In this case, a wizard.
Now, despite all my experience with optimization, I've never actually run a primary caster who stays a primary caster- I've run primarily martial classes. So while I might be able to design something interesting, I'd much rather have some help with it.
Here are the parameters:
Alignment: Must be evil (any axis)
ECL: 8
Class: Specialist Wizard (1 prohibited school must be necromancy, must not prohibit evocation)
Books allowed: Core, Completes (except Complete Arcane/Complete Divine/Complete Adventurer), Magic Item Compendium, Spell Compendium.
No reserve feats
The Concept:
My DM is very roleplay oriented, and likes a lot of flavour and rewards that sort of thing. So, while my current character lacks somewhat in the flavour department, I've decided that this one will give him more then enough flavour to work with, as well as challenging his perceptions of the alignment system.
Specifically, the intent is to run an evil wizard (probably lawful evil) in a party of mostly good adventurers (including a Paladin and two clerics)
More specifically, the idea would be that the wizard runs under some means to conceal alignment, and 'acts' primarily 'good'. Helps the party, does seemingly selfless things, and is general friends with them, even though his eventual goals are evil, and he plans on killing them all or something along those lines.
My preference would be for a specialist wizard who doesn't drop evocation. I'm aware it's a top level drop school, but I like the flavour.
My basic plan for a build would probably be a Specialist Wizard/Master Specialist, either specialising in Divination, or Evocation. The latter is a suboptimal choice sure, but I think it would work thematically with what I want to do. Other then that, feel free to come up with any suggestions or ideas.
Some of us serve a cosmic and terrible purpose.
I'm not so much malevolent, myself, as just possessed of differing priorities.
I want to set him straight.
Hit up Doc Rock's War Weaver handbook for some great party-boosting abilities.
In that case, lessee here...
Elena Smiling-eyes
3 Wizard, Abjuration specialist
5 MSpecialist Abjurer
Drops necromancy, illusion
Wears a mask of lies and insists that she couldn't fool you if she wanted to! She can't even cast illusion spells!
Or Ye Olde Shadowcraft Mage always works. Blooms pretty early if you hax your way in.
Alternatively, if you're feeling brave, you could try a summoning build. Or tainted scholar from heroes of horror. That'd cleanly explain her motivations.... She desperately wants to be good, she just doesn't quite remember how and she really would prefer not to lose the few anchors she has left. She'd murder to protect her friends.
Often my evil characters do the same things the good characters do, just for very different reasons.
There's some later blooming ones (Arcane Archer for a 2 level dip), but they're too late.
It could be such a strong, and epic, curse that Smite Evil works on you.
Personally, with Complete Mage I have always liked with Focused Specialist. You know the schools. Dropping Necromancy, Enchantment, and Abjuration.
Is pretty solid. Drop Necromancy, Enchant, and Illusion (really, why don't you want to drop Evo??!?!?!?!). Buy a custom item of Undetectable Alignment (360gp), and you'll never show up on 'Detect Evil' or the like. If anyone get's suspicious, you're 'true neutral', and that's why you don't show up on 'detect good' or any of the others. Besides, it's going to be really hard for a cleric or pally to question the guy that's persisting all his spells for him.
That's too many good dropped schools for a low level game. There, I said it. Roll a freaking elven generalist wizard instead, if you must go incantatrix. I'm going to really catch flak for this, but I feel that pre-10, the layout of Schoolz-Ta-Drop looks like this:
1: Enchantment; can't stick the saves.
2: Evocation; at low levels, this is ridiculously painful.
3: Illusion; almost impossible to give this up. Invisibility is huge early game.
4: Necromancy; Dropping this for a pre-10s build means you are dropping too many.
Do you see a pattern there? Early game, a lot of the no-save spells live in necromancy, a lot of utility lives in illusion, and scorching ray is sort of a big deal. I know that playing god is considered The Thing To Do, but if you can figure out a schema to avoid dropping evocation prior to level 7, then you should hold off dropping it unless it's evo versus necromancy.
