CO Challenge : The Tier 1 of Tier 1 Wizards..."The Ultimate Magus"

[KellKheraptis]

Very nice build there, but I had a few questions:

Where did the bloodline levels go?  When you have a major bloodline, you've got to dump three levels into it to get the benefits, and I don't see that here.  Could you also explain in a little more detail how bloodline augmentation works to get you that CL 52?  I'd also argue that relying overmuch upon feats acquired via magical locations is problematic at best, since they mostly last for only a year.

Additionally, I'd still argue for Dweomerkeeper over War Weaver for 4 levels at least, maybe swapping out the Mindbender level for the Cleric 1 dip required.

Every magical location mentioned is permanent.  Also, if bloodlines are used as intended, they are paid for gradually.  No LA needed, you just advance slower at 3/6/12.  They also add that +3 CL to each class.  Dweomerkeeper I'm guessing for Supernatural Spell?  And there are better ways than a Cleric dip to qualify

As for being a true dragon, it gives you any type and/or subtype you want, specifically.  You just can't get the demihuman or human ones.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Ritual of association specifically only gives a "subtype or type modifier".  You can't change type to dragon with it.

And you can't get age categories.  Since "True dragon" isn't a subtype of dragon, you can't get it that way either. 

[KellKheraptis]

Ritual of association specifically only gives a "subtype or type modifier".  You can't change type to dragon with it.

And you can't get age categories.  Since "True dragon" isn't a subtype of dragon, you can't get it that way either. 

The irony of this being Loredrake and friends are no longer needed, as this incarnation is a changeling (forgot to mention that in the build post I think...) to sneak into Hathran.  Loses a few spontaneous slots in exchange for full spontaneous wizard progression, with for all intents bottomless spell slots via said dirty trick with action points.  I'm keeping War Weaver in both because it's awesome and because it's absolutely bad ass from an action economy point of view.  That and there's several ways to get move actions, let alone standard and full round, so it's really easy to at any time have the needed action currency to insta-buff (not counting anything already persistent via Incantatrix).

[Naldor]

Also, if bloodlines are used as intended, they are paid for gradually.  No LA needed, you just advance slower at 3/6/12.

However, this does mean that what you have here is actually an ECL 23 build, not ECL 20.

As for War Weaver: Which is more awesome, Supernatural Spell or Eldritch Tapestry?  Bear in mind that we can use the feat cheese I described earlier to get Time Stop at-will, rendering all concerns about action economy relatively moot if we also get Celerity at will.  Time Stop + Celerity + Readied actions = do whatever we want, whenever we want.  I truly think that the massive benefits for Epic spells + free Wishes overrides the benefits War Weaver gives in this case.  It's good, I'll not debate that, but Supernatural Spell is just too darn good and too darn easy to abuse for us to pass up on it.

PS: You still haven't explained where your CL 52 number came from.

[Archmage Joda]

Could someone explain to me the aforementioned Action Point antics with spell recharging or whatever it was please?

[Suzerain]

Can anyone remember the thread on 339 where the people used cheesewrought kobold + heighten cheese to get 100th+ level spells? If we go that route, we could use that wizard feat to break up some of those to get more 9th level slots. While we're at it, we could get miracle, slap on any metamagic we need with those extra feats from chaos shuffle, and use an appropriate slot to power innate spell. That means we won't need to learn any 7th-level or lower spells or any 8th level cleric spells and can cast them all at-will, quickened, twinned and whatever else

edit: This, I think. Will go to bed now though.

[KellKheraptis]

Going with the cheese solution to Hathran, we can return to Human or Elf as a base race (elves get more retrainable feats, and their generalist ability is nice.  Their 3rd level sub is absolutely amazing with a hummingbird, so we'll assume that from here on out.  Dragonborn as desired for (Ex) flight and no Con hit, grey subrace of course for Int.

Wizard 5/Dweomerkeeper 4/Primal Scholar 2/Fatespinner 4/Mindbender 1/Archmage 1/Incantatrix 3

Full spontaneous casting, Supernatural Spell, rerolls in case some fuck gets the drop on us, all the niceness of spellcraft to metamagic something, auto-reach, telepathy, action point spell regen, and since we took it as our 18th level, it doesn't matter what school we ban for incantatrix, since we'll already have all of it's spells available in our book via the Dark Chaos shuffle.  Oh, and Spontaneous Divination, since we can fit all 5 Wizard levels in, all with a +8 to initiative regardless of feats or attributes/buffs.  Smexy!

[Bauglir]

Make sure to do Dragonborn after the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, in case nobody mentioned that; you lose racial bonus feats for becoming Dragonborn, so that might get a bit tricky.

[KellKheraptis]

Make sure to do Dragonborn after the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, in case nobody mentioned that; you lose racial bonus feats for becoming Dragonborn, so that might get a bit tricky.

Hmm...fair enough.  Loss of 4 feats = acceptable given the sheer number available.  And to answer the poster above me, the action point shuffle involved unfettered heroism and the secret from the class Primal Scholar called Secret of Power, that allowed the expenditure of an action point to regain a spell of up to Primal Scholar class level.  Speaking of which...

Wizard 5/Dweomerkeeper 4/Primal Scholar 5/Mindbender 1/Archmage 1/XXX Wizardy 2/Incantatrix 3

Crap...needed those PS levels for the Sanctum cheese.

