Piggy Knowles
2021-05-12, 02:49 PM
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, Akal Saris, daremetoidareyou, Darrin, Venger, the Viscount, WhamBamSam and Zaq. 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.
For this showcase, we’ll be getting extra friendly with How to Win Friends and Influence People!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/842124674073886750/1238937_582984871743932_336965058_n.jpg
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Six ways to make enemies like you.
BACKGROUND
Hey, another showcase two days later! While our group has been silent on the forum front for the past few months, we’re still pretty active and have been building this whole time, meaning we’ve actually got a decent backlog of builds. And since I’m decently caffeinated and feeling motivated to do another write-up, let’s jump write in with another showcase!
Unsurprisingly (given our group’s origins), this build all started out because of Iron Chef. On a recent round, Insidious Corruptor, we were all looking at some different ways to potentially meet the dominate person requirement. One of the most intriguing to me was using an early entry mindbender. Mindbender is no stranger to optimization circles as an easy dip to provide telepathy for Mindsight, but its half-casting makes it a poor choice to take for more than a single level. However, the low skill requirements mean that it could potentially be entered as early as level 2 - provided, of course, you had the relevant skills and you were able to get an arcane caster level of 5. While its abilities are a poor trade for spellcasting overall, getting access to the class could mean picking up Mindsight as early as level 3, and would make the charm and dominate abilities come several levels below when a standard caster might have access to them.
Though the insidious corruptor iron chef build didn't pan out, the idea was still intriguing. We poked around with a lot of ideas to enter by level 3, finally settling on a cloistered cleric dip for a quick +3 CL on divination spells via the Knowledge and Oracle domains. As this caster level boost was not restricted to just cleric spells, it meant that if we could get CL 2 on arcane divination spells otherwise, we'd hit the requirements. That was easily doable with a feat, and Practiced Spellcaster would come in handy regardless. The next step was to meet the other requirements. Almost no arcane spellcaster had access to all of the listed skills, but there were two interesting options: the jester, from Dragon Compendium, and wizard via the social proficiency enchanter ACF from Unearthed Arcana.
Jester has an awkward spell list and doesn’t pick up charm until level 2, but a wizard entry meant that we could complete mindbender and still hit 4th-level spells by ECL 13, which in turn meant we had just enough remaining levels to use nar demonbinder to rebuild our casting. From there, the basic pieces of the build were all in place, and the rest quickly came together. While it’s not as high powered as a straight wizard might be, it’s got some fun tricks up its sleeve. I hope you enjoy.
THE BASICS
Race: Illumian, with Naenhoon power sigils. While I was dearly tempted to go with something involving the Vau sigils for the CL boost, which would save this build a feat, Naenhoon was just too perfect for providing a way to take advantage of your cleric turning.
Build Stub: Wizard 1/Cloistered Cleric 1/Mindbender 10/Dweomerkeeper 1/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 6
Alternate class features: Social proficiency enchanter ACF, animal companion wizard (replaces your familiar), cloistered cleric.
Alignment: Any nongood.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Wizard 1
Scribe ScrollB, Practiced Spellcaster (wizard)
Animal companion, social proficiency, Scribe Scroll
A specialist enchanter? Trust me, it works here. You’ll drop evocation and illusion (the latter hurts, but you really want to hang onto necromancy on this build and everything else is essential). The social proficiency ACF allows you to trade away your feats at levels 5/10/15/20, which you’ll never reach or need, for an expanded skill list that includes everything you need for mindbender. You do, however, get to keep Scribe Scroll, which will help you meet one of your other pre-reqs down the road. Your Int focus will easily make up for your low skill points, letting you hit everything you need and fulfill a secondary role as a face. Not too shabby.
Anyhow, low level wizards get a bad rap outside of the CharOp community, and a really great rap within it. In my experience the truth lies somewhere in the middle - even at first level you’ve got plenty of game changing, encounter-ending options such as sleep or cause fear, but the low hit points and limited spells per day are definitely felt. For that reason I recommend going with an animal companion rather than a familiar. While animal companions are much worse than familiars in the mid- to late-game, and much more dependent upon levels to keep them competitive, they’re a HUGE help at 1st-level. Also, unlike familiars you can let your companion die and just summon a new one the next day, and having a companion instead of a familiar here means that when you eventually pick up nar demonbinder, your existing familiar won’t get eaten by an imp.
