Most Powerful Combinations

[Fluffles]

Be careful with that though, your DM might throw Mithral/Adamantine golems at you. And thier Immunity doesn't have the infinite SR clause.

I can fly/teleport/whatever. They can't. I don't care.

Seriously... that's your argument?

Yup. Though I get really evil with them.

(Maximized) Awakened Mithral Golem Wizard / Swiftblade. Though it requires the players to start bitching about how the magic immunity is unbeatable SR, which they later regret

[PhaedrusXY]

(Maximized) Awakened Mithral Golem Wizard / Swiftblade. Though it requires the players to start bitching about how the magic immunity is unbeatable SR, which they later regret

And how are you casting Awaken on it if it is completely immune to magic?

And yes... the DMs e-peen is always bigger. So what? That doesn't mean the dweomerkeeper isn't overpowered as shit.

[Phoenix00]

While this was not RAI but RAW Linked Power ignores xp components for the second power (but not the first.).

Do everything that the Dweomerkeeper does but with no prc just a feat, only limitation is there are less psionic powers than divine/arcane spells.

[SorO_Lost]

Planar Shepherd can free wishes, while Shadowcraft mage has shadow miracles.

1. The dweomerkeeper can cast both for free, if he wants... with the right domain(s). As well as any other spell they want (XP and gp free Similacrum? No problem. Dread Warriors? I can make 4 per day for free. Any arcane or divine spell 8th level or below as a standard action? I can do that.). And ignore SR with them, which includes "magic immunity". I think the dweomwerkeeper is being severely underrated here.

2. And nothing was said about the Shadowcraft Mage taking Arcane Disciple for Miracle access, anyway. And it is dubious if that even works in the first place. Arcane Disciple doesn't turn it into a Wizard/Sorcerer spell IMO, which is required to emulate it with Shadow Illusion.

1. You Craft one Ice Assassin of you're self and it crafts Simulacrums of you, it's not free but more like fifty six of the price of five which is still one heck of a deal.
Q. Once you burn up your SLAs/9th_level_spell_slots who is left standing with what?
A. A cleric with a preselected list of divine spells and a wizard with a preselected list arcane spells capable of being spontaneously converted into any arcane conjuration(summon/creation) & evocation spell and 100 persisted arcane/divine buffs while itching to cast Celerity.

2. I totally glazed over the part is wasn't mentioned, why wasn't it? And it is on said wizard's wizard class spell list but I see where you are coming from since while the spell is known as a class spell, the base nature of the spell is that it's a divine spell and not a wizard spell. It might make for an interesting debate later on in a separate thread and by someone other than me.

[DavidWL]

Planar Shepherd can free wishes, while Shadowcraft mage has shadow miracles. Wish and Miracle can pretty much replicate any relevant spell of 8th level or lower, so the real points of comparison should be 9th level spells, unique abilities that can't be gained from Shapechange(which they both have access to), and the ability to serve multiple roles.

Incantrix/Shadowcraft Mage has buffs that last all day, but the Planar Shepherd can grab as many buff rounds as he wants, so it's really a matter of just what's uniquely available to each of them.

+1

The Cleric builds can get easy casting in antimagic / dead magic which is worth something.  The Dweomerkeeper has supernatural spell, which is worth something.  It really is a tricky evaluation.  (The chameleon can snag it with some finagling).

Best,
David

[OblivionSmurf83]

I never expected the poll to provoke this much argument and discussion, keep it coming guys! Looks like the Incantatrix/Shadowcraft Mage and Planar Shepherd are leading the pack, with an equal number of votes between them. To be honest, I didn't expect the Dweomerkeeper or Incantatrix/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil to get this little love!

To the players who have voted for for Incantatrix/Shadowcraft Mage, I'd love to hear the reasons behind it - is -1 metamagic what's swinging you away from the Iot7fv's abilities, or the spell mimicking of the Shadowcraft Mage, or the combination of the two?

To the players suggesting the Planar Shepherd is useless because their Planar Bubble ability can be mimicked by spells, and their Wild Shape is inferior to a Reserves of Strength Shapechange, don't forget that the Planar Shepherd Planar Bubble ignores any negative features of your plane, which can be a very broad statement. Additionally, a Druid can cast Reserves of Strength Shapechange just as well as a Wizard; the reason why Outsider Wild Shape is so good is because it gives you spell-like abilities as well. If there were a way of getting that for Shapechange, I suspect this wouldn't even be a contest for the Wizard. NB: This isn't intended to bias the voting, I'm just highlighting the obvious abilities of the PS! If anything, I'm surprised it's as popular as it's proving to be - while I love both the Planar Shepherd's abilities, the Druid spell list simply isn't as good as the Wizard or Cleric one.

