D&D 3E/3.5 D&D 3.5 Warlock dual caster build

[Ischtan]

Hi,

currently I want to build a character for a campaign which probably starts at level 8. One premise is that he follows an evil deity (and probably itself will be evil). I thought a bit and realized that I always wanted to play a Warlock, so I came up with the idea of a Warlock dual caster build as follows:

Race: Illumian
Classes: Cleric 1, Warlock 2, Mystic Theurge 2, Eldritch Disciple 10, Mystic Theurge 5

To enter early the Mystic Theurge I wanted to use Divine Magician and the Feat Improved Power Sigil (Krau). This would lead to Warlock invocations and Eldritch blast as a Warlock 19 and Spells as a Cleric 18, both with CL 10 due to Krau power sigil. Is this build possible according to RAW? Would there be a better finish than Mystic Theurge 10? In general I want the character to be fun to play, not necessarily the most powerful.

For feats I was thinking to take Extend Spell, Persist Spell and Divine Metamagic(Persist), but that is 3 feats. Persisting 2 spells would need 10 uses of Rebuke Undead, which would maybe lead to take Extra Turning as the next feat. Also this build is dependant on Wisdom for divine spell DC and Charisma for Warlock DC. Other ideas or feat chains you would suggest?
The Base attack at level 8 woould only be +4, but as attacks are all touch it should not be a big problem, and later with divine power even less so. Fort Save would be fine, Will Save incredible, and Reflex Save not noteworthy.

An alternative build I was thinking of is (same race and initial feats)
Classes: Favoured Soul 1, Warlock 1, Dread Necromancer 1, Mystic Theurge 2, Divine Disciple 10, Mystic Theurge 5

I would loose 1 Warlock Level and Favoured Soul Spells come 1 Level later, but both would still be at CL 20. And Favoured Soul has more spells overall and more Charisma synergy. (Also I would not need to think about which spells to memorize, which speeds up gameplay at the table). In general A Sorcerer/Warlock Eldritch Theurge Build would also be interesting. Would it be possible to enter Mystic Theurge at Level 4 when taking the Domain access variant from CC?

For invocations and Cleric Spells I was generally thinking about the following at the first levels:

Least Invocations:
See the unseen
Dark one's own luck (only when focus is on charisma, otherwise maybe Frightful Blast or Baleful Utterance)
Eldritch Glaive

Lesser Invocations:
Beshadowed Blast
Fless the Scene
Voracious Dispelling

Cleric Spells 1st:
Divine Favor
Nightshield
Shield of Faith

Cleric Spells 2nd:
Resist Energy
Cloud of knives (should have a nice synergy with Eldritch Spellweave)

Cleric Spells 3rd:
Knight's Move (to enable Eldritch Glaive)
Magic Vestment

Cleric Spells 4th:
Divine Power
Consumptive Field
Freedom of Movement

Any suggestion for Divine Magician Spells. I was thinking about:
1st: Shield or Identify
2nd: Curse of Impending Blades or Ghoul Glyph or False Life
3rd: Curse of Impending Blades, Mass or Analyze Portal or Mind Poison or Vampiric Touch
4th: Ray Deflection or Enervation or Doom Scarabs

Sources can be all Core, non-setting specific or Forgotten Realms books.
Looking forward to your suggestions.

 

[Grogg of the North]

A warlock's invocations are not spells so you cannot enter into Mystic Theurge.

There is, however, a PrC in Complete Mage(?) that will let you stack Cleric and Warlock levels. It's called Eldritch Disciple, I think.

 

[Ischtan]

Thanks for your answer Grogg of the North.
I think I wrote to much text and thus it is unclear what I really wanted, so here listed the questions I have:

1. Is Illumian Cleric 1 (with Divine Magician alternate class feature from CM), Warlock 2 and the Feat Improved Power Sigil (Krau) a valid entry for Mystic Theurge?2. If the first question is answered positive, would there be a better finish for the last 5 levels than mystic theurge (Build is: Claric 2, Warlock 1, Mystic Theurge 2 (advancing Cleric and Warlock), Eldritch Disciple 10, X 5)?
3. Is the Divine Metamagic (Persist) Route a good idea for this build?
4. Which spells to take for Divine Magician?
5. Do you think Dread Necromancer 1, Favoured Soul 1, Warlock 1 would be a better entry?Thanks!