[Naldor]

Kell, what is your source of divine spellcasting and the Magic Domain to qualify for Dweomerkeeper?  I know that you don't necessarily require Cleric (Contemplative for instance works) but you do need divine spellcasting, and I've yet to see a feat that grants Divine casting.  IIRC there is one in Forgotten Realms which grants a rather limited arcane casting ability, but no divine, and we don't qualify for the Epic feat Extra domain, since we a) don't meet the pre-reqs, and b) no longer have the Dragon type.

Sorry to be such a constant naysayer like this, but I'd really like this thread to come up with a kick-ass, legal build worthy of being called the Ultimate Magus.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

 Southern magician /Alternative Source Spell/ Rainbow Servant 10 all give divine casting without loss of arcane ability.  Ranked in order of preference.

For magic domain, we just need to have dragonborn fairly early and replace two of those wizard levels with Singer of Concordance.

[Naldor]

aha.  Forgot that Southern Magician went both ways.

Something like:

Wizard 5 / Singer of Concordance 2 / Dweomerkeeper 4 / Primal Scholar 6 / Archmage 1 / Incantrix 3

could work.  Singer of Concordance could possibly be taken one level earlier with feat cheese from Cityscape.  Primal Scholar seems rather more useful than Mindbender, and the non-good requirement doesn't mesh well with Dragonborn from a flavour perspective (yes, I know this is CO-land, but still...)

[The_Mad_Linguist]

aha.  Forgot that Southern Magician went both ways.

Something like:

Wizard 5 / Singer of Concordance 2 / Dweomerkeeper 4 / Primal Scholar 6 / Archmage 1 / Incantrix 3

could work.  Singer of Concordance could possibly be taken one level earlier with feat cheese from Cityscape.  Primal Scholar seems rather more useful than Mindbender, and the non-good requirement doesn't mesh well with Dragonborn from a flavour perspective (yes, I know this is CO-land, but still...)

Dragon type automatically qualifies you for singer of concordance, which is one of the many reasons that dragonwrought kobolds are just plain awesome.  I suppose you could grab the draconic template, then buy it off at level 3 - IIRC, that changes your type to dragon.

Of course, for ultimate tier1ness, you should probably abuse taint for all its worth, and pick up tainted scholar.

[KellKheraptis]

aha.  Forgot that Southern Magician went both ways.

Something like:

Wizard 5 / Singer of Concordance 2 / Dweomerkeeper 4 / Primal Scholar 6 / Archmage 1 / Incantrix 3

could work.  Singer of Concordance could possibly be taken one level earlier with feat cheese from Cityscape.  Primal Scholar seems rather more useful than Mindbender, and the non-good requirement doesn't mesh well with Dragonborn from a flavour perspective (yes, I know this is CO-land, but still...)

Dragon type automatically qualifies you for singer of concordance, which is one of the many reasons that dragonwrought kobolds are just plain awesome.  I suppose you could grab the draconic template, then buy it off at level 3 - IIRC, that changes your type to dragon.

Of course, for ultimate tier1ness, you should probably abuse taint for all its worth, and pick up tainted scholar.

I was just reading up on that actually...don't suppose a Hellbred counts as an evil-type, does it?

[Archmage Joda]

Looking at singer of concordance, i'm not seeing how Dragon type auto qualifies you. It says something about true dragons getting in, but that's by virtue of their domain access. Is there an errata or something for that?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Looking at singer of concordance, i'm not seeing how Dragon type auto qualifies you. It says something about true dragons getting in, but that's by virtue of their domain access. Is there an errata or something for that?

Page 4 on races of the dragon says that dragons automatically qualify for anything that requires the dragonblood subtype.

It's a grandfather clause.  They set it up so they wouldn't have issues with (for example) dragons being unable to enter the Singer of Concordance PrC because they cast spells as arcane spells. 

[Naldor]

So is the character currently a Dragonwrought Kobold (a Dragon) or an elven Dragonborn (Humanoid with the Dragonblood subtype) ?

I'm also curious why Hathran got taken out of the build.  Should it be something like:

Wizard 5 / Singer of Concordance 2 / Dweomerkeeper 4 / Primal Scholar 5 / Hathran 1 / Archmage 1 / Incantrix 3 ?

Maybe add in two more PrC levels by moving Singer of Concordance down two levels if we have the Dragon type.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Dragon type can be acquired with the LA+1 draconic template.  Coincidentally, we can buy that off at level three.  That seems the most effective way, barring dragonwrought.

[KellKheraptis]

How about this one :

Wizard 5/Dweomerkeeper 4/Mindbender 1/Primal Scholar 6/Archmage 1/Incantatrix 3

Same deal as before with the feats, all prereq's and pertinent metamagic is covered via a custom bloodline, bought off/bought before level 12, Able Learner and Otherworldly at first level, as a Human or Silverbrow Human.  This nets us the same recycling cheese as before, only without the need to Sanctum everything, full spontaneous via the Stronghold trick (landlord feat used and set in stone as a bloodline bonus), and finally, the caster level (since bloodlines add 3 to each class, and they all stack) is either 38 or 39, depending on how many secrets a PS gets at level 6.  One of which must be the Secret of Power, and the other two nice ones would be the +1 Spell Power and the Immediate spell usage, with the MM/Item feats ranking a distant third (we already have plenty that are re-shufflable for that).  Oh, and with Ocular spell available, we can persistify anything.  Mix in shapechange to Solar, and you're golden.

[Archmage Joda]

A couple questions: how are you meeting the requisites for Dweomerkeeper, specifically the magic domain and the divine spells there, and where does that 6th lvl of Primal Scholar keep coming from, since in Secrets of Xendrik it's only listed as a 5 level class?