Building an Epic Pixie Ultimate Magus

[Jay R]

I am playing in my first epic game. I’ve never played above level 14 before, and now I have to design a 26th level character (actually, a 325,000 xp character). The character starts with stats 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13.

I want to try a couple of things that can’t work well at a lower level. So Pip is a pixie Ultimate Magus.

I know that pixie is not a common choice. +4 LA is kind of … daunting. But it seems to me that the improved stats (notable +6 INT and +6 CHA for a wizard / sorcerer), and the SR, DR, and greater invisibility, make it worth the cost at epic levels, where it doesn’t affect spell progression. The extra INT and CHA give him a extra spell per day in 7 or 8 different levels. [Yes, he’s taking Improved Spell Capacity.] By his current level, he’s bought off the LA, and is simply 72,000 xp behind.

To partially offset that, the DM is allowing him to take an item familiar, which increases his xps by 10%. So he has earned 325,000 xps + 10% = 357,500, but has spent 72,000 on buying off LA, for a current total of 285,500. He’s 24th level.

So he starts like this:
STR: 14 – 4 = 10
DEX: 15 + 8 =23
CON: 16
INT: 18 + 6 = 24
WIS: 13 + 4 = 17
CHA: 17 + 6 = 23

Stat improvements every 4th level will all go to INT, so that’s +6, for INT 30. [He’s not a balanced wizard / sorcerer; he’s a wizard with benefits.]

My DM is being careful with Tomes and Manuals allowed, and won’t allow him to buy 6. I hope to buy Pip a Tome of Clear Thought +5, midrange Manual of Good Health and Tome of Leadership and Influence, and possibly +1 books for DEX and WIS.

By the epic rules, he can extend Ultimate Magus past 10 levels.

I’m considering two builds. In either case, the spontaneous caster is a Practiced Spellcaster.
Sorcerer 1 / Wizard 4 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Incantator 4 / Wizard +1 / Ultimate Magus 4
Or
Beguiler 2 / Wizard 3 / Ultimate Magus 10 /Incantator 1 / ? 1 / Ultimate Magus 4

The sorcerer build has fewer spells available and fewer skill points, but the beguiler build misses the bonus feat at wizard 5.

Either way, he’d be a 21st level wizard with CL 26 and a 13th level spontaneous caster with CL 18.

Yes, by going wizard only, he could be at level 24 (or 26 if he wasn’t a pixie). That doesn’t seem to matter at that level. It doesn’t affect spell progression, and he still has CL 26, with more bonus spells from higher INT and CHA. But is it going to hurt him too much somewhere I’m not noticing?

He will not lose a wizard level when he can avoid it. He’s missed 3: either at Sorcerer 1, UM 10, and UM 13, or at Beguiler 1 & 2 and UM 13.

The DM has approved Pip’s earlier adventure to an otyugh hole, so he has Iron Will for entry to Incantatrix. Pip also has a dragon cohort – a juvenile gold dragon. [The DM approved the feat Epic Dragon Cohort as a parallel to Epic Leadership.]

To the extent that I have an idea who Pip is yet, he is intrigued by magic and wants to understand it – that’s why he’s a wizard from a race that usually produces sorcerers, and why he’s fascinated by metamagic. He's curious about the world. He is Neutral Good, and wants to help. He dislikes people who pick on (Good) smaller folk, being a smaller folk himself. And he is fatherly to, and protective of, Lori, his juvenile gold dragon.

Being curious about all magic, he is not a specialist. He will probably pick up Domain Magic, and prohibit necromancy. Disdaining death magic seems reasonable for a lively pixie.

Lori is still growing up, and didn't have her dragon parents to teach her disdain of others. She is growing haughtier, but is loyal to Pip, who saved her life. She is overly curious about any treasure they find.

So here are my (current) questions:

1. I’d prefer the beguiler, for the spell choice (and skill points), but Beguiler 1 / Wizard 4 incurs a 20% xp penalty. Beguiler 2 / Wizard 3 avoids that, but doesn’t get the 5th level bonus feat. And bonus metamagic feats are beyond price for this build. Is there a way to avoid the xp penalty and get the 5th wizard level? Alternatively, is there a prestige class that will give a bonus feat at 1st level (without a feat cost to enter)?

2. Is there any way to level both sides other than UM? His 16th-20th levels are wizard only.

3. Is there any way to avoid losing the wizard level at UM 13? Spontaneous caster isn’t enough after 10 wizard-only levels (wizard 5 / Incantator 4)?

