"This city deserves a better class of basketweaver, and I'm going to give it to them."The Joker"Let me show you how I got these spells..." This build is pretty cheesy, and is the work of a collaborative effort between Malkavon and myself. We use Magical Training to sneakily access Precocious Apprentice. This lets us grab an arcane spell to get us into Exalted Arcanist via Sanctum Spell tricks, which gives us a pair of arcane spells permanently added to our list. At this point we retrain Precocious Apprentice out for Combat Casting and proceed to climb up through War Weaver and Spellguard of Silverymoon, advancing our Favored Soul spellcasting because we are now an arcane spellcaster thanks to Exalted Arcanist. The build hinges on the fact that Favored Soul has an ACF that allows them to add temp. HP to any spell they cast. This lets all of their buffs be turned into touch spells via Spellguard of Silverymoon 4, and from there we spread them via War Weaver to all of our allies at once. The build squeaks in at 18th level Favored Soul spellcasting, getting 9th level spells and is able to share 6th level spells through the tapestry thanks to Sanctum Spell.
Human Favored Soul 4/Church Inquisitor 1/Exalted Arcanist 1/War Weaver 5 Spellguard of Silverymoon 4/Sacred Exorcist 1/Incantatrix 41) Sanctum Spell, Magical Training, Precocious Apprentice (retrained to Combat Casting after 6th), Consecrate Spell
3) Purify Spell
6) Enlarge Spell
9) Extend Spell
12) Persistent Spell
15) Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell)
17) Repeat Spell
18) Practiced Spellcaster (Favored Soul)
20) Bonus Metamagic Feat
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Algernon Of The White Lillies
"Everything slips away..."
Much like the joker except that it uses a dragon's blood pool to count himself as an arcane caster. Has to come back every twelve months for another drink or his powers fade. Uses favored soul ACF to add a buff to his spells that adds temporary HP. We can now cast any personal spell on an ally with a touch. Okay, fair enough, so now allies are legal targets. That's terribly important. Most GMs will now let you cast into the tapestry, though they should not. Share spell with your familiar, however, and it becomes a ranged touch, split ray it, and target the tapestry with it to store it as a quiescent weaving. It now satisfies all the requirements for using the tapestry.
Human Favored Soul 4/War Weaver 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 4/XXXXXXX 6 1) Sanctum Spell, Split Ray, Improved Initiative, Enlarge Spell
3) Extend Spell
6) Obtain Familiar, since we are an arcane caster
9) Persistent Spell
12) DMM: Persist
15) Free
18) Free
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He Who Hunts Monsters
Arcane Archer with 9th level spells and passable BAB. Some versions also achieve the golden four iterative attacks. By and at large, however, as an arcane archer you will be concerned less with iterative attacks and more with delivery of spells using standard actions. Why do we care about arcane archer? Because arrows fired during timestop get stopped. It's that simple. During timestop, we can actually cast spells directly using AA. We can use smite spell to stack spells often two-deep on an arrow, three deep if we use a glyph seal, preparing things in advance through various means. If we have access to Genesis, we can even keep our demi-plane at slow time to store smite-spell filled arrows among other things. We can stick AMFs in ways that make it impossible to block the emanation. We, in short, have a tremendously strange and wide set of options. None of this necessitates War Weaver, however, until you begin to talk about actions as currency. With delay spell, we can cast into the tapestry while timestopped. We can use a single spell to hit all our allies. One teleport to jump everyone when we can't touch them. This build emphasizes options and actions as currency, focusing on the ability to ready actions to interrupt enemy casters as well as buffs that allow it to position itself to abuse celerity and the like. In short, by mixing Arcane Archer in, we can continue to play the classical Batman roles with WW, while burning our higher level spells to nuke down enemy mages. Our job is to remove threats instead of just trying desperately to mitigate them. The simple fact is that mages aren't mitigated until they're dead as seven doornails and a nine-pence. We'll even keep scrolls of barghest feast around to destroy them permanently.
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Bard Weavers :
- From Keithio: Bard 4 / Any Full BaB Class 1 / Spellsword 1 / Abjurant Champion 2 / Arcane Archer 2 / Sublime Chord 1 / Abjurant Champion 3 / War Weaver 5 / Dragonslayer 1
- From Jameswilliamogle & Carnivore: Bard 8 / Arcane Archer 2 / Sublime Chord 2 / War Weaver 5 / Anything 3
"Use an Aptitude Skillful Bow to get +15 BAB. Feels very simple to me." - If partial BAB stacking is allowed, uses early entry with sanctum spell: Bard 6 /War Weaver 1/ Abjurant Champion 1 / Arcane Archer2 / Sublime Chord 1 / War Weaver 4 / Abjurant Champion 4 /Dragonslayer 1
A little bit of a late bloomer! BAB 16 or 17 thanks to the capstone ability of abjurant champion, CL17, 3rd level bard spells and 9th level Sublime chord spells.