2nd
Cloistered Cleric 1
Lore, domains (Magic, Oracle, Knowledge)
Cloistered cleric comes in as a dip that provides a significant boost to your caster level thanks to the Oracle and Knowledge domains. Since this CL boost applies to your wizard spells as well, it means you now have CL 5 on arcane divination spells, allowing you to qualify for mindbender. Meanwhile, cleric itself brings with it some nice benefits, such as undead turning to fuel Naenhoon and another set of decent low level spells to use, vastly improving your contributions in combat.
3rd
Mindbender 1
Mindsight
Telepathy
Part of the whole appeal of this build was getting Mindsight three levels sooner than just about any standard build, so this should be no surprise. Mindsight is outrageously good, and with your 100’ telepathy it has a great range on it.
4th
Mindbender 2
Push the weak mind 1/day, skill boost
Your first mindbender SLA is a powered up suggestion. It’s only 1/day, but it’s an improved version of a decent 3rd-level spell and you have access to it by 4th level, which is not bad at all. Your skill boost is also going to come in handy, reinforcing your face roll with a nicely scaling boost to all your social skills.
5th
Mindbender 3
Mindread 2/day
Another level that boosts casting means 2nd-level wizard spells. Lots of great options here, such as the always incredible glitterdust. You also get a couple of uses of mindread, which is basically detect thoughts without the three round buildup - you skip straight to the good stuff and start getting surface thoughts immediately. However, unlike detect thoughts, you don’t get the Intelligence score of your target and you can only target a single foe at a time.
6th
Mindbender 4
Fell Drain
Eternal charm (1)
I mentioned that Naenhoon would come in handy, right? Well, now that you have 2nd-level spells, it’s time to start putting it to work. Fell Drain is a great way to add a powerful debuff rider to anything that deals damage, and you can apply it for free twice a day. With 2nd-level spells, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better Fell Drain vector than kelgore’s grave mist, which fatigues and damages every round without a save. Toss on a Fell Drain and it will sap levels as well, making it an even scarier debuff, and perfect for softening foes up for your mental control.
And speaking of mental control, you now get your first trademark ability: eternal charm. This is basically charm monster with a permanent duration. Considering that a straight wizard wouldn’t be casting charm monster at all yet, much less with a permanent duration, that’s quite good. And charm is a REALLY nice effect to make permanent, especially when a DC 20 diplomacy check is all it takes to bump them up from friendly to helpful.
7th
Mindbender 5
Push the weak mind 2/day
It’s less impressive at 7th level than it was at 4th, but an extra use of souped up suggestion is still pretty nice, as is improving your wizard casting.
8th
Mindbender 6
Enchantment spell power +2, eternal charm (2)
Enchantment spell power doesn’t exactly make up for giving up 5 levels of casting progression, but it doesn’t hurt. More relevant, however, is the ability to have an extra eternal best friend.
9th
Mindbender 7
Spell Focus (conjuration)
Dominate, mindread 4/day
More absolutely incredible SLAs. Dominate monster is ordinarily a 9th-level spell, and you’re tossing it around roughly 8 levels early. That’s not half bad, especially considering how brutal the save DC is against anything remotely level equivalent. You also get a couple of extra uses of your mindread as well.
And while you’re at it, enjoy some 3rd-level spells, too. These came a bit late but that doesn’t mean they aren’t handy. Spell Focus (conjuration) and a decent Int means conjuration spells in particular will be a good choice.
10th
Mindbender 8
Eternal charm (3), push the weak mind 3/day
You’re up to three eternal buddies, plus an extra use of fancy suggestion every day.
11th
Mindbender 9
Ah, mindbender, you were doing so well. Why did you have to sneak in a dead level at 9? Oh well, at least it progresses casting.
