Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Yes, yes, I know, I've been very, very delayed in putting these up. But we're getting the ball rolling again! I am kind of jumping the gun a bit here because we don't have as big a buffer as I'd like, but I've held off too long as it is.
As usual for the showcase, these builds are intended to spur discussion and perhaps inspire a few people in the spirit of the old CO boards. They come from members of my gaming group - me, Radical Taoist, DisposableHero_, Andarious, Sionnis, and Seishi - and I'll always identify who wrote the build at the start, so do not assume I'm the guy behind all of them (because I'm not!).
Unless otherwise noted, showcase builds use 28 point-buy, and have their snapshots evaluated using fractional base attack / saves (because it simplifies the math). None of them actually rely on fractional to be built, though. The format I use showcases their progression at key levels rather than just presenting the build and showing off a few tricks at level 20; most of these are capable of being played 1-20 if you so choose.
With that out of the way, let's get started. This week, we’re taking a slight twist on an older idea, and presenting one of my own.
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WAND OVERDRIVE
Say Hello to my little friend.
Required Books: Eberron campaign setting, Sharn: City of Towers, Complete Scoundrel, Weapons of Legacy, Complete Arcane, Tome of Magic, and whatever source you want for spells. (The three Compendiums each provide useful things here.) Additionally, reading the handbook for wand users and crafters can provide some insight (although your abilities alter what spells make for good wands).
Unearthed Arcana used: None.
Background: The Legacy Trickster stunt is well-known in the context of the Hellfire Warlock (thank you, Tsuyoshikentsu, for finding this).
If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s a summary.
[sblock]The Hellfire Warlock has an ability that deals bonus damage based on its class level, but is only three levels long (likely for balance reasons). The Legacy Champion and Uncanny Trickster prestige classes include the ability to advance the effective level of another class, meaning you can raise your Hellfire Warlock level above 3 and bring somewhat more to the table than you’d normally expect. The basic structure involves [Base Class 7] / [Prestige Class 3] / UT 3 / LC 7, shuffled around as prerequisites come online. [/sblock]You’ve already seen something of this sort used in the showcase – the theoretical Gun Fu build adapted it to “bootstrap” up initiator level faster than usual.
There’s another prestige class that has the same properties that made the Hellfire + Legacy Trickster combination so appealing, but never got a lot of attention. The Cannith Wand Adept (Sharn, City of Towers) is three levels long and adds its class level to the caster level and DC of any wand he uses, and has a few wand-specific abilities as well. This is on top of the few other typical “wand master” abilities, which can already make wands more desirable in combat. This “overdrive” is an attempt to use the Legacy Trickster stunt to see how far open that specific ability can go before it snaps.
A note on power levels: We’re entering Cannith Wand Adept using the natural entry class, Artificer, which is on its own a fair sight stronger than the Cannith Wand Adept. Furthermore, none of the classes involved here actually advance caster level. This is a far ways down in power from a straight artificer as a result, but the goal here wasn’t raw power so much as seeing how much mileage we could get out of a wand.
Also: The build is more or less “complete” at level 12. Everything after that just attempts to kick it into overdrive with Legacy Trickster. If you don’t like that specific stunt, stop the build at 12; it’s completely serviceable there. Continue on as a straight-up artificer and you’ll be fine. It’s a pretty standard wand-based artificer up to that point; the new trick here is adding in a small extra DC boost and kicking the whole thing into overdrive rather than viewing it as a slight delay on your usual artificer.
The Basics
Skill Notes: Besides the obvious maxing out of Use Magic Device, there’s a bit of finesse required here. Qualifying for Uncanny Trickster using only artificer and wand adept levels is actually kind of painful because very few of the published skill tricks require artificer class skills. We have to grab a few superfluous tricks as a result. Specifically, I grabbed Collector of Stories, Magical Appraisal, Clever Improviser, and Swift Concentration, along with all of their prerequisites. I was able to max out Spellcraft, Search, Disable Device, and Knowledge: Arcana while still having enough points left over to qualify for other Trickster skill tricks.
On a related note, you need 5 ranks in Knowledge: History to become a legacy champion, and that’s a cross-class skill for everything else. Thankfully we’ve got a lot of skill points to play with.
Basic Equipment: This really doesn’t matter one iota beyond your bandolier or belt. Armor yourself as you need for an artificer and carry the backup crossbow most noncombatants carry. A masterwork UMD tool as early as possible would be a great investment, though you’ll replace it with magic gear eventually.
Also, I’d suggest tying some twine or chains or similar to your wrists. Cannith Wand Adepts can quickdraw wands, but like the feat, they have to drop the wand instead of quick-sheathing it. By giving yourself, essentially, a keychain, this’ll be less of a problem while you’re juggling your assorted wands. (If you want to be a real stickler for this, you’ll tie the strings to your bandolier or belt, as your quickdraw ability specifically refers retrieving wands from those places rather than dangling from your wrists. Basically you just want to be able to juggle wands without too much of a hassle.)
Magical Gear Goals: Wands up the yin-yang. You will be burning through the wooden sticks like wildfire. Anything that facilitates their use (such as a belt of many pockets, Spare Hand, and so on) is a good call as well. A basic +UMD item, advanced as big you see necessary, is also a wise investment, especially once you master the Spell Storing Item infusion. You can make pretty much anything you need on your own (Wands can’t store spells above 4th level, and you can create items of up to CL 11), so staple gear won’t be hard to get.
There is one magic item that deserves special mention here: The Rod of Many Wands (Complete Mage). I’ll discuss it below, once you’ve seen what the build can do.
You will need a legacy item as well, but it doesn’t have to progress beyond a Least Legacy (this can keep the legacy penalties from growing too significant). Special note on this: since wands take effect at their own CL, legacy items that penalize your CL won’t have as much of an impact on you as they would on a normal caster. On the flipside, artificers aren’t actual spellcasters and, as far as I can tell, you can’t “cheat” a legacy wielder requirement with UMD, so very few of the published items will work for you and you’ll probably have to design your own. There is a handbook out there for doing exactly this(x); there’s a more recent version which is offline at the moment.
The Build.
Build Stub: Artificer 9 / Uncanny Trickster 3 / Cannith Wand Adept 3 / Legacy Champion 5.
1 – Artificer – (Artificer knowledge, artisan bonus, disable trap, item creation) (Scribe Scroll, Favored in House Cannith, Bind Vestige)
*
[sblock] At low levels, with just the feat’s abilities open to you, your vestige of choice is probably Amon (for darkvision; vision is one of the few human drawbacks) or Naberius (grab a few trained-only skills outside your training, including Knowledge skills – ostensibly Speak Language is also selectable, but that’s not the trick here). You’re otherwise a pretty standard artificer at this level and will play as such for a while.[/sblock]
2 – Artificer – (Brew Potion)
3 – Artificer – (Craft Wondrous Item, Practiced Binder) *
[sblock] You’ve got access to advanced abilities now, but only on low-level vestiges. Naberius’ is perhaps the best, although Diplomacy and Bluff remain cross-class for you. Aym, usually a poor choice, can get you cheap fire resistance at levels when you might have to start worrying about it.
If you’d like, you can instead take Improved Bind Vestige here and delay Practiced Binder to 12. If you do, a pact with Malphas can get you poison use (use it as a way to buff the rest of your team; you’re expected to have a Craft skill and it may as well be Poisonmaking or Alchemy), while Focalor can get you a general-purpose short-range debuff aura (remember that using a wand does not provoke an AoO).
You kind of need all three feats before the reason behind the pact magic approach becomes clear, so for right now you’re relying on what Artificer provides you to normally.
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4 – Artificer – (Craft Homunculus, Heighten Spell)
5 – Artificer – (Retain Essence, Craft Arms and Armor)
6 – Artificer – (Twin Spell)
7 – Artificer – (Metamagic Spell Trigger, Craft Wand) *
[sblock] (EBCS errata: Metamagic Spell Trigger should be at level 7, not 6 - a rare case where both text and table are incorrect.)
This is one of your key abilities. It’s basically like a version of Divine Metamagic that costs GP. Critically, you seem to be able to use multiple metamagic feats with it at once, and it does not cap out at 9th level. This means at level 7 you can pick up a wand and burn through 5+(9-the spell’s level) charges in one shot to cast it twice with a significant DC bump (1st level: DC 20; 2nd level: DC 22; 3rd level, DC 24; 4th level: DC 26). For the record, the average saving throw mods for monsters at this CR are +9/+7/+6.
I’m rather cheesed off that Craft Wand is a bonus feat at level 7 when it only requires CL 5 to take normally. We held off on it because the artificer’s fixed bonus feats can’t be rotated, even though this kind of messes with the timing because Craft Wand is a prerequisite for several other good feats. If you can convince your DM to rotate when Craft Wand and Craft Arms/Armor come online, you can grab Reckless Wand Wielder at 6, and shuffling the order when you get your metamagics.
[/sblock]
8 – Artificer – (Quicken Spell) *
[sblock] Even faster wand use now – you can fire off a single spell four times in one round (or two of one and two of another, if you’re holding two wands).[/sblock]
9 – Artificer – (Wand Mastery, Craft Rod) *
[sblock] Seriously, this thing’s CL 9 requirement (missing both the 6th level feat slot and the 8th level bonus feat slot) screws with the timing nearly as much as the delayed Craft Wand bonus feat… But that doesn’t stop it being awesome for a wand user. It boosts your wand DCs and CL – the first of several such abilities to do so, and it does it without extra cost.[/sblock]
10 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Identify Wand, Wand Focus) *
[sblock]If I don’t speak about a Wand Adept ability, it probably does exactly what you think it does.
