make my dweomerkeeper better please

[newguydude1]

ok so this dweomerkeeper is very similar to an early build i made here
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...fritz-inspired

but the difference is instead of a mirror mephit to cheat the cost of simulacrum im using dweomerkeeper. but heres the problem. i dont know what feats to get. so i just filled up my feats to get a second persistent spell and grabbed a lot of spell mastery to be independent of spellbooks.

so after seeing all of the multiple instances of extra turning and spell mastery in my build, i cant help but think i could do better. so i made this thread. make my dweomerkeeper better please.

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this dweomerkeeper is designed for solo play. so relying on party members is a definite no.

this dweomerkeeper is also designed to be played without any wealth or magic items. so magic items to carry you through harder levels or to shore up weaknesses is a definite no as well.

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race: illumian - for naenhoon fell animate and persistent spell

class: wizard 9/cleric1/dweomerkeeper10
***class order: wizard1/cleric1/wizard3/dweomerkeeper8/wizard1/dweomerkeeper2/wizard4
***i have to get 5th wizard level on my 14th level so i can obtain spell mastery the same time as i get simulacrum. i need simulacrum selected for spell mastery to reduce its casting time to standard action via uncanny forethought thus allowing me to use supernatural spell on simulacrum.

domains: healing (traded out for healing devotion), undeath (retrainted to magic at 5 for dweomerkeeper)
ability scores - 25 point buy
9-2 str
8 dex
10 con
18 int
11 wis
12 cha

alternate class feature: swap out familiar for animal companion at half druid level. (unearthed arcana wizard acf)

feats
flaw: noncombatant
flaw: pathetic: strength
1 spell mastery
1 uncanny forethought
1 fell animate, retrained to extend spell at 6
1 natural bond, retrained to extra turning at 7
2 healing devotion
3 practiced spellcaster, retrained to extra turning at 8
6 persistent spell
9 spell mastery
12 practiced spellcaster
14 spell mastery
15 eschew materials
18 spell mastery

bolded feats are where i think i can do better.

Spoiler: spells

Show

spell mastery 1: power word pain, summon component, magic weapon, repair light damage
spell mastery 9: animate weapon, sonorous hum, girallon's blessing, adept spirit, spell enhancer
spell mastery 14: simulacrum, limited wish
spell mastery 18:

1st
1 power word pain (v)
1 summon component (s)
1 mage armor (v,s,f cured leather)
1 endure elements (v,s)
1 repair light damage (v,s)
1 magic weapon (v,s)
1 benign transposition (v)
3 feather fall (v)
3 erase (v,s)

2nd
4 command undead (v,s,m raw meat and splinter of bone)
4 unseen crafter (v,s)
5 repair moderate damage (v,s)
5 adept spirit (v,s)

3rd
6 animate weapon (v,s) Transmutation
6 sonorous hum (v,s) Evocation
7 fly (v,s,f wing feather from any bird)
7 girallon's blessing (v,s,m) Transmutation
8 augment object (v,s,m) Transmutation
9 greater magic weapon (v,s,m) Transmutation

4th
8 dimensional anchor (v,s)
9 Spell Enhancer (v)

5th
10 wall of stone (v,s,m)
10 major creation (v,s,m)
11 teleport (v) Conjuration
11

6th
12 greater dispel magic (v,s)
12 superior resistance (v,s,m)
13
13

7th
14 simulacrum (v,s,m,xp)
14 limited Wish (v,s)
15 energy Immunity (v,s)
15 greater Teleport (v)

8th
16 steal life (v,s,location)
16 mind blank (v,s)
17 moment of prescience (v,s)
17 greater shadow evocation (v,s)

9th
18 wish (v,xp)
18 ice assassin (v,s,m,xp)
19 time stop (v)
19 disjunction (v)
20 shapechange (v,s,f)
20 foresight (v,s,m)

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ok so the gameplan is

level 1: animal companion + power word pain
level 2-3: animal companion + 2 riding dog zombies (naenhoon fell animate) + power word pain.
healing devotion is how i will be healing myself, zombies, and my future animated object and simulacrum.
level 4-5: giant bat animal companion + 2 bison zombies
my character will be hiding in a stone box 24/7 being dragged around by the zombies so the only way anything gets to her is after her zombies are dead.

