War Weaver Gish[3.5]

[crazedloon]

Well I have sort of fallen for the War Weaver as a basis for a Gish build. I realize it doesn't have the normal full BaB of most gish classes (or even a 3/4ths for that fact) heck the low hit die hurts to .... So why would I like this class at all?

Its rather simple actually the ability to buff not only yourself but your entire party in a single move action is rather spiffy for a character who needs to enter the fray asap but still have those buffs so he does not get squished.

Important feats/spells/classes:

Classes:

Spoiler

Show

Base Class:

Battle Sorcerer:
Pros: Higher BaB, Higher HP , Spontaneous casting, More spells per day, weapon proficiency
Cons: Fewer Spells known, Slower spell progression

Wizard:
Pros: More spells Known, Faster spell progression, free Feat
Cons: low BaB, low HP

Prestige:
War Weaver:
Pros:Move action buff 4+ spells, Group effecting
Cons: Low BaB, Low Hp, lose one casting level

Abjurant Champion: (the staple)
Pros:Full BaB, High HP, Increase Ac, Full casting, Increase CL
Con: .... Ok really nothing for a Gish

Uncanny Trickster:
Pros:As the name implies you can trick your way into improving abilities of the war weaver, High skills
Cons:low BaB, moderate hp

Feats:

Spoiler

Show

Extra spell: This is perhaps the most important feat to get. The extra spell grabbed is Divine power which gets rid of lack of BaB.

Prerequisite feats: For obvious reasons.

Arcane Disciple: Healing the group will appreciate your ability to use Magic wands of healing particularly when the whole party gets effected by one use.


I am still a little iffy about what other feats to grab so feel free to suggest some.

Spells:

Spoiler

Show

1st:
enlarge person: Increase your combat prowess as well as any other melee character in the group with a single casting.
Ebon eyes:Allows your group to see in darkness including magical. Useful when combined with your own darkness spells to conceal alies and reduce Line of effect.
nerveskitter: +5 bonus to initiative to the entire party
shield: Ac bonus 4-9

2nd:
Ability enhancer X: All the +4 to an ability spells as they effect the entire group (therefor group dependent)
Dimension hop: Moves yourself and entire party into place for attack immediately reducing the effect losing your move action to cast the buffs.
See Invisible: Situational needed against pesky targets eg pixie
Snake's Swiftness:After moving all your allies into position allow them an immediate attack.
wraithstrike: You are a gish you want this

3rd:
heroism: +2 to saves and attack is strong particularly when given to entire party
protection from energy: can turn any hard situation into a walk in the park particularly good against elementals
haste: One casting entire party very nice and good to give you one extra attack an increased AC
Greater Mage Armor: a staple of the caster (only waste if time with it if you do not have access to Greater Luminous armor)
Spider skin:A good bonus to NA and hide check for the rogue
Nondetection:Useful to hide from prying eyes

4th:
Invisibility Greater:The party rogue will be your best friend and so will the party caster but you will benefit quite a bit as well
Divine Power:Must have and allows you to compete with the fighter
Greater Luminous armor: The whole group will appreciate the +8->+13 Ac but be careful about the Str Damage and make sure the party Cleric has a restoration spell prepared (fair trade for the ac bonus)

5th:
Greater Blink:For those encounters where invis is not enough

6th:
Antimagic field: Depending on your tactics (if you use a lot of magic or if you rely on physical items) this may be an encounter winner
true seeing: better then see invis and negates a bunch of the illusion school of magic (with a two level dip into uncanny trickster this can also effect your party)

7th:
IronGuard: Helps the whole group avoid some fights against other PC and NPC Melee characters

Sample "Builds"

Spoiler

Show

battle sorcerer 7/ War Weaver 5/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Uncanny Trickster 3
CL:18 (20 post divine power)
BaB: +14 (+20 post divine power)
HP:8+6d8+5d4+5d10+3d6 (98+con)
AC: Dex + 13 + 9 + 5 (37+dex)
spells known: 8/4/4/3/3/3/2/2/1/1
spells per day:5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/4/2
feats:Battle Casting,Enlarge spell,Extra spell(divine power), improved initiative +3 feats
Basic Strategy:
gain the first action
standard action divine power
swift action shield
move action activate weave moving party into flanking positions and allow an attack beat critter till dead...