12th
Mindbender 10
Iron Will
Enchantment spell power +4, eternal charm (4), thrall
Thanks to enchantment spell power and Practiced Spellcaster, you’ve got an effective caster level of 14 on enchantment spells despite dropping six casting levels. That’s pretty decent, even if enchantment spells aren’t the best. Better yet, you get another use of your eternal charm, bringing your buddies up to 4, and you get the absolutely excellent thrall ability, which allows you to make your dominate SLA permanent. That’s right, five levels before a standard wizard would even have access to dominate monster at all, you’ve got the ability to permanently turn a foe into your puppet.
As for your feat, Iron Will is required but standard caveats apply: if you’re allowed magical locations, jump in an Otyugh Hole and take something more useful with your 12th level feat instead.
13th
Dweomerkeeper 1
Mantle of spells 1
You need one more level of spellcasting before you can take nar demonbinder. Dweomerkeeper is notorious for supernatural spell, which is an absolutely broken ability with even a tiny attempt at optimization, but here it instead fits in as an easy way to get a 1st-level spontaneous arcane spell via your mantle of spells. That’s relevant for ultimate magus, which will require the ability to cast 1st level arcane spells spontaneously, while nar demonbinder starts you out at 4ths. Note that if you were able to hop in an Otyugh Hole, thus freeing up a feat, you could instead take Mother Cyst at 12 and qualify that way, since Mother Cyst will add necrotic awareness to all your spell lists. In that case, feel free to swap out the Magic domain with something more useful (Trickery Devotion would be a nice addition), and go with a different class such as paragnostic apostle here.
14th
Nar Demonbinder 1
Fiendish familiar, inimical casting
Enter one of the many excellent ways to rebuild casting: the nar demonbinder. With 8th-level spells in seven levels, nar demonbinder can quickly repair the levels lost from all that mindbending. The spell list is limited but includes some very powerful options, and it has a couple of frontloaded class features that also make it quite worthwhile: fiendish familiar, for an imp or quasit familiar, and inimical casting, which allows you to cast the evil version of spells like protection from good and blasphemy as though they were the good, lawful or chaotic versions of themselves. An imp or quasit is an excellent familiar choice, especially thanks to their commune SLA, and inimical casting is a great way to make blasphemy a top offensive option no matter regardless of what foes you are facing.
As for your spells, the standout options here are lesser planar binding and plane shift. Planar binding is a natural fit alongside an enchanter (which, really, is just another kind of minionmancer), and plane shift pulls double duty as utility and a powerful save or lose.
15th
Ultimate Magus 1
Mother Cyst
Arcane spell power +1
With both wizard and nar demonbinder casting, ultimate magus is a natural fit. You’ve already got all the pieces necessary to ensure your caster level is higher on your wizard side, thanks to your early CL boosting shenanigans, so you can fully progress nar demonbinder while also gaining four levels of wizard casting and some handy class features. And meanwhile, Mother Cyst comes on as a great way to expand your spell list and gives you some non-enchantment, non-[mind-affecting] ways to control your enemies.
16th
Ultimate Magus 2
Expanded spell knowledge (ray of enfeeblement)
You hit 6ths from nar demonbinder here, which includes both greater dispel magic and planar binding.
17th
Ultimate Magus 3
Augmented casting
Augmented casting is a nifty little metamagic reducer, allowing you to add on Fell Drain to spells at the cost of a low level spell slot. Since your naenhoon power word is only usable twice a day, and you have a LOT of spell slots to burn, this is a great way to get some extra debuffing all day long.
18th
Ultimate Magus 4
Quicken Spell
Arcane spell power +2, expanded spell knowledge (kelgore’s grave mist)
Of course, if you really want to get extra mileage out of metamagic reducers, it’s hard to do better than Quicken Spell for some nice action economy. Oh, and while we’re talking about spells, don’t forget that you hit 7th-level spells here, which means only one thing: it’s inimical blasphemy time!
19th
Ultimate Magus 5
Twin Spell
Bonus feat
With your bonus metamagic feat, Twin Spell is a nice option. Even at this level, twinned fell draining kelgore’s grave mists are still going to be a dangerous debuff.