4. For that matter, is there a way to start sorcerer 1 / wizard 4 and not lose a wizard level at UM 7?

5. Incantatrix 4 / Wizard +1 gets him 3 bonus feats. Is there any other set of 5 levels for 16th – 20th level that can improve on that? Is there a set of five that can equal that without Wizard 5?

6. What are the negatives to being a wizard 21 with CL 26 instead of a wizard 26? Is this build hopelessly crippled, or sufficiently better in some areas to compensate for the areas where he’s behind?

7. His Item Familiar will almost certainly be a ring. Any suggestion for what his 4 special powers should be?

8. He gets a familiar for both wizard and (if he isn’t a beguiler) sorcerer. But the familiar doesn’t grow that much, because of the prestige classes. So he should trade them both for a variant ability. I'm thinking focus caster (transmuter) for the wizard, and impromptu metamagic for the sorcerer. Comments, suggestions, dangers?

9. Pip can buy one Epic Magic Item. I’m looking at a Rod of Excellent Magic, a Ring of Wizardry, or a Rod of Epic Splendor. Good idea? Bad Idea?

10. Epic Spellcasting looks prohibitively expensive, especially for a character who had lost 72,000 xps to LA buy-off. But he has 11,500 xps he can play with right now if needed. Is there an epic spell worth the xp cost, for a character with a bunch of metamagic, including the UM ability to (occasionally) add metamagic for free ten times a day, to spells up to 7th level.

11. Any other suggestions, warning or discussion you have to offer? Don’t feel restricted to my numbered questions. Answer what you want; other people will answers ones that you aren’t interested in.

Tl;dr: Help!

[Brackenlord]

Minor nitpick, the bonus +10% XP wouldn't factor in the first 3000 necessary to reach character level 3 and pick Item Familiar, so the total is 357,500 - 300.



I’m considering two builds. In either case, the spontaneous caster is a Practiced Spellcaster.
Sorcerer 1 / Wizard 4 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Incantator 4 / Wizard +1 / Ultimate Magus 4
Or
Beguiler 2 / Wizard 3 / Ultimate Magus 10 /Incantator 1 / ? 1 / Ultimate Magus 4

The sorcerer build has fewer spells available and fewer skill points, but the beguiler build misses the bonus feat at wizard 5.


Any reason not to go with the first build but with Beguiler levels in place of Sorcerer?

[Seward]

This may sound strange, but have you considered bard2/wizard3?

Yes, you lose a single metamagic feat, or the trapfinding benefit of Beguiler

But you do get basic bardsongs, a good skill list, including UMD and an interesting spell list that has a lot of stuff not on the wizard spell list, some of them quite useful (eg, glibness, sculpt sound, silence, cures) or at lower level like Heroism or Tongues. The bardsongs open up other feats you might find interesting too, depending on what you are going for.

Plus a pixie singing in a piping voice or playing a tiny instrument would be adorable.


For your questions

1.
BTW I really like your use of those 6 epic levels to be willing to take LA and lose caster levels while still retaining L20 wizard casting and (via PRC levels) still get your epic feats on schedule. (I don't know what Incantator is. Web search turned up only a base class with that name. I'll just assume male form of Incantarix?)

Ultimate Magus advances the top caster class by 7 levels, but it advances the bottom class by 10 levels. Both classes seem to get to L11 by UM10, at CL 15. So I'm not entirely sure how you get L21 wizard. Incantrix4/wiz1 = 5 wizard, that's L16wiz/L11spont. 4 epic levels probably can't give you 5 levels of wizard? You seem to be getting 2 spont levels from epic (I can't find a UM epic progression anywhere) so probably you end L20 wizard/L13spont

Still I like bard better than beguiler since as a Pixie your CHA is just fine. It won't fuel quite as much metamagic with less spell slots, but the expanded spell list should serve you well.


2. Most dual casting PRCs are arcane+divine. UM is as far as I know the only one that advances both. However there is a class called Ultimate Trickster that advances ALL class abilities for 2 levels, at cost of one dead level. This build would get you to wizard5's bonus feat, but GM has to rule on how UM advances to level 11-12 without epic levels (something the PRC allows, but it isn't clear how it works. At my table you'd get 2 levels of both casting classes and Expanded Spell Knowledge (5th level) It would also raise passive things like augmented casting (where its effect is based on UM level). I will also assume the same epic progression posited earlier

bard2/wiz3/UM10/UT3/Wizard2/UM4

This gives you um

Wizard 3+8+2+2+4=19, Bard (or sorc, or beguiler) 2+9+2+2=15

But it does take a GM call on what Ultimate Trickster provides, and gives up the Incantatrix metamagic cheese.

