The Gaming Den

So, the feat makes your caster level 4 levels higher.

Would it be bad to make it actually give you up to +4 casting levels so that you could, for instance, use it to offset the lost casting of Ultimate Magus?

1) Yes, it would.

2) You already use it to offset the loss of casting of Ultimate Magus -- you use it on your sorcerer spell casting so that you can keep boosting your actual wizard spell casting levels.

Yeah, it's the whole Ultimate Magus-Practiced Spellcaster "trick". The text of the ability states that levels 1, 4, and 7 advance the class with the lowest caster level, so you can force it to advance levles 1 and 4 for wizard, even though you have more spellcasting levels as wizard, because techincally your caster level is lower.

If you're an illumian (Races of Destiny), you can also advance level 7 this way. So, over 20 levels, you'd only have to lose one wizard level and in turn, you gain eight sorcerer (I prefer beguiler due to Int-synergy) levels.

Wait, is Ultimate Magus even a worth while class?

Prak_Anima wrote:Wait, is Ultimate Magus even a worth while class?

Not really, but you can do some fun things with it as a focused specialist/beguiler. In that case it's not not worth it.

Is the practiced spellcaster trick actually better than being four levels behind Character Level on Wizard and Sorcerer (or whatever)?

Well, yeah. It's up to two spell levels of difference. It's the difference between the class being playable and being absolute crap.

Prak_Anima wrote:Is the practiced spellcaster trick actually better than being four levels behind Character Level on Wizard and Sorcerer (or whatever)?

It depends on your tolerance for losing caster levels.

You can run a wizard/beguiler with wizard as your "primary" casting class, and only have to lose one wizard level, which will happen pretty early in your career. So, half of the time, you will be casting level-appropriate spells, and the other half of the time, you'll be a caster level behind. To offset this, you end up with a lot of beguiler spells in addition to your wizard spells.

I've only seen it in practice once, and the game only ran up until level 6 or 7 or so. Sadly, this meant he only got to take UM for one or two levels. During the odd levels, it was obvious when the wizard was behind in his casting progression. So, at level 5, he's running around as a Wiz 4/Beg 1, casting 2nd level spells. Although, he did have a lot of staying power, and it was the first time I got him to see the benefits of crowd control.

Personally speaking, I think it'd be fun to run in a smaller group just to see how it works out. Most of the people I've gamed with lately aren't heavy optimizers, so I think the character would actually be a pretty good fit.

I have never really been a strong believer that the extra spell level was an incalculable loss. A Practiced Spellcaster Ultimate Magus Wizard/XXX using any spellcaster class with a lot of daily spells as 'XXX' can Persist and Quicken a lot of stuff at minimal cost, creating strong action economy.

A single lost level of spell progression, for a wizard, is not a deal-breaker in and of itself. It slows you down to beguiler spell progression. That's it. Big deal.

The question is if the class features you're getting from your PrC outweigh the disadvantage of being half a spell level behind other prepared casters. In the case of Ultimate Magus, the advantage is that you spend Beguiler spell levels to give free metamagic to your Wizard spells, along with having fairly flexible spell choices. In the case of Malconvoker, the advantage is that you get to bind creatures that are very powerful for your level with basically no drawbacks, even in games that ban candles of invocation and Wish-farming.

Sure, it's never worth it to take that 5th level of Fatespinner, but "thou shalt not sacrifice caster levels" is not an absolute rule.