20th
Ultimate Magus 6
Expanded spell knowledge (dimension step)
Your final level of ultimate magus leaves you with 8th-level nar demonbinder spells (greater planar binding!) and 6th-level wizard spells.
Spells Known:
1- Ray of enfeeblement, necrotic awareness
2- Kelgore’s grave mist, necrotic cyst, necrotic scrying
3- Dimension step, necrotic bloat
4- Lesser planar binding, dimensional anchor, wall of fire, summon monster IV, necrotic domination
5- Plane shift, summon monster V, flame strike, necrotic burst
6- Greater dispel magic, planar binding, fiendform, necrotic eruption
7- Blasphemy, summon monster VII, necrotic tumor
8- Greater planar binding, necrotic empowerment
Intelligence and Charisma all the way. Intelligence is more important in the first half of your life, as it drives your skills, Wizard spells and mindbender SLAs. Later, when you can cast 8th-level spells off of Charisma, you’ll want to move your focus there - while you could get away with as low as an 18 there, you do have a few decent spells that require saves.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (after racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 8/Dex 10/Con 12/Int 16/Wis 12/Cha 15
32-point buy: Str 8/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 16/Wis 12/Cha 16
While you’re only getting 2 skill points/level, you have a pretty decent skill list and a starting Int of 16, so it’s worth investing a bit in the social skills. Diplomacy in particular is a must, for converting your charmed thralls from friendly to helpful. You don’t need to fully max out every single social skill, and on most of them you can probably get by with a few ranks, your decent Charisma and the +5 bonus you get from mindbender, but it’s still worth taking advantage of.
BUILD SUMMARY
For a build with ten levels of mindbender, you end up quite strong. At the low levels, you have access to a powered up suggestion, charm monster and dominate monster earlier than a full caster would get them (and with quite good DCs for the level as well), plus Mindsight by level 3 and some rather decent social skills for a mage. Between casting, SLAs, your eternally charmed minions and the ability to throw around Fell Draining spells via Naenhoon, you should have no real troubles in the first half of your career.
And when those abilities start to taper off in power (though I’d argue things like Mindsight and eternal charm/thrall never go out of style), you pick up nar demonbinder, adding on high level casting that focuses on planar binding (which synergizes quite well with enchanter tactics). You also continue progressing your wizard casting and get even more metamagic fun thanks to ultimate magus. And because immunity to enchantments and [mind-affecting] is all too common at the highest levels, you also pick up a new way to collect thralls in the necrotic cyst line. You close things out with 6th-level wizard spells and 8th-level nar demonbinder spells, an imp or quasit familiar, three eternal charms and a thrall, plus whatever else you’ve managed to influence or bind along the way. How’s that for winning friends?
VARIANTS
The core build doesn’t leave a ton of wiggle-room - the enchanter wizard ACF is the only class that gets all required skills and charm person as an arcane spell at 1st level to allow for early mindbender entry - but there are some other ways around it. If you can get Intimidate added as a cleric class skill via the pact domain, beguiler is a viable alternative for low levels, though as it is a spontaneous caster you won’t be able to finish the build off with ultimate magus. You can also scrap the level of dweomerkeeper for something else that progresses casting by moving Mother Cyst earlier in the build, which not only gives you an extra level but also lets you choose something other than the magic domain at level 2.
The feats themselves have a bit more leeway. Naenhoon Fell Drain is a viable low level tactic that stays decent in the higher levels, but it’s not actually a required build element, so feel free to build out elsewhere. Note that if you drop Naenhoon altogether, you can net a spare feat, either by going with human or Vau sigil illumian.
SOURCES
Illumian: Races of Destiny
Enchanter wizard ACF, animal companion ACF: Unearthed Arcana
Practiced Spellcaster, mindbender: Complete Arcane
Dweomerkeeper: Complete Divine web enhancement
Mindsight: Lords of Madness
Nar demonbinder: Unapproachable East
Ultimate magus: Complete Mage
Fell Drain, Mother Cyst: Libris Mortis
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases!
