Still working on this Fochlucan Lyrist build

[Jeffrie]

This is about my third try at this. Please comment on anything and everything.
The goal here is for me to have fun building a character I will probably never get to play, but I’ve always wanted to. This is nearly my all time favorite character concept; an adventurer who could go alone many places and be ok, often because he isn’t fighting. He makes his destiny by his wits, and that includes being both careful, and detached. His goal is to be advisor to multiple powers, usually undercover of multiple identities.



On the list of what I hope to accomplish:
High skill points, particularly in social skills. Bardic Knowledge is a must. The ability to combine BK with Divination is a shortcut to treasure.


Disguise of all sorts, and of course the non detection to go with it.


Wizard at 17th lvl caster, Divination –Domain I think.


Cleric at 15th lvl caster, or close as possible. Perhaps Trickery and Oracle Domains. I thought about Druid here. I would still consider it if advised, but the character concept is not really summon monsters and slug it out in front of the castle.


Ability to use spontaneous casting for quite a few spells, but lose as little access as possible to the spell lists.


Of course, this is exactly the kind of thought that the Lyrist is designed for. Yes I’ve read several Lyrist Handbooks, Druid Handbooks, and Theurge Handbooks. I’m getting fairly close, but would like help editing the character before I invest work in dead ends.


My philosophy about Character Optimization; CO is fun, and folks are going to do it. I read someone say that the easiest way to balance was to allow everything by RAW, but limit the wizards to spells from just the core books and one other. Of course a few things are broken. I believe that the persist spell, as well as the factotum inspiration font, are broken, I just limit those with ‘x per y’ formulas and they work.
Anyway, I try to always have a RAW or a reference, but I don’t want to make the post too cluttered with notes that might not be used.



Here are the last few builds I’ve looked at, loosely in order of preference.


Rouge2/Cloistered Cleric1/Wizard2/Mystic Theurge4/PARAGNOSTIC APOSTLE1/Fochlucan Lyrist 10
PRO; 17th lvl caster Wizard, 15th lvl caster Cleric, 4 domains, Bardic Knowledge 13th lvl, Bardic Music 10th lvl, 0 Prerequisite Feats
CON; Loses Heavy Armor, Less Skills than hoped for.


Rouge2/Bard1/Wizard2/Mystic Theurge5 / Fochlucan Lyrist 10
PRO; 17th lvl Wizard, 16th lvl Bard, etc, 0 Prerequisite Feats
CON; Lots of overlap with Wizard/Bard lists even though Zone of Silence and Modify Memory rock.


Bard1/Cleric1/Wizard3/Mystic Theurge4/ Initiate of Draconic Mysteries1/ Fochlucan Lyrist 10
PRO; 17th lvl Wizard, 15th lvl Cleric, 11th Bard, Full Plate Casting,
CON; IoDM needs 3 Feats: Alertness, Improved Unarmed Strike, Power Attack


Bard1/Cleric1/Wizard1/Mystic Theurge5/SpellDancer2/ Fochlucan Lyrist 10
PRO; 17th lvl Wizard AND Cleric
CON; SD is a 3.0 class, needs 4 Feats: Combat Casting, Endurance, Mobility, and Dodge.


HUMAN MIDDLE-AGED, TRUE NEUTRAL, 32 POINT (I want to go half elf, but the extra feat is so tempting).


All, or most, of these builds depend on the Bardic Tutelage regional background giving Druidic as a language; the assumption that “identical” means identical in the case of lore/bardic knowledge, and a Cust Serv ruling saying ‘a heightened spell level counts as a heightened spell level’. [FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ask/20080603a[/FONT]. Though these are a little loose, at least they all have a cost. I do not think a ring of evasion, or torturing a druid, are acceptable paths to the build.
My next step is to actually count the Prereq’s for skills. Able Learner should take care of it, though I haven’t actually counted them out. Did I hear someone say they have an xcel base character builder?