I talked about this above, but it bears repeating: Wand Focus is your other heavy lifting ability. It gives you a slight bonus on wand attack rolls, and – much more importantly – it further raises your wand caster levels and DCs by an amount equal to your wand adept class level. That number normally caps at 3; we’re going to make it much higher.
[/sblock]
11 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Wand Quick Draw, Dual Wand Use) *
[sblock] “Two wands? That is pretty pimp.”
Keith Baker at one point said that this ability was supposed to make a huge splash, but a similar ability showed up as a feat in Complete Arcane (the books were released in the same month – apparently development teams don’t coordinate with each other all that much). Thankfully, the wand adept’s version is better (it doesn’t require Two-Weapon Fighting, and, by extension, 15+ Dexterity), if slightly more expensive charge-wise. By burning 1d4 charges per wand instead of the usual 1, you can trigger two wands as a single full-round action. Add in Metamagic Spell Trigger and you can tack on Twin or Heighten to that without too much trouble. Due to the action cost you can’t add Quicken to dual wands, but you can lead or follow up a dual trigger by Quickening either one of the wands you’re holding (and possibly also twinning or heightening it), or using your Wand Quick Draw ability to switch to a third wand and quickening that. Six spells per round at level 10 isn’t too shabby.
Interestingly, there’s a side effect to this. The ability lets you trigger the wands as a full-round action, overriding the usual time it takes to use a wand (typically a standard action; the RC makes it clear that it’s a swift or immediate action if you’re using a swift or immediate action spell though). This looks like a drawback – until you notice you can pack wands with spells that take more than one full-round action to cast. A trivial example is using a single full-round action to fire off two Summon Monster wands (normally a 1-round casting time each), before considering your metamagic.
There’s also one other thing here. Following that RC ruling, if you’ve got an immediate-action wand in your hand, you can use it as an immediate action. You’ve got Wand Quick Draw, which means after you’re done with your dual-wield, drop the wands you’re using (see the keychain note above) and Quick Draw a pair of immediate-action wands of your own. You can switch back to combat wands as a free action at the start of your next turn.
[/sblock]
12 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Improved Dragonmark, Siphon Charge) (Least Dragonmark (Making), Improved Bind Vestige) *
[sblock] Finally, we see why we’re dabbling in pact magic at all: you switch your pact over to Karsus at this point. You want him for his Heavy Magic ability, which adds 2 to the DC of any effect from a magic item you use. For those keeping track at home, this means your wands get +7 to their DC and +5 to their CL, which makes them pretty potent even before you tack on your Metamagic Spell Triggers or your ability to use two at once.
It’s also a trivially minor effect at this point, but Karsus’ other ability (essentially an always-on Detect Magic) links up well with Magical Appraisal and Identify Wand. (It does have a slight backfire effect – powerful magic within 30 feet will automatically Dazzle you. This isn’t very significant, but at the later levels your own gear might trip this!) Be advised that Karsus will not answer a binder’s summons if his seal is within the effect of an active spell. These drawbacks probably won’t be an issue, but shouldn’t be forgotten either, particularly if your team favors heavy buffing / Persistent Spell.
[/sblock]
13 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick)
14 – Legacy Champion – (Reduced Lesser, Bond of Lore) *
[sblock] We go UT1/LC1 to give the LC the biggest possible skill list. LC has a slightly better combat chassis than the UT, so we’re going to advance it first. Use the time to build up skill ranks as a prerequisite for whatever skill tricks you want – your skill list is a lot bigger now.
Like the last time I used the legacy champion on a showcase, I’m going to omit bonus legacy feats from the build discussion. Which you pick is largely up to your choice of legacy item, and you can easily use one of your own design here. (If you do, know that you don’t actually need to advance it beyond the Least Legacy for the build to work, which can help mitigate the penalties from legacy items.)
[/sblock]
15 – Legacy Champion – (Replace Least) (Reckless Wand Wielder) *
[sblock] This drains charges slightly faster than usual, but it boosts up your wands’ caster levels by another 2.[/sblock]
16 – Legacy Champion – (Extra Least)
17 – Legacy Champion – (Bonus Legacy Feat)
18 – Legacy Champion – (Replace Lesser) (Repeat Spell) *
[sblock] Yep. That just happened. Twin Repeat Dual Wands (with Reckless and Heighten tacked on for good measure) followed by a Quickened Twin Repeat Wand can let you unload a rather prodigious number of spells in a rather short span of time. Add in some measure of getting extra actions (and there’s a lot of them – Celerity will fit in a wand, for instance, and Repeat Spell helps mitigate its drawback) and factor in Wand Quick Draw for an even faster rate of fire. [/sblock]
19 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick)
20 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick, Uncanny Luck)
Snapshot: You’re actually mostly ability-score independent as I mentioned. The only +6 booster item you need is to your Constitution, which’ll raise your expected HP to 180 (not all that hot, even for a caster, but if you want, you can shuffle level-up points and tomes to Constitution to get it higher). Since you trigger your things with UMD, we’ll also give a cheap +5 UMD item, although realistically you’ll want a bigger one. With no other magic items or buffs, you’re at Base Attack +15, saves of +11/+8/+13, and a respectable amount of skills (all those listed above, plus 80 extra skill points to distribute as you see fit among a pretty broad list as a Legacy Trickster). You also have item creation (up to CL 11) and artificer infusions at CL 9 (up to 4th level infusions – 5/4/4/3 slots per day), which can give you a decent amount of backup versatility; if you boost that CL using equipment, Power Surge becomes useful. The real winner on the infusion list is Spell Storing Item, which actually creates a wand on the spot (up to 4th level, with a DC 32 UMD check – your UMD mod is +32; you can’t fail this.). It’s only got one charge (without Power Surge), so you can’t overload it like other wands, but you still get its passive benefits, and since you can hasten your infusions with Action Points, this can really save your bacon if you’re caught with your pants down and surrounded by mixed metaphors.\
But, of course, the real selling point is your wands. You get +13 to the DC of any wand you use, and +11 to its CL, simply by holding it. You can burn an extra charge from the wand to raise that up to +13 CL if you need to hit a breakpoint or breach SR. You can also burn extra charges to apply Heighten (up to +9-the spell’s level extra charges), Twin (+4 charges), Quicken (+4 charges), and Repeat (+3 charges) to any of the spells in those wands, in any combination. You can also dual-wield wands, firing two off with one full-round action by burning 1d4 charges instead of the initial 1. Although this gets pricey, it also makes wands much more effective, to the point where you’ll select different sorts of spells than usual for them. You can also create wands of any spell that’ll fit into a wand (CL 9 is enough to fit them in), using your CL boost to get it to the higher levels, or you can buy higher-CL wands on the open market and use your boosts to get somewhat ludicrous.
The final saving throws you get for this, using store-bought wands (minimum CL), depending on how much you heighten, are: 1st level wand, DC 24-32, CL 12-14; 2nd level wand, DC 24-33, CL 14-16; 3rd level wand, DC 25-33, CL 16-18; 4th level wand, DC 27-34, CL 18-20. You can craft wands with higher base CLs if you want (getting them up to CL 24 when you use them). DC 34 is respectable but not amazing against a good saving throw (+23/+19/+16 average at CR 20), but that’s on its own: you can throw out up to six of these at once, and follow it up next round with another six at no action cost to you (sustaining one spell every half-second without resorting to extra-action magic); even if you’re sticking to saving-throw-based spells, that’s a difficult spell barrage to evade.
Aside on the Rod of Many Wands:
[sblock] The Rod of Many Wands is a surprisingly badass item tucked away in Complete Mage. It’s a rod that is loaded with up to three wands of your choice. A single command word (spoken as a full round action instead of the usual standard action) triggers the rod, after which the three wands activate all at once as if you had triggered them. This drains charges from the wands – the more wands loaded, the greater the charge cost.
You’ll notice this basically “buys” you the Cannith Wand Adept’s dual wand use ability, of a sort, except you can go up to three wands. And since the wands trigger as if you had triggered them, it’s likely that your passive wand-based abilities – Wand Mastery, Wand Focus, and Karsus: Heavy Magic – still apply to the wands you use. However, it’s questionable if your active abilities, particularly Metamagic Spell Trigger and Dual Wand Use (and to a lesser extent Reckless Wand Wielder), can be used in conjunction with the rod since the rod itself is not a spell trigger device, but it is activating spell trigger devices as if you had activated them.
This is something to check with your DM. It looks, to me, like you definitely get Wand Focus, Wand Mastery, and Karsus’ Heavy Magic, and you very likely can press for Metamagic Spell Trigger and Reckless Wand Wielder as well. However, the different actions required to activate the rod, and the fact that it itself isn’t a wand, means that Dual Wand Use is likely out of the question (so you can’t dual-wield rods – or hex-wield wands, if you prefer). Similarly, Wand Quick Draw is right out. However, there’s also a very real case that the DM simply says “no, none of them will work, because it’s its own command-word item and it’s doing the activation, not you”.
Fear not, it’s useful in both interpretations (and most combinations of those interpretations).
Under the interpretation that I think seems like a fair, but lenient, one, you can keep the rod in hand as a shotgun of sorts. Toss in cheap wands that do most of their lifting from your +CL effect, and use it to open up with three magic effects all at once instead of your usual two (it’ll be slightly more efficient at this job but you won’t be able to pick what they are on the spot since you’ll need to start with it loaded, and you won’t be able to metamagic them). Then drop the rod (free action) and juggle between your other wands as you see fit (possibly twin/repeat/quickening them on the same round).
