I haven't played a drow elf since 2nd edition, and I've decided to make a drow wizard aiming for Ultimate Magus.
My point buy stats are:
str 10 plus racial mods 10
dex 14 16
con 14 12
int 16 18
wis 12 12
cha 14 16
I was thinking of going wizard 1 drow paragon 3 (which will increase my dexterity to 18) sorcerer 1 Magus 10. What are your opinions of this progression? What prestige class do you recommend after Magus?
Skill wise I was thinking about concentration, craft alchemy, knowledge arcana, spellcraft,
use magic device*, tumble*, intimidate* and autohypnosis* Should I pick up something else instead?
Are there any racial feats, regular feats or substitution classes you recommend? Character is not going to be evil (at least at first) but neutral, with neutral evil tendancies.
I can use pretty much any printed material WotC or otherwise. Please offer me any opinions and suggestions.
I wouldn't recommend playing a drow unless u can use LA buyoff, bc of the caster level loss
As or skills Iajutsu is a very broken one (it's like full sudden strike progression in a skill)
and synergyze nicely with drow's darkness ability
I would recommend whatever prcs u take after ultimate magus, that they stick to one caster
without LA buyoff, u can still get 9th level spells with ur wizard
(if ur allowed LA buyoff I would suggest advancing ur sorceror, and leve buffs and less significant stuff to the wizzy)
If ur going for the blasting type, one can seldomly go wrong with incantrix...
My apologies for not mentioning that I'll be using the level adjustment buy off rules in Unearthed Arcana. With drow paragon, you have to take all three levels for the dex bonus. I don't mind doing it for the increased spell abilities, extra darkvision and dex bonus. Say for a minute I wasn't married to the drow idea, what would you suggest? Also, I am allowed one flaw, and I was aiming towards non combatant.
The only thing I can say for race is anything that improves Cha and Int would be a good start
stay away from Dex and Con penalties
u need dex for ray spells
and u need con to stay alive (though dex is more important)
I don't have my books on me right now
as long as drow paragon gives full caster progression, I have no problems with it
Well for a drow ultimate magus I would definitely recommend beguiler for spontaneous casting side so that you can keep everything int based. Actually I would even start with beguiler then go into wizard since beguiler gets you a lot of skills at 1st level and some decent spells
- Beguiler - Magic in the Blood, Gift of the Spider Queen, Master of Shadow, 2x flaws
- Wizard - B: Scribe Scroll
- Wizard - Weapon Finesse
- Drow Paragon
- Drow Paragon
- Spellthief - Master Spellthief
- Drow Paragon
- Unseen Seer - B: Silent Spell
- Unseen Seer - Craven
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Mindbender - Mindsight
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus - Metamagic, Bonus Metamagic
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus - Metamagic
- Ulitmate Magus - Bonus Metamgic
- Ultimate Magus
I'm sure you'll get more posting on really optimizing a drow ultimate magus but this above build has some useful spellcaster/rogue qualities to it.
9th level wizard spells at 20th level with Caster Level of 30
4th level beguiler spells with a CL of 30
Wear light armor while casting
5/day of each Drow SLA or 6/day with a Ring of Drow Blood for fueling Gift of the Spider Queen
Sneak Attack at 20th Level - 12d6+20 (Advanced Learning Hunters Eye)
100ft Telepathy/Mindsight
Ideal Ability Score Layout - INT > DEX > CON > CHA > STR > WIS - your stats should work just fine acutally
Edit: If you don't need that many Drow SLAs/day you could drop Master of Shadow for say Versatile Spellcaster for more caster based goodies, and Drop Weapon Finesse for Arcane Manipulation or someother metamagic or caster based feat.
Well for a drow ultimate magus I would definitely recommend beguiler for spontaneous casting side so that you can keep everything int based. Actually I would even start with beguiler then go into wizard since beguiler gets you a lot of skills at 1st level and some decent spells
- Beguiler - Magic in the Blood, Gift of the Spider Queen, Master of Shadow, 2x flaws
- Wizard - B: Scribe Scroll
- Wizard - Weapon Finesse
- Drow Paragon
- Drow Paragon
- Spellthief - Master Spellthief
- Drow Paragon
- Unseen Seer - B: Silent Spell
- Unseen Seer - Craven
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Mindbender - Mindsight
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus - Metamagic, Bonus Metamagic
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus
- Ultimate Magus - Metamagic
- Ulitmate Magus - Bonus Metamgic
- Ultimate Magus
I'm sure you'll get more posting on really optimizing a drow ultimate magus but this above build has some useful spellcaster/rogue qualities to it.