Battle Sorcerer 5, Domain Access healing 3.75 bab War Weaver 1, using earth spell\sanctum\etc to qualify Warrior Skald 1, bardic music 4.75 bab Can't qualify without a hack to get perform as a class skill. cosmopolitan works, though it's 3.0. AbjurantChampion 1 6.75 bab ArcaneArcher 2 8.75 bab SublimeChord 1 9.25 bab War Weaver 4 11.75 Sacred Exorcist 1 12.5 AbjurantChampion 4 15.5 CL 16 Sublime Chord, 9th level spells from sublime Chord
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Rainbow Weavermage
The purpose of this build is very very simple. Rush to eleven, get cleric spells, and dash into your preferred prestige. In this case, obviously, we'll be using War Weaver, because we get the distinct and pleasant advantage of being able to cast spells like heal into our tapestry if we use sanctum spell cheese. Presented here are only early entry builds, as this is a fairly difficult option to pursue otherwise.
Malkavon's basic Rainbow Warweaver:
Human Warmage 1/Rainbow Servant 10/Sacred Exorcist 1/War Weaver 5/Incantatrix 3Feats:
Heighten Spell (1), Earth Sense (H), Earth Spell (F1), Versatile Spellcaster (F2)
Extend Spell (3)
Iron Will (Otyugh Hole)
Enlarge Spell (6)
Persistent Spell (9)
Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell) (12)
Sanctum Spell(15)
Open (18)
Open (Inc1).
This build however offers the greatest degree of overall legitimacy, a strong balance of power and utility, and a wide range of abilities. It loses a number of caster levels, depending on your reading of Rainbow Servant, covered neatly by our feat choices, and has access to DMM(Persist) in conjunction with sanctum spell cheese for really heavy-duty lifting when it comes to casting buffs. It is well positioned to progress into epic level play, easy to play at early levels, and very party-friendly.
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Rt. Hon. Fred Astaire
Star Elf, take Aereni Focus(Perform) (DMG II) for perform. You'll need one flaw to make this work and still be fun, probably, unless you're playing human. You'll be using the dragonsblood pool + sanctum spell early entry hack on war weaver, but otherwise this is a completely legit if utterly mind-boggling build.
Sorcerer 3\War Weaver 5\Spelldancer 1\Spellsinger 1\Sublime chord 1\ Ultimate Magus 9 Feats:
1: Aereni Focus(Perform)
1F: Enlarge Spell
1F: Draconic Heritage(Blue), for listen as a class skill.
3:Improved Counterspell
Metamagic Storm-> Sanctum Spell, hit up a dragonsblood pool.
Retrain Otyugh Hole:combat casting
6 dodge
DCS for Mobility
DCS for Endurance
9: Arcane Preparation OR Corrupt Arcana, to qualify for UM.
Unless I'm completely stupid, this should get you 9th level sorcerer spells and 8th level sublime chord spells, along with full weaver, two means of alternative casting for your meta-magic, and a little bit of bardic action to boot. There's always a chance I'm completely stupid though, and I go cross-eyed looking at the table for ultimate magus anyway, so, wotcha, as they say. It will also give you a weird and entirely unnatural sublime chord casting level. Crucially, you will also get arcane fusion lesser and greater, as well as arcane spellsurge in a way that's usable. You might even be able to snag triadspell with some trickery.
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Well-Dressed Wrestler
by Endarire
GOAL: Be a Wizard grappler, but get into group buffing ASAP with War Weaver. Losing casting progression at War Weaver1 -hurts-, but being able to buff the group with one spell and one action (like with the animal buffs, Levitate, Displacement, and Polymorph) makes up for it in the long term and a bit in the short term.
This build assumes no Persistent Spell, but that feat is an obvious choice if you can get it and spread the day-long buffs via tapestry. You also need a bonus feat at level 1, so Human it probably is!
I opposed Necromancy since
shivering touch is banned for me in this game and the main reason I'd keep Necromancy.
Transmuter3/War Weaver5/Incantatrix4/Master Transmuter1/Incantatrix+6/Whatever1
1: {Aggressive}, {Murky-Eyed}, {Shaky}, {Spellgifted: Transmutation}
1: Collegiate Wizard, Enlarge Spell, [Improved Grapple], Improved Unarmed Strike, [Oppose Enchantment & Necromancy], Practiced Spellcaster: Wizard, [Summon Familiar: Octopus]
3: Sanctum Spell
4: [Eldritch Tapestry I], LOST CASTER LEVEL!
5: [Eldritch Tapestry II], [Quiescient Weaving I]
6: [Eldritch Tapestry III], Iron Will, [Quiescient Weaving II]
7: [Eldritch Tapestry IV], [Quiescient Weaving III]
8: [Eldritch Tapestry V], [Enlarged Weave], [Quiescient Weaving IV]
9: [Extend Spell], Reserves of Strength, [Oppose Illusion]
10: [COOPERATIVE METAMAGIC!]
11: {METAMAGIC EFFECT!]