level 6-13: persistent sonorous hum + animate weapon + colossal stone greatsword = 24hour colossal animated object that hits for 8d6+13 per attack.
***so yeah this is the most important part of the build. this colossal animated object has to carry me all the way to 14 when i get my free simulacrums.
sonorous hum is mandatory if im gonna cast buffs like girallons blessing on my colossal animated object. or to heal it with healing devotion.
my character will be hiding inside the colossal stone greatsword so the only way to get to her is after they destroy the colossal stone object, or dispel it enough times until she cant re-animate it anymore.

level 14+: free simulacrums. my cl is boosted by adept spirit + spell enhancer for +3 cl for some powerful high hd simulacrums. this is what my character will be doing for the rest of eternity even in epic.

level 18: free wishes. my character will transform herself into a succubus for immortality, humanoid shape, at will greater teleport, etc. ecl increases by +12 but i think free simulacrums and wishes can carry me until i make up all the xp i need to continue leveling up at ecl 31. succubus is chosen instead of erinyes for the lower ecl. due to race change i no longer have naenhoon but who cares right?

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ok so here are the things id like from the playground
1. better feat choice - i go 2 extra turnings which brings my turn count to 12 for two persistent spells. one for sonorous hum, one for backup sonorous hum when the first is dispelled, but do i really need that 2nd persistent spell? i go spell mastery at 9 to avoid the -2cl due to uncanny forethought in case im in a worst-case scenario when somehow the enemy erases all of the tattood spells on her body. same reason i go practiced spellcaster at 3 and 12. these two feats are gotten solely to prepare for the worst case scenarios.
2. better spell selection - this is a solo character. so i need all my bases covered with spells. dimensional anchor is gotten precisely because of that. but my experience is not encyclopedic so asking the playground in case they are. i got healing, teleporters, incorporeals, and flying creatures covered with my current spell selection.
3. optimize my zombies - they arent that strong, but i cant sacrifice my colossal animated object or my simulacrum timings to buff them with feats, unless you can convince me they can be very strong. alternatively, a better level 1-5 strategy for a solo wizard would be awesome too.
4. optimize my colossal animated object - has to carry me all the way to level 14. i grabbed augment object to double its hardness, girallons blessing to triple its dps, fly so it can kill flying creatures, magic weapon and the greater version to hit incorporeals.

thanks.

[magicalmagicman]

Remember these two threads you made?
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...at-high-levels
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...d-on-a-monster

Geometer PrC adds Greater Glyph of Warding to your wizard spell list. Use Dweomerkeeper to ignore the material cost and you can have your simulacrum walk around with an AMF aura.

[ExLibrisMortis]

If you pick up Eidetic Spellcaster, you don't need a spellbook at all. It costs you Scribe Scroll and your familiar, which is not cheap, but it does mean you're 100% beyond spellbook loss. You can pick up additional spells with Collegiate Wizard, as well. That helps with wealth-independence and versatility.

Practiced Spellcaster only gives you +1 CL, which is quite small for a feat. There are a few other ways to boost your CL:
- Create magic tattoo emulated with shadow conjuration grants +1 CL. Exceptionally good flavour for an illumian, too.
- Persistent suffer the flesh for 10 points of ability damage grants +5 CL. A single [I]rod of bodily restoration[/] is all you need to offset the damage--they cost 3100 gp--but if you can't get one, regular old restoration will do, though it's not easy to get (it's not on any domain list, as far as I can see). You can get heal with Arcane Disciple (healing), at ECL 11, or with summon monster IX, which comes online at ECL 17 and is probably too late for your purposes. Even if you can only restore ability damage with Arcane Disciple for heal, it's honestly still worth getting suffer the flesh, because +5 CL is massive. It reduces the chance that your Persistent spells get dispelled, too. If the 250 gp component is too much, well, you do have Supernatural Spell, and that does protect your CL boost from dispels...
- Consumptive field grants +50% CL. It's evil, and not a wizard spell, but with your level in cleric, you can cast it from a staff (10 500 gp) without UMD, and Persist it with a minor schema of metamagic item (12 000 gp). I realize that's a wealth-dependent solution, but I do want to mention it, because it's such a huge CL boost--it's only slightly more expensive than a bead of karma, but twice as good! (Yes, it costs 210 gp per day, but come on, +50% CL!) Without magic items, you can use limited wish to emulate consumptive field, which could still be worth it, depending on how your DM runs XP costs, whether you can mitigate them, what sort of encounters you expect to face, and whether you can Persist limited wish. As a solo character, there's no chance of falling behind the party, at least.
- Theurgic Specialist (Dragon #325) + Practiced Spellcaster (cleric) grants +5 CL for your chosen school, with your current build. If you take four levels in Mystic Theurge (instead of wizard 6-9), you can another +4 CL. If you take as many levels of Mystic Theurge as will fit (replacing wizard 3-9), you get another +7 CL, and you also pick up restoration and consumptive field on your cleric side, which Dweomerkeeper lets you cast spontaneously from your wizard spell slots using your wizard caster level. If you use this trick, you might want to specialize in Necromancy, as the +11 CL on consumptive field works out to +5 CL for every other school. Taking Mystic Theurge 6 does mean delaying your final Dweomerkeeper levels (since you need to have 4th-level cleric spells to pick consumptive field for your Mantle of Spells), but that's potentially quite worth it, considering the massive CL boosts that are possible.
- Elder Giant Magic grants you +3 CL, but isn't usable in combat, and doesn't work for spells that take more than a full-round action to cast. You need a bit of Concentration to make this work (a bonus of 11 + spell level, since you can't take 10), but that's pretty easy to get on a wizard. An easy way to protect your spells against dispels (a little). Does boost suffer the flesh and consumptive field.
- Mysterious Magic increases the dispel DC for all your spells by 2. Not great, but if you're worried about dispels and can't get anything else... A ring of enduring arcana (6000 gp) adds +4, but that's a magic item.
- Any magic item can be turned into a warforged component. Embedded warforged components can only be used by warforged, but if you don't mind a little cheese, well, you can UMD racial requirements... Warforged components can't be taken away (unless you fall unconscious) or targeted (which blocks disjunction), so they're a good way to get magic item effects without any of the usual worries. If you don't want to UMD "being a robot", you can take levels in Renegade Mastermaker, but that's costly in terms of time and lost caster levels.