9th level wizard spells at 20th level with Caster Level of 30
4th level beguiler spells with a CL of 30
Wear light armor while casting
5/day of each Drow SLA or 6/day with a Ring of Drow Blood for fueling Gift of the Spider Queen
Sneak Attack at 20th Level - 12d6+20 (Advanced Learning Hunters Eye)
100ft Telepathy/Mindsight
Ideal Ability Score Layout - INT > DEX > CON > CHA > STR > WIS - your stats should work just fine acutallyEdit: If you don't need that many Drow SLAs/day you could drop Master of Shadow for say Versatile Spellcaster for more caster based goodies, and Drop Weapon Finesse for Arcane Manipulation or someother metamagic or caster based feat.
I did not do the math, but I assume you have a total of 30 caster levels which you have as giving you a caster level of 30 ( did not look up all the feats, sorry if you have something besides master spell theif adding in). The master spell theif feat is very powerful, but it does not work like that. You get to add together all your levels in spell casting classes. Not only does Ultimate magus not add double for levels that give +1 to two different classes, but prestige classes that give progression but not have their on spell casting are often argued to not be spell casting class levels. I am not sure if that last point have been resolved, but at most it would only add 1 per level.
I had a very nice Savage bard/Ur-Priest/Nar Demonbinder/ Mystic Theurge build that got a caster level of 99 before I realized it was class levels in casting classes, not caster level. I forget the equation needed to calculate the caster level, but Ur-Priest adds half of all other casters and used that as the class nar Demonbinder uses to determine its caster level. So 2 levels of mystic theurge near the end would push up the demon by 2, which would add 1 more to ur-priest, which also already got two from the theurge, which pushed up the demon by 3, which increased the Ur-priest, and so on.
Maybe a good build for your drow might be
Wizard 5/Drow 3/bard 1/ ultimate magis 1/Sublime chord 1/ Ultimate magis 9
Ultimate magis 1 adds to bard, 4 adds to sublime chord, and 7 adds to either wiz or chord
Now the sublime chord uses its level plus a level in one other spell casting class to determine the caster level for all of of your arcane casters. This ability is listed under the sublime chord spell casting, so it is advanced by the Ultimate Magis.
You end up with a progression of 14 in wizard (7th level spells) and 10 in sublime chord (9th level spells). The caster level is 5 (wiz) + 1 (sublime chord) + 9 (ultimate magis)=15
If you instead went:
Wizard 8/Bard 1/Ultimate Magis 1/Sublime Chord 1/ Ultimate Magis 9
Ultimage Magis 1 adds to bard, 4 and 7 adds to sublime chord
Progression 15 wizard (8th level spells) and 10 sublime chord (9th level spells) with a caster level of 18. Practical spell caster can always be thrown in.
I did not do the math, but I assume you have a total of 30 caster levels which you have as giving you a caster level of 30 ( did not look up all the feats, sorry if you have something besides master spell theif adding in). The master spell theif feat is very powerful, but it does not work like that. You get to add together all your levels in spell casting classes. Not only does Ultimate magus not add double for levels that give +1 to two different classes, but prestige classes that give progression but not have their on spell casting are often argued to not be spell casting class levels. I am not sure if that last point have been resolved, but at most it would only add 1 per level.
Okay then, after thoroghly scrounging through the google cached history I finally found out the custserv ruling on master spellthief and CL. It adds all of the arcane spellcasting class levels together to determine the CL. So with my build then you still end up with 8th level wizard spells at CL of 23 (to do this you need to add in the feat Practiced Spellcaster set to Beguiler), and 4th level beguiler spells at CL of 23 which is still pretty good.
Beguiler +1
Wizard +2
Drow Paragon +2
Unseen Seer +2
Ultimate Magus +10
Ultimate Magus Arcane Spell Power +4
Mindbender +1
Spellthief +1 (added in with Master Spellthief)
=+23
Link of custserv reference: 74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:TFkz8IgtUKg...
Edit: A Ring of Arcane Might will bump that up to CL 24 so you would only loose out on +2d6 of sneak attack, with my build, but still leave you with 10d6+20 sneak attack
I'm playing a beguiler/Wizard and it's really nice to be able to pretty much dump all of my points into Int and have just a passable con. Another thing is that the Beguiler side runs heavily on some of the more utilitarian spells you might now want to waste a wizard slot prepping but are incredible when you DO need them.