3. I don't know how you are doing epic progression for UM, so can't really answer that, although see my prior answer for a way to maybe advance both classes some.

4. No. the class is clearly intended to "even out" a 4/1 or 3/2 build by UM10 and there isn't any way to slime around that.

5. Incantrix has decent synergy with your build beyond the bonus feats, so it's tough to see anything much better than I4/Wiz1 if your lower class is only level 1. Incantrix3/wiz2 is less of a bargain - the feat Incantrix provides is offset by the feat tax (iron will) to enter and the other stuff probably isn't worth the loss of a spell school, especially if you go the Focused Specialist route on your wizard levels. So you're looking for 2 metamagic feats in 5 levels to match I4/wiz5, or one feat in 3 levels if you take wiz2/something else. That is probably doable, but it might depend on what you want. (Loremaster has a similar problem, feat tax to get a feat from loremaster secret, and unseen seer gets you silent spell by L2, but that isn't so exciting. Poke around. 3 levels of something is likely to net you an interesting option)

One thing people do is use Loremaster to get past a feat tax involving Skill Mastery. Take skill mastery, take Loremaster 1 next level, take Feat secret, then take something like Archmage, but I don't know whether that's helpful.

6. Honestly wiz17 is probably enough. You have 9th level spells and free metamagic. Some kinds of epic spellcasting that need level 10 spell slots could give you trouble perhaps.

7. no comment, item familiars aren't a thing I understand

8. Yes to both. Transmuter immediate magic and Sorc metamagic with no delay will serve you far better in epic than 1-2 weak familiars.

9. I'm a fan of rod of excellent magic. At minimum one limited wishes/day, free and it can do quite a bit more, including reducing cost to raise your attributes via wishes by 40%. I find the ring of wizardry less appealing. You will be swimming in spell slots, although I do grant high level slots might be less plentiful - it just doesn't seem like the best possible first choice. Rod of epic splendor hard pass. You will already have a +6 charisma item, so it is only a +1, uses a hand slot and everything else it does you can already do with major creation, fabricate and/or Mordenkeinen's mansion. Assuming you don't ban conjuration, which I think anybody would say is a poor choice.

10. Epic spellcasting is pretty overrated barring a few infinite loop/resource abuses that your GM probably won't allow. Doubly so for somebody whose caster level slots will be closer to L20 than L26. I'd poke around in the epic feats for something fun that works all the time in your place.

[Bphill561]

Couple of things, some mentioned.

Step 1 is talk to the DM. Make sure the rules on gaining xp are the standard rules where you get more for an encounter when you are a lower level. LA buy off is great under the standard rules, but you could end up permanently behind the rest of the party if he/she is using some aberrant xp system. Same goes for epic spell casting, too much resource cost if you are permanently behind.

Check if the DM is giving full caster progression on both classes for the Ultimate magis in epic levels, because at best it would copy the same formula already listed for the class. See epic progression on mystic theurge, ouch.

Build-wise if you want beguiler, just flip your equation. Not 2 beguiler/3 wizard, go 3 beguiler/2 wizard. Now the wizard is the lower for most of the Ultimate magus levels. Should end up with wizard2+9+5 Inchantrix+4 UM Epic. Still gets you to a progression of 20 on wizard and 15 beguiler, +4 caster level from Um and more skill points.

Also note for your builds, Incantrix 5 grants a bonus feat so you don't need wizard 5.

Bard-wise, Sublime chord usually comes up. 2 Bard/3 Wizard/ 5 Incantrix/ 1 Sublime Chord/ 13 UM (assuming again full dual progression). It would give you Wizard 18 and sublime chord progression 14+3CL from wizard. More balanced, dual 9's. You need to use Sanctum spell or other early entry tricks for Incantrix from wizard 3. You can swap out the feat later once you have enough incantrix to self qualify.