Illumian are associated with the Plane of Shadow. Flavour-wise, they really should be able to enter Shadowcraft Mage, which lets you emulate lots of nice spells with illusions (including summon monster, which offers access to many nice SLAs), and is much nicer than wizard levels 6-9. If your DM doesn't let illumians enter SCM, polymorph into a gnome when you're about to level up, and enter the class anyway. Ain't nobody got time for Stoneblessed.


So yeah, a bunch of things you could or couldn't do. I kept the WBL-dependent things in, just in case someone reads the thread later looking for suggestions. And perhaps you'll run into treasure you want to use anyway, who knows?

[newguydude1]

snip

i found this
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...g-Caster-Level
and everything you said i think is in there already.

like you said most of the things you said requires wealth. if i did use wealth your right i could probably be undispellable, but my dm is already giving me the looks for having a colossal animated object at level 6 so... hehehe

personally i think umding warforged components is not cheese. you cant mimic any other race while your mimicing warforged so there is no cheese here. everything is used as intended.

Remember these two threads you made?
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...at-high-levels
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...d-on-a-monster

Geometer PrC adds Greater Glyph of Warding to your wizard spell list. Use Dweomerkeeper to ignore the material cost and you can have your simulacrum walk around with an AMF aura.

im tempted to make another amf thread.

amf blocks line of effect for spells (i think) so i can use an amf dire bat to ready his actions and intercept spellcasters, but that might require more intelligence than an animal is capable of. the animal is still used by handle animal checks and stuff after all.

amf also removes dr for most creatures that arent adamantine. but then colossal object and 14th+ simulacra, im sure theyll hit way harder than 15 dr so its not really an issue.

the geometer thing, i need 5 levels, so on top of 4 levels of dweomerkeeper and needing that wizard level at 14th level, its not until level 15 i can get amf on my other creatures but at that point does it really matter. i also need spell mastery at 15th level for greater glyph of warding to reduce the casting time to a standard action so i can supernatural spell it.

so all in all, is dr ignoring and magic immunity at the cost of your own dr and your own magic worth it? maybe? i dont know. i think most slas are worthless against other monsters because they have high spell resistance. so maybe amf is good. something to think about.

ill think about it.

i was also thinking about mindsight, but nah. i might get a dip in mindbender because why not, its just a skill tax and telepathy lets me communicate with everyone while hiding in a box, but mindsight doesnt work on undead, and you need to rule lawyer against mind affecting immunes with the dm, and undead is a super common enemy you fight.

sidenote: i just realized i could use supernatural spell to make my animate weapon undispellable!!!! cant cast buffs on it because sonorous hum doesnt work with supernatural abilities, but its still something!

edit:

A 788

No, as clarified in the Rules Compendium, an antimagic field does not block line of effect. If you cast a spell on one side of the antimagic field with a target or area on the opposite side, the spell functions normally except for any part which overlaps the antimagic field.