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, Akal Saris, daremetoidareyou, Darrin, Venger, the Viscount, WhamBamSam and Zaq. 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.
For this showcase, we’ll be getting extra friendly with How to Win Friends and Influence People!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/842124674073886750/1238937_582984871743932_336965058_n.jpg
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Six ways to make enemies like you.
BACKGROUND
Hey, another showcase two days later! While our group has been silent on the forum front for the past few months, we’re still pretty active and have been building this whole time, meaning we’ve actually got a decent backlog of builds. And since I’m decently caffeinated and feeling motivated to do another write-up, let’s jump write in with another showcase!
Unsurprisingly (given our group’s origins), this build all started out because of Iron Chef. On a recent round, Insidious Corruptor, we were all looking at some different ways to potentially meet the dominate person requirement. One of the most intriguing to me was using an early entry mindbender. Mindbender is no stranger to optimization circles as an easy dip to provide telepathy for Mindsight, but its half-casting makes it a poor choice to take for more than a single level. However, the low skill requirements mean that it could potentially be entered as early as level 2 - provided, of course, you had the relevant skills and you were able to get an arcane caster level of 5. While its abilities are a poor trade for spellcasting overall, getting access to the class could mean picking up Mindsight as early as level 3, and would make the charm and dominate abilities come several levels below when a standard caster might have access to them.
Though the insidious corruptor iron chef build didn't pan out, the idea was still intriguing. We poked around with a lot of ideas to enter by level 3, finally settling on a cloistered cleric dip for a quick +3 CL on divination spells via the Knowledge and Oracle domains. As this caster level boost was not restricted to just cleric spells, it meant that if we could get CL 2 on arcane divination spells otherwise, we'd hit the requirements. That was easily doable with a feat, and Practiced Spellcaster would come in handy regardless. The next step was to meet the other requirements. Almost no arcane spellcaster had access to all of the listed skills, but there were two interesting options: the jester, from Dragon Compendium, and wizard via the social proficiency enchanter ACF from Unearthed Arcana.
Jester has an awkward spell list and doesn’t pick up charm until level 2, but a wizard entry meant that we could complete mindbender and still hit 4th-level spells by ECL 13, which in turn meant we had just enough remaining levels to use nar demonbinder to rebuild our casting. From there, the basic pieces of the build were all in place, and the rest quickly came together. While it’s not as high powered as a straight wizard might be, it’s got some fun tricks up its sleeve. I hope you enjoy.
THE BASICS
Race: Illumian, with Naenhoon power sigils. While I was dearly tempted to go with something involving the Vau sigils for the CL boost, which would save this build a feat, Naenhoon was just too perfect for providing a way to take advantage of your cleric turning.
Build Stub: Wizard 1/Cloistered Cleric 1/Mindbender 10/Dweomerkeeper 1/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 6
Alternate class features: Social proficiency enchanter ACF, animal companion wizard (replaces your familiar), cloistered cleric.
Alignment: Any nongood.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Wizard 1
Scribe ScrollB, Practiced Spellcaster (wizard)
Animal companion, social proficiency, Scribe Scroll
A specialist enchanter? Trust me, it works here. You’ll drop evocation and illusion (the latter hurts, but you really want to hang onto necromancy on this build and everything else is essential). The social proficiency ACF allows you to trade away your feats at levels 5/10/15/20, which you’ll never reach or need, for an expanded skill list that includes everything you need for mindbender. You do, however, get to keep Scribe Scroll, which will help you meet one of your other pre-reqs down the road. Your Int focus will easily make up for your low skill points, letting you hit everything you need and fulfill a secondary role as a face. Not too shabby.
Anyhow, low level wizards get a bad rap outside of the CharOp community, and a really great rap within it. In my experience the truth lies somewhere in the middle - even at first level you’ve got plenty of game changing, encounter-ending options such as sleep or cause fear, but the low hit points and limited spells per day are definitely felt. For that reason I recommend going with an animal companion rather than a familiar. While animal companions are much worse than familiars in the mid- to late-game, and much more dependent upon levels to keep them competitive, they’re a HUGE help at 1st-level. Also, unlike familiars you can let your companion die and just summon a new one the next day, and having a companion instead of a familiar here means that when you eventually pick up nar demonbinder, your existing familiar won’t get eaten by an imp.