[SorO_Lost]

1. To the players who have voted for for Incantatrix/Shadowcraft Mage, I'd love to hear the reasons behind it - is -1 metamagic what's swinging you away from the Iot7fv's abilities, or the spell mimicking of the Shadowcraft Mage, or the combination of the two?

2. To the players suggesting the Planar Shepherd is useless because their Planar Bubble ability can be mimicked by spells, and their Wild Shape is inferior to a Reserves of Strength Shapechange.

3. The reason why Outsider Wild Shape is so good is because it gives you spell-like abilities as well.

1. All and more. For those whom still have yet to read the class the Incantatrix offers the following;

Bonus Feats
4 bonus metamagic feats without a limited list to choose from. You can pick any metamagic feat you like.

Cooperative Metamagic
You can apply any metamagic feat you have to any spell cast by someone else for free. It's based off a skill check. Two levels into this class and you can already Persist the Shepard's self buffs to make him feel important & useful in the world of broken stuff.

Metamatic Effect
Three levels in and you can now apply any metamagic feat you know to any spell after it's cast. Persist & Extend every personal spell you have slots to cast. If possible, Empower & Maximize them too. Hell, consider Widen/Enlarge while you are at it. Consider this, cast Waithstrike/Bite-Of-Blank on your self and share it with your familiar, then apply both Extend & Persistent Spell for free to your familiar's buff. Your pet is now superior to the fighter.

As a secondary effect of Extending/Persisting everything you not only run around buffed all the time but you have more buffs running than anyone else. Say for example casters prep 25% of their spells are personal buffs. Well since yours last two days you change your buffs around each day into one of two sets and even with the same 25% allotment you have 50% of your total number of spell slots in buffs running on any given day after level 3 in this PrC.

Metamagic Spell Trigger
This is the one of the three I won't list as blue (really good) and that is because there are ways to gain this ability outside of this class. Such as a feat, or item, or playing an Artificer. Anyway, any item with charges provided you have the feat required to craft it you can apply your metamagic feats to it. and I do mean anything, like a Healing Belt (MiC) since it has 3 charges per day, for 2 charges you can Empower the healing and 2d8+50% is greater than 3d8. I'm sure the MiC has dozens of items you would love to use this ability with.

Seize Concentration / Snatch Spell
More holy crap abilities. Who wrote this class? Did the enemy spellcaster cast a shaped antimagic field so he maintains all of his buffed uberness and no one else does? Snatch it, it's yours now. Did the Cleric just cast Greater Visage of the Deity? Snatch it, then Persist & Extend it for the lolz and wtfpwn3d. Sick of stealing buffs? No problem, snatch their Summoned Monsters, their animated monsters, their dominated monsters, their Gated monsters, their Ice Assassins, their Vortex of Teeth. It's all fair game.

And by fair game I mean it's like playing chess but each round one of their pieces becomes yours and goes on a rampage in your foe's base killing their doods. Checkmate in four moves? Ha. Make it two, and without using anything you started with.

Instant Metamagic
2/day no cost metamagic ability. Not blue because you have better abilities. Mindful the Recaster, a powerful PrC for changlings, only gets 5/day free maximize or empower so it's still pretty useful, just out shaded by the rest of the abilities.

Improved Metamagic
-1 to all metamagic costs (to a min of +1). Empower Spell? It's +1 in cost. Heighten Spell used 4 times consecutively? It's +3 in cost and Earth Spell in this case makes the effective boost +5.

Focused Study
The boo part, would be red becuase you are giving up an entire school of magic, then you realize you can still Snatch spells from the banned school and apply your metamagic feats to them anyway. Further more since you are Shadowcraft you can ban the Envocation school and just use your shadow spells to mimic it as you do not have to know the mimiced spell. Thats right, the so called downside is completely ignored.

***

2. Shapechange is better than Wild Shape without Reserves of Strength. Wild Shape has it's duration going for ... oh yeah free Persist/Extend by most of the class combinations posted.

3. Turning into a demon/devil or angel and using it's spell-like abilities would be great. Semi-Free abilities are nice. I say semi free since you burn two shapes per day of your maximum of six per form you turn into so really you can only gain three sets of SLAs.

