- There are some cool aspects to his build
- Maybe you still have some good ideas ;)
The basic premises are:
- He's a bard at heart. I like playing bards.
- The sorcerer side of the build has a full 20 caster levels.
- The bard side of the build is adapted from the Bard 6/Lyric Thaumaturge 2 or 3/Virtuoso 2 or 1/Sublime Chord 2/Virtuoso 8 progression that lets bards get up to 9th-level casting while still having good bardic music and skills.
- Marshal's Minor Auras give the entire party +Cha bonuses to Init, Dex skills and checks, Int skills and checks, and Cha skills and checks. The character has +13 Cha bonus. For 1 level of Marshal you get one of those (Dex + Init, or the party would lynch me); for 3 levels you get 2; for 5 levels you get all 3. In comparison, I think the Major Aura is – well, it's minor.
- Paladin of Refluff would, at level 2, give +Cha to all saves. Hexblade would do almost the same, with more save benefits at level 3. However, the original DM thought that was too much, so we negotiated a house-rule sticking a 50% nerfed Divine Grace into the Marshal class in lieu of the standard 4th level feature.
Other notes include:
- The DM allowed Incantrix. This creates a need to make high Spellcraft checks. The marshal's aura helps big-time with those. So does the bard level 1 spell Improvisation (14 caster levels of bard, so it gives +7 each to four different skill checks). And being a Spellscale gives you a +10 racial bonus to Spellcraft if you take the Io meditation that day.
- Bards have some really cool things to Persist – Sirine's Grace, Ruin Delver's Fortune x3, Glibness
, plus a variety of more standard stuff. Persisting Arcane Spellsurge seems like coolness as well, although it's less of a big deal if – like a spellscale – you have draconic blood. - Virtuosos and Sublime Chords both have some cool bardic music. Jarring Song lets you impose very high concentration checks on enemy casters, regrettably just in a 30' radius. The level 10 Virtuoso song lets you give True Seeing to the whole party. Sublime Chord let you boost your CL on, IIRC, enchantments and illusions.
- Bardic music eats feats. So, to a lesser extent, does Incantrix.
- Don't shoot me for including M's Magnificent Mansion. It really fit the fluff.
- Dispels could ruin his day. One thread with ideas about how to defend against them: www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t...
His character sheet (definitely work in progress) is at www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheet...
Has your DM waived the restriction against taking prestige classes on both sides of gestalt at once? You have minor shapeshift listed as providing 40 temporary hit points, but it provides 20.
You should take the divine companion alternate class feature from Complete Champion. This would give you a +21 deflection bonus to AC and +21 resistance bonus to all saves for 21 rounds per use. You need to sacrifice spells whose levels add to 21 to do it, but that can just be a bunch of lower level spells.
Has your DM waived the restriction against taking prestige classes on both sides of gestalt at once? You have minor shapeshift listed as providing 40 temporary hit points, but it provides 20.
You should take the divine companion alternate class feature from Complete Champion. This would give you a +21 deflection bonus to AC and +21 resistance bonus to all saves for 21 rounds per use. You need to sacrifice spells whose levels add to 21 to do it, but that can just be a bunch of lower level spells.
Yes to the prestige classes.
Ack, you're right about Minor Shapeshift. Annoyingly, the swift actions it takes to reinvoke Minor Shapeshift are precious if you have Arcane Spellsurg up.
Speaking of Complete Champion, I should probably take Healing Hymn for the bard side from that book, since the cost is the Fascinate bardic music feature, and Virtuouso reproduces that.
Domain Access on the sorcerer from that book looks strong as well, if one picks the domain well.
Interesting idea on the divine companion. I traded in the familiar for some bonus spells (+4 to primary casting attribute only for counting spells, plus a little shift in class skill list, as per Dragon Magazine Blood (?) of Siberys variant). So switching to divine companion would cost a lot of net spell slots. And Sirine's Grace already gives +13 deflection. Hmm -- big benefit for a high cost.
However, I really want the 9th-level spell Choose Destiny. One way to get it is to take the Arcane Disciple feat. Another is Unseen Seer.
Unseen Seer has some rogue skills as prerequisities. Well, there's a PrC called Heartfire Fanner from Dragon Magazine 314 (Page 15) that gives full caster progression, stacks with bardic music, adds new bardic music abilities, and adds Spot and Search to the class spell list.
It does have two lame feat prerequisites (skill point ones), which is one more than just taking Arcane Disciple. Hmm ...