2nd
Cloistered Cleric 1
Lore, domains (Magic, Oracle, Knowledge)
Cloistered cleric comes in as a dip that provides a significant boost to your caster level thanks to the Oracle and Knowledge domains. Since this CL boost applies to your wizard spells as well, it means you now have CL 5 on arcane divination spells, allowing you to qualify for mindbender. Meanwhile, cleric itself brings with it some nice benefits, such as undead turning to fuel Naenhoon and another set of decent low level spells to use, vastly improving your contributions in combat.
3rd
Mindbender 1
Mindsight
Telepathy
Part of the whole appeal of this build was getting Mindsight three levels sooner than just about any standard build, so this should be no surprise. Mindsight is outrageously good, and with your 100’ telepathy it has a great range on it.
4th
Mindbender 2
Push the weak mind 1/day, skill boost
Your first mindbender SLA is a powered up suggestion. It’s only 1/day, but it’s an improved version of a decent 3rd-level spell and you have access to it by 4th level, which is not bad at all. Your skill boost is also going to come in handy, reinforcing your face roll with a nicely scaling boost to all your social skills.
5th
Mindbender 3
Mindread 2/day
Another level that boosts casting means 2nd-level wizard spells. Lots of great options here, such as the always incredible glitterdust. You also get a couple of uses of mindread, which is basically detect thoughts without the three round buildup - you skip straight to the good stuff and start getting surface thoughts immediately. However, unlike detect thoughts, you don’t get the Intelligence score of your target and you can only target a single foe at a time.
6th
Mindbender 4
Fell Drain
Eternal charm (1)
I mentioned that Naenhoon would come in handy, right? Well, now that you have 2nd-level spells, it’s time to start putting it to work. Fell Drain is a great way to add a powerful debuff rider to anything that deals damage, and you can apply it for free twice a day. With 2nd-level spells, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better Fell Drain vector than kelgore’s grave mist, which fatigues and damages every round without a save. Toss on a Fell Drain and it will sap levels as well, making it an even scarier debuff, and perfect for softening foes up for your mental control.
And speaking of mental control, you now get your first trademark ability: eternal charm. This is basically charm monster with a permanent duration. Considering that a straight wizard wouldn’t be casting charm monster at all yet, much less with a permanent duration, that’s quite good. And charm is a REALLY nice effect to make permanent, especially when a DC 20 diplomacy check is all it takes to bump them up from friendly to helpful.
7th
Mindbender 5
Push the weak mind 2/day
It’s less impressive at 7th level than it was at 4th, but an extra use of souped up suggestion is still pretty nice, as is improving your wizard casting.
8th
Mindbender 6
Enchantment spell power +2, eternal charm (2)
Enchantment spell power doesn’t exactly make up for giving up 5 levels of casting progression, but it doesn’t hurt. More relevant, however, is the ability to have an extra eternal best friend.
9th
Mindbender 7
Spell Focus (conjuration)
Dominate, mindread 4/day
More absolutely incredible SLAs. Dominate monster is ordinarily a 9th-level spell, and you’re tossing it around roughly 8 levels early. That’s not half bad, especially considering how brutal the save DC is against anything remotely level equivalent. You also get a couple of extra uses of your mindread as well.
And while you’re at it, enjoy some 3rd-level spells, too. These came a bit late but that doesn’t mean they aren’t handy. Spell Focus (conjuration) and a decent Int means conjuration spells in particular will be a good choice.
10th
Mindbender 8
Eternal charm (3), push the weak mind 3/day
You’re up to three eternal buddies, plus an extra use of fancy suggestion every day.
11th
Mindbender 9
Ah, mindbender, you were doing so well. Why did you have to sneak in a dead level at 9? Oh well, at least it progresses casting.
