This is a cross build between a wizard and a shifter. For situations where you need melee power you have a huge variety of shapes to choose from: Wyrmling Harpy Gargoyle Minotaur Basilisk Drider Manticore Drow Lizard Kobold Dire Tiger (sucks) Medusa Mind Flayer Azer Chief Rakshasa Death Slaad
This is a very robust and unique shifter build. You have many options for your shapes and in every single form you can cast epic warding, epic mage armor, greater ruin, or hellball. Because most of the time strength and dexterity shift over, we focused raising intelligence enough to get level 9 wizard spells, wisdom to get outsider shape, and constitution for the forms that don’t shift the constitution.
Hit point calculation in human form as a level 24 wizard. 24 wizard x 4 = +96 5 druid x 8 = +40 11 shifter x 8 = +88 Con modifier = +80 Toughness = +80 Maximized Endurance = +80 Extended Blood Frenzy = +40 ===== Total = 464 hit points. Very respectable for a caster/shifter.
Human True Neutral Wizard to start.
Starting (Ending) stats Str 8 (8) Dex 8 (8) Con 12 (14) Int 16 (20) Wis 18 (25) Cha 8 (8)
From your wizard school of spells you gain the following abilities/immunities: 50% concealment Damage Reduction 50/+20 Haste Immunity to spells by level: 4 and lower 50% immunity to cold 50% immunity to fire Immunity to death magic Immunity to Necromany spells. Immunity to Magic Missile Spell level absorption (spell mantles) True Seeing Probably more, I can’t remember off the top of my head.
With acid sheath and elemental shield and death armor anyone who hits you will be taking a minimum of: 1d6 + 48 acid damage 1d6 + 24 fire damage 1d4 + 5 sonic damage
I’ve been talking about the human and wizard side, just to get that part out of the way. Here’s where the build shines: Rakshasa shape.
You run around in human form and if you see anything melee, you kill it like any wizard would. It is a very simple kill, easily achieved with Grasping Hand and Forceful Hand and GS, etc. If you see a spellcasting opponent you shift immediately into Rakshasa form and you kill the mage. Once in Rakshasa shape you have immunity to spells level 8 and lower.
There’s only two level 9 spells that can kill you. Weird and Wail of the Banshee. Fortitude saves once you shift into Rakshasa is 35. You have 63 points in spellcraft when shifted so you get +12 to your saves against spells. So basically you get 1d20 + 47 to beat a maximum DC of 46. This means you will only die on a roll of a 1 or 5% of the time against a wizard. IGMS, Firebrand, and everything else the wizard throws at you won’t do any damage.
A wizard could cast Meteor Swarm, but honestly, even if they do, I’ve never met a wizard who prepared more than one or two. That’s not enough to kill you. You have unlimited ice storms and unlimited acid breaths. They do damage counting your wizard level as your highest caster level so you’ll be doing a lot of damage. Also you have greater ruin, and hellball to cast against mages. A mage can cast hellball and greater ruin against you and should do ~200 damage. That’s not enough to kill you and they won’t have any other attack spells to kill you because 99% of people prepare a couple mordenkainen’s disjunctions and maximized IGMS. They’d need a lot of meteor swarms to kill you in rakshasa shape.
While shifted you can cast epic warding, epic mage armor, hellball, greater ruin, maximized acid breath, and maximized ice storm. If you prepare these spells once with your wizard levels and put them in your quickbar, then from that point on when you shift to Rakshasa you will cast them from your wizard school and not your druid school. The damage calculated is based off your wizard casting level.
For example, maximized Ice Storm does 60 cold and 18 bludgeoning on this build. You can cast it unlimited times per day. Maximized Mestil’s Acid Breath does 60 acid damage, unlimited times per day. You have unlimited dispel magic at your disposal as well.
Using improved expertise, and epic mage armor your AC will be 66 when in Rakshasa Shape. A mage’s only real strategy is to try to kill you with devastating critical if they have it. Casting GS won’t do anything because you have unlimited dispels. I don’t know many mages who have devastating critical. Even if they do, they’re going to have a super hard time hitting you with AC at 66. Finally, suppose a mage does have dev. Crit. and they come attack you, you’ve got 50% concealment.
This build is an all out melee and mage killer.