A targeted dispel magic on someone outside of the antimagic field will function normally, as will any part of an area dispel magic which is outside of the field.

Even if you shoot a ray spell through an antimagic field, it will only disappear while inside and reappear on the far side, continuing on towards its target.

so yeah i confirmed rule compendium says amf does not block line of effect. so it doesnt do anything much for my colossal animated object, so is it worth it on my simulacra.

[Anthrowhale]

Have you considered entry without a level of cleric? Something like Wizard 5/Singer of Concordance 2/Dweomerkeeper 5/Loremaster 1/Dweomerkeeper 5/?? 2

This avoids retarding your spellcasting granting many things a level earlier. It requires Southern Magician (which requires human) to finesse the entry into SoC and DK.

[newguydude1]

Have you considered entry without a level of cleric? Something like Wizard 5/Singer of Concordance 2/Dweomerkeeper 5/Loremaster 1/Dweomerkeeper 5/?? 2

This avoids retarding your spellcasting granting many things a level earlier. It requires Southern Magician (which requires human) to finesse the entry into SoC and DK.

oh yeah exlibrismortis also suggested eidetic spellcaster. but thats banned because of dragon magazine, but even if it werent i need a solo strategy for level 1-5. i couldnt trade out my familiar for eidetic because my familiar is an absolutely crucial component to my zombie army.

same with your suggestion. even if i were to somehow get my dm to ditch the faqs ruling considering southern magician and get him to agree to fr stuff (he hates fr for some reason, but does say yes after enough asking), i need a solo strategy that would keep me alive until level 5. cleric is absolutely critical to the build because its my only source of zombies, and its my only source of healing. i dont think i can heal my 256 hp colossal object reasonably with just repair light damage spells. and my zombies at lower levels.

so if you guys think you can think of a replacement strategy for 1-5, im all ears. my dm likes to throw fiends at me with 100% success summon chance and my zombies maxed out with command undead are getting slaughtered left and right because of that goddamn dr and fast healing fiends have, so yeah, if you guys have a better strategy im all ears. but without a replacement strategy i cannot ditch the cleric level or my familiar.

[newguydude1]

so thats it?

no op trick that only uses feats that i can put into this build?
no op class dip or something that synergizes with dweomerkeeper?
just... extra turning? no fancy trick with something like summon elemental reserve feat?

extra turning and spell mastery are literally the best feats i can grab with this build?

how about at least a good spell to persist? im using wish to turn into a succubus because i dont see any spells worth persisting with naenhoon at level 18. otherwise i wouldve acquired templates to keep my naenhoon.

[NigelWalmsley]

Have you considered entry without a level of cleric? Something like Wizard 5/Singer of Concordance 2/Dweomerkeeper 5/Loremaster 1/Dweomerkeeper 5/?? 2

Alternatively, you can get in without taking levels of Wizard by going Cleric 5 with the Spell and Magic domains (the spell anyspell gives you is arcane for some reason). That makes your life easier at early levels, and doesn't cost you any casting. You need to get Simulacrum somehow, but if worst comes to worst, you can do complicated shenanigans with Limited Wish emulating Dragonblood Spell-Pact.

[Anthrowhale]

Alternatively, you can get in without taking levels of Wizard by going Cleric 5 with the Spell and Magic domains (the spell anyspell gives you is arcane for some reason). That makes your life easier at early levels, and doesn't cost you any casting. You need to get Simulacrum somehow, but if worst comes to worst, you can do complicated shenanigans with Limited Wish emulating Dragonblood Spell-Pact.

I think the difficulty is that he wants Supernatural Spell on Simulacrum, which requires Uncanny Forethought which requires Spell Mastery, which requires Wizard 1. Hence, wizard 1 must come into the build before level 9.

I'm much less clear on the necessity of something not wizard in solo play. Here for example is a pretty mean melee wizard at level 1.

[newguydude1]

animate weapon is one of the most powerful spells in the game. nothing cleric has comes even close. thats why im going wizard instead of cleric. because colossal animated object is how you stay alive solo.

I'm much less clear on the necessity of something not wizard in solo play. Here for example is a pretty mean melee wizard at level 1.

healing, zombies, and persistent spell. level 4 and 5 is the hardest. how does your melee wizard fair against an ekolid (fc1), spinagon kiting you from above and out of range of power word pain, etc.?
right now im doing a massive zombie bison army, as much as i can control with command undead. and even then im getting my ass kicked against certain fiends.

im not familiar with melee wizards. could you describe how the fight vs ekolid and spinagon would go?