Basic weave:
Enlarge person
Haste
Dimension hop
heroism
Snake's swiftness
Greater Blink

Feel free to critique my horrid class desicions

[Ned the undead]

Extra spell only grants spells that are on your spell list.

EDIT: This post made me a Dwarf! Excellent!

[crazedloon]

.... Um last time I checked it even has in the description the use for it as far as wizards go of grabbing spells they can not normally get (like divine spells)

However should I be wrong in the assumption that a feat works as it says it does you can grab Arcane Disciple war and then extra spell as the domain adds it to your class list.

[Chronos]

Uncanny Trickster:
Pros:As the name implies you can trick your way into improving abilities of the war weaver, High skills
Cons:low BaB, moderate hp

It's a great class for skillmonkeys, but what's a gish going to do with those skill points? You'd be better off just taking more levels of whatever you'd advance with it. Don't try to spread yourself too thin; you've already got spellcasting and melee.

[crazedloon]

It's a great class for skillmonkeys, but what's a gish going to do with those skill points? You'd be better off just taking more levels of whatever you'd advance with it. Don't try to spread yourself too thin; you've already got spellcasting and melee.

it really is not for the skills it is for advancing the class features of the War Weaver. As far as I know because the class itself does not specify it allows you to advance features in a class which you have "maxed" out in this case war weaver. What this does is allow you to have 6 spells on your weave and have and cast 7th level spells through your weave.

[Douglas]

.... Um last time I checked it even has in the description the use for it as far as wizards go of grabbing spells they can not normally get (like divine spells)

However should I be wrong in the assumption that a feat works as it says it does you can grab Arcane Disciple war and then extra spell as the domain adds it to your class list.

The exact quote is "a specific spell that the character lacks access to and would be unable to research." "Lacks access to" doesn't necessarily mean any more than that you can't find a scroll of it or a spellbook containing it. "Unable to research" is almost entirely up to DM fiat. Neither condition necessarily implies "not on class spell list". In addition, the FAQ specifically states that the spell chosen must be on your class list.

Arcane Disciple does get the spell on your class list, but Extra Spell does not allow you to ignore the restrictions Arcane Disciple places on casting it.

If you can find a PrC that gives access to an appropriate domain and is available to arcane casters, however, that would let you get Divine Power as a regular spell known for a Sorcerer, I think.

On another subject, the Legacy Champion class from Weapons of Legacy has the same "advance as if advancing in X class" feature as Uncanny Trickster but has 10 levels rather than just 3, 7 of which advance the chosen class.

[Chronos]

As far as I know because the class itself does not specify it allows you to advance features in a class which you have "maxed" out in this case war weaver.

But what are the sixth-level class features for War Weaver?

[Nebo_]

Battle Sorcerer sucks for Gish builds. Don't bother with it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

My first recommendation would be to play a melee combatant, possibly a more traditional gish even, and take Leadership for a War Weaver cohort.

HP/BAB focused:
Fighter 2/ Wizard 4/ Spellsword 5/ War Weaver 4/ Abjurant Champion 5
At level 20 that gets 8th level spells at caster level 19 with Practiced Spellcaster, with a +16 BAB. HD is 8d4+5d8+7d10, you get Channel Spell from Spellsword and you can use magical Mithril Breastplate or Twilight Mithril Full Plate with a Mithril Heavy Shield without risking arcane spell failure.