I’m just posting this for SBully. This was not my idea. I think, that it might be better if we went 23 wizard/ 5 druid/ 12 shifter and got undead shape too. I’ll have to go talk to SBully about that and see if it is possible to squeeze that in. I’m not sure if SBully will want to do that or not. We’ll see, but I think it is possible to do that.
cdaulepp
edit: I forgot, Rakshasa has permanent True Seeing
Edited By cdaulepp on 04/02/04 09:53:42
Torias Moderator
Joined: 18 Oct 2001 From: Sydney, Australia Posted: Friday, 02 April 2004 10:04AM
Quote: Posted 04/02/04 14:51:56 (GMT) by cdaulepp Casting GS won’t do anything because you have unlimited dispels.
apparently they are fixing dispel in the next patch (or the one after) to do a proper caster level check.
so a level 24 wizard will have little chance of dispelling the spells of a level 40 wizard.
Edited By billb0 on 04/11/04 16:17
Quote: Posted 04/02/04 18:14:01 (GMT) by Stephen Hawking
Wow, they're fixing dispel checks?
Finally, a reason to take more than 23 or 29 lvls of a caster class.
If you can squeeze it in, you can use lvl 10 shifter for undead shape on a feat lvl up, you may want to be gnome or dwarf for extra con and racial bonuses. Spell focus illusion for your wizard, or dwarf combat feats when fighting.
So for example, lvl 10 shifter at lvl 27 or so, for a feat instead of epic fortitude could easily be undead shape. I think most shifters are happy to gain that as well as outsider.
Besides, some sadistic DMs use planar turning, and clerics can cast bless on a xbow or arrow bolt that give auto kill rakshasha, no save.
On a side note, going 11 shifter gives greater wildshape 2, improved. Which means 25/+7 DR (eventually), epic minotaur with gmw/keen/flame weapon is pretty brutish, and deals like 32 dmg per hit.
All in all, a solid mix, and sounds pretty fun. I don't think saves are that much of an issue if you go dwarf instead, since they get another +2 to spell saves, which basically means great fortitude. +45 or 43? Fort save, vs 46 DC is still a success on a a roll above 1, but still always a failure on a 1 roll.
Anyway, that's what I know from my shifter experience that could help improve that build.
Doesn't the blessed crossbow bolt have to hit you though? If they attack and miss it doesn't automatically kill you, right?
Thanks Stephen. That's some sound advice. I've worked out some different numbers and I'm able to get both outsider shape and dragon shape, if I want too, but it costs me 2 epic spells. I'm trying hard to find a way to get a 3rd or 4th epic spell so I can get hellball and greater ruin. If I can swing that somehow, it'd be even better.
Another possibility is I can go 13 shifter/ 5 druid/ 22 wizard and get 1 epic spell (most likely epic warding), but I'd get 3 shapes. The question is does SBully want to leave it how it is or go for another shape or two. If we leave it the way I posted originally, we get all 4 important epic spells which can be cast in Rakshasa form (or any other shifter form). Imagine a kobold cammando casting Hellball.
Getting any extra shapes will cost a minimum of 2 epic spells. Unless I'm wrong with the math, which I'm working on now. Maybe I can get 2 shapes and 3 epic spells, I'll work on it some more. I'd really like to get Outsider and Dragon Shape if I can and still maintain the epic spells as much as possible.
Time for me to go do more brainstorming.
cdaulepp
Quote: Posted 04/03/04 03:30:12 (GMT) by Lockindal
Honestly, I think getting construct shape on SBully's build would be much better than greater ruin.
Why?
The only weakness of the Rakshasha build right now is a Paladin/Bard/RDD with Devastating Critical.
Construct Shape would allow the rakshasha to avoid this situation.... and wow, imagine a Iron Golem with Acid Sheath and Epic Warding? That would be killer.
Please do not mention time stop, 99% of modules that have ANY sense of balance at all disable/change time stop.
~ Lock.
I think SBully's idea was when he faced any type of melee character he'd cast MD on them and then use forceful hand or grasping hand to stop them in their tracks. Once they are knocked down or unable to move, he'd cast maximized IGMS or go back to rakshasa and do maximized ice storms.
Yeah, an iron golem with acid sheath, and elemental shield would be awesome.