I suppose using Wish will come up a lot. Big deal, most arcane casters (thats normal, no incantarix/scm/etc) can just use Planar Binding to acquire the materials and craft a Simucrum of an Efreeti for 3 free wishes per day a level before the Sheppard can shift into one so what is the big deal anyway? Brag-ability it's your ability thus more effective when you're kidnapped and thrown into a prison cell? Yeah, like you won't get tossed into an antimagic cell to use it. I'll take the pet since he can try to free me.

[Phaenix]

Metamatic Effect
Three levels in and you can now apply any metamagic feat you know to any spell after it's cast. Persist & Extend every personal spell you have slots to cast. If possible, Empower & Maximize them too. Hell, consider Widen/Enlarge while you are at it. Consider this, cast Waithstrike/Bite-Of-Blank on your self and share it with your familiar, then apply both Extend & Persistent Spell for free to your familiar's buff. Your pet is now superior to the fighter.

Metamagic Effect is 3 + INT mod times per day. While enough to have several awesome buffs up at all times (especially with the Extend combo), it's hardly enough for every slot you have. You might also want to keep one or two uses in reserve, in case you want to persist a stolen spell effect later on in the day or something.

That said, this ability is a big part of the reason I voted for the Incantatrix/ScM. Plus Shadow Miracles, or course.

[deuxhero]

Can't the wizard get into master specialist before level 5?

[CantripN]

Metamatic Effect
Three levels in and you can now apply any metamagic feat you know to any spell after it's cast. Persist & Extend every personal spell you have slots to cast. If possible, Empower & Maximize them too. Hell, consider Widen/Enlarge while you are at it. Consider this, cast Waithstrike/Bite-Of-Blank on your self and share it with your familiar, then apply both Extend & Persistent Spell for free to your familiar's buff. Your pet is now superior to the fighter.

Metamagic Effect is 3 + INT mod times per day. While enough to have several awesome buffs up at all times (especially with the Extend combo), it's hardly enough for every slot you have. You might also want to keep one or two uses in reserve, in case you want to persist a stolen spell effect later on in the day or something.

That said, this ability is a big part of the reason I voted for the Incantatrix/ScM. Plus Shadow Miracles, or course.

I know it seems odd, but I never got why people like Incantatrix all that much.
Sure, if your DM allows Persistent Spell, it's a very good way to get that for everything, but if he doesn't (like all my groups), you don't get much beyond a few bonus MM feats, and the ability to take over a VERY limited choice of spells (and mind you, enemies often have a much higher CL than you from my personal experience).
Not only that, but the Spellcraft DC is VERY hard to meet without Divine Insight, Guidance of the Avatar, an Item Familiar or a Custom Spellcraft Item - assuming none of those on your Wizard, which is likely, how is he supposed to meet the ridiculous DC (Moment of Prescience doesn't work for this RAW)? And a Sorcerer simply has no Skill Points nor the INT bonus to do this well, nor many uses per day.

So what am I missing that makes it better than stuff like Escalation Mage, Shadowcraft Mage, War Mage, Mage of the Arcane Order or any other decent full casting PrC?





Currently, my favorite Sorcerer build is based on War Mage and Fiend-Blooded, while my favorite Wizard is an Urban Savant.

[DavidWL]

I know it seems odd, but I never got why people like Incantatrix all that much.
...
So what am I missing that makes it better than stuff like Escalation Mage, Shadowcraft Mage,
War Mage, Mage of the Arcane Order or any other decent full casting PrC?

Well ... even without metamagic effect
1)  Improved Metamagic is great if you are going to play a metamagic specialist (all spells are still, silent, invisible and echoed for free, for example).
2) 4 bonus metamagic feats - more than any other class I can think of.  Twice as many as the Mage of the Arcane Order

So even without persistent, you can make a very powerful metamagic specialist (combine with Halruaan Elder, Practical Metamagic, Arcane Thesis, etc.)

That said, I think Shadowcraft Mage is more powerful (if we exclude persistent spell), but the others weaker.

Best,
David

[CantripN]

You can't look at a class at it's capstone and judge based on that. I look at the whole progression, and it seems that while it's never bad, others are superior until 10th.

[Anklebite]

incantatrix is powerful as hell from level 3 onwards. also, people underestimate the usefulness of the +4 metamagic feats the class gives.

[DavidWL]

Overall, the question of "can we get these abilities other ways" is a great question, but in some sense I have the feeling that the other ways often feel more cheesy than through class features (although if it is "too" powerful, any way is cheesy).  So I'm not sure how to handle the discussion of planar bubble or shapechange, etc.