 

[Grogg of the North]

1) I don't think Divine Magician would let you qualify for Mystic Theurge. Yes, you can get wizard spells on your spell list but it's all still divine magic. Warlock definitely does not. Further, Improved Power Sigil (Krau), from my reading, functions like Heighten Spell. Heighten Spell does not get you the ability to cast second level arcane or divine spells. Your DM may differ but I would definitely not allow it.

2) Not applicable given my answer to #1 but I'm a fan of simplicity. Cleric X / Warlock Y / Eldritch Disciple 10.

3) DMM(Persist) can be awesome. IF you have the turning attempts. Ask your DM on their opinion of Nightsticks and specifically point out that you want to use them as a battery for DMM. You'll need Extend Spell but Planning Domain gives you that. Warlock gives you a ton of 24 hour buffs.

4) Well ... what's the theme you're going for your character? His deity? Personality?

5) Are you trying to use IPS(Krau) again to get into Mystic Theurge?

 

[Ischtan]

Hey Grogg of the North. Thanks for your swift reply.

1) I don't think Divine Magician would let you qualify for Mystic Theurge. Yes, you can get wizard spells on your spell list but it's all still divine magic.

You have a good point here.

Warlock definitely does not. Further, Improved Power Sigil (Krau), from my reading, functions like Heighten Spell. Heighten Spell does not get you the ability to cast second level arcane or divine spells. Your DM may differ but I would definitely not allow it.

Here I am not so sure how the rules as written define this case. (That I as a DM also would think twice to allow it is another story)

2) Not applicable given my answer to #1 but I'm a fan of simplicity. Cleric X / Warlock Y / Eldritch Disciple 10.

I was a fan of simplicity for a long while, too. I now made two character with a mixture of classes and alternate class features to support the concept of the character better from rules perspective and both characters were not overpowered and were a lot of fun to play. For this concept the power level will probably be higher, depending on spell selection and how I will play him. In the end the power level just needs to fit to the group.

3) DMM(Persist) can be awesome. IF you have the turning attempts. Ask your DM on their opinion of Nightsticks and specifically point out that you want to use them as a battery for DMM. You'll need Extend Spell but Planning Domain gives you that. Warlock gives you a ton of 24 hour buffs.

I myself am not a fan of the nightstick trick, but thanks for the input.

4) Well ... what's the theme you're going for your character? His deity? Personality?

Character will follow Bane (from the forgotten realms) or one of his associates before the time of troubles. Or if I decide him to be not that religious, than at least he should have some ties to the zhentarim or zhentilar.
For the background story I will think about something later. May be a fallen Aasimar, who's beloved were murdered and his friends/church did not interfere or just someone who from birth took a dark path.
In a nutshell: The character will be someone evil to the core, following a doctrine or fear and tyranny, as these can be easily used to build a network of "helpful" servants and informants. He will not kill anybody just that easily, but only if there are reasons to do so (if not, fear can maybe convince that anybody to be more helpful). He does not pursuit personal power, but power for his organisation/church.
The group is currently lacking any arcane support. Initially I was thinking about playing a Dread Necromancer, but decided that a) undead minions just slow down the combat phase and I do not want to take so much time compared to the other players (and it is a large group: I think we are 6) and b) playing a Dread Necromancer without undead minions is only half the fun.

5) Are you trying to use IPS(Krau) again to get into Mystic Theurge?

This was the idea, yes.

When thinking about the reasons I started this thread. I would like the character to have as much warlock progression as possible, with only some support of another spellcasting class to give some versatility (as the warlock has at will powers, but not that many of them). And to not loose Warlock levels I was thinking about an early entry to the Mystic Theurge to advance to Eldritch Disciple. But in general any Eldritch Disciple/Theurge build with almsot full invocation progression would be fine. For the caster class I would prefer any spontaneous caster to keep the daily preparation of spells simple. E.g. if something like Sorcerer 1/Warlock 4/ Eldritch Theurge 10/ Warlock 5 would be possible.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Grogg's steering you in the right direction. The 3.5Ed Martial Arcanist link in my sig might help you, but I personally never got too much into the 3.5Ed version of the Warlock.

