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Zephyros
2008-05-27, 05:14 PM
3.5 dnd one-session-smack-down any time soon. And I wanna play the gish this time. Also there is some serious possibility that the winning party of the showdown will continue with the DM that runs this event, so I want to have a character that I will like to play on the long run - so no "just go full caster"; been there, done that, and am ok!

The event has a 16 lvl requirement for entry builds: 32 point-buy. All WotC books allowed, but no dragon. So far I am settled more or less on race class combo.

Male Grey Elf.
Elven Paragon 3
Wizard 3 (elven ACF from RotW, with Homing Bird combo)
Ruathar 3
Abj. Champion 5

And here as I look at it I stand puzzled and full with questions. Wizards need to pay scroll cost x10 to have extra spells scribed to their spellbooks besides normal leveling additions.
1) What to do with the remaining 2 levels
2) What feats to take? Power attack? Arcane Strike? Martial studies for JPM?
3) Should I use Collegiate Wizard feat to save money and be spellfull (sic)?

Thanks in advance fellow playgrounders.

Galdor Miriel
2008-05-27, 06:54 PM
One set of feats to consider is crafting. Craft arms and armor really helps with a gish build as you actually use the stuff, and naturally craft wondrous item for those boost items to use in battle.

Spellsword is decent to let you wear mithril chain with no spell failure chance which is way better than mage armor. Probably worth the two level dip even with the loss of caster levels, who cares anyway, you have a big sword.

I would also consider going specialist rather than wizard. If you go focused specialist you have tons of spells to burn in arcane strikes. I personally favour transmuter or abjurer. Get two extra spells per level of specialist school. Also you will not need a familiar, and if you specialise you can give up the familiar for some funky abilities.

Power attack is awesome with wraithstrike, from spell compendium. Power attack for full bab and hit every attack in your full attack.

Hope this is useful, I am not familiar with the paragon or ruathar classes so it may be useless advice. After abjurant champion really good classes to advance spell casting and bab are pretty limited, the one in the DMs guide, eldritch knight might be your best bet.

My favourite gish spells are:
Heart spells(complete mage) as they boost movement, stop sneak/death/skirmish attacks on you and actually become quite useful spells if you need them, drop heart of earth on the first round and you have stoneskin for the battle, at no cost!
Wraithstrike, touch attack with power attack and a great sword. What more can I say.
Shield +9 shield AC baby!
Dragonskin, natural armor and energy resistance
Dispel magic, as a swift spell!
Any low level abjuration as a swift spell
Basically all the spells you can cast as swift spells in a battle to give you time to hit people really hard with your quite excellent big stick.

I personally favour an adamantium big stick, with holy on it because when you are a hero, the baddies are nearly always, well, bad.

Zephyros
2008-05-28, 06:01 AM
Well the paragon gives some martial profs for abj champ requirements, 2/3 spellcasting and a +2 int and +2 dex to boot. The ruathar is a 3 level elf friend PrC with 3/3 spellcasting and 3/4 bab bonus (we use fractional bab)

1 level spellsword may be nice, since it doesn't lose CL.

Elven generalist gives some extra spells per day and I really like the familiar to use with imbue familiar (benign transposition etc etc)

I could do with Eldritch Knight but I don't wanna miss on the caster level.. May be I can't avoid it...

Thanks for the spell selection advice, it was actually pretty much my choice already :smallwink:

I was thinking about taking the Otherwordly feat from FR.

Anymore feedback? Pretty plz???

JeminiZero
2008-05-28, 06:41 AM
You may want to consider Knight Phantom (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20050706a&page=4) instead of Eldritch Knight+spellsword, since it gets light armor casting.

MorkaisChosen
2008-05-28, 07:13 AM
The other alternative to Spellsword, if you have sash spare, is a Twilight Mithral Shirt. No ASF, no ACP so you don't need to worry about proficiency (I don't know if you have proficiency or not...).

Zephyros
2008-05-28, 08:14 AM
Thx for the input.

