Here are the things he has changed.
Hit Dice has changed from 1d6 to 1d4 (not to bad since he is doing a half rounded up thing ie 1d4 would be 3 and 1d6 would be 4) I was thinking of taking Improved Toughness to offset this.
Wild shape feature has been eliminated and the companion familiar only gains the best nat armor bonus (which ends up being the druids)
Any thoughts, tips or ideas are welcome. I have read the Arcane Hierophants handbook but wanted to get some feedback on this watered down version.
Thanks
Core books are allowed and anything with the wizards seal is pretty much a go (need to confirm with the DM before using something)
imagine if you filled a 1/2 cup with Milk and the other 1/2 with Water..... thats what the Revision is like
:D
With his changes, my only advice is not to play it. This class is now only slightly better than Mystic Theurge, and that class isn't worth playing 95% of the time.
As long as you don't abuse shapechanging, which you shouldn't ever be doing in a real game (unless everyone's abusing something and it's group-deemed 'okay'), there's nothing broken about AH.
JaronK
I was thinking about not playing it at all too. He even told me that this was a hard campaign so I don't know why he changed stuff. What is a Supermount? Not sure that is the way I want to go but I need to figure something out. I think I want to stick with a Druid at first level but I think so far there is no other spellcaster in the group (aside from a bard)
This is Sparta! Um, Supermount, I mean.
I could go a 17 Druid / 3 Master of many forms with natural bond and the improved wild shape spell thing but that makes me a wild shaper again.
With his nerfing of the Arcane Hierophant does it make it completely and utterly unplayable? I mean I'll end up with caster levels of 20 wizard and 20 Druid with 9th level spells with a lvl 16 animal companion with familiar traits (minus the nat armor bonus of the familiar side)
With his nerfing of the Arcane Hierophant does it make it completely and utterly unplayable?
Unplayable? No. With the right feats, spells, and/or items practically anything is playable.
However, at low-mid levels you're going to be losing a lot for what you get from Arcane Heirophant (out of the book), the wildshape bonus and Familiar Companion bonus are supposed to make up for that. Without those bonuses, the loss is too much of a hit. At 20th, yeah, the extra spells and two spell lists is going to be awesome. At 5th though, you're going to be extremely sorry that you took those levels of wizard instead of going straight druid (or vice versa). When you're in the 8-11 range, and you really need the oomph from the wildshape forms or from the familiar companion or from the higher level spells, you're going to regret going with this build.
Playing from 1-20 as a dual caster is extremely difficult. While classes like Mystic Theurge and Cerebremancer seem like good options at high level, and they are, playing through those levels will suck a lot if you don't know what your doing. Thankfully, even WoTC realized this and provided later versions of the 'dual-caster' PrC with extra abilities to make up for this lack. Your DM has taken those extra abilities away and castrated the concept again.
While I am normally the DM and therefore normally a fan of DM fiat, I have to say that I'd have to have a very good reason to nerf this class in this way. Even if I did have such reason and I thought it was too 'powerful' for my campaigns story, I'd just ban it, outright. With that said, I cannot imagine a campaign under say level 18 or 19 in which that would remotely be the case.
If you really want to go dual caster w/out wildshape/polymorph cheese, Beguiler 1/Wizard 4/Ultimate Magus 10/Arcane PrC of your Choice 5 can net you a final Caster Level of 18(22) Wizard/9 (17) Beguiler before Items, with no MAD and much less delay on spell progression. Up until Ultimate Magus 7, you'll be getting new spell levels as often as a Sorceror or Beguiler would (every even level from 4 up to 18), and from then on out would be one level behind a sorceror. In exchange you'll have a higher caster level for those spells, extra feats, more spells known, as many or more spells per day, and somewhat free metamagic. That (or something similar) is the only dual caster build I can imagine actually working well from 1 to 20.
Of course, from the sound of it, your DM would probably try and nerf that too.
As a general rule, anything that takes more than 2 levels out of your progression is going to severely start to suck around level 4 or 5 and not stop sucking until 15-16.
If you really want to go dual caster w/out wildshape/polymorph cheese, Beguiler 1/Wizard 4/Ultimate Magus 10/Arcane PrC of your Choice 5 can net you a final Caster Level of 18(22) Wizard/9 (17) Beguiler before Items, with no MAD and much less delay on spell progression. Up until Ultimate Magus 7, you'll be getting new spell levels as often as a Sorceror or Beguiler would (every even level from 4 up to 18), and from then on out would be one level behind a sorceror. In exchange you'll have a higher caster level for those spells, extra feats, more spells known, as many or more spells per day, and somewhat free metamagic. That (or something similar) is the only dual caster build I can imagine actually working well from 1 to 20.
For a dual caster feel without the hit to caster levels, you might look at Anima Mage. If all WotC books are available, Gnome Binder 1/Beguiler 4/Anima Mage 10/Shadowcraft Mage 5 (Surreal's build stub) is 6th level vestiges and 9th level spells.
When I say, "18(22) Wizard/9 (17) Beguiler", I mean that, as far as the number of spells you get are concerned, you'll have the same number and levels of spells that an 18th level wizard (9th level spells) and 9th level beguiler (4th level spells), but the spells you cast have Caster Levels (what determines range, damage dice, duration, et cetera) of 22 and 17 respectively.
One of the benefits that UlM's get is an unnamed bonus of +4 to both their caster levels, for this build to work, you also have to take Practiced Spellcaster-Beguiler, which gives another +4 unnamed bonus.