Under the conservative interpretation, fear not: it still serves a use. Under this interpretation, the rod is a command word item, and the wands appear to trigger even if the user is not able to trigger them normally (i.e. a wizard using a rod with a bard-exclusive, ranger-exclusive, and assassin-exclusive wand can still get the spells to trigger simply by using a command word, and without making a UMD check). In addition, you’ve got the ability to create homunculi. Take note that the Expeditious Messenger homunculus in the Eberron Campaign Setting, unlike all other homunculi, can actually speak. By building one of these guys and passing him a fully-loaded rod of many wands, you basically build a flying spell cannon, or a magical turret (I prefer the ShMUP term “option”, but now I’m showing my age.). This guy will work like the common UMD raven familiar, but without the actual need for Use Magic Device ranks (although he can get those too - it’s just a more complex and expensive process), and armed with an analogue to your Dual Wand Use ability. Crafting a basic expeditious messenger, the rod, and (for instance) three CL 9 1st-level wands will cost you 25,275gp, which can get pricey, but it’s still cheaper than buying the empty rod on its own at the market, and it’ll help you if you want to pull off a Macross Magic Missile Massacre.
[/sblock]
Overall Strengths: Extremely powerful wand use, limited only by the number of charges you’re carrying with you. With powerful boosts to their CL and DC, and a metamagic cap broken wide open, you can adjust your wand selection to the situation and bring a pretty respectable amount of spell output to the table with almost as much flexibility as a wizard. You also carry all the basic item creation feats and Retain Essence, which can help fund this arsenal, and enough of a CL to hit all the spells that could go into a wand to begin with. (Remember to look for lower-level versions of each spell you want(x) in order to really save on your prices; the Trapsmith list is amazing here.)
Overall Weaknesses: I won’t lie – this is expensive, particularly if you look into the homunculus “options” or use all of your abilities every round (you can actually burn through about 40 charges from a single wand in one round if you use a 1st level wand in both the dual-wield attack and the quickened followup!). You will probably run short of gold pretty quickly unless you resort to economy-breaking measures (for instance, using Astral Projection to duplicate your gear and using the duplicates’ charges instead of your normal charges). Your HP are also on the low side, but this can be shored up by boosting Constitution via level-up pumps. It’s not like your ability scores are doing much else in the endgame – which is also one of the drawbacks of the build, since you can’t add your ability score to wand DCs the way you do to staves (and staves don’t benefit from your wand-specific class features, although they do still benefit from Metamagic Spell Trigger and from Karsus’ Heavy Magic abilities, so you’re no slouch with them!). Although this saves you quite a lot in booster/tome costs, it also means your wands probably cap out around DC 34 (for max-heightening a 4th level wand), which is acceptable but not all that amazing (although you do unload six of them at once, and can include save-hosing spells or no-save spells in your arsenal just as easily). Finally, it’s a minor note, but if you fail Karsus’ DC 25 binding check at the start of the day (check modifier +7), you’re subject to his influence – specifically, he forces you to use Bluff or Intimidate whenever you’d want to use Diplomacy. If you built those spare skill points to serve as a face, this might be tricky (although you may just as easily have boosted Bluff for the deceptive skill tricks anyway, or gone all silent wallflower and let someone else do the talking).
Variants: The obvious variant juggles which metamagic feats you have available – Chain, Persistent, Fell Drain, and others are all on the table here. The three I picked are examples that can be applied to a pretty wide range of spells and contributed to the action advantage effect; if you want to specialize in a specific spell type (or even a specific spell) you can focus the feats on that choice and/or invest in metamagic cost reducers for charge efficiency. You can also rotate the metamagic feats out for specific support feats, such as Extraordinary Spell Aim if you’re focusing on area wands, Extraordinary Artisan and/or Magical Artisan to make your wand crafting more efficient, or an action-point feat (probably either Heroic Spirit or Action Surge) for general badassery.
Special note here goes to Wand Surge, which allows you to spend an action point instead of a wand charge; this is usually combined with a wand of Unfettered Heroism (Races of Eberron; provides you one temporary action point every round for its duration – you don’t even need to persist it if you use Wand Surge to keep casting it. It even lasts a little longer if a human casts it!). I left it out of the build because the AP only counts toward one charge and you’re draining many more than that, but no wand build would be complete without mentioning this feat as an option, at least in passing. (If nothing else, it allows for dramatically increased use of Spell Storing Item.)
There you have it. It looks like you can stretch your wands to the point where they bring a respectable amount of power to the table, albeit at a high gold cost. Lock and load, and go all Chow Yun Fat with spells.
Next up: RT has a couple of his ready to go (more or less), so we'll have you choose between the [RT] Abominable Throwman and [RT] God Hand. I think this time we're only going to list builds that we've completed the writeups for, which'll make it easier to keep the pressure going on our end without simultaneously killing ourselves with an update schedule.
In the meantime, I'm interested in seeing if anyone's got some really good finds for spell selections that can be fit into this chassis....
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
Tempest is mobile, so he can't correct it quite yet, but [RT] Monkey Do is not actually on this week's voting list (we haven't got that one written up yet). We do have a build of mine called the [RT] God Hand that's written up and ready to go, and that's what Tempest meant to write there. He'll fix that shortly. (Hopefully he'll remember to link my Kung Fu Witchcraft thread in his sig while he's at it.
)
Originally posted by triumphanthero:
So, question: Would it be possible to qualify for Shadowcraft with this, and if so would the level 3 ability apply to the wands?
I'll vote Abominable Throwman.
Originally posted by EruditeApe:
Does "God Hand" involve Shining Finger?
I guess I'm gonna vote for God Hand.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
Two questions:
Since when does Quicken Spell on a wand allow you to exceed the limit of one swift action/spell per round? (and immediate doing the same on the following round).
Second, aren't Twin and Repeat SPell +4 level modifiers?
I was actually the one who pointed out Reckless Wand Wielder to Keith Baker on the Eberron boards back then, I believe...
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by draco1119:
God Hand. And thanks for the Macross reference!
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Triumphant: no, it can't qualify, but shadow illusions will work on wands. You can use Residual Metamagic to trigger a shadowcraft effect on a standard shadow mage.
Ael: you're not getting an extra swift. You're full-round is dual wand (twin/heighten/repeat), then quickdraw (free) and swift to speed up a wand (with quicken and twin/heighten/repeat). And I recall them being +3.
Draco: needs a better effect than just magic missile, but nothing I know beats that for a missile massacre. Though if Manyjaws is wand -friendly....
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Twin and Quicken are both +4, Repeat is +3 and really awkward to use in a combat that doesn't involve a really effective lockdown or bottleneck.
Originally posted by draco1119:
Here's an odd question: how well could this adapt to psionics, and are there phenomenal cosmic powers that would make a dorje user inherently better?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Edited in: I did mis-price Twin. It's +4.
Repeat is the worst of the feats here, but included nonetheless - repeat, for instance, works with summon wands provided the original minion moved out of the way. (Twin will not work with summon wands.) As I said earlier, shuffling which metamagic feats you pick is a perfectly viable way of doing this, and I was picking ones that were effective in absentia of context.
Draco: Nothing that specifically refers to wands will also work with dorjes, so you can't switch this over easily. Dorjes have only two advantages over wands in this case: they're slightly tougher, and they aren't limited to 4th level powers to begin with (perhaps to allow for augmented lower-level powers the way wands allow for higher-CL spells). I'm AFB at the moment but as I recall even the psionic artificer doesn't allow multiple metapsionics at once (i.e. psionic focus prevents it from breaking the way metamagic does).
Originally posted by draco1119:
Well... Damn. That could have been fun.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
I was wondering why you just didn't use Admixture or Born of the Three Thunders, which also double the damage, without the targetting problems of Repeat (which has to have the same target as the previous spell).
Note that if you don't want to burn the extra charges of dual wielding, you can just Quicken one wand, and you'll still get off two shots. There's no need to quick draw a new one. You're just triggering the same one twice. I was scratching my head wondering why you were drawing a new wand...
What would you call the effect with Twinned Admixtured Scorching Rays? 12 Rays per shot, 3 sets of shots = 36 beams of fire stabbing out...
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I love this build, in the realm of theory though could you use bloodlines to boost this even higher?
Also my no buff time gish build I was excited to see is gone... Oh well guess ill have to build my own and see how close it gets to yours
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
In the sense that such a finger could be what you're raising at your opponent, yes.
Bloodlines should indeed do what you think they would, which means another +3 to want adept and fatter bonuses on wand use.
And you're right, we let the 0 Buff Time Gish fall to the wayside. I'll look for the start of a writeup we had and get it out there.
EDIT: And Tempest, your sig is still referencing Monkey Do, and lacking Kung Fu Witchcraft(x)
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Mostly because you can make Twin and Repeat work on spells that do more than deal energy damage. damage, but you can't really do the same with Admixture or Born of Three Thunders. Cheap core examples - twin/repeat Stinking Cloud or Black Tentacles.
Of course, they still work with energy damage as well, so if you want to lock, load, and play evoker, you can without swapping out your feats. And if you want to specialize in them, you can switch 'em out too.
The reasoning was so that you dual-wield wand A and wand B as your full-round, then use quickdraw and your swift to quicken wand C, in effect getting three different spells out per round (possibly six separate spell effects with twin). Then, if you really want, you can quickdraw wands D and E, which are immediate-action effects that you can trigger before your next turn if you want, and if you don't need to, nothing stops you from starting your next turn by switching back to A and B.
Admixture doesn't add an extra set of rays, it doubles the damage on the rays that do fire. Scorching Ray caps out at three 4d6 rays natively, so a twinned admixed scorching ray would shoot off six 8d6 rays. The problem with this is the build only has room for three metamagic feats, and Admixture requires Substitution - thus, you can't add Quicken to the mix. You could still dual-wield them though, getting 12*8d6 per round if you wanted. (336 average damage, assuming no spell resistance or energy resistance/vulnerability exploits.)