Well the fact is that i need +1bab and +1 CL... (and 1st lvl of spellsword covers that)
Me thinks am greedy :smallbiggrin:

Temp.
2008-05-28, 01:13 PM
If you don't want to lose caster levels, these are some of the best bets:

Sacred Exorcist (CDiv)--Ridiculously easy prerequisites, 3/4 BAB, full casting, d8 HD, a slew SLAs from the Cleric list. It's a great filler class.
Dragon Slayer (Drac)--Requires Dodge and Iron Will, the first level gives +1 BAB and +1 CL. Provides the Heavy Armor Proficiency required for Spellsword and the Martial Weapon Proficiency for Eldritch Knight. After a single-level dip, it sucks.

And Knight Phantom sucks. It's basically an Eldritch Knight with two fewer feats, 1 more HP per level and 1 extra point of AC.
If the HP is really an issue, just take Improved Toughness (CWar). You'll suddenly be a feat ahead.
AC shouldn't matter as much for a gish as it does for other characters and feats should. And 1 point of AC isn't anything to write home about. An extra feat for a Gish build is.
Also, the KP's setting-specific source does nothing to encourage DMs to accpet it as a viable option. Especially because it looks so much better than EK when Gish feats, the mandatory single-level Spellsword dip and the existance of Mithral Chain Shirts are taken into account.

Zephyros
2008-05-29, 06:00 PM
Temp. thx alot... I was thinkin about Sacred Exorcist myself although its not a very gish-y class by it self.

Is the Otherworldy feat gonna be considered cheesy? (mostly for the all martial proficiencies-and not for the all cheesy alter self- polymorph abuse)

What about my other free feat slots?

Temp.
2008-05-29, 10:27 PM
The feats that I always consider:

Quicken Spell is always a must for obvious reasons.
The standard Power Attack feats (Improved Bull Rush/Shock Trooper; Improved Sunder/Combat Brute; Leap Attack) provide easy sources for damage.
Combat Reflexes/Robilar's Gambit (PHB2) is golden for a gish who's had a chance to throw up a few defensive buffs.
It also helps if you want to do some battlefield control. Combat Expertise/Improved Trip or Stand Still (EPH) are required if you want to effectively participate in that role.
Knowledge Devotion (CChamp) turns your skill points into a scaling attack and damage bonus. That's nice. At your level, this should be an easy +4 or +5 to both.
Arcane Strike (CW) and Smiting Spell (PHB2) allow you to use your spell slots while fighting. Smiting Spell requires prep time, though.
Minor Shapeshift (CMage) gives some nice minor benefits as long as you have (Draconic) Polymorph prepped.
Improved Familiar (DMG) can be useful for an Imp or Quasit. Given the number of buff spells most Gishes use, your familiar should be about as tough as the Druid's Animal Companion. Improving the familiar with DR, Fast Healing, Immunities, Invisiblity and natural flight is always nice. Extraplanar Familiars also make even more use of (Draconic) Polymorph than the standard choices.

Behold_the_Void
2008-05-29, 10:53 PM
If you do get that Spellsword dip in, I believe you can cast in a Mithral Twilight Feycraft Full Plate without ASF.

marjan
2008-05-30, 07:56 AM
Quicken Spell is always a must for obvious reasons.


Quicken Spell is nice, but I would also consider Extend Spell, nice for hours/level buffs and Wraithstrike, and it is also prerequisite for Persistent Spell (persisted Wraithstrike, which is finest cheese for gishes IMO).




The standard Power Attack feats (Improved Bull Rush/Shock Trooper; Improved Sunder/Combat Brute; Leap Attack) provide easy sources for damage.



With Power Attack I agree. Shock Trooper + Gish's low HP = dust biting. Combat Brute is nice but it is tough to squeeze in that many feats in a gish build, and there are other ways of boosting your dmg (Wraithstrike and Arcane Strike).




Combat Reflexes/Robilar's Gambit (PHB2) is golden for a gish who's had a chance to throw up a few defensive buffs.


Same as before - while these are nice I'm not sure it is good choice for low-HP, feat-starved build.



It also helps if you want to do some battlefield control. Combat Expertise/Improved Trip or Stand Still (EPH) are required if you want to effectively participate in that role.


