A challenge for those who like wizards

[F.L.]

Since everyone here seems to think that wizards are unbalanced, etc, I would like to issue this challenge: build the classic 4 player party entirely out of wizards. Build a meat-shield, healbot, skill monkey, and batman out of characters who can obtain 9th level arcane casting at 20th level. These characters must be able to fill their role in the party at 5th level.

[Yechezkiel]

I bet someone does it all, by level 5, with one Wizard.

[psychoticbarber]

Since everyone here seems to think that wizards are unbalanced, etc, I would like to issue this challenge: build the classic 4 player party entirely out of wizards. Build a meat-shield, healbot, skill monkey, and batman out of characters who can obtain 9th level arcane casting at 20th level. These characters must be able to fill their role in the party at 5th level.

I'm pretty sure you could do all but the healbot. I don't think Arcane (at least not in the books I've read) gets access to healing-type spells. Damage PREVENTION, sure, easy, but not healing.

Edit: Ninjaed, and please, prove me wrong

[Anxe]

You could make the whole party Warforgeds. Wizards get spells that act just like Cures, but work only for constructs.

[mikeejimbo]

Build a meat-shield, healbot, skill monkey, and batman out of characters who can obtain 9th level arcane casting at 20th level.

Not necessarily a wizard, but any character who can obtain 9th level arcane caster at 20th level? In that case, I'll take a Beguiler. I believe they get up to 9th level spells. Now, they don't have all that many spells, but they also get UMD as a class skill. Purchase wands of Cure Wounds and all that jazz, and there you go - a healbot.

Of course, a Rogue could do it too, but this fits the given specifications.

Also, I bet this isn't strictly necessary since there are probably ways to make a Wizard/Eldritch Knight as a better Meat Shield, but here's a Sorcerer Varient:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/cl...BattleSorcerer

[Arbitrarity]

Skill monkey is beguiler, or bard/sublime chord.

Tank is probably something like wiz 5, warblade 1, JPM 10, Abjurant champion 4. Nice INT synergy there, with uber ref saves. A swiftblade/abj champion could work as well. Not the last lvl of swiftblade tho. Wizard 6 swiftblade 9, abj champion 5. +17 BAB :P. Actually, an IOTSOV makes a good tank.

Batman is a wizard 5/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 3/XX fullcasting 2.

For the healbot, just hand one of them a wand, and use UMD. Or take a 1 level dip in cleric/Archivist.

So. Since 5'th level, warblade 1/Wiz4. Manuvers, a +8 hp at 1'st, progresses to JPM.

Wizard 5.

Archivist 1/Wizard 4. Or, even better, sub out the bonus feat at 5'th for wiz (complete champion cheese), go into MT at level 6. Use one of the CO methods, and you could also try to go Arcane Heirophant.

Bard 5 as skillmonkey. Goes Virtuoso, SubCh.

[F.L.]

I'm impressed by the speed at which this was answered. Though I mainly posted it to get some ideass...

[nerulean]

Bards get all the Cure spells up to sixth level, though miss out on Heal. Though obviously not as good as a cleric, you could make a perfectly serviceable healbot bard/sublime chord.

[Morty]

Wizard can easily get meatshield by conjuring some monsters or dominating some fighter. Dominate Person/Monster lasts day/levlel.

[MeklorIlavator]

If warforged can cast, the wizard can be the healer, as only arcanists can cast the repair spells. I would agree on the beguiler and tank builds, as those pretty much cover everything that would really work, and a straight wizard would definably cover the arcanist area.

[Arbitrarity]

Also, a druid 3/wizard 3/Arcane heirophant 10/Mystic theurge 4 gets wizard 17, druid 17 casting, wildshape and animal companion of a 13'th level druid, i.e. Tank/healbot/weak batman. Skills are a minor issue, with improvisation.

[Recursive]

Or if you want a wizardly healer using core rules, just use Cleric-3 / Wizard-3 / Mystic Theurge-10, then finish with four more levels of wizard (or full-arcane-casting prestige class of your choice.)

She'll get level-9 arcane spells at 20th level exactly, and will be decent but not spectacular at her party role at level 5 (as a cleric-3/wizard-2).

[Emperor Tippy]

Or if you want a wizardly healer using core rules, just use Cleric-3 / Wizard-3 / Mystic Theurge-10, then finish with four more levels of wizard (or full-arcane-casting prestige class of your choice.)

She'll get level-9 arcane spells at 20th level exactly, and will be decent but not spectacular at her party role at level 5 (as a cleric-3/wizard-2).

