Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 deusexs Feb 13, 2010 14:35:56	Ever since I saw the spellwarp sniper, I thought about the cool ways for using rays for sneak attack damage.   My favorite idea was taking levels in spellthief so that any ray attack that was cast and SA an enemy caster would deal damage to it and presumably steal a spell that you convert into another spell bullet.  I didn't actually scour the spellthief spell list into very much detail, but from what I gathered, there was no ray spell that it could cast, not any damaging AoE spell that could be changed into a ray.  I could do the extra spell cheese (I don't know if it was errata'd or anything) but I didn't want to go into that kind of debate with my DM.  I abandoned the idea for a long time until recently when I read about the ultimate magus prc.  It says you can add a spell (of a certain level according to your class level) from your spellbook into your list of spells known by your spontaneous casting class.  I figured I should take a pretty obvious choice: Scorching ray.  That way, when striking with the spell,  (I presume they all strike at the same time) I get 3 rays that do sneak attack damage, each with the potential to steal a spell from a caster enemy! 3 for 1 deal? Awesome. So I mapped out a build that looks something like this: Human Spellthief 4/Wizard 3/Ultimate Magus 4/Spellwarp Sniper 5/Unseen Seer 4 The 2 base class levels are obviously for entering into UM, and at 4th level UM, I can transfer my  scorching ray spell from my wizard spellbook into my spellthief spell repertoire.  I enter SWS immediately after to start my Pew Pew Lazer on everything and I max it out.  I chose the Unseen Seer to top off my build to make use of the extra damage bonus and the advanced learning for hunter's eye. Whew. Done explaining my life story, here come some questions that I have. I haven't taken any consideration what feats would benefit this class the most.  I'm already going to take the obvious ones to gain access to PrC's: Extend Spell Point Blank Shot Master Spellthief Able Learner (Maybe) Those are in no particular order, but I need 5 other feats Second question, is there any better spell that I could do this combo with other than scorching ray? It has to be within 1st or 2nd level so I can put it in my spellthief. Finally, Even though I have this build mapped out to 20, I don't know where to apply my +1 to caster level from the prc's. I made my decisions based off of spell break points in the Spellthief: 8th level for minimum number of 0 2nd level spells, 10th level for 1 2nd level spell, or max out spellthief: If I break off at 8 level, the end result is 8th level caster ST, and 14th level caster Wiz. If I break off at 10 level, the end result is 10th level caster ST, and 12th level caster Wiz. If I max out Spellthief casting , the end result is 16th level caster ST, and 6th level caster Wiz. As for caster level, with Ring of Arcane Might and Orange Ioun Stone, Master Spellthief, and Arcane Spell Power (from the same order), the end result is: 15(16)   18(19) 17(18)   20(21) 22(23)   15(16) The parenthesis are for divination spells. I also did damage calculations for the 10th level break point so far for one ray: +4d6 from scorching ray +5d6 from SA/SS +7d6 from more SA via Hunter's Eye -1d6 trade off for steal spell =15d6 for one ray attack, 45d6 for the entire scorching ray spell, and 3 free spells from steat spell
#2 waazraath Feb 13, 2010 15:06:56	That way, when striking with the spell,  (I presume they all strike at the same time) I get 3 rays that do sneak attack damage Unfortunately, no. Only the first one does sneak attack damage. Complete arcane has some detailed rules on the way it works and it's quite clear that when casting scorching ray, or using split ray, you only deal extra damage (incl sneak attack) with the first. For your questions, I'd go with metamagic feats. Ulitmate magus has some nice tricks with metamagic, and with quickend spell, repeat spell and twin spell you can get multiple castings of the ray, and if you do that, they should trigger sneak attack damage I think. Following that line of thought: check out the rod of many wands from complete mage. With that, you can trigger 3 wands at the same time, with a twinned quickened spell added to it you could still get 5 times sneak attack triggered in one round. It's cheesy though. If your dm doesn't allow it, there is several stuff that makes you wield 2 wands, like the feat dual wand wielder (I think). For your second question, melf's unicorn arrow would be better, up to 5 shots, no save, no SR. But since it doesn't work like that, it won't help much. Third one, dunno. I like the build, btw. With ulitmate magus, it'll be quite easy to employ metamagic and the spellthief works also really nice with it!