So dual casting is usually to get more spell access or more spell slots, usually at the cost of class features. Another option with more bonus feats would be Wizard 5/Incantrix 10/ Rainbow Servant 10. Practiced spell caster would cover the loss of caster level on the wizard, give you -1 to all metamagics which you were focused on, and the cleric spell list. Also since you cast some of those as divine spells as a wizard, maybe you can talk your dm into Heirophant levels. 5 levels of bonus metamagic feats...

[Rebel7284]

Question: If you take 5 levels of Wizard with Spontaneous Divination, can you take the first level of Ultimate Magus before you have a spontaneous class?

I, too am a fan of entering UM with Sublime Chord for a much better progression!

I enjoy qualifying for Sublime Chord with Heartfire Fanner, it does burn a couple of feats, but has some unique abilities.

Also consider Nar Demonbinder as your spontaneous side. The spell list is quite a bit weaker, than Sublime Chord but if you'll be mostly burning those slots for free metamagic, it's probably fine. :)

[ToranIronfinder]

I would think that Ultimate Magnus in Epic advances spell casting the way Mystic theurge does: by alternating casting classes rather than advancing both at any individual level. One option might be to advance the sorcerer or Beguiler with a prestige class and advancing Wizard through epic practiced spellcaster feats once you hit the full spell casting progression in Wizard; this would still advance skills required for epic spell casting. Of course, this would also hold true if you continue with Ultimate Magnus as well, though your sorcerer levels will lag further behind (which may be worth it, since you will likely be using those slots for metamagic anyway).

[Bphill561]

I forgot to mention, there is also the Arcane School regional feat from Player's guide to Faerun and the Additional Favored Class Unearthed Arcana feat that add an additional favored class.

Not really optimized, but

Bard 1/ Wizard 9/ Sublime Chord 2/ UM 10/ Wizard 2

Sublime Chord's caster level is equal to Wizard levels + sublime chord levels. You could add the first 2 level gains to wizard from UM, and the third to sublime chord because of the tie.

Final Tally

Sublime Chord
Progression 10 (Maxed)
Caster level 2+11 (Wiz)+4 (UM Bonus)=17

Wizard
Progression 20 (Maxed unless you count Demi-lich's 21 levels of wizard requirement)
Caster Level 20+4(UM)

You could still add Practiced spell caster to each as long as it come in before the UM bonus on the wizard. If you stick to Wizard, it will keep advancing sublime chord's caster level. You would still need sanctum spell tricks, another level of bard, or spontaneous wizard casting of UM entry. Don't forget orange ioun stone and ring of arcane power for more spell caster level increases.

Still not optimized, but you might be able to find some aberrant wizard class features that no one else would really ever have since you normally PrC out of wizard so quickly. Staff wizard from dragon 338 is weird and can do some unique stuff.

Still you can probably find better class features from a non-theurge caster or a more standard arcane/divine theurge caster. Especially starting at epic levels, but not really what you were looking for. You could also play a petal from Monster Manual III (if LA+2 cohort is not a no-no) and convince you DM the lack of favored class means it could be bard (They like to sing).

[Jay R]

Thank you all for your answers. I’m learning a lot. To reply to everyone, this post is way too long.

My DM has decided that UM level progression continues as before. Double progression at all levels except 1st, 4th, 7th, (not 10th), 13th, 16th, 19th, (not 22nd), etc. Additional caster level every 3rd slot. Feats every 3rd level like any epic casting class.


Minor nitpick, the bonus +10% XP wouldn't factor in the first 3000 necessary to reach character level 3 and pick Item Familiar, so the total is 357,500 - 300.

If I understand the rules, this isn’t how it works. The specific example is somebody who has 19,000 xps when he takes it, and immediately gets +1,900 xps.


Any reason not to go with the first build but with Beguiler levels in place of Sorcerer?

Yes. The favored class of a pixie is sorcerer, not beguiler. If he starts as a Beguiler 1 / wizard 4, he will have a 20% xp penalty for the rest of the build.


This may sound strange, but have you considered bard2/wizard3?

Yes, you lose a single metamagic feat, or the trapfinding benefit of Beguiler

But you do get basic bardsongs, a good skill list, including UMD and an interesting spell list that has a lot of stuff not on the wizard spell list, some of them quite useful (eg, glibness, sculpt sound, silence, cures) or at lower level like Heroism or Tongues. The bardsongs open up other feats you might find interesting too, depending on what you are going for.

Plus a pixie singing in a piping voice or playing a tiny instrument would be adorable.

