I did a quick search and saw that there weren't too many "spellblade" builds around that weren't several years old, so I went ahead and decided to post this:
Paladin(9), Sorcerer(21), Red Dragon Disciple(10) Human, Lawful Good
This is obviously made to be very melee orientated, through the use of Stilled spells you have full access to all sorc spells up to lvl 8, with Divine Might/Divine Shield the RDD bonuses and Sorc buffs AC and DMG are both reasonably high.
There are several verbal only lvl 9 spells you still have access to, I'll list them here:
Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Power Word: Kill, Time Stop, and yes..Wail of the Banshee..not that it'll see much use
The lvl 39 Feat was left open intentionally, as there are several viable feats available so instead I'll list a few I'ld recommend: ESF (Disc), Epic Prowess, Epic Fortitude, Epic Warding, Epic Mage Armor
Edited By Kail Pendragon on 04/29/09 17:49
This is great, seriously. Very nice build! I wish there was an awesome story to accompany it. What weapon would you suggest?
I leave weapon up to personal preference on all my builds, however I'ld suggest Longsword/Scimitar or Rapier if you can get Keen as a weapon property
Any reason you have so much pally? 4 will do just fine for DM/DS. I'd rather have 26 levels of sorc since this gives you 2 bonus feats and immunity to Greater Dispel.
Also... come on man, no devcrit? You'll lose your 4 Great STR feats but in return you'll actually be a threat in melee (because otherwise anyone with decent AC or HP will be able to ignore you and do whatever when you're not casting spells).
By the way, dozen or so attacks out of timestop is just plain deadly. Not only is your opponent flat-footed, but he's also not hitting back... And there's a very good chance there will be a 1 somewhere along the way... (all the more reason to have devcrit).
Edited By Bertuzzi on 03/10/09 10:42
Quote: Posted 03/10/09 10:36 (GMT) -- Bertuzzi
Any reason you have so much pally? 4 will do just fine for DM/DS. I'd rather have 26 levels of sorc since this gives you 2 bonus feats and immunity to Greater Dispel.
I wondered that as well. It appears that he was trying to get 16BAB for the full attack schedule. Which, if that were the case, would go well with your Dev Crit suggestion. In a PvM spellblade, I prefer to get only the 3APR schedule so that I can get more caster levels in there, and end around Caster26/Class4/Class10 find of split.
In this case, dropping Paladin to 4 and raising Sorc to 26 will have a number of postives, to include undispellability, longer buffs, better penetration, 2 bonus feats, faster accelaration of spell progression, and more efficacy on some of the damage spells. The only downside to this is that your AB is lowered slightly, and you drop from 4APR to 3APR. The loss is more than made up for by the addition of 5 sorc levels. _________________ Got Hommlet? World of Greyhawk Action Server (with 1/2 price ales on Mondays!)
Ariel, Ookla, RIDE!
Dropping from 9 Paladin to 4 Paladin is a great idea. I mean.. the last two APR aren't really that useful. At least in my mind they aren't.
I personally never found dev crit to be a useful feat, 5 feats and you spend the rest of your time hoping some poor dope rolls a 1, or doesn't know how to get decent fort..just not an effective usage of feats on an already feat hungry build.
And fully geared/buffed your AB can reach up to 68/63/58/53 with a 12-20/15-20 crit range, so take less paladin levels, drop the great strengths etc and your max AB suffers, and since you're going to be able to hit the +20 AB cap easily through True Strike uses (you'll have up to 9 of them) higher AB potential was more important to me when I made this.
Besides there were already several more caster heavy versions of a sorc/pally/rdd already here
Edited By Revenant Mattlov on 03/10/09 18:49
Epic Warding would be the obvious choice to me in lvl 39.
Good build, and probably cool to play. _________________ We are sons of Odin, and the fire that we burn inside is the legacy of warrior-kings who reign above in the sky I will lead the charge, my sword into the wind Sons of Odin fights to die and live again
In most balanced worlds you can't get 68 AB fully buffed without True Strike (9 seconds.. come on). You're not a cleric and don't get the full +20, the most you can expect is +7-8 weapon, +2 bless/aid and another +2 if there's a bard in the party, so 58-60 or so is a more reasonable estimate.
The point of Devcrit is psychological warfare. Unless you're doing a whackload of damage per hit (unless you're a weaponmaster, a smiter or a bard/battle cleric with DM and high CHA, you're not), the enemy can quite safely not consider you a threat. They can also ignore saves completely and wear AC or DR gear.
Devcrit forces your opponents to 1. wear lots of +Fort items, 2. make sure not to get flat-footed since a few criticals usually follow it and 3. pay attention to you whilte potentially more fragile allies (like non AC mages) are out doing damage.
Yeah, dev crit is personal preference, I personally find it completely worthless unless I'm intentionally killing effortless rated PCs/NPCs so I don't bother trying to fit it into most of my builds, either way I believe there was another variant of a sorc/pally/rdd that had dev crit on the search engine
Yeah, dev crit is personal preference, I personally find it completely worthless unless I'm intentionally killing effortless rated PCs/NPCs so I don't bother trying to fit it into most of my builds, either way I believe there was another variant of a sorc/pally/rdd that had dev crit on the search engine
That reminds me, you're supposed to linkify similar builds in the OP, for easy reference.
I personally never found dev crit to be a useful feat, 5 feats and you spend the rest of your time hoping some poor dope rolls a 1, or doesn't know how to get decent fort..just not an effective usage of feats on an already feat hungry build.
No argument here.
Quote: And fully geared/buffed your AB can reach up to 68/63/58/53 with a 12-20/15-20 crit range, so take less paladin levels, drop the great strengths etc and your max AB suffers, and since you're going to be able to hit the +20 AB cap easily through True Strike uses (you'll have up to 9 of them) higher AB potential was more important to me when I made this.
If we're addressing the PvM aspect of this, we're only talking 1 AB. 4-5 Pally levels for 1AB is not really worth it.
Quote: Besides there were already several more caster heavy versions of a sorc/pally/rdd already here
A few, but none have the split I suggested plus, as you explained, are caster heavy, and consequently spend all attribute efforts on Charisma. Yours is strength-based, and would easily be head and shoulders better than those collecting dust. _________________ Got Hommlet? World of Greyhawk Action Server (with 1/2 price ales on Mondays!)
Ariel, Ookla, RIDE!
I've posted a variant of this build with the lvl split suggested by Grizz, Arcane Blade of Draconic Might V2