Go Wizard 1/Cleric 1/MT 10/ Wizard 8

Illumins (a race in races of destiny) can meet the requirements for MT with 1 level in each class. It's just about the only time MT is worth it

[Anxe]

I played a Favored Soul 4/War Mage 4/ Mystic Theurge 4 once. Took Practiced Spellcaster twice to make everything full power. Kicked a lot of butts and kept on going. The rest of the party was out of spells when I was half out of only War Mage spells. That would definitely fit well into any party.

[Behold_the_Void]

All Warforged party as was said earlier, Meatshield would be Wizard/Fighter/EK/AC, skill monkey could be straight wizard that focuses in tech spells or possibly an Arcane Trickster (I believe 9th level casting can still be attained as an Arcane Trickster if you favor the wizard side more).

[TheAlmightyOne]

Door opener. Get the spell knock
Meat shield. Summon monster spells, get them to stand in front of you
Traps and stuff. Blow them up
Healing. Brewing healing potions

[Callix]

You can't brew healing potions without havig healing spells. Now, one wizard with some means of making UMD a class skill (Human paragon?) and a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, with a stronger wand as an IC item is a mean healbot. Use the summoning meatshield and they're not even all that necessary.

[CASTLEMIKE]

You can't brew healing potions without havig healing spells. Now, one wizard with some means of making UMD a class skill (Human paragon?) and a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, with a stronger wand as an IC item is a mean healbot. Use the summoning meatshield and they're not even all that necessary.

Not true there is the Magic Pot of Potion Making (Forget the real name) including Cure Light for wizards now without needing the Craft Potion feat or even the Cure light spell and it was pretty cheap for what it did I thought. Unfortunately the name escapes me at the moment.

[SpiderBrigade]

One thing to remember about the all-wizard party is that the more of them there are, the more their versatility increases. Think about it. Any spell one of the wizards knows, they can all know, via scribe scroll. So they can attain a really amazing degree of flexibility, without even stopping at the magic shop for additional scrolls.

I would also like to argue that the original challenge is asking a moot question. The point of the batman wizard is not that he can become or replace the party meatshield. He doesn't need to. The point is that a properly-run wizard can actually make that entire role unnecessary. Similarly, if the 4-man batman part can avoid being damaged 90% of the time, they can simply buy potions instead of needing a healbot per se.

Which is of course not to say that both of these roles couldn't be reasonably filled by a wizard. One member of the party just needs to be a particularly strong wizard (or a particularly tough one), and focus on self-buffs. As the party levels, things like Alter Self, Polymorph, and Tenser's Transformation will become available. Additionally, this "tank" wizard might wear armor, and focus on spells that won't suffer from ASF (or, take Still Spell. Or, use wands).

The healer role is a bit harder, but the Arcane Disciple feat would provide a limited amount of healing. Or do the aforementioned Warforged thing, which is really very beautiful for the purposes of this challenge.

[Tor the Fallen]

Skill monkey is beguiler, or bard/sublime chord.

Tank is probably something like wiz 5, warblade 1, JPM 10, Abjurant champion 4. Nice INT synergy there, with uber ref saves. A swiftblade/abj champion could work as well. Not the last lvl of swiftblade tho. Wizard 6 swiftblade 9, abj champion 5. +17 BAB :P. Actually, an IOTSOV makes a good tank.

Batman is a wizard 5/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 3/XX fullcasting 2.

For the healbot, just hand one of them a wand, and use UMD. Or take a 1 level dip in cleric/Archivist.

So. Since 5'th level, warblade 1/Wiz4. Manuvers, a +8 hp at 1'st, progresses to JPM.

Wizard 5.

Archivist 1/Wizard 4. Or, even better, sub out the bonus feat at 5'th for wiz (complete champion cheese), go into MT at level 6. Use one of the CO methods, and you could also try to go Arcane Heirophant.

Bard 5 as skillmonkey. Goes Virtuoso, SubCh.

How many of those cast as a 20th level caster? arch1/wiz19 doesn't. war1/wiz19 doesnt.

[Piccamo]

Its a good thing there's no feat that raises your caster level and certainly no items, either.

[ZeroNumerous]

Party: All Warforged.

Meat-shield: Dread Necromancer 8/Walker-in-the-Waste 10/Full Casting 2. Natural Armor + Light Armor Casting + Fear Aura. Even if they make the save to -get- to attack you, they aren't guarenteed to hit you. Further, you become undead at the end of Walker in the Waste. Pick up Arcane Disciple and the Undeath domain. You now have 4x Caster Level in undead meat-shields.