That said, I think this is deadlier if used with area effects that do more than damage, and with spells that take longer than a standard action to cast normally.
RT: You're right on bloodlines; that'd also increase your effective artificer level (so you can infuse up to CL 12 and craft at up to CL 14) on top of the +3 DC/CL from Wand Focus. And I've corrected my signature.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
I really wish that you didn't have to weaken yourself for the builds trick. Is there another entry class besides Artificer that you can use for this build?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I wouldn't say this is terribly weakening yourself - if your initial goal is not Tier One, then playing straight Artificer would give you too much power.
That said, you could probably do it with other spellcasters - and, curiously, you might be able to do it with Binder as well (substituting a full Karsus pact instead of the three feats), provided you can acquire Craft Wand somehow (perhaps via any spellcaster level 1 + Practiced Spellcaster). The drawback here is that you'd need the Metamagic Spell Trigger feat from Complete Mage, which is worse than the artificer's ability since it doesn't break the metamagic cap open. I think you can also do something similar using Warlock, but that probably takes too many warlock levels to truly overclock the same way this works.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
For me, it's mostly an issue of elegance. Weakening yourself (even if it's not that much) to do the trick rubs me the wrong way. It's the same reason I prefer suel archamanach into Master Transmogrifist instead of sorcerer into Master Transmogrifist.
Cleric would probably be the best dip for Practiced Spellcaster. Binders better skill list would also make entering into UT much easier.
Do you think the Binder variant of the build would stack up well against a straight Binder?
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Cloistered Cleric if you're going for a Dip will be better yet.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Probably better, provided you're not using the online vestiges. I'm not sure about how an online-vestige binder would work with the wand overdrive trick.
On second thought, though, you can't do it with just PSC - Wand Mastery itself requires caster level 9, as well as Craft Wand (which requires CL 5). So you'd need to ender with a caster class of some sort, and the only wand-friendly caster class I know of that won't suck royally with just 5 levels + Practiced Spellcaster is Warlock (since people expect different things from them).
Originally posted by skynir:
I'd like to vote for God hand.
I want to see a build that can dragon kick its enemies into the milky way.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Warlock 6 would probably be better for the extra invocation. Would the extra 3 levels be used for Legacy Champion?
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
Someone got the reference, and it hasn't even been posted yet!
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
I vote for God Hand.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I'd really like to put my vote in for the throw man, that sounds so cool also tempest assuming the wand chamber works like a magical "shotgun" what spells would you suggest going in there?
Originally posted by skynir:
I've enjoyed the weekly optimization showcase since I stumbled upon the wizsassin. I've even ran the feral druid against my party when I was dming.
I'm sure I speak for many forum lurkers when I say that I'm overjoyed to see this new post and hope for more exciting builds.
As far as god hand goes its without question my favorite beat em up game of all time. Not every video game can get away with replacing character developement with punching and plot with karate
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Okay, I wanna know, how'd the Feral Druid fare against a party? What was the ECL to EL and how many guys were fighting how many guys? Details, you can't just make a post like that without DETAILS!
Originally posted by Lashius:
I second this. That build was one of my favorites.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I must insist that you post details aswell, especially because I was planning to run it against my party I'm dming and I feel its an attractive choice, thanks to tempest, rt, andarious and all other contributers I have run one build they did against my part (heavy crusader) and have used these builds if I need a powerful character on the fly. I have also had great success with eat sleep gank causing massive havoc for the pcs.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'd love to hear details too.
You and DisposableHero both. ESG started off as a recurring villain in his game.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
Yeah I read the intro to eat sleep gank and how he used it and was quite pleased since I ran it at ecl 10 against ecl 6 just to sxare them. Esg ended up eliminating the parties soulbow and severly crippled the cleric before delivering his message to the pcs and leaving, now they are terrified on nightwatch of being "ganked" again. He was able to crank out enough damage to wholly eliminate the sb I one round if I recall. the cleric survived but just with 6 hps to spare. This severly slowed their progress against the bbeg which means he was well worth the hiring fee
Originally posted by skynir:
Ok when I get home tonight ill look over my notes and post how the party did.
They eventually took him down but it was a bloodbath
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
fire: what about the crusader? An optimized NPC is a significant speed bump for PCs; an optmized crusader NPC is a brick wall. I'd like to hear how that went.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
The crusader was actually meant to be an npc they shouldnt have fought, so i made him ecl 12 since they party face (the cleric) and the crusader worshipped different gods and it degenerated first into a screaming match then into a battle. The Crusader dominated the cleric in the name of his god with no effort but made sure to deal non lethal, but essentially dropped the cleric in a single blow. He then was attempted to be jumped by our party tank (a shifter whose taking WTM (with the uber bear abilities) and warshaper enchanced with the feral template for flavour and power) who got in one attack before the Crusader almost dropped him too with another strike, i beleive the first strike was the one which dumps con and the second was a stone dragon, i cant recall off the top of my head :/. The final party member high taled it away to get help. THis was actually a classic story of Roleplaying gone wrong, they were later going to ally themselves with the order the crusader was a part of but there is now more tension then i intially had planned for. The Crusader i dont beleive took a single point of damage or if he did it was a miniscule amount. Id like to bring him back for some actualy play testing though, since i really like the idea. In a couple of weeks im actually running them up against a hexblade debuffer (much like Tempest's character you posted) and a version of the A-game paladin but im mixing in 2 crusader levels. This will give them quite a test since they have never really encountered a debuffer before and i think they will like the idea of number games. These builds have been of immense help to me as a DM actually since i can usually whip one up on the fly if the unexpected happens, thats how the Heavy crusader got brought into the game in the frist place.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'll post mor commentary when I'm not dodging my advisor, but if you want to crank this into overdrive, Paladin of Tyranny 3-4 is the way to go. Delays your hexblade curses a bit, but is less dependent on the Mike Mearls modifications to be useful, has amazing Charisma synergy, and gets even more of a debuff aura on top of the curse, Focalor, Imperious Command, and Dark Companion. If you're giving up on higher-level hexblade abilities (including the DC on its curse - your debuffs often provide enough of an edge here), you can even go further with actual Binder levels instead of binding feats; Chupoclops is a pretty good pact to begin with and has a better debuff aura than Focalor. (PalTyr4 also gets you Turn Undead, which can be used to fuel extra uses of Death Devotion. Negative levels are nasty - and doubly so if the save to resist them is being hosed by countless debuff effects.)
The character I posted actually has, for novelty reasons, a strong familiar emphasis (Improved Familiar plus the three familiar-boosting buff spells, coming online at level 12), and in time develops more darkness/fear/nightmare powers. You might want to focus on other areas for your debuffer.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
Yeah I was thinking about adding more binder the paladin of tyranny totally slipped my mind but will be a great addition to the further debuffs, this is actually beneficial due to have a positive bonus on to damage to hit (although I'm considering dragonfire inspiration) and have negatives to the enemies' stats. I was just for giggles thinking about addint a blaster to make it an even 3 on 3 fight (maybe ill go with the nuker and just post a play by play)
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Recently found a cool little feat-Wand Bonding (from City of Stormreach). Only available to Warforged that can cast arcane spells or infusions spontaneously, but by picking up a wand, allows you to expend one of your spell slots to cast the spell in the wand without expending any of the wand's charges.
Not sure how it would impact the build but I thought I'd throw it out here.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
It wouldn't change the build at all, because the build centers on the Cannith Wand Adept, which requires either Least Dragonmark (Making) or Favored in House (Cannith), both of which are human-only feats. Likewise, feats like that are hard to apply when you're gulping down charges - that's the same reason Wand Surge isn't on the feat roster (but I did mention it as noteworthy - it's actually better than Wand Bonding if you have access to the Unfettered Heroism spell in a wand).
I didn't realize that Wand Bonding existed - good find. There is, however, a similar feat in Lost Empires of Faerun called Channel Charge. It's not racially restricted and works with staffs as well, but requires 4th-level spell slots (i.e. not infusions), and works from a Use Magic Device check (of a respectable DC). The main reason why that feat is noteworthy is because it allows you to bypass costly material components or XP components on your wands (you still spend them when you create the wand, but if you plan on casting the spell a lot (i.e. Create Magic Tattoo, Animate Dead) or if you find a wand that would be expensive to recharge, the spell slot is "free" by comparison). The same can be said for Wand Surge + Unfettered Heroism, though, which works out better since once you start the ball off (by casting Unfettered Heroism from a spell slot, scroll, wand charge, or AP) it really is unlimited over time. (The one drawback to Wand Surge is that action points have a 1/round limit, with the only exception being the "I'm not dying" option, while Channel Charge at least does not. Thus, you could trigger multiple wands - swift and standard, say - with Channel Charge, but only one with Wand Surge.)
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Technically you can start as a Warforged and take Wand Bonding, then reincarnate as a human and take the dragonmark feats.
The rest of your reasons still apply though
Originally posted by piggyknowles:
Doesn't work, unfortunately. Reincarnate can't apply to constructs. Also, per the article on reincarnation in Eberron, if you start out with a dragonmark, you keep it when you reincarnate (even if you reincarnate into a totally different race), but there's nothing to imply that an orc who reincarnated into a human could then gain a human-only dragonmark. (As dragonmarks are passed on by blood, I would doubt it.)
Originally posted by draco1119:
What about a human becoming a Warforged?
Yes, yes, I know, I've been very, very delayed in putting these up. But we're getting the ball rolling again! I am kind of jumping the gun a bit here because we don't have as big a buffer as I'd like, but I've held off too long as it is.