Shadowcraft Mage
Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10/Shadowcraft Mage 5
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=365.msg7177#msg7177

Shadowcraft Mage

• Single Spell Dependent, allowing incredible use of arcane thesis and residual metamagic - could cast 30+ 9th level spells a day
• Shadow miracles and summons
• Very good other class features - miss chance from shadowcraft mage

.
Incantatrix

• Free Still, silent, invsible spells
• Metamagic Effect / Persistent Goodness

.
Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil
Wizard 5/Incantatrix 8/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 7

I think the Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is overrated.  By that time, you have lots of immediate-action ways of responding to threats, so giving you the ability to do it a few times a day just isn't that uber.  AND you have to "waste" a few feats to get in!

While incantatrix is great, this is a mediocre incantatrix build, and is strictly worse than the shadowcraft mage.

I propose we replace this with a metamagic specialist + circle master:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=365.msg7187#msg7187

(Note - replace Metaphysical Spell Shaper with additional levels of sorcerer ... either of the two builds)
.
Planar Shepherd
Druid 5/Planar Shepherd 10/X 5

• When this came out, it was so obviously broken, that I just ignored it.  This is not in it's favor
• Fast Time trait or powerful outsiders with Miracle, etc.

.
Dwoemerkeeper
Cleric 5/Dweomerkeeper 10/X 5
.

• I think this has been underrated - supernatural spell is great
• Good arcane access (miracle + anyspell)
• Cast in antimagic and dead magic

.
Chameleon
Cleric 3/Wizard 1/Swordsage 1/Chameleon 10/X 5
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=365.msg225054#msg225054

• I like this archetype, but it does require a lot of cheese, which is not in it's favor
• Full access to any spell
• We can squeeze in supernatural miracles, giving us a lot of the dweomerkeeper goodness
• Initiate of Mystra for casting in antimagic and dead magic zones

Best,
David

[DavidWL]

Part of the problem is that it doesn't seem clear to me how to compare:

• cast miracle as a supernatural spell
• cast in dead magic zone
• metamagic mastery (repeat, twinned greater arcane fusion)
• persistent spell powers

It depends on the situation to determine which is best.

Best,
David

[SorO_Lost]

Metamatic EffectThree levels in and you can now apply any metamagic feat you know to any spell after it's cast. Persist & Extend every personal spell you have slots to cast.

Metamagic Effect is 3 + INT mod times per day.

There is some vitality in that statement.

34 int means 15 times a day you can apply Persist to an Extended buff to make it last 48 hours so on a given day you can have 30 buffs of your 40 base spell slots. Close but not quite is it? Well what is a day? Is it when the sun goes down and comes back up? What if your plane has no sun? Rule wise any time the wizard naps for 8 hours they reset their daily spells.
The buffs last 48 hours.
At the end of every odd day cast, nap, cast, nap again, cast. 45 applications, or more than your base spell slots. What about even days? What about places that don't care about days like cities, dungeons, wilderness and other planes?

I went with a 25% thus 50% of your total spell slots example for better accuracy in the next paragraph but it just doesn't sound as cool enough by it's self.

[Solo]

I've always viewed "day" as "24 hour period", relative to the caster.

[SorO_Lost]

I've never hard ruled it to have any tangible delay though multiple restings like that would draw my attention.

Everyday the wizard preps at 6am, the same time the cleric must pray for his or her spells. One day the party is ambushed at 6:14am, prompting the wizard to start the preparation process at 6:20am. On all following days he is forced to wait that extra 20 minutes until he can forgo an entire day to reset back at 6am if 24 hours was required while the Cleric whom is supposed to pray at certain times is completely screwed over unless his deity is lenient.

So what if you set days to 23 hours to allow some changes in turn around? Planeshift to created plane, buff, rest, buff, rest, buff. Still have an hour left on those extended/persisted buffs. Might as well not even care if it's 23 hours or 8.

So where is the line drawn on what is day?
It isn't dependent on time, too problematic & exacting in a world that uses dripping water to measure time.
It isn't based on when the sun sets as some planes have more than one (heck dragonlance has 3 and they run in different cycles) or none at all.
It is probably based on game balance and here, on these forums, in a thread about the most powerful game braking class combinations, who cares about balance?

[Endarire]

"Day" is often viewed as "rest period;" thus, a Barbarian's rage is renewed when he sleeps for 8 huours.

[cru]

you can apply Persist to an Extended buff to make it last 48 hours

If you persist an extended buff, you increase its duration to 24h.
You need to extend a persistent buff to get 48h.