Spellcasting focused:
+0 LA Aasimar or Tiefling since outsiders get proficiency in all martial weapons, Wizard 6/ War Weaver 5/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Eldritch Knight 4
At level 20 it gets 9th level spells at caster level 20 with Practiced Spellcaster, and loses only one level of spellcasting until you start taking EK, with a +14 BAB. HD is 11d4+4d6+5d10, you don't have any armor proficiencies but this is the best spellcasting progression build I can come up with. You could replace EK with Dragon Slayer 1/ Spellsword 3 for armor and better HD, but fewer feats.

If you want skill points don't make a gish, or at least don't call what you make a gish. A gish is spells and melee combat, almost exclusively built from classes that get only 2 base skill points/level because those are the classes that are good for building a character focused in those areas. A character that tries to be too many things ends up being exceptional at nothing.

Feats: Power Attack, Arcane Strike, Practiced Spellcaster, and maybe Leap Attack are what every gish uses. Extend Spell is good, but metamagic rods are probably better considering how cheap they are, though Persistent Spell for stuff like Shield, Wraithstrike, Bladeweave, Displacement, Swift Expeditious Retreat, Swift Fly, etc. is just priceless. If you can get Easy Metamagic (Dragon magazine), Practical Metamagic, and/or Metamagic School Focus: Transmutation or Illusion to help with Persistent. Incantatrix 4 is also amazing in a gish build, though including it with a War Weaver build would make a non-gish spellcaster with a few levels of Abjurant Champion thrown on at the end. Whirling Blade is an amazing situational spell, like using it Quickened after you just used Arcane Strike and Leap Attacked with Wraithstrike already active.

[Douglas]

But what are the sixth-level class features for War Weaver?

It doesn't get any new ones, but any existing features improve based on any references to class levels in their descriptions. In this particular case, he would gain the ability to cast 6th level spells through his Eldritch Tapestry, his limit on spells stored in a Quiescent Weaving would increase to 5 with a maximum spell level of 6, and his spellcasting would advance 1 level.

[Chronicled]

If you go Changling, you have access to the Recaster PrC, which lets you add a spell from any class list, twice, to your spells known. This can work wonderfully with War Weaver.

War Weaver really wasn't designed with a gish in mind, though.

[namo]

It doesn't get any new ones, but any existing features improve based on any references to class levels in their descriptions. In this particular case, he would gain the ability to cast 6th level spells through his Eldritch Tapestry, his limit on spells stored in a Quiescent Weaving would increase to 5 with a maximum spell level of 6, and his spellcasting would advance 1 level.

It doesn't work like this ! (TM)

You gain abilities "as if you had gained another level of the class". You can't gain another level of the class.
Now, I'm not saying that a lenient DM won't let you do it, but in the absence of en exception specifically stating that Uncanny Trickster (or LC) allows you to take more levels of a class than there exists, this is not something allowed by the rules.
Bloodlines work, but *shudder* well, they're Bloodlines.

Chronicled has a good point: there is a variety of builds in the War Weaver Handbook (over on the CharOp board) but in the end the best one is Wizard 5/WW 5/whatever (Transmuter is the best specialization) because it blooms much earlier. You can still do all the battlefield controlling that you want, too.
I do like the elegant Changeling Bard 8/WW 1/Recaster 1/Sublime Chord 2/WW +4/Recaster +4 but it is geared towards high-level play.

[Douglas]

Right, you gain abilities "as if you had" gained another level in the class. You do not actually gain another level in the class, so whether gaining another level is possible is not relevant.

[Nebo_]

Douglas is right. The abilities keep going past what the class itself can normally achieve. This works great with Hellfire Warlock and bloodline abuse.

[namo]

No, he's not. Look, it's a long-debated issue and you're free to adopt the "It doesn't say we can't do it" stance but don't say it's the RAW. (Because the RAW is unclear.)

If there is no other level, gaining the class abilities "as if" does not gain you any ability. The Bloodline levels have an explicit language that lets you add them to all level-dependent calculations.