12: [Chain Spell], Improved Initiative
13: [Skill Focus: Spellcraft]
14: [Metamagic Spell Trigger]
15: [Seize Concentration], -=FEAT=-
16: [Easy Metamagic: Chain Spell], [Instant Metamagic 1/day]
17: [Snatch Spell]
18: [Instant Metamagic 2/day], -=FEAT=-
19: [Easy Metamagic: Chain Spell OR Easy Metamagic: Quicken Spell OR Quicken Spell], [Improved Metamagic!]
20: Whatever
-=FEAT POOL=-
-Ability Enhancer
-Extraordinary Concentration
-Extraordinary Spell Aim
-Metamagic School Focus: Abjuration/Evocation/Transmutation
-Reserves of Strength
-=EXPLANATIONS=-
-+Traits+-
-Spellgifted: +1 caster level (Unearthed Arcana)
-+Feats in Order of Acquisition+-
-Collegiate Wizard: Doubles the amount of free Wizard spells per level. (Complete Arcane 181 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Collegiate_Wizard)
-Enlarge Spell: Totally a prerequisite for War Weaver which I don't plan to use otherwise.
-Practiced Spellcaster: Makes up for lost caster levels from Spellgifted and War Weaver. Doesn't make up for lost casting progression at War Weaver1. (Complete Arcane 82 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Practiced_Spellcaster)
-Sanctum Spell: Allows me to enter War Weaver at level 4, and lets me use up to level 6 spells via my Eldritch Tapestry. Inside my sanctum ('home' or 'base'), any Sanctum Spell I cast is treated as 1 level higher than normal in all regards. Outside my sanctum, any Sanctum Spell is treated as 1 level lower than normal in all regards. (Complete Arcane 82 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Sanctum_Spell)
-Iron Will: Prereq for Incantatrix. Also, minor protection vs. Umber Hulks.
-Chain Spell (+3 slot levels): Mostly to buff the party with Greater Magic Weapon. (Complete Arcane 76 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Chain_Spell)
-Reserves of Strength: I increase my caster level by 1, 2, or 3 for a spell but am Stunned for that many rounds immediately after casting. I can also exceed caster level caps by this amount, such as generating 1 more image with Mirror Image by using +3 CL via this feat. (Dragonlance Campaign Setting 85 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Reserves_of_Strength)
-Improved Initiative: Going first is good.
-Easy Metamagic: Reduces the slot level of a 1 metamagic feat by 1, minimum +1. ("Dragon" 325 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Easy_Metamagic)
-Quicken Spell (+4 slot levels): I'm sure I can find a use for more spells per round.
-Ability Enhancer: Spells and effects that give a bonus to an ability score (like Bull's Strength or Draconic Polymorph) give +2 more. ("Dragon" 325" and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Ability_Enhancer)
-Extraordinary Concentration: I can maintain concentration as a move action instead of a standard action and can concentrate on spells while doing other things. Mostly useful for Summon Elemental Monolith (Complete Arcane 124) and Silent Image/Major Image. (Complete Adventurer 109 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Extraordinary_Concentration)
-Extraordinary Spell Aim: I can exclude 1 creature from an area spell. (Complete Arcane 109 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Extraordinary_Spell_Aim)
-Metamagic School Focus: Reduces the slot increase for metamagic by 3 levels per day. (Complete Mage 45 and
http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Metamagic_School_Focus)
-+Classes+-
-Wizard (Transmuter): I like Wizards and most buff spells I plan to use are Transmutation.
-War Weaver: Cast one buff spell and have it apply to the entire party. Later, I can have spells remain dormant and release all of them as a move action. (Heroes of Battle 112)
-Incantatrix: Bonus metamagic feats are helpful. Being able to apply my metamagic feats (mostly Extend Spell) to others' spells as they're being cast, and to spells already cast without increasing the slot level is wonderful! Without Persistent Spell, there's less need to send dispellers after us, though we will still be plenty potent. Finally, taking all 10 levels in this build qualifies me for Epic Incantatrix should we hit epic levels.
-Master Specialist (Transmutation): It's a one-level dip for Skill Focus: Spellcraft. (Complete Mage 70)
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Finally, some generalist tips.
These are basic and well loved components used to augment a variety of builds. I'll be adding comments as I get time, but for now, I'm archiving them here. Thanks to James for pulling together this short-list in a really readable fashion.
Some stuff I like:
- Loremaster 7
- Archmage 3
- Fatespinner 4
- Incanatrix 10
- Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge 8
- Binder 1 / Anima Mage 9
- Mindbender 1
- Mage of the Arcane Order 10
Mix and match as desired!
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1.Summary, Essential Readings, Acknowledgments.
2: Why We Are Better Blasters Than The Best.
3: Pros, Cons, and a Few Gimmicks.
4: A Shortlist of Spells and Feats.
5: Takeaway Conclusions.
6: Gear and Glitteries.
7: Black Tactica.
8: Builds.