12th
Mindbender 10
Iron Will
Enchantment spell power +4, eternal charm (4), thrall
Thanks to enchantment spell power and Practiced Spellcaster, you’ve got an effective caster level of 14 on enchantment spells despite dropping six casting levels. That’s pretty decent, even if enchantment spells aren’t the best. Better yet, you get another use of your eternal charm, bringing your buddies up to 4, and you get the absolutely excellent thrall ability, which allows you to make your dominate SLA permanent. That’s right, five levels before a standard wizard would even have access to dominate monster at all, you’ve got the ability to permanently turn a foe into your puppet.
As for your feat, Iron Will is required but standard caveats apply: if you’re allowed magical locations, jump in an Otyugh Hole and take something more useful with your 12th level feat instead.
13th
Dweomerkeeper 1
Mantle of spells 1
You need one more level of spellcasting before you can take nar demonbinder. Dweomerkeeper is notorious for supernatural spell, which is an absolutely broken ability with even a tiny attempt at optimization, but here it instead fits in as an easy way to get a 1st-level spontaneous arcane spell via your mantle of spells. That’s relevant for ultimate magus, which will require the ability to cast 1st level arcane spells spontaneously, while nar demonbinder starts you out at 4ths. Note that if you were able to hop in an Otyugh Hole, thus freeing up a feat, you could instead take Mother Cyst at 12 and qualify that way, since Mother Cyst will add necrotic awareness to all your spell lists. In that case, feel free to swap out the Magic domain with something more useful (Trickery Devotion would be a nice addition), and go with a different class such as paragnostic apostle here.
14th
Nar Demonbinder 1
Fiendish familiar, inimical casting
Enter one of the many excellent ways to rebuild casting: the nar demonbinder. With 8th-level spells in seven levels, nar demonbinder can quickly repair the levels lost from all that mindbending. The spell list is limited but includes some very powerful options, and it has a couple of frontloaded class features that also make it quite worthwhile: fiendish familiar, for an imp or quasit familiar, and inimical casting, which allows you to cast the evil version of spells like protection from good and blasphemy as though they were the good, lawful or chaotic versions of themselves. An imp or quasit is an excellent familiar choice, especially thanks to their commune SLA, and inimical casting is a great way to make blasphemy a top offensive option no matter regardless of what foes you are facing.
As for your spells, the standout options here are lesser planar binding and plane shift. Planar binding is a natural fit alongside an enchanter (which, really, is just another kind of minionmancer), and plane shift pulls double duty as utility and a powerful save or lose.
15th
Ultimate Magus 1
Mother Cyst
Arcane spell power +1
With both wizard and nar demonbinder casting, ultimate magus is a natural fit. You’ve already got all the pieces necessary to ensure your caster level is higher on your wizard side, thanks to your early CL boosting shenanigans, so you can fully progress nar demonbinder while also gaining four levels of wizard casting and some handy class features. And meanwhile, Mother Cyst comes on as a great way to expand your spell list and gives you some non-enchantment, non-[mind-affecting] ways to control your enemies.
16th
Ultimate Magus 2
Expanded spell knowledge (ray of enfeeblement)
You hit 6ths from nar demonbinder here, which includes both greater dispel magic and planar binding.
17th
Ultimate Magus 3
Augmented casting
Augmented casting is a nifty little metamagic reducer, allowing you to add on Fell Drain to spells at the cost of a low level spell slot. Since your naenhoon power word is only usable twice a day, and you have a LOT of spell slots to burn, this is a great way to get some extra debuffing all day long.
18th
Ultimate Magus 4
Quicken Spell
Arcane spell power +2, expanded spell knowledge (kelgore’s grave mist)
Of course, if you really want to get extra mileage out of metamagic reducers, it’s hard to do better than Quicken Spell for some nice action economy. Oh, and while we’re talking about spells, don’t forget that you hit 7th-level spells here, which means only one thing: it’s inimical blasphemy time!
19th
Ultimate Magus 5
Twin Spell
Bonus feat
With your bonus metamagic feat, Twin Spell is a nice option. Even at this level, twinned fell draining kelgore’s grave mists are still going to be a dangerous debuff.
