viablility of a lossy three-way theurge with metamagic fun

[sreservoir]

I'm considering a PrC which provides 12/15 of each of arcane, divine, and manifesting, plus 1 for the lower two (it loses at 1st, 4th, and, for the highest, 9th) and opens up metamagic and metapsionic screwiness. this should come out to a 15/14/14 spread at 20. this precludes ninths.

the question. then is:

are the extra spells and metawhatever worth the loss of ninths?

[SilverStar]

No, because not everyone stops playing at 20th level.

In all seriousness, though, it seems rather too good, just because it increases three casting/manifesting classes at once AND gives abilities (you imply such, anyway). Stuff like this makes theurges and cerebremancers cry.

[sreservoir]

theurges and cerebremancers are considered suboptimal anyway,
but at least they end with double ninths.

these only get up to eighths for a single class and sevenths for the other two. some eighths and ninths are just ridiculously awesome.

so, would you, for, say, a wizard, go take a divine class and a psionic class (losing two CL), then take some amount of this class (losing two more CL)? or an archivist, or an erudite.

it gets the abilities I "implied" at 1st, 4th, and 9th; 1st gets +2 CL to spells and powers on more than one list; 4th gets the ability to cast from of the three lists from any of the three classes; and 9th gets the metamagic fun.

[draco_nite]

It sounds like it'd be decent for PF (at least, when Paizo makes a Psionics handbook, that is.) Theurges do get a few special abilities in PF.

Also, I personally wouldn't worry about balancing past 20th, epic levels are a joke.

[erikun]

A lot of people will likely say "nothing makes up for 9th level spells," but that assumes a very specific set of circumstances - namely: 20th level, 4 encounters per day, WBL, all with CR range, ability to divination beforehand, etc. In truth, any kind of 15 level Theurge will be gold for anybody who wants to play a more-spells-than-HP character.

What kind of enterance prerequisites are there? The biggest drawback for Wizard 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge is the loss of 3 levels on each side. Throwing around a 6d6 Fireball at level 9 isn't as impressive as using the 5th level spells you would otherwise have.

If your Triad Theurge has enterance requirements of Wizard 3/Cleric 1/Psion 1 (for example) and continues on for 15 levels, then I think it will be fine, even if you loose 2-3 levels of the highest caster (Wizard, in this case). The key is to space out the caster level loss, so that it doesn't all hit at once.

[sreservoir]

entry requirements are seconds on one side and firsts on the other two, with four ranks in three relevant knowledges.

yes, lost caster levels are the main problem with theurge classes; at ninth level, this conceptual theurge won't be throwing around 6d6 (21) fireballs, but 5d6 (17) fireballs, with a spread of 5/3/3, though archivist with fireball in prayerbook would get +2 CL (1st level thing, which probably needs to scale better) for 7d6 (24); a full-caster would be able to throw around 9d6 (31).

Then, at 9th level of this theurge (presumably character level 14), the full-caster, can, with cone of cold, deal 14d6; the theurge (spread 9/7/7) is doing 9d6 (49), but with the ability to stack metamagic on it like crazy. out of core, one can heighten +1, quicken, empower, and maximize fireball for 10*6*1.5*2 (280) at a cost of a fourth, two thirds, two seconds, and two firsts per round, or 25 power points (or some combination thereof), plus two thirds for the spell; the full-caster can choose one or two metamagic effects.

the theurge is much better at novaing, but it still suffers traditional theurge deficiencies.