Comments are more than welcome. To come are choices (mostly researched already) on skills, skill tricks, feats, and alterative class features or substitution levels.

 

[Jeffrie]

Hmmm, several views and not one comment? Is my work so good? or just that bad? or is it just that boring? I guess many folks have already played with these builds and are chuckling to themselves.

Just jokin', . . . . .

I am going to wait a short while to make the decision of which build to flesh out, but if you have advice or chat about them i'm listening.

Here's a real question: Do you think one more level of divine spells is worth the cost of 4 feats?

In the meantime i am counting sklll points.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Rouge2/Bard1/Wizard2/Mystic Theurge5 / Fochlucan Lyrist 10
PRO; 17th lvl Wizard, 16th lvl Bard, etc, 0 Prerequisite Feats
CON; Lots of overlap with Wizard/Bard lists even though Zone of Silence and Modify Memory rock.

You can just prepare different spells as a Wizard. Perhaps even specialize and ban enchantment and some other school, since bard has it covered for you. I am confused though...is there some sort of Divine caster class in there? Mystic Theurge advances one arcane class and one divine. It can't advance bard and wizard, as it appears to me you have it doing. Look into Ultimate Magus (C.Mage) to do that. Another thing, possibly cheesy... Look at the Sublime Chord prestige class, which I think is in C.Arcane, maybe C.Adventurer. it gives you quickened bard spell progression, so a bard can obtain eventually level 9 spells even. The real kicker, though, is apparently by RAW, you do not have to stay in the prestige class to retain the fast spell progression, just take any class that advances bard spellcasting. So you could dip into Sublime Chord, go Fochluryan Lyriscist 10, and fill up the rest of levels with Ultimate Magus (and I guess 2 for rogue is sort of required...) and end up with very high level spells for both bard and wizard.

Also don't forget the Practiced Spellcaster feat. Won't get you more spells per day or faster access to the next spell level, but up to +4 CL for all spell parameters is still helpful when you're multiclassing that much.

 

[Jeffrie]

True that to take that build a divine trick would be needed. Divine Bard The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org

Is that jim carey in your profile picture?

Sublime chord looks and sounds great, and fits well with the character concept, but upon rereading i see it takes 13 ranks in arcana and listen, so cant be entered until 10th level.

Hey, can you qualify for a prereq skill at the same level as you gain it? IOW, could you upon attaining 10th level and possibly having just gained 13 ranks (10+3) then take Sublime Chord as your 10th level class?
My guess is the answer is yes?

My read of the SC is that it would increase caster levels, not class levels, and therefore not spell progressions. So i can only see it reducing the spell levels available to the second class. It would certainly increase the potency of the class applied to. Speaking of feats. I think my next post my note my list of potentials.

 

[Persiflage]

Sublime chord looks and sounds great, and fits well with the character concept, but upon rereading i see it takes 13 ranks in arcana and listen, so cant be entered until 10th level.

Hey, can you qualify for a prereq skill at the same level as you gain it? IOW, could you upon attaining 10th level and possibly having just gained 13 ranks (10+3) then take Sublime Chord as your 10th level class?
My guess is the answer is yes?

My group house-rules differently, but the rules say:

Unlike the basic classes, characters must meet requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. The rules for level advancement apply to this system, meaning the first step of advancement is always choosing a class. If a character does not meet the Requirements for a prestige class before that first step, that character cannot take the first level of that prestige class.

So, you guessed incorrectly I'm afraid

My read of the SC is that it would increase caster levels, not class levels, and therefore not spell progressions. So i can only see it reducing the spell levels available to the second class.

Er... yes. But that's why StreamOfTheSky's suggestion was to take ONE level of Sublime Chord in order to pick up the advanced Bard progression on the spontaneous side and then go Ultimate Magus in order to advance the prepared-casting AND spontaneous casting. Not to mention gaining insane caster levels in the process. Yes, you'll lose some spells-per-day progression in one or the other class but it's still highly cheeseworthy