I’ve considered it. But this is primarily a wizard with benefits, and the biggest benefit is free metamagic with a spell from the other side of the right level. A Bard won’t have 6th level spells yet, and won’t provide free Persistent Spell for the wizard’s spells.

You’re right about the other benefits, though.

Yes, I mean Incantatrix, with the male ending.

Starting with Latin, some nouns have different endings for male and female. A female gladiator (if there had been such a thing) would have been a gladiatrix. Similarly, a cantor was a male singer; a cantrix was a female singer. English adopted this usage for some nouns. It has used “aviator” and “executor” for men, and “aviatrix” and “executrix” for women. Hence, since D&D rules use the feminine gender throughout, they said “incantatrix”, which is for women. Since Pip is male, I use “incantator”.

These distinctions are slowly going away in modern English, and women are both aviators and executors. In the 21st century, “-tor” is for men and women, and Trix are for kids.


Ultimate Magus advances the top caster class by 7 levels, but it advances the bottom class by 10 levels.

Both classes seem to get to L11 by UM10, at CL 15. So I'm not entirely sure how you get L21 wizard. Incantrix4/wiz1 = 5 wizard, that's L16wiz/L11spont. 4 epic levels probably can't give you 5 levels of wizard? You seem to be getting 2 spont levels from epic (I can't find a UM epic progression anywhere) so probably you end L20 wizard/L13spont

Not quite. It only advances the one with the lower (or equal) caster level at levels 1, 4, and 7 (and 13). Since the spontaneous caster has Practiced Spellcaster, it has CL 5. It’s the “higher” one at level 1, equal at level 4, but the lower one at level 7.

So the first 10 levels of UM give wizard 9 levels, and sorcerer 8. Added to 5 wizard and 4 incantator levels, he’s a wizard level 18 at level 20. He gets three in the next 4 levels of UM, for wizard 21 with CL 26.


2. Most dual casting PRCs are arcane+divine. UM is as far as I know the only one that advances both. However there is a class called Ultimate Trickster that advances ALL class abilities for 2 levels, at cost of one dead level. This build would get you to wizard5's bonus feat, but GM has to rule on how UM advances to level 11-12 without epic levels (something the PRC allows, but it isn't clear how it works. At my table you'd get 2 levels of both casting classes and Expanded Spell Knowledge (5th level) It would also raise passive things like augmented casting (where its effect is based on UM level). I will also assume the same epic progression posited earlier

No epic levels before 21st level according to the Epic Level Handbook, so I can’t take UM 11 until then.

I can’t find the Ultimate Trickster class. It sounds great.


5. Incantrix has decent synergy with your build beyond the bonus feats, so it's tough to see anything much better than I4/Wiz1 if your lower class is only level 1. Incantrix3/wiz2 is less of a bargain - the feat Incantrix provides is offset by the feat tax (iron will) to enter and the other stuff probably isn't worth the loss of a spell school, especially if you go the Focused Specialist route on your wizard levels. So you're looking for 2 metamagic feats in 5 levels to match I4/wiz5, or one feat in 3 levels if you take wiz2/something else. That is probably doable, but it might depend on what you want. (Loremaster has a similar problem, feat tax to get a feat from loremaster secret, and unseen seer gets you silent spell by L2, but that isn't so exciting. Poke around. 3 levels of something is likely to net you an interesting option)

There’s no feat tax for Incantator. The DM has approved a visit to an otyugh hole in Pip’s first 23 levels of adventuring, so Iron Will only costs 3,000 gp. Secondly, I have no problem with losing necromancy, since it seems out of character for a pixie anyway.

Your ideas are helping me explore options. Thank you.


Step 1 is talk to the DM. Make sure the rules on gaining xp are the standard rules where you get more for an encounter when you are a lower level. LA buy off is great under the standard rules, but you could end up permanently behind the rest of the party if he/she is using some aberrant xp system. Same goes for epic spell casting, too much resource cost if you are permanently behind.

Those are the rules, but he is permanently behind anyway. It would take a long time to catch up to the 72,000 lost xps. I'm assuming that those are the fee for +6 INT and CHA, + 8 DEX, +4 WIS, SR, DR, and lots of SLAs.


Check if the DM is giving full caster progression on both classes for the Ultimate magis in epic levels, because at best it would copy the same formula already listed for the class. See epic progression on mystic theurge, ouch.

I did. It follows the the pattern of earlier levels. Full progression 2 levels out of 3, and once more occasionally.