Hey look, that's where we are right now. Roll an elven generalist if you want to go into incantatrix.
Moreover, I'm dropping necromancy not because I think it's a good school to drop, but because it fits the thematicism of what I want to do, and will prevent my DM from trying to railroad me into becoming a lich.
I'm keeping evocation for almost the same reason. This campaign is heavily steeped in fluff, and it has an equal or greater value then the mechanics, as much as I'd wish otherwise. I want a blaster capable mage.
ECL is eight, but it's been a 1-20+ game. We're not just running a couple sessions then making new characters and doing other things- we're going to be keeping on until we decide not to play anymore, and given the ambitions of some of the players, that looks like it will take us right into epic.
I. Do. Not. Care. How. Good. Necromancy. Is.
It. Does. Not. Fit. The. Character.
I really do appreciate the help, but please can we try to work within the guidelines. Please stop suggestings classes that, as per the OP that I've outlined, I cannot actually take. Please.
Dropped schools will almost certainly be Enchantment and Necromancy. End of Discussion. What I'd like is some suggestions on general feats that would help a specialist wizard build, even if he by some strange chance decides to specialize in evocation. I'm still aware of how horribly suboptimal evocation magic is, and how if the community had its way, it wouldn't bloody well exist. But that said....
I really don't care.
My drop picks are this: Necromancy, Enchantment.
Becomes: Necromancy, enchantment, illusion for a master specialist.
Feats I really like:
Improved Initiative, a must for blasters.
Knowledge Devotion, very good in general.
Residual Magic, essential if there's a chance you'll be paying full price for meta-magic.
I actually tend to specialize in abjuration for my blasters... :: thinking ::
Man, lacking complete arcane and complete divine really hurts. It means that meta-magic fu is gonna be very hard.
I'm also apparently illiterate. How would you feel about a blaster-capable gish?
I'm not too big on the idea of gishing right now. Specializing in Abjuration sounds good- and I don't need to be a focused specialist to get into Master Specialist, so I'm only likely to drop two schools.
Actually, an idea I was pondering that might be interesting: Focused Specialist Diviner 3/Master Specialist 5
Combine your ideas of focusing on Divination and Evocation. Plenty of blaster-style direct damage and the ability to spellwarp area spells down to rays if you need precision. There is also a decent little hint of skillmonkey in here.
Frost Breath spellwarped is a very potent evocation spell.It's only level 2 as well, meaning you can metamagic it without much problem, and lesser rods of metamagic are cheaper.
Should fit in with your book selections, but just an idea for ya.
I wouldn't play around - if you like evocation, specialize! Drop necromancy and enchantment - it's pretty painless.
HERE is my guide to evocation spells
Unfortunately, without Complete Arcane your PrC choices are a bit slim. Master Specialist (Evoker) sucks.
You might consider picking up a level of Sorcerer and going with an Ultimate Magus? (I would recommend Beguiler except PHB II isn't allowed).
This would give you the ability to use spell trigger items from prohibited schools (they are all on the sorcerer list), as well as powerup some Metamagic feats.
A bit of MAD, but don't worry too much about CHA, a 14 will suffice to start.
Sorry, I think I came across wrong. I was arguing in favor of not dropping evocation, and merely using necromancy as my cut off point. I cherish it, but it's not too good to not drop. It's just that when you start dropping three schools, things can get rough. Particularly when you drop illusion.
Say what? Illusion? I'd drop abjuration over illusion any day of the week! Mirror Image, Shadow Evocation/Conjuration, Invisibility, Silent Image. Abjuration... has the Dispel Magic line. That's just not enough IMO. (assuming explosive runes cheese and Planar Binding cheese is disallowed that is. Even if it was allowed, I like wouldn't use so as to avoid winning DnD too much)
Anyway, the 2nd I'd drop would always be ecnahtment. It's good but rather unneccsary. 3rd School to drop would be Abjuration IMO.