Battlefield control can be achieved through spell, so I would try to save some feats. If you have any spare this is good option though.




Knowledge Devotion (CChamp) turns your skill points into a scaling attack and damage bonus. That's nice. At your level, this should be an easy +4 or +5 to both.


This is one of the best feats you can get as a wizard gish. Though it's best use is in combination with Able Learner, since most of the prestige classes for gishes don't have all knowledge skills as class skills.




Arcane Strike (CW) and Smiting Spell (PHB2) allow you to use your spell slots while fighting. Smiting Spell requires prep time, though.


+1 on Arcane Strike. I'm not a huge fan of Smiting Spell - you can get one spell of at first round, but for any spell after the first you need to spend action in combat.




Minor Shapeshift (CMage) gives some nice minor benefits as long as you have (Draconic) Polymorph prepped.


There are usually better things that you can do with your swift actions. Besides, Draconic Polymorf is the as broken as it gets.




Improved Familiar (DMG) can be useful for an Imp or Quasit. Given the number of buff spells most Gishes use, your familiar should be about as tough as the Druid's Animal Companion. Improving the familiar with DR, Fast Healing, Immunities, Invisiblity and natural flight is always nice. Extraplanar Familiars also make even more use of (Draconic) Polymorph than the standard choices.


There are also other sources for Improved Familiar. Planar Familiar also has some pretty nice ones (I like Lantern Archon and Howler).

Now, my suggestions:

1. Specialize in Transmutation and get Focused Specialist ACF from CM. This will lose you access to 3 schools, but Transmutation is very versatile school which gishes should use often and it will give you more spell slots to burn on Arcane Strike. RoW substitution level is nice but one spell slot is nothing to be excited about when compared to lots of spell slots you get from Focused Specialist. Loss of flexibility is not that bad since almost every spell you'll be casting is from Transmutation or Abjuration and other stuff can be done by party's primary arcane caster (you shouldn't try to fill this role).
2. From UA get the variant that lets you take fighter bonus feats instead wizard bonus feats and Scribe Scroll (you won't use it that much).
3. Race - elves are bad for gish builds IMO. They do get a few free proficiencies, but you have option of having: strength penalty (won't kill you but it sucks), int penalty (sucks even more) or constitution penalty (you already have low HP, no need to make it any lower). I guess it can be done, but I wouldn't do it. My favorite would be Illumian - use strength for bonus spells and get a minor boost to your caster level, plus free light source:smallbiggrin:.

As for the rest of the levels:
1. Eldritch Knight - impossible with your current levels. If you want this you would need at least one level of some martial class, in which case you should drop Elven Paragon levels completely (you don't want to lose more caster levels).
2. Knight Phantom - same as above. And in addition doesn't get you much with just 2 levels.
3. Jade Phoenix Mage - unless you take some levels in warblade or crusaider you won't have enough feats for this. Otherwise it's solid class.
4. Spellsword - one level is good, anything more is waste.
5. Sacred Exorcist - if you don't have anything better then it's OK class.
6. Wizard - wiz4 will give you +1 bab, +1 will and + 1 CL. Wiz5 can get you another bonus feat (which can be traded for ACF from CC), but you'll lose 1 point of bab. Might be your best bet though.

In conclusion I think you would be better of with something like Wiz4/Warblade1/SS1/AbCh5/X5.

Andarious
2009-12-26, 08:33 AM
Over two years late... but Swiftblade (found online on WOTC content) is pretty sweet. You do loose a lot of caster levels 4/10 but there are some good points to jump out of the class. Personally I like to take 9 levels regardless for two standard actions/round or standard+full round action. Makes a nifty combo wth Wiz5/Crusader1/Swiftblade 9/Jade Phoenix Mage 5 to pull off some crazy combo strike and cast (empowered). 17 BAB, 15 CL (20 with stance and PSC), 13th level initiator (able to heal themselves and the party tank). It's a real triple threat with minimal waste in fighter/caster ability.

Roland St. Jude
2009-12-26, 11:16 AM
Sheriff: Threadnecromancy is frowned on here.