20th
Ultimate Magus 6
Expanded spell knowledge (dimension step)
Your final level of ultimate magus leaves you with 8th-level nar demonbinder spells (greater planar binding!) and 6th-level wizard spells.
Spells Known:
1- Ray of enfeeblement, necrotic awareness
2- Kelgore’s grave mist, necrotic cyst, necrotic scrying
3- Dimension step, necrotic bloat
4- Lesser planar binding, dimensional anchor, wall of fire, summon monster IV, necrotic domination
5- Plane shift, summon monster V, flame strike, necrotic burst
6- Greater dispel magic, planar binding, fiendform, necrotic eruption
7- Blasphemy, summon monster VII, necrotic tumor
8- Greater planar binding, necrotic empowerment
Intelligence and Charisma all the way. Intelligence is more important in the first half of your life, as it drives your skills, Wizard spells and mindbender SLAs. Later, when you can cast 8th-level spells off of Charisma, you’ll want to move your focus there - while you could get away with as low as an 18 there, you do have a few decent spells that require saves.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (after racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 8/Dex 10/Con 12/Int 16/Wis 12/Cha 15
32-point buy: Str 8/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 16/Wis 12/Cha 16
While you’re only getting 2 skill points/level, you have a pretty decent skill list and a starting Int of 16, so it’s worth investing a bit in the social skills. Diplomacy in particular is a must, for converting your charmed thralls from friendly to helpful. You don’t need to fully max out every single social skill, and on most of them you can probably get by with a few ranks, your decent Charisma and the +5 bonus you get from mindbender, but it’s still worth taking advantage of.
BUILD SUMMARY
For a build with ten levels of mindbender, you end up quite strong. At the low levels, you have access to a powered up suggestion, charm monster and dominate monster earlier than a full caster would get them (and with quite good DCs for the level as well), plus Mindsight by level 3 and some rather decent social skills for a mage. Between casting, SLAs, your eternally charmed minions and the ability to throw around Fell Draining spells via Naenhoon, you should have no real troubles in the first half of your career.
And when those abilities start to taper off in power (though I’d argue things like Mindsight and eternal charm/thrall never go out of style), you pick up nar demonbinder, adding on high level casting that focuses on planar binding (which synergizes quite well with enchanter tactics). You also continue progressing your wizard casting and get even more metamagic fun thanks to ultimate magus. And because immunity to enchantments and [mind-affecting] is all too common at the highest levels, you also pick up a new way to collect thralls in the necrotic cyst line. You close things out with 6th-level wizard spells and 8th-level nar demonbinder spells, an imp or quasit familiar, three eternal charms and a thrall, plus whatever else you’ve managed to influence or bind along the way. How’s that for winning friends?
VARIANTS
The core build doesn’t leave a ton of wiggle-room - the enchanter wizard ACF is the only class that gets all required skills and charm person as an arcane spell at 1st level to allow for early mindbender entry - but there are some other ways around it. If you can get Intimidate added as a cleric class skill via the pact domain, beguiler is a viable alternative for low levels, though as it is a spontaneous caster you won’t be able to finish the build off with ultimate magus. You can also scrap the level of dweomerkeeper for something else that progresses casting by moving Mother Cyst earlier in the build, which not only gives you an extra level but also lets you choose something other than the magic domain at level 2.
The feats themselves have a bit more leeway. Naenhoon Fell Drain is a viable low level tactic that stays decent in the higher levels, but it’s not actually a required build element, so feel free to build out elsewhere. Note that if you drop Naenhoon altogether, you can net a spare feat, either by going with human or Vau sigil illumian.
SOURCES
Illumian: Races of Destiny
Enchanter wizard ACF, animal companion ACF: Unearthed Arcana
Practiced Spellcaster, mindbender: Complete Arcane
Dweomerkeeper: Complete Divine web enhancement
Mindsight: Lords of Madness
Nar demonbinder: Unapproachable East
Ultimate magus: Complete Mage
Fell Drain, Mother Cyst: Libris Mortis
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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!