It seems a standard Conjurer/Focused Specalsit Conjurer would be good here if you're not set on the Diviner/Evoker specalization. Then Master Specalist would be a good choice followed by and full casting PrC and the industry standard Archmage.
If you're dead set on those speclaizizations... then perhaps go Specalist Diviner dropping Necro and pretend to be a generalist (since you wouldn't be using Necro for RP reasons anyway)
Then you have the POWER to destroy the party at a later date
If you go to later levels I would hit 1 level of Unseen Seer then Spellwarp Sniper.So final build would be:
Beguiler 1 / Evoker 4 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Unseen Seer 1 / Spellwarp Sniper 4
Gives you 19th level Wizard Casting, 8th level Beguiler casting, LOTS of spells, the ability to cast damaging precision or area spells, and 8 free feats to play with (2 bonus from UM - I took Invisible Spell from Cityscape as my Metamagic Qualifier but you can use any you deem appropriate)
Split Ray would be awesome at higher levels. Get the Dragon Subtype somehow and use Practical Metamagic (Split Ray) to make it even worse for the party.
With the right Magic Items & Spells (and a prepared battleground) you could likely tear the party to shreds :D
That's actually terribly clever! :: impressed ::
:D Why thank you :embarrass
Belt of Battle, MIC
+1 Eager/+1 Warning Quarterstaff
Ioun Stone, Orange
Ring of Spell-storing
Boccob's Blessed Book
Would be my short-list.
Though something else I've been pondering, if I have enough money (and probably a bad but amusing expenditure of money): A Ring of Wizardry (I-IV)
Given double casting progression, having double spells for a given level for both classes could be lulzy.
RoWIVs are expensive as all hell. But hilarious. double 4th level Beguiler spells, double 4th level Evoker spells.
I use the Ring of Spellstoring to hold assorted buffs not on my spell list, or if it's a minor, to hold three castings of nerveskitter.
So final build would be:
Beguiler 1 / Evoker 4 / Ultimate Magus 10 / Unseen Seer 1 / Spellwarp Sniper 4
Depending on how your DM reads the Unseen Seer that build might be illegal towards the end. Unseen Seer says it advances bonus damage, implying that if you don't have any bonus damage it doesn't advance anything. And you need that to get into Spellwarp Sniper. Very cool build if it's ruled that Unseen Seer gives you the SA.
I would probably take Diviner 3/Master Specialist 5 in your shoes, revoking only necromancy.
I'm actually debating taking 5 levels of wizard initially to grab spontaneous divination. Seems like it'd really come in handy.
That wouldn't be a bad choice, either. In fact, I think I like it better.
I on the other hand would insist that you not give up Enchantment, especially if you are considering initiating verus party play. Enchantment is pretty much a guarnteed win if you have any idea that you are going to kill the party before the fight breaks out. If your Enchanter has access to the party's sleeping area, it's an 'all you can dominate' fest, as sleeping characters = helpless = get no save versus yer spells. Then you proceed to have everyone follow you somewhere away from their equipment, order them to kill eachother, and pick apart the survivors or leave them chain dominated, as you prefer. Admittedly, you will occasionally run into a problem DM who disagrees with what exactly gives you that secondary dominate save, but you can get around this with Master Enchanter specialist, or Arcane Disciple - Domination domain (for Monstrous Thrall).
Oh, just noticed you don't have Complete Arcane/Divine/Adv (But you do have Mage, Warrior, Champion? Odd). I don't know if it's in the magic item compendium, but a Ring of Spell Battle would also probably be a good long term investment for dealing with the party's opposed casters (presumably a cleric or druid? These are the only real threats to a wizard, besides complex PrCs). However, it's too expensive to get at the level specified (costs 65k, if I recall). The rings of Wizardry are nice if you find them, but I personally don't feel at yer level they'd be worth the investment on your baseline, or even your in-game gold. +Int items help with your spell DCs, if you take my advice about enchantment (which is all about DCs). Sorta depends on yer group though, Paladins are notoriously hard to dominate unless your DM agrees with the RAW on helpless sleeping characters and dominate.