As usual for the showcase, these builds are intended to spur discussion and perhaps inspire a few people in the spirit of the old CO boards. They come from members of my gaming group - me, Radical Taoist, DisposableHero_, Andarious, Sionnis, and Seishi - and I'll always identify who wrote the build at the start, so do not assume I'm the guy behind all of them (because I'm not!).
Unless otherwise noted, showcase builds use 28 point-buy, and have their snapshots evaluated using fractional base attack / saves (because it simplifies the math). None of them actually rely on fractional to be built, though. The format I use showcases their progression at key levels rather than just presenting the build and showing off a few tricks at level 20; most of these are capable of being played 1-20 if you so choose.
With that out of the way, let's get started. This week, we’re taking a slight twist on an older idea, and presenting one of my own.
------------------
WAND OVERDRIVE
Say Hello to my little friend.
Required Books: Eberron campaign setting, Sharn: City of Towers, Complete Scoundrel, Weapons of Legacy, Complete Arcane, Tome of Magic, and whatever source you want for spells. (The three Compendiums each provide useful things here.) Additionally, reading the handbook for wand users and crafters can provide some insight (although your abilities alter what spells make for good wands).
Unearthed Arcana used: None.
Background: The Legacy Trickster stunt is well-known in the context of the Hellfire Warlock (thank you, Tsuyoshikentsu, for finding this).
If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s a summary.
[sblock]The Hellfire Warlock has an ability that deals bonus damage based on its class level, but is only three levels long (likely for balance reasons). The Legacy Champion and Uncanny Trickster prestige classes include the ability to advance the effective level of another class, meaning you can raise your Hellfire Warlock level above 3 and bring somewhat more to the table than you’d normally expect. The basic structure involves [Base Class 7] / [Prestige Class 3] / UT 3 / LC 7, shuffled around as prerequisites come online. [/sblock]You’ve already seen something of this sort used in the showcase – the theoretical Gun Fu build adapted it to “bootstrap” up initiator level faster than usual.
There’s another prestige class that has the same properties that made the Hellfire + Legacy Trickster combination so appealing, but never got a lot of attention. The Cannith Wand Adept (Sharn, City of Towers) is three levels long and adds its class level to the caster level and DC of any wand he uses, and has a few wand-specific abilities as well. This is on top of the few other typical “wand master” abilities, which can already make wands more desirable in combat. This “overdrive” is an attempt to use the Legacy Trickster stunt to see how far open that specific ability can go before it snaps.
A note on power levels: We’re entering Cannith Wand Adept using the natural entry class, Artificer, which is on its own a fair sight stronger than the Cannith Wand Adept. Furthermore, none of the classes involved here actually advance caster level. This is a far ways down in power from a straight artificer as a result, but the goal here wasn’t raw power so much as seeing how much mileage we could get out of a wand.
Also: The build is more or less “complete” at level 12. Everything after that just attempts to kick it into overdrive with Legacy Trickster. If you don’t like that specific stunt, stop the build at 12; it’s completely serviceable there. Continue on as a straight-up artificer and you’ll be fine. It’s a pretty standard wand-based artificer up to that point; the new trick here is adding in a small extra DC boost and kicking the whole thing into overdrive rather than viewing it as a slight delay on your usual artificer.
The Basics
- Race: Human. “Cannith” is a human family and you can’t get the requirements without belonging to it.
- Ability Scores: Oddly, this doesn’t matter quite so much, since virtually everything you do is almost ability-score-independent, particularly at the endgame. Charisma and Intelligence still matter, especially early on, so we’re going with 8/10/14/16/9/14 to start. Increases don’t need to go anywhere in particular though. (For snapshotting, I’ve assumed they go to Intelligence: you’ll get better infusions and more skill points, which are pretty much all your own ability scores provide.)
Skill Notes: Besides the obvious maxing out of Use Magic Device, there’s a bit of finesse required here. Qualifying for Uncanny Trickster using only artificer and wand adept levels is actually kind of painful because very few of the published skill tricks require artificer class skills. We have to grab a few superfluous tricks as a result. Specifically, I grabbed Collector of Stories, Magical Appraisal, Clever Improviser, and Swift Concentration, along with all of their prerequisites. I was able to max out Spellcraft, Search, Disable Device, and Knowledge: Arcana while still having enough points left over to qualify for other Trickster skill tricks.
On a related note, you need 5 ranks in Knowledge: History to become a legacy champion, and that’s a cross-class skill for everything else. Thankfully we’ve got a lot of skill points to play with.
Basic Equipment: This really doesn’t matter one iota beyond your bandolier or belt. Armor yourself as you need for an artificer and carry the backup crossbow most noncombatants carry. A masterwork UMD tool as early as possible would be a great investment, though you’ll replace it with magic gear eventually.
Also, I’d suggest tying some twine or chains or similar to your wrists. Cannith Wand Adepts can quickdraw wands, but like the feat, they have to drop the wand instead of quick-sheathing it. By giving yourself, essentially, a keychain, this’ll be less of a problem while you’re juggling your assorted wands. (If you want to be a real stickler for this, you’ll tie the strings to your bandolier or belt, as your quickdraw ability specifically refers retrieving wands from those places rather than dangling from your wrists. Basically you just want to be able to juggle wands without too much of a hassle.)
Magical Gear Goals: Wands up the yin-yang. You will be burning through the wooden sticks like wildfire. Anything that facilitates their use (such as a belt of many pockets, Spare Hand, and so on) is a good call as well. A basic +UMD item, advanced as big you see necessary, is also a wise investment, especially once you master the Spell Storing Item infusion. You can make pretty much anything you need on your own (Wands can’t store spells above 4th level, and you can create items of up to CL 11), so staple gear won’t be hard to get.
There is one magic item that deserves special mention here: The Rod of Many Wands (Complete Mage). I’ll discuss it below, once you’ve seen what the build can do.
You will need a legacy item as well, but it doesn’t have to progress beyond a Least Legacy (this can keep the legacy penalties from growing too significant). Special note on this: since wands take effect at their own CL, legacy items that penalize your CL won’t have as much of an impact on you as they would on a normal caster. On the flipside, artificers aren’t actual spellcasters and, as far as I can tell, you can’t “cheat” a legacy wielder requirement with UMD, so very few of the published items will work for you and you’ll probably have to design your own. There is a handbook out there for doing exactly this(x); there’s a more recent version which is offline at the moment.
The Build.
Build Stub: Artificer 9 / Uncanny Trickster 3 / Cannith Wand Adept 3 / Legacy Champion 5.
1 – Artificer – (Artificer knowledge, artisan bonus, disable trap, item creation) (Scribe Scroll, Favored in House Cannith, Bind Vestige)
*
[sblock] At low levels, with just the feat’s abilities open to you, your vestige of choice is probably Amon (for darkvision; vision is one of the few human drawbacks) or Naberius (grab a few trained-only skills outside your training, including Knowledge skills – ostensibly Speak Language is also selectable, but that’s not the trick here). You’re otherwise a pretty standard artificer at this level and will play as such for a while.[/sblock]
2 – Artificer – (Brew Potion)
3 – Artificer – (Craft Wondrous Item, Practiced Binder) *
[sblock] You’ve got access to advanced abilities now, but only on low-level vestiges. Naberius’ is perhaps the best, although Diplomacy and Bluff remain cross-class for you. Aym, usually a poor choice, can get you cheap fire resistance at levels when you might have to start worrying about it.
If you’d like, you can instead take Improved Bind Vestige here and delay Practiced Binder to 12. If you do, a pact with Malphas can get you poison use (use it as a way to buff the rest of your team; you’re expected to have a Craft skill and it may as well be Poisonmaking or Alchemy), while Focalor can get you a general-purpose short-range debuff aura (remember that using a wand does not provoke an AoO).
You kind of need all three feats before the reason behind the pact magic approach becomes clear, so for right now you’re relying on what Artificer provides you to normally.
[/sblock]
4 – Artificer – (Craft Homunculus, Heighten Spell)
5 – Artificer – (Retain Essence, Craft Arms and Armor)
6 – Artificer – (Twin Spell)
7 – Artificer – (Metamagic Spell Trigger, Craft Wand) *
[sblock] (EBCS errata: Metamagic Spell Trigger should be at level 7, not 6 - a rare case where both text and table are incorrect.)
This is one of your key abilities. It’s basically like a version of Divine Metamagic that costs GP. Critically, you seem to be able to use multiple metamagic feats with it at once, and it does not cap out at 9th level. This means at level 7 you can pick up a wand and burn through 5+(9-the spell’s level) charges in one shot to cast it twice with a significant DC bump (1st level: DC 20; 2nd level: DC 22; 3rd level, DC 24; 4th level: DC 26). For the record, the average saving throw mods for monsters at this CR are +9/+7/+6.
I’m rather cheesed off that Craft Wand is a bonus feat at level 7 when it only requires CL 5 to take normally. We held off on it because the artificer’s fixed bonus feats can’t be rotated, even though this kind of messes with the timing because Craft Wand is a prerequisite for several other good feats. If you can convince your DM to rotate when Craft Wand and Craft Arms/Armor come online, you can grab Reckless Wand Wielder at 6, and shuffling the order when you get your metamagics.
[/sblock]
8 – Artificer – (Quicken Spell) *
[sblock] Even faster wand use now – you can fire off a single spell four times in one round (or two of one and two of another, if you’re holding two wands).[/sblock]
9 – Artificer – (Wand Mastery, Craft Rod) *
[sblock] Seriously, this thing’s CL 9 requirement (missing both the 6th level feat slot and the 8th level bonus feat slot) screws with the timing nearly as much as the delayed Craft Wand bonus feat… But that doesn’t stop it being awesome for a wand user. It boosts your wand DCs and CL – the first of several such abilities to do so, and it does it without extra cost.[/sblock]
10 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Identify Wand, Wand Focus) *
[sblock]If I don’t speak about a Wand Adept ability, it probably does exactly what you think it does.