Build-wise if you want beguiler, just flip your equation. Not 2 beguiler/3 wizard, go 3 beguiler/2 wizard. Now the wizard is the lower for most of the Ultimate magus levels. Should end up with wizard2+9+5 Inchantrix+4 UM Epic. Still gets you to a progression of 20 on wizard and 15 beguiler, +4 caster level from Um and more skill points.

That's not needed. It levels up the one with the lower [I]caster level. A beguiler 2 with Practiced Spellcaster is higher than the wizard 3 through the first ten levels of UM. After I take 5 wizard-only levels at character level 16-20, that will be the high one for the foreseeable future.


Also note for your builds, Incantrix 5 grants a bonus feat so you don't need wizard 5.

Actually, that feat is at level 4. I'm taking it and then going after wizard 5.


Bard-wise, Sublime chord usually comes up. 2 Bard/3 Wizard/ 5 Incantrix/ 1 Sublime Chord/ 13 UM (assuming again full dual progression). It would give you Wizard 18 and sublime chord progression 14+3CL from wizard. More balanced, dual 9's. You need to use Sanctum spell or other early entry tricks for Incantrix from wizard 3. You can swap out the feat later once you have enough incantrix to self qualify.

I don't know Sublime Chord well enough to try it on a build that's already complicated. It's a great idea, but this will be only my fourth long 3.5e campaign. [I'm an old original D&D player, with gusts of AD&D.]


So dual casting is usually to get more spell access or more spell slots, usually at the cost of class features.

Usually, yes. But the main benefit of this one is free metamagic at the cost of a slot from the other class. Once he hits UM 12, that's free Persistent Spell. At 24th level, he will be able to give up to ten spells a free metamagic worth up to +7. That seems to me to be the strength of the build -- which is why I want a bunch of metamagic feats.


Another option with more bonus feats would be Wizard 5/Incantrix 10/ Rainbow Servant 10. Practiced spell caster would cover the loss of caster level on the wizard, give you -1 to all metamagics which you were focused on, and the cleric spell list. Also since you cast some of those as divine spells as a wizard, maybe you can talk your dm into Heirophant levels. 5 levels of bonus metamagic feats...

That's a great build that is completely different from the pixie I have in mind. I will save that idea for another campaign. Thanks!

Rebel 7284: those are good ideas that don’t quite match my plans. I don’t want to try to learn Sublime Chord or Nar Demonbinder while also learning Ultimate Magus and epic playing. I do appreciate the expanded set of ideas.


I would think that Ultimate Magnus in Epic advances spell casting the way Mystic theurge does: by alternating casting classes rather than advancing both at any individual level. One option might be to advance the sorcerer or Beguiler with a prestige class and advancing Wizard through epic practiced spellcaster feats once you hit the full spell casting progression in Wizard; this would still advance skills required for epic spell casting. Of course, this would also hold true if you continue with Ultimate Magnus as well, though your sorcerer levels will lag further behind (which may be worth it, since you will likely be using those slots for metamagic anyway).

My DM has ruled that class effect apply before feat effects, so the practiced spellcaster won’t help my wizard, who is currently CL 26 at 24th level. Practiced Spellcaster won’t improve that.


I forgot to mention, there is also the Arcane School regional feat from Player's guide to Faerun and the Additional Favored Class Unearthed Arcana feat that add an additional favored class.

I will look into this. It doesn’t solve the original problem; it gets me the wizard feat at the cost of … a feat. But it looks helpful in other ways.

Nobody has disapproved of using Pixie even with the LA, and Seward approved. I'm going to assume the idea is a good one (or at least still untested).

Thanks to all of you for providing me new thought and new ideas.

[Seward]

Ok lets see.....the practiced spellcaster thing isn't how I would have interpreted UM, but your GM approved it and also the epic progression so that's all good.

Ultimate Trickster is in Complete Scoundrel. The various 3 level Trickster PRCs are USUALLY not worth the kinda dead level you get at the beginning so they are pretty obscure, but sometimes the payoff is pretty good. The magical Trickster capstone is basically a free metamagic 1/day, and for a gish who just wants to quicken or twin something, that could be interesting and possibly worth the lost caster level, especially if he has a use for the 3 free skill tricks he gets along the way. Ultimate Trickster actually advances all class abilities for 2 of 3 levels, and there's all kinds of implications of that but it gets tricky when you've already maxxed out a PRC and try to apply it. So it would be a GM call.