And yes, Beguiler at first level for the d6 hit dice and 6+int skillpoints.
Beguiler/Wiz/UM is stronger than straight wiz, IMHO, (yes I know, travesty, lies and slander!) if you focus hard on your metamagic using the UM's ability to burn the Beguiler's copious amounts of early level spells on Augmented Casting on the occasions when the Beguiler spells aren't useful... but it's campaign specific. If you're going to be doing a lot of social/political action the Beguiler spells are great, if you're undead hunting or dungeon crawling, less so.
On the further end, have you looked at taking Domain Wizard (enchantment) from Unearthed Arcana on your Wiz side? The way the RAW seems to read to me you get the CL bonus from wherever the spells come from, giving you an instant +1DC to Charm Person, Suggestion, Hideous Laughter, Hold Monster, Mass Charm Monster, and Dominate monster, and you lose nothing for it if you weren't going to be a Specialist Wizard. Your spells from the Beg side are save-or-die anyways, every DC is good.
Thanks for all the replies, I've decided to skip the drow paragon class. What about being a focused specialist conjurer for the wizard side? Use sorcerer to pick up a few spells in my forbidden schools for sorcerer?
Ok, so, after reading Caelic's ..."return oneroute(this,'thread','view','/75882/19860738/The_Ten_Commandments_of_Practical_Optimization');">"The Ten Commandments of Practical Optimization " I think I know how to better approach this.
I play D&D with the same guys I played with in middle school (I'm 31) and we have played a lot of D&D let me tell you. My friends are not optomisers and gererally its just a "no dude, I had to be the cleric last time" type of campaign. Our dm has been working for months on a full bore 1-20 campaign and basically said, if you want it, go for it.
I want to make what I consider to be an iconic arcane caster. A staff, a floppy hat, a familiar, some meta magic, the ability to make some magic items, a bit of everything. The thought of wizard 20 sounds boring to me though.
I haven't made a drow elf since 1996, so I want to. It isn't the optimal choice, but it's what I'm shooting for. Drow have LA+2, however, I can lower this to +1 if I give up the drow spell resistance of 11+level and I can lower it to zero by giving up one of the +2 stat bonuses to dex or int.
So I'm making a 0 LA drow with no SR and no +2 to dex. Our particular group thinks scribe scroll sucks, and since wizard bonus feats every 5 levels are good for item creation or meta magic, we can substitute scribe scroll for a PHB meta magic feat. I'm leaning towards extend spell.
I'm taking several flaws. I can take the cheesy - to spot and listen checks, if I take the -1 to hp or ac flaw. I was thinking of selecting precocious apprentice and collegiate wizard. I was going to spend my one legit feat on spellcasting prodigy from the FRCS, none of us have the Players guide to Faerun, so we get to use the better one.
So, I'm looking at a 1st level drow wizard with spellcasting prodigy, collegiate wizard and precocious apprentice (and extend spell instead of scribe scroll). I'm thinking wizard 4 sorcerer 1 and ultimate magus 10. I'm also considering going focused specialist conjuration, and using sorcerer to pick up spells I want from enchantment, evocation and illiusion.
So, I'm looking for some practical help, I need a functional build for all 20 levels, I'd like a good familiar, sculpt spell, 9th level spells on the wizard side and 5th level spells sorcerer side, and at least craft wonderous items.
One thing my dm doesn't like is a bunch of level dipping, ultimate magus 10 and something else 5 is about all the room I'll get for dipping. I up for suggestions of something other than magus if someone has a good build.
Thanks for your time OP boards, I can use any WotC book and Dragon with permission.
Sorcerer will work, but it'll introduce double spellcasting stat problems. Beguiler will be easier. Take a look at the list: it's a couple of buffs and a bunch of the classic illusion/enchantment spells. Coupled with INT casting and some really nice skills, it's a good way to enter Ultimate Magus. It certainly makes it easy to know which schools to drop, anyway. And look at it this way: the real point of your spontaneous class has nothing to do with its spells. It's dropping them for metamagic effects that counts. Beguiler is flat out stronger than Sorcerer for this application.
Just choose your favorite metamagic then, and go to town. The strongest, and most fun for your friends, is probably buffing, so there's your Extend and Persistent Spell stuff. Persistent is a little hard to pull off, so be sure to cheapen it a bit with MM discounters like Incantatrix, Easy Metamagic, Metamagic School Focus, etc. Or you could blast, and it's well known how to do that.
There are even Ultimate Magus Gish characters, but that gets funky. But it sounds like straight up wizardry is what you want.