I talked about this above, but it bears repeating: Wand Focus is your other heavy lifting ability. It gives you a slight bonus on wand attack rolls, and – much more importantly – it further raises your wand caster levels and DCs by an amount equal to your wand adept class level. That number normally caps at 3; we’re going to make it much higher.
[/sblock]
11 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Wand Quick Draw, Dual Wand Use) *
[sblock] “Two wands? That is pretty pimp.”
Keith Baker at one point said that this ability was supposed to make a huge splash, but a similar ability showed up as a feat in Complete Arcane (the books were released in the same month – apparently development teams don’t coordinate with each other all that much). Thankfully, the wand adept’s version is better (it doesn’t require Two-Weapon Fighting, and, by extension, 15+ Dexterity), if slightly more expensive charge-wise. By burning 1d4 charges per wand instead of the usual 1, you can trigger two wands as a single full-round action. Add in Metamagic Spell Trigger and you can tack on Twin or Heighten to that without too much trouble. Due to the action cost you can’t add Quicken to dual wands, but you can lead or follow up a dual trigger by Quickening either one of the wands you’re holding (and possibly also twinning or heightening it), or using your Wand Quick Draw ability to switch to a third wand and quickening that. Six spells per round at level 10 isn’t too shabby.
Interestingly, there’s a side effect to this. The ability lets you trigger the wands as a full-round action, overriding the usual time it takes to use a wand (typically a standard action; the RC makes it clear that it’s a swift or immediate action if you’re using a swift or immediate action spell though). This looks like a drawback – until you notice you can pack wands with spells that take more than one full-round action to cast. A trivial example is using a single full-round action to fire off two Summon Monster wands (normally a 1-round casting time each), before considering your metamagic.
There’s also one other thing here. Following that RC ruling, if you’ve got an immediate-action wand in your hand, you can use it as an immediate action. You’ve got Wand Quick Draw, which means after you’re done with your dual-wield, drop the wands you’re using (see the keychain note above) and Quick Draw a pair of immediate-action wands of your own. You can switch back to combat wands as a free action at the start of your next turn.
[/sblock]
12 – Cannith Wand Adept – (Improved Dragonmark, Siphon Charge) (Least Dragonmark (Making), Improved Bind Vestige) *
[sblock] Finally, we see why we’re dabbling in pact magic at all: you switch your pact over to Karsus at this point. You want him for his Heavy Magic ability, which adds 2 to the DC of any effect from a magic item you use. For those keeping track at home, this means your wands get +7 to their DC and +5 to their CL, which makes them pretty potent even before you tack on your Metamagic Spell Triggers or your ability to use two at once.
It’s also a trivially minor effect at this point, but Karsus’ other ability (essentially an always-on Detect Magic) links up well with Magical Appraisal and Identify Wand. (It does have a slight backfire effect – powerful magic within 30 feet will automatically Dazzle you. This isn’t very significant, but at the later levels your own gear might trip this!) Be advised that Karsus will not answer a binder’s summons if his seal is within the effect of an active spell. These drawbacks probably won’t be an issue, but shouldn’t be forgotten either, particularly if your team favors heavy buffing / Persistent Spell.
[/sblock]
13 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick)
14 – Legacy Champion – (Reduced Lesser, Bond of Lore) *
[sblock] We go UT1/LC1 to give the LC the biggest possible skill list. LC has a slightly better combat chassis than the UT, so we’re going to advance it first. Use the time to build up skill ranks as a prerequisite for whatever skill tricks you want – your skill list is a lot bigger now.
Like the last time I used the legacy champion on a showcase, I’m going to omit bonus legacy feats from the build discussion. Which you pick is largely up to your choice of legacy item, and you can easily use one of your own design here. (If you do, know that you don’t actually need to advance it beyond the Least Legacy for the build to work, which can help mitigate the penalties from legacy items.)
[/sblock]
15 – Legacy Champion – (Replace Least) (Reckless Wand Wielder) *
[sblock] This drains charges slightly faster than usual, but it boosts up your wands’ caster levels by another 2.[/sblock]
16 – Legacy Champion – (Extra Least)
17 – Legacy Champion – (Bonus Legacy Feat)
18 – Legacy Champion – (Replace Lesser) (Repeat Spell) *
[sblock] Yep. That just happened. Twin Repeat Dual Wands (with Reckless and Heighten tacked on for good measure) followed by a Quickened Twin Repeat Wand can let you unload a rather prodigious number of spells in a rather short span of time. Add in some measure of getting extra actions (and there’s a lot of them – Celerity will fit in a wand, for instance, and Repeat Spell helps mitigate its drawback) and factor in Wand Quick Draw for an even faster rate of fire. [/sblock]
19 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick)
20 – Uncanny Trickster – (Bonus Trick, Favored Trick, Uncanny Luck)
Snapshot: You’re actually mostly ability-score independent as I mentioned. The only +6 booster item you need is to your Constitution, which’ll raise your expected HP to 180 (not all that hot, even for a caster, but if you want, you can shuffle level-up points and tomes to Constitution to get it higher). Since you trigger your things with UMD, we’ll also give a cheap +5 UMD item, although realistically you’ll want a bigger one. With no other magic items or buffs, you’re at Base Attack +15, saves of +11/+8/+13, and a respectable amount of skills (all those listed above, plus 80 extra skill points to distribute as you see fit among a pretty broad list as a Legacy Trickster). You also have item creation (up to CL 11) and artificer infusions at CL 9 (up to 4th level infusions – 5/4/4/3 slots per day), which can give you a decent amount of backup versatility; if you boost that CL using equipment, Power Surge becomes useful. The real winner on the infusion list is Spell Storing Item, which actually creates a wand on the spot (up to 4th level, with a DC 32 UMD check – your UMD mod is +32; you can’t fail this.). It’s only got one charge (without Power Surge), so you can’t overload it like other wands, but you still get its passive benefits, and since you can hasten your infusions with Action Points, this can really save your bacon if you’re caught with your pants down and surrounded by mixed metaphors.\
But, of course, the real selling point is your wands. You get +13 to the DC of any wand you use, and +11 to its CL, simply by holding it. You can burn an extra charge from the wand to raise that up to +13 CL if you need to hit a breakpoint or breach SR. You can also burn extra charges to apply Heighten (up to +9-the spell’s level extra charges), Twin (+4 charges), Quicken (+4 charges), and Repeat (+3 charges) to any of the spells in those wands, in any combination. You can also dual-wield wands, firing two off with one full-round action by burning 1d4 charges instead of the initial 1. Although this gets pricey, it also makes wands much more effective, to the point where you’ll select different sorts of spells than usual for them. You can also create wands of any spell that’ll fit into a wand (CL 9 is enough to fit them in), using your CL boost to get it to the higher levels, or you can buy higher-CL wands on the open market and use your boosts to get somewhat ludicrous.
The final saving throws you get for this, using store-bought wands (minimum CL), depending on how much you heighten, are: 1st level wand, DC 24-32, CL 12-14; 2nd level wand, DC 24-33, CL 14-16; 3rd level wand, DC 25-33, CL 16-18; 4th level wand, DC 27-34, CL 18-20. You can craft wands with higher base CLs if you want (getting them up to CL 24 when you use them). DC 34 is respectable but not amazing against a good saving throw (+23/+19/+16 average at CR 20), but that’s on its own: you can throw out up to six of these at once, and follow it up next round with another six at no action cost to you (sustaining one spell every half-second without resorting to extra-action magic); even if you’re sticking to saving-throw-based spells, that’s a difficult spell barrage to evade.
Aside on the Rod of Many Wands:
[sblock] The Rod of Many Wands is a surprisingly badass item tucked away in Complete Mage. It’s a rod that is loaded with up to three wands of your choice. A single command word (spoken as a full round action instead of the usual standard action) triggers the rod, after which the three wands activate all at once as if you had triggered them. This drains charges from the wands – the more wands loaded, the greater the charge cost.
You’ll notice this basically “buys” you the Cannith Wand Adept’s dual wand use ability, of a sort, except you can go up to three wands. And since the wands trigger as if you had triggered them, it’s likely that your passive wand-based abilities – Wand Mastery, Wand Focus, and Karsus: Heavy Magic – still apply to the wands you use. However, it’s questionable if your active abilities, particularly Metamagic Spell Trigger and Dual Wand Use (and to a lesser extent Reckless Wand Wielder), can be used in conjunction with the rod since the rod itself is not a spell trigger device, but it is activating spell trigger devices as if you had activated them.
This is something to check with your DM. It looks, to me, like you definitely get Wand Focus, Wand Mastery, and Karsus’ Heavy Magic, and you very likely can press for Metamagic Spell Trigger and Reckless Wand Wielder as well. However, the different actions required to activate the rod, and the fact that it itself isn’t a wand, means that Dual Wand Use is likely out of the question (so you can’t dual-wield rods – or hex-wield wands, if you prefer). Similarly, Wand Quick Draw is right out. However, there’s also a very real case that the DM simply says “no, none of them will work, because it’s its own command-word item and it’s doing the activation, not you”.
Fear not, it’s useful in both interpretations (and most combinations of those interpretations).
Under the interpretation that I think seems like a fair, but lenient, one, you can keep the rod in hand as a shotgun of sorts. Toss in cheap wands that do most of their lifting from your +CL effect, and use it to open up with three magic effects all at once instead of your usual two (it’ll be slightly more efficient at this job but you won’t be able to pick what they are on the spot since you’ll need to start with it loaded, and you won’t be able to metamagic them). Then drop the rod (free action) and juggle between your other wands as you see fit (possibly twin/repeat/quickening them on the same round).
