Building advices

[Speezaker]

Hello everyone and especially builder experts,

I'm looking into creating a build. The background of the character is to be a mixed chosen of Mystra and Meilikki being a mix of nature and magic power seeking to using these 2 sources of power to bring peace on Toril.

Here are some prerequisites :
- Use Arcane hierophant prestige class
- Be Saint eligible
- Have dual 9s in arcane and druid casting
- Neutral Good alignment
- 0 LA races only
- Not too much cheese in building

My first ideas were a human dru 3/wiz 3/Mystic theurge 2/AH 10/MT +2 or an Illumian wiz 1/ dru 3/MT 4/AH 10/MT +2.

What i would like :
- Be an animal companion competent rider
- Have a good animal companion
- Have good diplo/spot/listen/survival
- Be able to craft some magic items to take profit of these 2 spell lists

Do you have some ideas that could have all this ?

Thanks :smallsmile:

[Doctor Despair]

Does it have to be druid casting? You don't need to be a druid to get trackless step.

[Speezaker]

Does it have to be druid casting? You don't need to be a druid to get trackless step.

Not necessarily, i'm curious of what you are thinking about !

[thethird]

How against cheese are you / your dm?

Because a bamboo spirit folk gets trackless step as a racial ability which by raw is iffy if it gets you into arcane hierophant.

Assuming you can use bamboo spirit folk to get into arcane hierophant you only need some early entry into mystic theurge.

As for the animal companion, note that wizards can trade their familiar for an animal companion per unearthed arcana. And you can later take obtain familiar as a feat.

Druid isn't really necessary, you could go with archivist. And have a spellbook/prayerbook.

[Doctor Despair]

How against cheese are you / your dm?

Because a bamboo spirit folk gets trackless step as a racial ability which by raw is iffy if it gets you into arcane hierophant.

Assuming you can use bamboo spirit folk to get into arcane hierophant you only need some early entry into mystic theurge.

As for the animal companion, note that wizards can trade their familiar for an animal companion per unearthed arcana. And you can later take obtain familiar as a feat.

Druid isn't really necessary, you could go with archivist. And have a spellbook/prayerbook.

You swordsaged most of my post while I was fidding around with Chameleon builds. XD

With that said...


Here are some prerequisites :
- Use Arcane hierophant prestige class

So race is Bamboo Folk, or you have 3 druid levels, or maybe 1 level in wild-runner. There's a few other sources for trackless step, but those are the easiest.


- Be Saint eligible

Alright, Ur Priest is sadly out the window, as is Mindbender.


- Have dual 9s in arcane and druid casting

A superior option to druid casting would be archivist casting, as that gets you access to any divine spell (druid spells included). Wizard 3 can get you animal companion by trading out the familiar, so a bamboo folk wizard 4 / archivist 4 qualifies for Arcane Hierophant all by itself. With that said, 4 levels is a lot to lose to get dual 9ths, so I'd probably go a different route... but I'm not going to invest much time speculating if you specifically want druid casting.


- Neutral Good alignment

The neutral aspect doesn't shut off anything new for me off the top of my head.


- 0 LA races only
- Not too much cheese in building

Fair enough; fairly standard.


My first ideas were a human dru 3/wiz 3/Mystic theurge 2/AH 10/MT +2 or an Illumian wiz 1/ dru 3/MT 4/AH 10/MT +2.

If you want druid casting, you are probably either in druid or, possibly, a creature that casts as a druid like a nymph. With no LA, we are left with... druid. So druid 3 is a given. For arcane casting, we could do something a little cheeky and sneak into Sublime Chord at 11... Although qualifying without spending more than 4 non-druid levels would be tricky. Otherwise Druid 3 / Wiz 3 / Mystic Theurge 2 / Arcane Hierophant 10 / Mystic Theurge 2 is probably the best you can do, yeah. I'll see if I can offer an alternative for you.