Honestly if you are getting 2 free feats out of Incantatrix, that's going to be hard to beat, although you could just dip 1 level and see if 2 levels of something else would get you another feat, then finish with wizard2, if you wanted beguiler or whatever.

If sorcerer is favored class of Pixie though, 4/1 is probably the better move, especially if you see the spont class as mostly an engine for free metamagic, plus maybe some banned school spells known gaps filled on the wizard class.



Nobody has disapproved of using Pixie even with the LA, and Seward approved. I'm going to assume the idea is a good one (or at least still untested).


I'm not saying it is a GOOD idea, from a charop standpoint.

I am saying it is a FUN idea, which is usually better as long as you aren't useless, and I can't see how somebody with full wizard casting and free metamagic is going to be useless in any party without really working at it. Yes, even in epic. Epic feats and especially epic spellcasting are overrated. The biggest gap between Epic and non-Epic is WBL - you can basically afford everything except epic items and weapons that has a goldpiece cost. It becomes reasonably easy to get most saves on a 2, reroll items to not fail those saves, permanent items of things like free movement etc etc. Your GM limiting Tomes shows he's got a sense of this, L26 WBL pretty much means you can go "Lol, I will get +5 to all attributes" if allowed. Instead he's putting it on you for an xp cost to fill in gaps if you aren't satisfied with what you can purchase.

(that was part of why I recommended the epic rod that reduces xp cost).

LA doesn't really affect WBL, and a full caster isn't as gear dependent as a martial anyway, so *shrug*. The only real issue I see with CL21 instead of 26 is spell penetration, but you can always pick SR=no spells of various kinds for offense, at least enough to get through a bad fight, and of course stuff like Assay Resistance or um, fortify spell? could close the gap.

Your lower max spellcraft will limit which epic feats you can take in some cases, including the excellent Improved Metamagic (spellcraft=30) feat, as will less higher level slots but here are a few to look at that you qualify for.

Actually good:

Multispell (cast an additional quickened spell each round. You can buy this more than once)

Improved Spell Capacity (this is how you get L10 slots to play with)

Situational
Permanent Emanation - make any 1 "centered on you" emanation spell permanent, with ability to turn on and off as will

Enhance Spell. for a whopping +4 adjustment you add 10d6 to the cap of a spell. Because you play games with metamagic it probably won't take you a 10th level spell slot to have a 120hp maximized fireball, so you might find this interesting.

Familiar spell. If you DO keep a familiar (or two) it can cast a L8 spell as a SLA. Can be done multiple times. Depending on spell could be interesting, although I do think you are better off swapping both familiar options for something else, since the wizard doesn't progress past 5 and the sorcerer doesn't progress past L1.

Spell stowaway - read it. It's weird but might fit a pixie.

Spontaneous Spell - pick one spell, it's spontaneous for you. If you have Arcane Thesis on something this might be nice.

[Anthrowhale]

A few (possibly incompatible) thoughts:


If you are the good guys fighting the bad guys, then Exalted Spell Resistance might be good. Getting your SR up to 19+class levels is nearing shutdown territory.
It's more straightforward to be something else and Shapechange into a pixie. For example, a black ethergaunt is also LA+4 and has an Int bonus of +20. The appropriate use of Persistent Spell and Cloak of Khyber, you can even appear a pixie under true seeing.
Have you considered instead using Wizard/Nar Demonbinder/Ultimate Magus? It's more straightforward, and allows you to lay on the heavy metamagics like persistent spell or intensify spell.
A different way to dabble with multiple lists is via Wizard/Archivist/Hathran. Hathran has several benefits: it allows you to cast any spell written in your prayerbook/spellbook spontaneously. It gives you access to circle magic which allows you to heighten spells to level 20 and increase caster level to 40. The heightened spells can then be turned into something else via Rary's Arcane Conversion. It also gives you an epic feat every 2 levels in the official progression.
If you are looking for a high caster level, Hierophant is an interesting and unusual choice since it can increase caster level by 2 per level. This could be access with a wizard spell base via Sha'ir or a Wizard/Rainbow Servant.
If you are looking for metamagic facility, Spelldancer is good at high levels where you can pay the feat tax.
For really epic magic, you often want to avoid paying XP costs. This is viable via Dweomerkeeper and the Uncanny Forethought feat.

Much of the above can be overpowered in games, so you should talk to your DM.