Under the conservative interpretation, fear not: it still serves a use. Under this interpretation, the rod is a command word item, and the wands appear to trigger even if the user is not able to trigger them normally (i.e. a wizard using a rod with a bard-exclusive, ranger-exclusive, and assassin-exclusive wand can still get the spells to trigger simply by using a command word, and without making a UMD check). In addition, you’ve got the ability to create homunculi. Take note that the Expeditious Messenger homunculus in the Eberron Campaign Setting, unlike all other homunculi, can actually speak. By building one of these guys and passing him a fully-loaded rod of many wands, you basically build a flying spell cannon, or a magical turret (I prefer the ShMUP term “option”, but now I’m showing my age.). This guy will work like the common UMD raven familiar, but without the actual need for Use Magic Device ranks (although he can get those too - it’s just a more complex and expensive process), and armed with an analogue to your Dual Wand Use ability. Crafting a basic expeditious messenger, the rod, and (for instance) three CL 9 1st-level wands will cost you 25,275gp, which can get pricey, but it’s still cheaper than buying the empty rod on its own at the market, and it’ll help you if you want to pull off a Macross Magic Missile Massacre.
[/sblock]
Overall Strengths: Extremely powerful wand use, limited only by the number of charges you’re carrying with you. With powerful boosts to their CL and DC, and a metamagic cap broken wide open, you can adjust your wand selection to the situation and bring a pretty respectable amount of spell output to the table with almost as much flexibility as a wizard. You also carry all the basic item creation feats and Retain Essence, which can help fund this arsenal, and enough of a CL to hit all the spells that could go into a wand to begin with. (Remember to look for lower-level versions of each spell you want(x) in order to really save on your prices; the Trapsmith list is amazing here.)
Overall Weaknesses: I won’t lie – this is expensive, particularly if you look into the homunculus “options” or use all of your abilities every round (you can actually burn through about 40 charges from a single wand in one round if you use a 1st level wand in both the dual-wield attack and the quickened followup!). You will probably run short of gold pretty quickly unless you resort to economy-breaking measures (for instance, using Astral Projection to duplicate your gear and using the duplicates’ charges instead of your normal charges). Your HP are also on the low side, but this can be shored up by boosting Constitution via level-up pumps. It’s not like your ability scores are doing much else in the endgame – which is also one of the drawbacks of the build, since you can’t add your ability score to wand DCs the way you do to staves (and staves don’t benefit from your wand-specific class features, although they do still benefit from Metamagic Spell Trigger and from Karsus’ Heavy Magic abilities, so you’re no slouch with them!). Although this saves you quite a lot in booster/tome costs, it also means your wands probably cap out around DC 34 (for max-heightening a 4th level wand), which is acceptable but not all that amazing (although you do unload six of them at once, and can include save-hosing spells or no-save spells in your arsenal just as easily). Finally, it’s a minor note, but if you fail Karsus’ DC 25 binding check at the start of the day (check modifier +7), you’re subject to his influence – specifically, he forces you to use Bluff or Intimidate whenever you’d want to use Diplomacy. If you built those spare skill points to serve as a face, this might be tricky (although you may just as easily have boosted Bluff for the deceptive skill tricks anyway, or gone all silent wallflower and let someone else do the talking).
Variants: The obvious variant juggles which metamagic feats you have available – Chain, Persistent, Fell Drain, and others are all on the table here. The three I picked are examples that can be applied to a pretty wide range of spells and contributed to the action advantage effect; if you want to specialize in a specific spell type (or even a specific spell) you can focus the feats on that choice and/or invest in metamagic cost reducers for charge efficiency. You can also rotate the metamagic feats out for specific support feats, such as Extraordinary Spell Aim if you’re focusing on area wands, Extraordinary Artisan and/or Magical Artisan to make your wand crafting more efficient, or an action-point feat (probably either Heroic Spirit or Action Surge) for general badassery.
Special note here goes to Wand Surge, which allows you to spend an action point instead of a wand charge; this is usually combined with a wand of Unfettered Heroism (Races of Eberron; provides you one temporary action point every round for its duration – you don’t even need to persist it if you use Wand Surge to keep casting it. It even lasts a little longer if a human casts it!). I left it out of the build because the AP only counts toward one charge and you’re draining many more than that, but no wand build would be complete without mentioning this feat as an option, at least in passing. (If nothing else, it allows for dramatically increased use of Spell Storing Item.)
There you have it. It looks like you can stretch your wands to the point where they bring a respectable amount of power to the table, albeit at a high gold cost. Lock and load, and go all Chow Yun Fat with spells.
Next up: RT has a couple of his ready to go (more or less), so we'll have you choose between the [RT] Abominable Throwman and [RT] God Hand. I think this time we're only going to list builds that we've completed the writeups for, which'll make it easier to keep the pressure going on our end without simultaneously killing ourselves with an update schedule.
In the meantime, I'm interested in seeing if anyone's got some really good finds for spell selections that can be fit into this chassis....
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
Tempest is mobile, so he can't correct it quite yet, but [RT] Monkey Do is not actually on this week's voting list (we haven't got that one written up yet). We do have a build of mine called the [RT] God Hand that's written up and ready to go, and that's what Tempest meant to write there. He'll fix that shortly. (Hopefully he'll remember to link my Kung Fu Witchcraft thread in his sig while he's at it.
)Originally posted by triumphanthero:
So, question: Would it be possible to qualify for Shadowcraft with this, and if so would the level 3 ability apply to the wands?
I'll vote Abominable Throwman.
Originally posted by EruditeApe:
Does "God Hand" involve Shining Finger?
I guess I'm gonna vote for God Hand.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
Two questions:
Since when does Quicken Spell on a wand allow you to exceed the limit of one swift action/spell per round? (and immediate doing the same on the following round).
Second, aren't Twin and Repeat SPell +4 level modifiers?
I was actually the one who pointed out Reckless Wand Wielder to Keith Baker on the Eberron boards back then, I believe...
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by draco1119:
God Hand. And thanks for the Macross reference!
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Triumphant: no, it can't qualify, but shadow illusions will work on wands. You can use Residual Metamagic to trigger a shadowcraft effect on a standard shadow mage.
Ael: you're not getting an extra swift. You're full-round is dual wand (twin/heighten/repeat), then quickdraw (free) and swift to speed up a wand (with quicken and twin/heighten/repeat). And I recall them being +3.
Draco: needs a better effect than just magic missile, but nothing I know beats that for a missile massacre. Though if Manyjaws is wand -friendly....
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Twin and Quicken are both +4, Repeat is +3 and really awkward to use in a combat that doesn't involve a really effective lockdown or bottleneck.
Originally posted by draco1119:
Here's an odd question: how well could this adapt to psionics, and are there phenomenal cosmic powers that would make a dorje user inherently better?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Edited in: I did mis-price Twin. It's +4.
Repeat is the worst of the feats here, but included nonetheless - repeat, for instance, works with summon wands provided the original minion moved out of the way. (Twin will not work with summon wands.) As I said earlier, shuffling which metamagic feats you pick is a perfectly viable way of doing this, and I was picking ones that were effective in absentia of context.
Draco: Nothing that specifically refers to wands will also work with dorjes, so you can't switch this over easily. Dorjes have only two advantages over wands in this case: they're slightly tougher, and they aren't limited to 4th level powers to begin with (perhaps to allow for augmented lower-level powers the way wands allow for higher-CL spells). I'm AFB at the moment but as I recall even the psionic artificer doesn't allow multiple metapsionics at once (i.e. psionic focus prevents it from breaking the way metamagic does).
Originally posted by draco1119:
Well... Damn. That could have been fun.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
Ah, you're counting the repeats. Okay...
I was wondering why you just didn't use Admixture or Born of the Three Thunders, which also double the damage, without the targetting problems of Repeat (which has to have the same target as the previous spell).
Note that if you don't want to burn the extra charges of dual wielding, you can just Quicken one wand, and you'll still get off two shots. There's no need to quick draw a new one. You're just triggering the same one twice. I was scratching my head wondering why you were drawing a new wand...
What would you call the effect with Twinned Admixtured Scorching Rays? 12 Rays per shot, 3 sets of shots = 36 beams of fire stabbing out...
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I love this build, in the realm of theory though could you use bloodlines to boost this even higher?
Also my no buff time gish build I was excited to see is gone... Oh well guess ill have to build my own and see how close it gets to yours
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
In the sense that such a finger could be what you're raising at your opponent, yes.
Bloodlines should indeed do what you think they would, which means another +3 to want adept and fatter bonuses on wand use.
And you're right, we let the 0 Buff Time Gish fall to the wayside. I'll look for the start of a writeup we had and get it out there.
EDIT: And Tempest, your sig is still referencing Monkey Do, and lacking Kung Fu Witchcraft(x)
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Mostly because you can make Twin and Repeat work on spells that do more than deal energy damage. damage, but you can't really do the same with Admixture or Born of Three Thunders. Cheap core examples - twin/repeat Stinking Cloud or Black Tentacles.
Of course, they still work with energy damage as well, so if you want to lock, load, and play evoker, you can without swapping out your feats. And if you want to specialize in them, you can switch 'em out too.
The reasoning was so that you dual-wield wand A and wand B as your full-round, then use quickdraw and your swift to quicken wand C, in effect getting three different spells out per round (possibly six separate spell effects with twin). Then, if you really want, you can quickdraw wands D and E, which are immediate-action effects that you can trigger before your next turn if you want, and if you don't need to, nothing stops you from starting your next turn by switching back to A and B.