Trapmonkey: Beguiler 5/Full Casting 10/Archmage 1/Full Casting 4. Rogue skills, wizard casting.

Healbot: Wizard 5/Full Casting 10/Archmage 2/Full Casting 3. Give him Repair X Wounds. Call it a day.

Batman: Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 2/Full Casting 3. Self-explanatory.

[Flawless]

How about:

-Meat Shield: Fighter2/Wizard3 at lvl 5
Wizard6/Fighter2/Eldritchknight8/Abjurant Champion5 at lvl 20

-Skill Monkey: Rouge3/Wizard2 at lvl 5
Rouge3/Wizard7/Arcane Trickster10 at lvl 20

-Heal Bot: Cleric3/Wizard2 at lvl 5
Cleric3/Wizard7/Mystic Theurge 10 at lvl 20

-Batman: Wizard5 at lvl 5
Wizard5/Incantatrix10/Archmage5 at lvl 20

[Dausuul]

How many of those cast as a 20th level caster? arch1/wiz19 doesn't. war1/wiz19 doesnt.

The challenge said nothing about casting as a 20th-level caster. It only said you must be able to cast 9th-level arcane spells by level 20.

Now, I think this is a somewhat more interesting challenge if you require the ability to cast as a 20th-level arcane caster, with 9th-level spells, at 20th level.

[Dhavaer]

Any spell one of the wizards knows, they can all know, via scribe scroll.

Or they could just copy it straight from each others' spell books. Saves on crafting XP.

[greenknight]

I bet someone does it all, by level 5, with one Wizard.

Sure - Pun-Pun is technically a Wizard, isn't he? By level 5, the character can fill every party role without any help at all.

If you want to avoid that, my idea of the ultimate party is a Beguiler, Druid, Cleric and Wizard. Two arcane spellcasters, two Divine, and every one of them is a full spellcaster (although adding a few PrCs wouldn't hurt).

[Sornjss Lichdom]

i didnt read through all of it but in the middle of one of them it hit me, the best way to do it is take a feat in tomb-tainted then use negative energy as ur heal, use summon undead to locate any and all traps, us alsorts of abjuration for ur meat guy (or just more summons), then crank up the evo/conjer for u nuker, simple easy. and if ur gona find a wiz healing thing look under conj thats were all healing is put.

[Merlin the Tuna]

As much as I hate Frank Trollman's custom work, he can manage some solid stuff within the published system. Here's a solid tank wizard concept.

[Sir Giacomo]

Funnily, the trick of a single-class group with different specialisation can be done with all classes (including the non-casting ones).

Cleric, druid, bards: just use different spell specialisations, domains and UMD.
Non-casters: just use UMD (even if cross-class) and feats.

Example: a "wizard role" kind of fighter recipe
- get high INT (nets you more skill points, so you can cross-class the necessary magic skills easily)
- get leadership feat for mid- to high-levels for access to cohort longer-lasting spells, item creation etc. (depending on interpretation of emulate a class ability of UMD, you could also get low-level item creation feats yourself)
- get 2nd highest score on DEX (like many wizards), specialise in ranged tactics (posioned arrows likely beat the damage a wizard does at low levels at long range by far, wand rays have better chances to hit touch AC due to higher BAB)
- use items (mundane or magic) to do "area" effects and control battlefield
- use feats to control battlefield

- Giacomo

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, here ya go:

This is a full party of Warforged

Meat Shield: Wiz1/Fig2/Wiz4/Spellsword1/EK10/Abjurant Champ2.
Your basic meat shield, with BAB of +18 and 9th level spells at level 20.

Healbot: Sorc/Incantatrix/Archmage. Takes the Repair Damage series of spells, and can apply all kinds of metamagic goodness to them. His other spells include things like Greater Magic Weapon (to have the AM Arcane Reach applied, then Chain so the whole party gets +5 weapons) and some basic CC spells (Slow, Solid Fog)

Or, if you don't like that bit of cheese, Cleric3/Wiz5/MT10/AM2. There's nothing that says you can't use Arcane Reach on his divine spells, so now you can heal at 30'

Skillmonky: Beguiler 20 OR Rog3/Wiz5/Arcane Trickster10/Archmage 2

beguiler is probably better for this, but the other one is Core. Use is obvious.

Aaaaaand Batman: Wiz5/MotAO4/Iot7V7/AM4

Yes, my friends.... it's TURBO GENSU! It slices, it dices... it has full casting progression and a whole lot of pain to dish out! Iot7V means never having to worry about your defense, MotAO means you get a 'get out of jail free' even if you memorised the completely wrong spell set that day, and of course Archmage... use is obvious.