(3.5) Incantatrix

[Ilmryn]

Any advice on playing a incantatrix, as far as what spells and feats to pick? Currently I'm a 4th level spellscale shi'ar(casts from sor/wiz list, dragon compendium) looking to go into incantatrx at 6th level. Which metamagic feats are the most useful?

[mootoall]

Best, or least likely to get books thrown at you while still remaining useful?

[Jack DeCoeur]

Best, or least likely to get books thrown at you while still remaining useful?

Yeah, you can really cheese this class if you like. The generally accepted feats that make it really worth playing are MM: Extend Spell and MM: Persist Spell. You don't actually even need more than 3 levels to make this work. Cast a spell and then make it last 24 hours. Like Mootoall says though, pushing this too far (unless the entire group is pretty well optimised) could lead to your DM throwing things at you .

If you go this route I cannot recommend Arcane Spellsurge, from Dragon Magic enough. A cheap meta-magic feat (such as Heighten, or Invisibile Spell (From Cityscape) then becomes pretty useful too.)

[Ilmryn]

Since the cheesiest thing really is persist, and it seems likely that persisted buffs will go on my allies, I'm not really worried about that.

Mostly I want to do blasting and battlefield control, so what metamagic would be best for that?

Note-shi'ar are prepared casters with a twist, but I still have to prepare spells with metamagic applied.

[Warlawk]

I am actually working on an incantrix right now as well. We just got 6th level in game so I am just now getting to the goodies. Now, I made him before I knew what the rest of the party was going to play, and good lord the difference in power/tier issues is almost painful. So I am really trying to make him good and useful without just breaking the game or trivializing other players.

Currently the party is:
Myself (Elven sub wizard, domain wizard 5 incantrix1)
Cleric 4, Warlock 1, Prestige class1 (cannot remember the name. It advances both warlock and cleric)
Monk 5, tattood monk 1
Scout 4, ranger 2 (swift hunter build)

So I'm trying to find ways to stay true to what I want to do with the character and not just overpower things. My current focus is to grab any of the party buffs that are really nice (haste at the moment) and then focus on fogs, walls (when I get high enough level to get some nice ones anyway) and debuffs. I just grabbed arcane thesis: Ray of Enfeeblement since we hit 6th and I could qualify for it. I play to stack up empower (easy metamagic) and split ray on it, eventually moving into Chain Spell and other such goodies. As we get higher level (with liberal application of Arcane These, Easy Metamagic and the incantrix capstone power) I want to move those same feats to Enervation, because even at higher levels of play an empowered, maximized, extended, chained, twinned enervation will make someone cry.

This approach lets me do fun things, but also allows the other players a chance to get in there and lay some beatdown into the enemies that are now seriously hampered.

[Jack DeCoeur]

Hmm, ok. Well, the first thing that may be worth doing is chatting to your DM on exactly how he interprets the wording of Persist spells valid targets of only spells with a fixed range. For example, does this include touch spells and/or personal range spells. Now, personally I would say it does, but I know there is some debate on this issue.

As for specific spells, well, Arcane Spellsurge for yourself is still a good idea once you get to a high enough level, especially if you are planning on blasting as it will let you get off two spells a round (more with Arcane Fusion thrown into the mix) without the need for the expensive (in terms of spell levels) Quicken spell.

As for other stuff, well, invisible spell is always fun to play with, especially when combined with any of the Prismatic spells (wall and sphere specifically).

Maximize is not a bad investment for a blaster (although Empower is strictly better due to its low increase cost), as long as you have some way of bringing down the prohibitive +3 cost. Perhaps Easy Metamagic from... somewhere, I'm AFB and can't remember off the top of my head. This approach can get pretty feat intensive, but you get bonus MM feats anyway, and, really, what else are you going to be using your regular ones for.

Twin is fun, but, again, very expensive. Repeating is cheaper, but not as reliable.

Sculpt may be useful to you if your are planning on blasting around your allies, although (depending on how high level your campaign gets) you may be able to round out your build with some levels of Archmage and pick up the ability that way instead.

As for spells? Some of my favourites: Arcane Spellsurge and Arcane Fusion as mentioned, Maw of Chaos is excellent at 9th, but I'm guessing you'll want some lower level ones. The classics like Haste and Slow of course. Persisting Improved Invisibility on the parties Rogue can be fun. Greater Mirror image is great for self preservation (until everything you fight begins to have Ture Seeing, itself a very good spell). Black Tentacles, the Orb of X spells, Polymorph Any Object can be fun.

Hmm, that's all I have for the moment I think.
this thread has some good general advice for a blaster sorcerer spell list, as does this one which also offers some good advice on Meta-Magicing it up. Now, these threads are aimed at Sorcerers but should hopfully be able to help.

[kestrel404]

The abusive way to use the class is to take Arcane Thesis for a non-fire ray spell, then use Energy Substitution (fire), Sanctum Spell, Energy Admixture (Fire), Blistering Spell, Searing Spell, Empower Spell and Split Ray on that spell (plus others, if you can get more metamagic). This causes the spell to deal quadruple damage, for a cumulative total of +0 spell level (once you hit Incantatrix 8, anyway). Searing spell also means that anything that's immune to fire damage still takes 1/2 the spells total damage anyway (so double the normal damage).

Add Maximize spell to the mix for +1 to spell level.

So, for example, a 20th level incantatrix using all of the above (including maximize) on a Polar Ray can use a 9th level slot to deal (80d6 + 72) fire damage, maximized to 552 damage, half of which cannot be prevented by fire immunity.

Note: This will get books thrown at you.

[Warlawk]

A few things I was thinking I should post for you...

Treantmonks wizard guide

Logicninjas wizard guide

Both guides have a review of spells for each level that include core, spell compendium, phb2 and completes.

Metamagic guide

A thread about reducing metamagic costs

A general wizard handbook

EDIT: Just wanted to note I know you aren't playing a wizard, but much of the information there can be applied to any prepared caster.

[Warlawk]

The abusive way to use the class is to take Arcane Thesis for a non-fire ray spell, then use Energy Substitution (fire), Sanctum Spell, Energy Admixture (Fire), Blistering Spell, Searing Spell, Empower Spell and Split Ray on that spell (plus others, if you can get more metamagic). This causes the spell to deal quadruple damage, for a cumulative total of +0 spell level (once you hit Incantatrix 8, anyway). Searing spell also means that anything that's immune to fire damage still takes 1/2 the spells total damage anyway (so double the normal damage).

Add Maximize spell to the mix for +1 to spell level.

So, for example, a 20th level incantatrix using all of the above (including maximize) on a Polar Ray can use a 9th level slot to deal (80d6 + 72) fire damage, maximized to 552 damage, half of which cannot be prevented by fire immunity.

Note: This will get books thrown at you.

Just to clarify what's being said here.

Arcane Thesis reduces the level modifier of each metamagic feat applied to your thesis spell by 1. People interpret this to mean that applying a 0 modifier metamagic reduces the total modifier by 1. So if you apply Maximize, it level mods the spell by 2 (reduced for thesis) then you apply two different 0 mod metamagics to reduce that total mod to 0 and you have a maximized spell that is the same level as the original.

I'm not interested in debating RAW of the interpretation or if anyone should use it. I just wanted to clarify what was being stated, because if you don't understand that specific mechanic, the post makes no sense.