Taken from my other topic where I ended up getting no comments after posting the build outline...


Race Human
Clerical Domains:
Healing, Air

made the build with starting stats:

10 STR
10 DEX
14 CON
16 WIS
16 INT
8 CHA

ended with:

10 STR
10 DEX
14 CON
18 WIS
28 INT
8 CHA



Took feats:

Expertise
Improved Expertise
Spell penetration
Greater Spell penetration
Epic Spell penetration
Epic Spell: EMA
Epic Spell: EW
Armor Skin
Toughness
Blind Fighting
Empower
Combat Casting
Improved Combat Casting
Extend
Great Intelligence I-IV
Maximize Spell
Silent Spell


Pre-epic:
14 Cleric/6 Wizard

Epic:
1 Cleric / 17 Wizard / 2 Bard

Total:
15 Cleric / 23 Wizard / 2 Bard


BAB 24, 14 Pre-epic, 3 attacks base
4 attacks with Divine Power
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Not much else I could possibly improve on this build except of course getting more INT and WIS
I guess Blind Fighting isn't really necessary so any other proposals would be accepted with joy.



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I did the same build CHA based and trying to get Divine Shield and all but didn't work out too well. Build was greatly lacking feats (4 feats...) and thus ended low with CHA and wasn't too useful overall although the spell selection was nice as Clerical spells could substitute for a great deal of sorceror spells.
I guess the main problem was getting 13/14 STR and INT in addition to keeping CHA and WIS reasonable.


please critique my build.
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Inactive for a while There was a build similar in class structure to yours that had lv 9 arcane and divine. Where yours is trying to be a master of both, that one focused on dev crit!

I was thinking about this just now, the 2 lvls of bard give you a nice xp penalty for the last lvl of your career, and I am lost to see what the 2 lvls at 39 + 40 give you that 1 bard lvl wouldnt (you would take bard at lv 40 so, unless you loose xp upon death, you would have no penalty). So other than that, if you like casting, this will be a nice build. Though, because your wis is low, you are basicaly taking cleric for buffs (div fav and such) and depending on wiz for casting (its what you ultimately appear to be doing), and as such, you will not be as an effective caster overall, as say a specialized wizard or cleric. Just an observation.

Peace
Quote: Posted 08/01/05 02:56:59 (GMT) -- avado

There was a build similar in class structure to yours that had lv 9 arcane and divine. Where yours is trying to be a master of both, that one focused on dev crit!

I was thinking about this just now, the 2 lvls of bard give you a nice xp penalty for the last lvl of your career, and I am lost to see what the 2 lvls at 39 + 40 give you that 1 bard lvl wouldnt (you would take bard at lv 40 so, unless you loose xp upon death, you would have no penalty). So other than that, if you like casting, this will be a nice build. Though, because your wis is low, you are basicaly taking cleric for buffs (div fav and such) and depending on wiz for casting (its what you ultimately appear to be doing), and as such, you will not be as an effective caster overall, as say a specialized wizard or cleric. Just an observation.

Peace

I have been considering getting 9th level spells for each cleric and wizard, but With the low cleric level, the 9th level spells would fail to be very effective imho, which is why i stopped cleric short of 9th lvl spells.
Also, tking more wizard levels allowed for epic spells, which will greatly help this build out and have at least some decent capability of dealing with foes which have some SR (if they have a lot like pure monks, then of course this build is weak except for buff+attack)

I will take 1 bard level at 22 and one at 40th. This allows a tumble/UMD/discipline dump early epics and one to max out skills, making the build more playable overall when disregarding the xp penalty.

Concerning xp penalty, it will be harsh and hard to get higher, but I think if I get used to the build and can enjoy it at that point, I would strive to get it to 40 later on.


Thanks for your comments, i greatly appreciate them. Please keep them coming.
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Inactive for a while I would definitely try to get epic spell focus:evocation, probably by dropping blind-fight and two great int. Also I just love the word of faith spell so I'd take one more cleric level for an extra cast per day of 7th and 8th lvl spells, either sacrificing the early bard level and lose playablity (but also avoiding the xp penalty) or a wizard level and lose a bonus feat, in which case I would probably drop epic spell penetration. Personally I'm not a great fan of the penetration feats at all, they are only useful agianst enemies whose MR is within a fairly specific range after all.

I'm also curious about silent spell, but I expect this is environment specific, yes?

You could make a more drastic change and use sorc instead of wiz, taking divine shield and/or might for improved melee presence. Notice that these can still be used while using the shape change spell. War and strength domains also offer cha-based combat bonuses.A very different build in a way, but I think it could be done without losing much spellcasting ablity, if you are interested I'd be happy to help with ability score and feat distribution.
EDIT:
I now notice you've already tried that, I really have to learn to read the whole post, sorry about that. I'll try to make something of it anyway, I really think it could be made to work.

You could also use monk instead of bard to get a nice +4 ac and extra attacks shifted (perhaps in human form too, I don't see auto still). And there's cleave and evasion. You lose UMD of course but is that really all that useful on SF anyway? You can use scrolls already, and the really nice items would require 30 lvls bard to go with the UMD anyway.

Looking back on my own post I realise it's a bit messy, but I hope you'll find some of it helpful at least.

Edited By pulse cap on 08/01/05 23:24

Quote: Posted 08/01/05 23:15:24 (GMT) -- pulse cap
I would definitely try to get epic spell focus:evocation, probably by dropping blind-fight and two great int. Also I just love the word of faith spell so I'd take one more cleric level for an extra cast per day of 7th and 8th lvl spells, either sacrificing the early bard level and lose playablity (but also avoiding the xp penalty) or a wizard level and lose a bonus feat, in which case I would probably drop epic spell penetration. Personally I'm not a great fan of the penetration feats at all, they are only useful agianst enemies whose MR is within a fairly specific range after all.

I'm also curious about silent spell, but I expect this is environment specific, yes?

You could also use monk instead of bard to get a nice +4 ac and extra attacks shifted (perhaps in human form too, I don't see auto still). And there's cleave and evasion. You lose UMD of course but is that really all that useful on SF anyway? You can use scrolls already, and the really nice items would require 30 lvls bard to go with the UMD anyway.

Thanks for your comments pulse.
Since we play on the same PW, some of the features of the build are rather known to us
I took bard level for the light armor (-50%ASF) which lets me get rid of still spell/auto still for the wiz levels, this wasy I had more feats to play with, although admittedly my AC will be lower due to not using a full plate and DEX bonus not being too great.

Bards, with 1 or 2 levels have the same potential AC as monks when you neglect WIS. both have tumble as a class skill.
I would only get the WIS bonus to AC if i were using clothing and no shield, which probably wouldn't be a too great of an idea due to low DEX and WIS (even when buffed).

Also, UMD would allow access to more restricted items which can be a boon for this build, e.g. regen rings, alignment restricted items, druid items etc.

I have been considering epic focus, but since my casting stat is low to begin with, adding the foci wouldn't bring all that much either, maybe increase full damage chances by 20% at max overall, which likely won't make these 3 feats justified. I could possibly drop blind fight for normal spell focus for the 10% boost, which I will consider, but when you look at all those buffs, you'd think blind fight would be great when you go melee.

I chose to take 2 bard levels to have a small skill dump and a possibility to cast spells without switching armor around all the time early epics. If i hadn't done that, I wouldn't be able to use my wizard spells effectively..
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Inactive for a while