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#1 zombiegleemax Oct 12, 2005 18:54:00

Here it is, a way to create and play an effective spell caster who only uses melee touch spells to deal damage, 95% of which comes straight from the core rulebooks! Why would anyone want to completely depend upon melee touch spells for damage? Using the tactics listed below, one will find that using melee touch spells can be a great deal more dependable than other spells. For example, one can hold the charge of a melee touch spell even if the attack misses unlike ranged touch attacks. Other spells such as Fireball can hit several enemies at a time and usually guarantees damage from a distance. However, the damage of a fireball (level 3 spell) is halved upon a successful reflex save whereas an Empowered Shocking Grasp (level 3 spell) has no save and has a chance of scoring a critical hit). The strategy of the melee touch spell specialist depends upon Feinting. Why? A target’s Armor Class is made up of 10 + Dexterity Mod + Shield Bonus + Armor Bonus + Deflection Bonus + Miscellaneous Modifiers. First, a touch attack negates the Shield and Armor bonuses to the enemy’s AC. Now a successful Feint negates the Dexterity Mod to the target’s Armor Class. Therefore, if one feints successfully in order to set up a touch attack, the target’s touch AC becomes 10 + Deflection Bonus + Miscellaneous Modifiers. In other words, generally, unless the target has a deflection bonus (which usually isn’t encountered until fairly high levels) the DC to deliver a successful touch attack becomes 10! Here is how one makes this workable: Say a player creates a 3rd level character. The player should acquire the Improved Feint feat as soon as possible in order to be able to feint as a move action. In order to obtain this however, one must have the feat Combat Expertise as well as an Intelligence score of at least 13. The next step is to max out the bluff skill. A very high bluff skill is necessary in order to use feinting effectively for several reasons. First, in order to feint successfully, the attacker’s bluff skill roll must exceed the defender’s Sense Motive roll plus the defender’s base attack bonus. Therefore the one attempting the feint is at an automatic disadvantage. In addition, the feint check gets more and more penalties as the defender’s intelligence is lower and lower. One’s bluff skill must then be borderline ridiculous in order to not worry about failing a feint check. With little work, however, this is very easy. Again say the character is starting at 3rd level and that he/she will predominantly be a sorcerer (it is typically easier to be a sorcerer when using this tactic). The maximum number of ranks he/she can then have in the bluff skill is 6. Charisma is one of the most important stats for a sorcerer so say you have a 16 Charisma (+3 modifier to the bluff skill). Take the feat Skill Emphasis for Bluff (+3 bonus) and make your familiar a snake (+3 bonus). Now, by expending one feat a several skill points, at 3rd level, your total bluff skill is +15 (6+3+3+3). This puts the odds of feinting well in your favor. My suggestion for making a 3rd level touch spell specialist is choose a Human, 2nd level Sorcerer, 1st level Fighter. Of the 4 feats granted by doing this, take Combat Expertise, Improved Feint and Skill Emphasis Bluff as 3 of them. One option for a 4th feat is Weapon Finesse since Dexterity is very important for any spellcaster and one may not have a good strength score to make for a good melee touch attack modifier. Other options for a 4th feat are discussed below if taking Weapon Finesse is redundant for your character. If your character has say 14 Dexterity and you do take Weapon Finesse, your technique will (at this early a level) be very effective. A 2nd level Sorcerer/1st level Fighter will then have a + 4 bonus when making a touch attack. This means that starting at 3rd level, upon a successful feint (not hard to do with the above bluff score), one generally only has to roll a 6 in order to deliver a touch attack! For every level attained afterwards this gets easier and easier. Keep maxing out the bluff skill so as to make sure you always have a distinct advantage in feinting. Now why choose a 1st level Fighter over something else to cross class with? The fighter level will grant you Combat Expertise, Improved Feint or Weapon Finesse along with Shield, Armor and Weapon proficiencies necessary to make a mage adaptable and able to Prestige Class as the Eldritch Knight. This is a crucial piece of the puzzle for an Eldritch Knight gains a +1 Base Attack bonus every level while keeping a steady increase in say you Sorcerer class’ use of spells. The increase in your Base Attack is crucial for several reasons. First, once your total melee touch attack bonus is a +8 then every single roll you make (with a successful feint and not including a deflection bonus to the target’s AC) will hit unless you roll a 1. Now why keep increasing in Eldritch Knight levels after this bonus is achieved? This is the second reason for a high base attack. Once you hit the +8 touch attack mark every time you level up (for the next 5 levels) the newly gained base attack increases will go straight to you Armor Class via Combat Expertise. So by using your Combat Expertise fear, when you make your touch attack when let’s say your attack mod is a +12 and your Base Attack bonus is a +10, take a -2 penalty on your attack (which will most likely still hit) and you will receive a +2 bonus to your Armor Class! Here’s your battle tactic with the given information thus far: If you are starting out of the enemy’s threatened area cast the touch spell and either (ready a touch attack in case he/she moves adjacent to you) or (move in and feint since it is a move equivalent action with Improved Feint) all in one round. If you did not move in and feint, try doing so the next round, then deliver the touch attack. If however, if you are already in their threatened area and have are not holding the charge of a spell, feint, take a 5-foot step away and cast the spell in order to avoid provoking an attack of opportunity when casting. This tactic will change when fighting enemy who can make a melee attack more than 5-feet away. It may change if say if you build your character to cast on the defense well in order to not provoke an attack of opportunity. It will change if say you have the imbue weapon feat and can make a touch attack with a whip from 15 feet away. All in all though, the essence of the tactic will generally stay the same. Here are things to consider beyond what I’ve suggested in order to aid the effectiveness of the Touch Spell Specialist: Preventing attacks of opportunity, playing it safe: Still Spell, Sudden Still, Imbue Weapon, Imbue Weapon Strike (Quintessential Wizard), Combat Casting Guaranteeing it was worth all the trouble: Maximize Spell, Empower Spell, Sudden Maximize, Sudden Empower, Rods of Metamagic Empower and Maximize, Imbue Weapon.