Elephant said:
Someone who can't cast 9th level spells in either Wiz or Clr is about as powerful as someone who can? I have a hard time agreeing.
Well, it might not be perfectly true that having the casting ability of both a 15th level cleric and a 15th level wizard is equal to having the casting ability of a 20th level wizard its roughly true. Certainly we agree that at some point, say having the caster ability of a 19th level cleric and a 19th level wizard and only be a 20th level character would be unbalancing. So what's it going to be? While you are giving up 4 9th level spells and 2 8th level spells, you are gaining 5 6th, 5 5th, 5 4th, 5 3rd, 5 2nd, 5 1st, and 6 0 level spells plus maybe some domain spells. They might not be worth the four 9th level slots, not only are they definately worth something but its debatable whether 4 9th level arcane spells are worth that much more than (for example) 5 Heals, 5 True Seeing, 5 Greater Magic Weapon and a long list of other clerical magic. Moreover, compared to the single class Wizard you are gaining 2 cleric domain powers which can be non-trivial (Luck for example, or improved caster level), improved weapon access, improved armor access, improved saving throws, a limited ability to turn undead, and much greater independence since you can cure yourself.
That's a total of 6 extra high-power slots for the single-classed caster (7 if a Clr 20), and in general, higher level spell slots are worth more than lower level spell slots.
Yeah, but how much more? You are gaining 36+ other spell slots in return, plus some minor abilities. Surely that counts for something?
Lower caster level hurts the MT in two ways: Spell resistance checks and spell effects. The MT will have a harder time penetrating SR when he blasts foes with evocations, meaning more of his spells are wasted.
First, blasting foes with evocations is in general a waste of a perfectly good spell in 3rd edition, especially against targets that are worth using spells on, especially at higher levels when lots of things are going to have damage resistance and evasion and the alternative is casting a 'save or die' spell.
Second, I have a feat that allows your caster level to be equal to your character level that was designed to let fighter types splash a few levels of a spell casting class. You don't get more spells per day, but you do get better at using the ones you know.
For, say, healing spells (starting at Cure Crit), he's doing 5 HP less healing per person per casting. That really adds up when your party members are in the 150-200 max HP range.
Sure, but while his heal spell only cures 150 h.p. instead of 200 h.p., he's got 4 extra 6th level arcane spells - Antimagic fields or Greater Dispellings or Circles of Death or Disentigrate or whatever your favorite spell is.
Not to mention MSD that the MT suffers from...the single-classed character can afford to pump their casting stat as high as possible, while the MT has to push BOTH Int and Wis up to 18 by 20th level. That's not a big deal if you managed to roll two 18s on your 4d6DL, but if you're using point buy, you'll run into problems.
Agreed and I think that that is probably the biggest drawback to multiclassing between classes with different attribute needs, but then again, you can't have everything. It's not so much that you can't pump both WIS and INT up to 18th by 20th level using point buy, but that you can't focus all your ability advances into pumping
one up to 22 or so, and you'll probably have to sacrifice more in your other attributes. But while the multi-classed Cleric/Wizard might not be quite as twinked out as a single class character built by a min/maxer, the MT make it at least viable. It might not be the most powerful character in the party, but it would certainly contribute alot given the number of spells it could cast per day. A pure cleric10/wizard10 though
is just not viable in a high level campaign at all.