Admixture doesn't add an extra set of rays, it doubles the damage on the rays that do fire. Scorching Ray caps out at three 4d6 rays natively, so a twinned admixed scorching ray would shoot off six 8d6 rays. The problem with this is the build only has room for three metamagic feats, and Admixture requires Substitution - thus, you can't add Quicken to the mix. You could still dual-wield them though, getting 12*8d6 per round if you wanted. (336 average damage, assuming no spell resistance or energy resistance/vulnerability exploits.)
That said, I think this is deadlier if used with area effects that do more than damage, and with spells that take longer than a standard action to cast normally.
RT: You're right on bloodlines; that'd also increase your effective artificer level (so you can infuse up to CL 12 and craft at up to CL 14) on top of the +3 DC/CL from Wand Focus. And I've corrected my signature.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
I really wish that you didn't have to weaken yourself for the builds trick. Is there another entry class besides Artificer that you can use for this build?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I wouldn't say this is terribly weakening yourself - if your initial goal is not Tier One, then playing straight Artificer would give you too much power.
That said, you could probably do it with other spellcasters - and, curiously, you might be able to do it with Binder as well (substituting a full Karsus pact instead of the three feats), provided you can acquire Craft Wand somehow (perhaps via any spellcaster level 1 + Practiced Spellcaster). The drawback here is that you'd need the Metamagic Spell Trigger feat from Complete Mage, which is worse than the artificer's ability since it doesn't break the metamagic cap open. I think you can also do something similar using Warlock, but that probably takes too many warlock levels to truly overclock the same way this works.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
For me, it's mostly an issue of elegance. Weakening yourself (even if it's not that much) to do the trick rubs me the wrong way. It's the same reason I prefer suel archamanach into Master Transmogrifist instead of sorcerer into Master Transmogrifist.
Cleric would probably be the best dip for Practiced Spellcaster. Binders better skill list would also make entering into UT much easier.
Do you think the Binder variant of the build would stack up well against a straight Binder?
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Cloistered Cleric if you're going for a Dip will be better yet.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Probably better, provided you're not using the online vestiges. I'm not sure about how an online-vestige binder would work with the wand overdrive trick.
On second thought, though, you can't do it with just PSC - Wand Mastery itself requires caster level 9, as well as Craft Wand (which requires CL 5). So you'd need to ender with a caster class of some sort, and the only wand-friendly caster class I know of that won't suck royally with just 5 levels + Practiced Spellcaster is Warlock (since people expect different things from them).
Originally posted by skynir:
I'd like to vote for God hand.
I want to see a build that can dragon kick its enemies into the milky way.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Warlock 6 would probably be better for the extra invocation. Would the extra 3 levels be used for Legacy Champion?
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
Someone got the reference, and it hasn't even been posted yet!
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
I vote for God Hand.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I'd really like to put my vote in for the throw man, that sounds so cool
also tempest assuming the wand chamber works like a magical "shotgun" what spells would you suggest going in there?Originally posted by skynir:
I've enjoyed the weekly optimization showcase since I stumbled upon the wizsassin. I've even ran the feral druid against my party when I was dming.
I'm sure I speak for many forum lurkers when I say that I'm overjoyed to see this new post and hope for more exciting builds.
As far as god hand goes its without question my favorite beat em up game of all time. Not every video game can get away with replacing character developement with punching and plot with karate
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
Okay, I wanna know, how'd the Feral Druid fare against a party? What was the ECL to EL and how many guys were fighting how many guys? Details, you can't just make a post like that without DETAILS!
Originally posted by Lashius:
I second this. That build was one of my favorites.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
I must insist that you post details aswell, especially because I was planning to run it against my party I'm dming and I feel its an attractive choice, thanks to tempest, rt, andarious and all other contributers I have run one build they did against my part (heavy crusader) and have used these builds if I need a powerful character on the fly. I have also had great success with eat sleep gank causing massive havoc for the pcs.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'd love to hear details too.
You and DisposableHero both. ESG started off as a recurring villain in his game.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
Yeah I read the intro to eat sleep gank and how he used it and was quite pleased since I ran it at ecl 10 against ecl 6 just to sxare them. Esg ended up eliminating the parties soulbow and severly crippled the cleric before delivering his message to the pcs and leaving, now they are terrified on nightwatch of being "ganked" again. He was able to crank out enough damage to wholly eliminate the sb I one round if I recall. the cleric survived but just with 6 hps to spare. This severly slowed their progress against the bbeg which means he was well worth the hiring fee
Originally posted by skynir:
Ok when I get home tonight ill look over my notes and post how the party did.
They eventually took him down but it was a bloodbath
Originally posted by radicaltaoist:
fire: what about the crusader? An optimized NPC is a significant speed bump for PCs; an optmized crusader NPC is a brick wall. I'd like to hear how that went.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
The crusader was actually meant to be an npc they shouldnt have fought, so i made him ecl 12 since they party face (the cleric) and the crusader worshipped different gods and it degenerated first into a screaming match then into a battle. The Crusader dominated the cleric in the name of his god with no effort but made sure to deal non lethal, but essentially dropped the cleric in a single blow. He then was attempted to be jumped by our party tank (a shifter whose taking WTM (with the uber bear abilities) and warshaper enchanced with the feral template for flavour and power) who got in one attack before the Crusader almost dropped him too with another strike, i beleive the first strike was the one which dumps con and the second was a stone dragon, i cant recall off the top of my head :/. The final party member high taled it away to get help. THis was actually a classic story of Roleplaying gone wrong, they were later going to ally themselves with the order the crusader was a part of but there is now more tension then i intially had planned for. The Crusader i dont beleive took a single point of damage or if he did it was a miniscule amount. Id like to bring him back for some actualy play testing though, since i really like the idea. In a couple of weeks im actually running them up against a hexblade debuffer (much like Tempest's character you posted) and a version of the A-game paladin but im mixing in 2 crusader levels. This will give them quite a test since they have never really encountered a debuffer before and i think they will like the idea of number games. These builds have been of immense help to me as a DM actually since i can usually whip one up on the fly if the unexpected happens, thats how the Heavy crusader got brought into the game in the frist place.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'll post mor commentary when I'm not dodging my advisor, but if you want to crank this into overdrive, Paladin of Tyranny 3-4 is the way to go. Delays your hexblade curses a bit, but is less dependent on the Mike Mearls modifications to be useful, has amazing Charisma synergy, and gets even more of a debuff aura on top of the curse, Focalor, Imperious Command, and Dark Companion. If you're giving up on higher-level hexblade abilities (including the DC on its curse - your debuffs often provide enough of an edge here), you can even go further with actual Binder levels instead of binding feats; Chupoclops is a pretty good pact to begin with and has a better debuff aura than Focalor. (PalTyr4 also gets you Turn Undead, which can be used to fuel extra uses of Death Devotion. Negative levels are nasty - and doubly so if the save to resist them is being hosed by countless debuff effects.)
The character I posted actually has, for novelty reasons, a strong familiar emphasis (Improved Familiar plus the three familiar-boosting buff spells, coming online at level 12), and in time develops more darkness/fear/nightmare powers. You might want to focus on other areas for your debuffer.
Originally posted by frost.fire:
Yeah I was thinking about adding more binder the paladin of tyranny totally slipped my mind but will be a great addition to the further debuffs, this is actually beneficial due to have a positive bonus on to damage to hit (although I'm considering dragonfire inspiration) and have negatives to the enemies' stats. I was just for giggles thinking about addint a blaster to make it an even 3 on 3 fight (maybe ill go with the nuker and just post a play by play
)Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Recently found a cool little feat-Wand Bonding (from City of Stormreach). Only available to Warforged that can cast arcane spells or infusions spontaneously, but by picking up a wand, allows you to expend one of your spell slots to cast the spell in the wand without expending any of the wand's charges.
Not sure how it would impact the build but I thought I'd throw it out here.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
It wouldn't change the build at all, because the build centers on the Cannith Wand Adept, which requires either Least Dragonmark (Making) or Favored in House (Cannith), both of which are human-only feats. Likewise, feats like that are hard to apply when you're gulping down charges - that's the same reason Wand Surge isn't on the feat roster (but I did mention it as noteworthy - it's actually better than Wand Bonding if you have access to the Unfettered Heroism spell in a wand).
I didn't realize that Wand Bonding existed - good find. There is, however, a similar feat in Lost Empires of Faerun called Channel Charge. It's not racially restricted and works with staffs as well, but requires 4th-level spell slots (i.e. not infusions), and works from a Use Magic Device check (of a respectable DC). The main reason why that feat is noteworthy is because it allows you to bypass costly material components or XP components on your wands (you still spend them when you create the wand, but if you plan on casting the spell a lot (i.e. Create Magic Tattoo, Animate Dead) or if you find a wand that would be expensive to recharge, the spell slot is "free" by comparison). The same can be said for Wand Surge + Unfettered Heroism, though, which works out better since once you start the ball off (by casting Unfettered Heroism from a spell slot, scroll, wand charge, or AP) it really is unlimited over time. (The one drawback to Wand Surge is that action points have a 1/round limit, with the only exception being the "I'm not dying" option, while Channel Charge at least does not. Thus, you could trigger multiple wands - swift and standard, say - with Channel Charge, but only one with Wand Surge.)
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Technically you can start as a Warforged and take Wand Bonding, then reincarnate as a human and take the dragonmark feats.
The rest of your reasons still apply though
Originally posted by piggyknowles:
Doesn't work, unfortunately. Reincarnate can't apply to constructs. Also, per the article on reincarnation in Eberron, if you start out with a dragonmark, you keep it when you reincarnate (even if you reincarnate into a totally different race), but there's nothing to imply that an orc who reincarnated into a human could then gain a human-only dragonmark. (As dragonmarks are passed on by blood, I would doubt it.)
Originally posted by draco1119:
What about a human becoming a Warforged?
