feat selection help

[freyar]

Thought I'd turn to the collective wisdom of EN World for some advice.

A PC in the campaign I run is just advancing to bard 3/wizard 3. She's been a bit bothered by lowish save DCs, so I got her to take scorching ray and seeking ray (PHII) as her 2nd level wizard spells, which promptly led to bad luck with attack roles. She does know summon monster I (I think on both spell lists).

So the question: what would be a good feat for her to take? You can go outside of core for this; I'll let you know if I have it. I can note up front that I don't have access to the complete series (but I do know about crystalkeep ).

 

[FEADIN]

Difficult to up the DC's, best way is to up the revelant ability, may be you should grab eagle splendor and fox cunning....
Another way to be a better spellcaster is to up the casting level with a feat: Practiced spellcaster.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Thought I'd turn to the collective wisdom of EN World for some advice.

A PC in the campaign I run is just advancing to bard 3/wizard 3. She's been a bit bothered by lowish save DCs, so I got her to take scorching ray and seeking ray (PHII) as her 2nd level wizard spells, which promptly led to bad luck with attack roles. She does know summon monster I (I think on both spell lists).

So the question: what would be a good feat for her to take? You can go outside of core for this; I'll let you know if I have it. I can note up front that I don't have access to the complete series (but I do know about crystalkeep ).

weapon focus ray really isn't worth the feat. I'd look for gloves of dexterity to help with ranged touch attacks.

 

[Herobizkit]

You could also grant her access to the various (and arguably b0rken) Orb spells from Complete Arcane. They strike via ranged touch attack, come in all 5 flavors of energy damage, and ignore SR.

Practiced Spellcaster is an excellent feat, but she will have to decide to which spellcasting class to apply it.

Spell Focus allows her to choose a school of magic to apply a +1 DC save to her spells.

If she's having issues with low save DCs, I would suggest to her to start choosing self-buffing and area effect spells. Upping her primary casting stats will help those DC's along.

 

[Runestar]

I seem to recall a 1st lv spell which is essentially a swift version of true strike, just that it grants a much smaller to-hit bonus (+4?). Anyone has any idea what it could be?

 

[Alzrius]

How high is her Strength? She could take the Power Caster feat from Fifth Element Games's PDF Manual of Gainful Exercise, reprinted over on The Grand OGL Wiki. This feat lets you use Strength for determining your spell DCs for a single class, rather than the normal ability score.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

(Warning: House rule advice approaching.)

If the player of the PC is a player who won't take advantage of your reasonable nature, just flat-out grant substantial bonuses to offset the total suckitude that is multi-classing-two-casters. Just as an example, allow +2 to save DCs if the multiclass remains balanced.

If you want to make it a feat, call it something like "Spellcasting Synergy," and say it provides a +1 to spell DCs for each "dual level," so bard 3/wizard 3 would be +3.

I know this seems very powerful, but it's really hard to exagerrate how much the multiclassing rules suck for primary casters.

 

[freyar]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I think I may get her to think about buffs or else have the party cleric help her out a bit.

Jeff's Spellcasting Synergy is also a good idea. Power Caster isn't going to work, though, as Int and Cha are her best stats by a bit. Or maybe Practiced Spellcaster -- does that actually let you cast higher level spells?

I'll talk these over with her; maybe with the idea of buffing, she'd rather take a feat to improve her bardic music or social skills. Huh.

While we're at it, any ideas for a prestige class that it might be worth guiding her towards for the future?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Ultimate Magus, perhaps, to dual progress the arcane casting?

If she takes a level in Sublime Chord for Bard at some point, that gives a faster Bard spell progression, too. You technically benefit from it even if you don't continue in the PrC.

 

[freyar]

Uhh, which books are those PrCs in? I do have the 3.0 splat Song & Silence if there's something comparable in there.