Still...I might be able to help a bit more with some more understanding of the character's personality & backstory, etc. For instance, there might be some Reserve Metamagic feats or alternative versions of base classes I can point to that might help you out.

 

[Ischtan]

It took some time (and I had not much of it the last days), but here are some more information about my ideas regarding the background story:
The still not named character grew up with his family, consisting of his parents and a younger brother. He always was a loner, as the other children found him weird (reason yet to decide: maybe some heritage, visual feature or strange behavior).
So he started to search the company of animals to play with. One day he found out that with his touch he can induce pain in these creatures and he discovered the satisfaction it gave him to torture these creatures.
But after a while this was not enough to him, so he decided to kill one of the poor animals which made him feel really powerful. His parents already started to worry about their son, as they uncovered his doings, but could not stop him from continuing on his wronged path.
The pain and death of animals then soon also was not enough, so he tried to kill one of the neighbor boys. Luckily his actions were detected soon enough and the boy survived, but he will be marked for life (maybe let the DM decide, may be a nice hookup).
Eventually his parents decided to send him away to a monastery (deity yet open), where the priests discovered both his cruel nature and his dabbling in the arcane arts. So they decided to assign a mentor and teacher to him to guide and steer him in a right direction. This went well for a long while and his mentor also accomplished to reduce the drive of violence of him. Until one day he stole a scroll from a library and managed to summon a hell hound, which wreaked havoc in the monastery and killed one aspirant. After a trial he was exiled from the monastery.
Now, educated from the many hours of study, he found out, that he can delight himself by producing fear in other beings instead of pain. And with the power of fear, he can control human beings to some extent. Especially inducing hate or envy in one human being to made him take malicious actions against other humans seems to be great fun. With this “gift” he disturbed the peaceful life of the small town of “yet to be named” until he became bored and decided to travel further.
He still has contact to his brother, who share a deep connection (although his brother never became that violent).

In the end when writing the background story I remembered the movie “needful things”, as you may notice.

Regarding the character based on the rules, here some thoughts I made:
Sorcerer 1/ Warlock 4/Eldritch Theurge 10/Warlock 5 (or some other nicely themed Warlock prestige class, like Hellfire Warlock or Fiend Blooded, …)

As I probably will start at level 8, it would be Sorcerer 1/ Warlock 4/Eldritch Theurge 3.
To be able to enter Eldritch Theurge with just one sorcerer level, at first level I would take the feat Precocious Apprentice (I know it is a bit cheesy, but should function according to RAW and as I will end with only 5th level sorcerer spells should not be powerful).
As 3rd level feat I thought of Ability Focus(Eldritch Blast) and at 6th level Practiced Spellcaster for Sorcerer. Further feats I thought about are Evil Blessing (Elder Evils), Mortalbane (Book of Vile Darkness),

Invocations as 7th level Warlock:
Least invocations I was thinking about ( I can select 3):
Beguiling Influence (fitting to the concept described above)
Frightful Blast (fitting to the concept described above)
Dark One's own Luck (as the Fortitude Save of the character probably will be bad)
See the unseen (always useful, alternative: Race with Darkvision and See invisibility as Sorcerer Spell)

Lesser Invcations (I can select 1):
Flee the Scene (good utility, maybe with Quicken Spell-like ability later)
Beshadowed Blast
Relentless Dispelling or Voracious Dispelling (can relentless dispelling be used to counter a spell?)
Fell Flight (also good utility)

Spells known as 4th level Sorcerer:
Options I thought about for 1st level (3 Spells known):
Shield or Shieldbearer (Spell Compendium)
Wall of Smoke (Spell Compendium)
Shock and Awe (Spell Compendium)
Identify

Options I thought about for 2nd level (1 Spell known):
Cloud of knives (PH2, should work well with Eldritch Spellwaeve)
Sadism (Book of vile darkness – fits nice to the concept)
Snowball Swarm (Spell Compendium – to have an area spell to use with Spellblast)
Belker Claws (Spell Compendium)
Vision of Entropy (Fiendish Codex – fits nice to the concept)

Also I would like to trade the familiar for an alternative class feature, as by concept a familiar does not fit. But I did not find any worthy substitute for the familiar.

Any ideas for the story or the built? And thanks for reading that long post