What i would like :
- Be an animal companion competent rider
- Have a good animal companion
- Have good diplo/spot/listen/survival
- Be able to craft some magic items to take profit of these 2 spell lists

Ookay... I wanted to look at something with Chameleon, but 3 levels to spare is just too tight when two of them would have to be Chameleon. If you're willing to look at archivist instead of druid, we could do:

Bamboo Folk
Wiz 3 / Archivist 3 / MT 4 / AH 10

That gets you dual 9ths, an animal companion to buff, and access to all divine and wiz spells.

You could also go Dragonwrought Kobold (+3 to int, +3 to wis, helps with MAD):

Sorc 3 / Druid 3 / MT 4 / AH 10

If your DM will let you use Southern Magician to qualify as casting divine spells, some more options open up, too, but you'd want to confirm if they'd read a wizard 3 with Southern Magician as being able to cast divine spells for the purposes of qualifying for Aracane Hierphant

[Speezaker]

I think Bamboo spirit folk can be accepted by DM.

[Speezaker]

Southern magician is interesting and in topic given the background, i can give it a try

[thethird]

Southern magician is interesting and in topic given the background, i can give it a try

See if precocious apprentice + southern magician would let you reduce the levels of wizard / archivist before jumping into mystic theurge. Ideally you would want archivist 2 / wizard 1 and then mystic theurge until you can qualify for arcane hierophant and then jump back into mystic theurge.

If you can't do early entry or so cheesy early entry and you need to take 3 levels of archivist consider taking initiate of mystra to let you cast your spells in antimagic zones.

[Doctor Despair]

There's text in CArc that really makes it seem like Precocious Apprentice doesn't let you meet prereqs, but maybe the DM will go for it.

[Rebel7284]

Technically something like Bard 2/Druid 3/Green Whisperer 5/Sublime Chord 1/Arcane Hierophant 9 fits the criteria too. Sadly the Arcane Hierophant levels come a bit late. Weaker than 9th level wizard spells, sure, but you're still a dual 9 caster with an extra bit of bardic goodness on top.

[Pezzo]

Technically something like Bard 2/Druid 3/Green Whisperer 5/Sublime Chord 1/Arcane Hierophant 9 fits the criteria too. Sadly the Arcane Hierophant levels come a bit late. Weaker than 9th level wizard spells, sure, but you're still a dual 9 caster with an extra bit of bardic goodness on top.

Stealing your idea, if you go druid 5/bard 1/green whisperer 3/sublime chord 1/arcane hierophant 10 you also get wildshape, that's with cheesing versatile spellcaster or southern magician

[Paragon]

Technically something like Bard 2/Druid 3/Green Whisperer 5/Sublime Chord 1/Arcane Hierophant 9 fits the criteria too. Sadly the Arcane Hierophant levels come a bit late. Weaker than 9th level wizard spells, sure, but you're still a dual 9 caster with an extra bit of bardic goodness on top.

If you could fit in some Fochlucan Lyrist in there, it's way better than MT

[ciopo]

I've played an AH 1 to 21 in the last 4ish years, here's some feedback

Companion familiar is strong, even if you plan to use your AC as a mount, I'd suggest getting the enspell familiar feat anyway. Doing the share spell with mirror image and filling up the area with huge-size dire polar bear was a blast
there are some arcane spells that are meant to buff your familiar, they are relatively that much stronger when you're allowed to apply them to an AC

my entry was shapeshift variant druid 3 / sha'ir 1 / planar shepherd 2 (advancing sha'ir) / AH 10 (regaining the AC and counting the druid and PS levels) , that was very favorable GM adjudication, even with extra feat "taxes" (wild cohort to plug the AC back in) but if you intend to have the AC (and or wild shape/shapeshift) being "on par", you can't drop too much druid or druid-alike from it
I then went "normal" hierophant to bestow my shapeshift to the AC, but if you want 9/9 then you don't have much choice other than mystic theurge

there is no wishy-washyness about INT<3 for the companion familiar being smart enough to take less "natural/instincitve" feats, I went boring with mage slayer and a bunch of shape soulmeld ( I took the open lesser chakra spell as soon as I could )


On a more traditional druid 3/wizard 3/MT 2 entry, the AC lagging behind ... I'm unsure how much it'd hurt honestly, if oyu plan to rely on the AC