scion. It gives you CL 14 true seeing at will (only works against fiends).

[sreservoir]

That leaves your artificer bonus feat free for Craft Staff.

Item creation feats are not part of the artificer's 4th/8th/&c. bonus feat selection:


In addition, an artificer gains a bonus feat at 4th level and every four levels thereafter (8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th). For each of these bonus feats, the artificer must choose a metamagic feat or a feat from the following list: Attune Magic Weapon, Craft Construct (see the Monster Manual, page 303), Exceptional Artisan, Extra Rings, Extraordinary Artisan, Legendary Artisan, Wand Mastery.

(This does remind of a funny argument that "An artificer gains every item creation feat as a bonus feat at or near the level at which it becomes available to spellcasters." implies that the artificer gains every item creation feat, not just the listed PHB ones ... but it's probably just more of the poor editing the artificer suffers from.)

[Nihilarian]

A Deepstone Sentinel from ToB can make their own personal hill whenever they feel like it

[ExLibrisMortis]

Item creation feats are not part of the artificer's 4th/8th/&c. bonus feat selection:
Good point, my bad. In that case, go with Troacctid's excellent suggestion. Artificer 7 with feats (in order): Celestial Scion, Extend Spell, Persistent Spell (artificer bonus), Craft Staff.

[Asmotherion]

I'll seccond Persisted Undermaster, so Incantatrix to that effect. I'll also add Sand Shaper PRC as it practically gives exactly what you ask for. You loose 2 caster levels, but can easyly compensate for them, and get partial Benefits of Undermaster pretty early on.

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, so I have a really fun cleric build that can be used to do all sorts of fun environment control stuff via a rebuked Rejkar (monster manual 3, page 140).

Rejkar have fabricate as an at will SLA.

SLA's do not require material components.

Thus a Rejkar can, at will, as many times a day as it pleases, simply will into existence any object up to 50 cubic feet.

For example, a 6" X 10' x 10' wall of pure adamantine.

Or a masterwork adamantine greatsword.

Or a full suit of adamantine full plate.

Or 50 cubic feet of lava.

20,000lbs of adamantine.

374 gallons of drow knockout poison.

These objects are nonmagical and undispellable and will last forever.

So you want to be a cleric with the cold domain. This will allow you to rebuke cold creatures, and a Rejkar is one such creature. That means if you can get one to half your HD you can control it and use it as a minion.

But they have 5 HD. How do you get one controlled at level 7?

Negative levels. Fell drain and any spell that deals no save damage applied twice will reduce a Rejkar to 3 HD temporarily. This allows you to use Rebuke to pull it into your control. Once in your control it is only released if your control pool exceeds your HD. This means you can cure or allow the negative levels to fade and have a 5HD creature under your control.

Now, how do you get your hands on a Rejkar? A scroll of lesser planer binding. It's a 5th level wizard spell, but 1/2 a rank of UMD and the guidance of the avatar spell will give you a +20 UMD check at charisma 10.

So you call one onto the material plane and bind it to you.

What now.

Well, now you want to start working on it. Divine Insight and Guidance of the Avatar stack with maxed ranks of diplomacy to give you a silly high diplomacy check. Start using the Book of Exalted Deeds conversion rules to talk the Rejkar into matching your alignment. This is to prevent backstabbing later.

Well, now you have a loyal minion capable of creating any mundane object smaller than 50 cubic feet you want. What next.

Well, now you want to see if your DM will count your minion as part of the party for EXP because it's time to level it. You want to keep it at or bellow your HD so it stays under your control, but you want it to start taking levels in Fiend of Possession so it can posses an item you have. Once it can do that you have it posses a Riverine object so it becomes immune to damage.

Tell it to make and then posses a weapon. Then tell it to make the weapon bane to whatever creature you are fighting at the moment.