Complete Arcane Review

[Josh_Kablack]

First off: Today I found out that using Store Credit at Phantom of the Attic means you don't have to pay the Regional Asset District Tax. Woot! In your face Mayor Murphy, I scoff at your hairbrained redevelopment schemes and your attempts to finance them on the backs of underemployed gamers :middlefingertotheman:

Now on to the review:

Introduction: We get some gobbledygook about how it is important to roleplay magic as exclusive, mysterious and unpredictable. Notably the the word "capricious" does not mean what the author seems to think it means.

Chapter1: Classes.

Warlock: d6 HD, good will, 2+ Int Skills per level. You get spell-like abilities usable at will in place of spells, and they waste about a page of the book needlessly splitting hairs about how these are spell like abilities and therefore you can't use Spell Focus or Metamagic feats with them, but have to take the MM Ability Focus and Meta-Ability Feats instead and then turn right around to kick the player in the balls by specifying that these (Sp) abilities *ARE* like spells in that that they do suffer from Arcane Spell Failure, but then they turn around to apologize by giving the warlock the bardic armor exemption. For the life of me, I can't begin to figure out what balance gain here is worth the hassle and confusion of creating exceptions to exceptions to rules. I can already see the boards arguments about what these (Sp) abilities do and don't count as for PrC requiements going on forever.

Then we get to the interesting parts of the class. At 4th, the warlock gets the ability to always take 10 on UMD tjecks, which combined with being a Cha caster, makes him the item guy. Additionally he gets to have Fast Healing for one 2-minute period a day, as apparently just letting him cast cure spells or lay on hands was too similar to existing mechanics.

Then we get into the actual invocations, which fall into 2 categories: They are either untyped damage blasts (doing a paltry 1d6 + 1d6 every 2 levels after 1st), which you get for free and can blow invocation slots on to add status ailments and such or tend to mimic spells. A number mimic spells which have significant durations, which makes the ability to use them at will either worthless (personal-only buffs for 24 hours, summon swarm with a concentration duration) or totally punk rock (evard's black tentacles with additional continous cold damage or insect plague with increased distraction DCs)

Next up, The Warmage. You're a sorcerer with d6 HD, no familiar, light armor and light shields, eventually getting medium armor. You get to spontaneusly cast anything on your spell list, which is almost entirely evocations plus true strike, phantasmal killer, cloudkill, tenser's transformation and similar evocation-like effects, needless to see, this makes your spontaneous casting almost worthless, since your only real choice per level is "What kind of damage do I do to them?". However you also get to add 4 wizard spells of your choosing to your list. I recommend you find one that deals both HP damage and Ability or Vile damage, because then you can actually maybe get some use out of the poorly-worded Warmage Edge ability which lets you add your Int bonus to the damage dealt by a HP-damage dealing spell, but only once (in the case of Magic Missile) aside from the examples about how Fireball deals this damage to all targets and Melf's Acid Arrow deals it again on successive rounds.

The Warmage Class also inexplicably contains an adventure map of the Tarth Moorda academy, in case you want to run through a dungeoncrawl during chargen.

Wu Jen: At first glance, unchanged from the OA version aside from your initiative bonus changing into a reroll, elemental mastery changes to bonus to your chosen element at 6th (instead of requiring you to learn all spells of that element) level and minor tweaks to the spell list. (these might prove to be more than minor later)

Chapter 2: Prestige Classes.

This chapter opens with the worst drawing of Mialee yet. I feel this is foreshadowing.

Then we get some half-assed division of PrCs into 5 types: Alternate Spellcasting, Full Spellcasting, Noncaster, Transformational and Unique Capability.

This is the point where I break to rant about how Noncaster PrCs do not belong in this supplement, Transformational PrCs have to exceed Shapechange by character level 17 and what they tend to call "Unique Capability" usually already exists on the PHB spell list. Hence we're only at 40% before I've even read one of the PrCs in this book. I'll keep score as I go along to see how accurate this prediction is:

Acolyte of the Skin:

d8 HD, medium BAB, 2 good saves.

Over 10 levels you get 5 caster levels, +2 natural armor, +2 inherent to Dex, +2 inherent to con, darkvision 120', Poison once/day, fire resistance 10, cold resistance 10, a glare that works roughly like Power-Word: Stun 1/day, a pair of 8d6 Eyebeams 1/day, the ability to summon a Babu or Chain Devil for 1/hour a day, a type change to outsider and DR 10/good.

In effect, you give up 1 third 1 fourth 2 fifth 3 sixth 2 seventh and 1 eighth level spells in exchange for a better Fort Save, 20 more average HP, +2 inherent to 2 stats, a type change, DR 10/good and effects you could get with Resist Energy (2nd level), Darkvision (2nd level), Poison (3rd/4th level), Eyebeams which are better than Scorching Ray but worse than Lightning Bolt (3rd level), Planar Binding (6th level), Power Word: Stun (8th level).

And if you'll take that deal, I have a bridge to sell you.

0/10 useful levels.

Alienist Full casting progression. Familiar Progression, plus some more minor stuff at the cost of taking Augment Summon and 8 ranks in knowledge planes and losing 2 points of wis at level 2. I need to talk Malik into taking this class for Jamica Phats. On the downside, you lose a small amount of Summoning versatility.

10/10 useful levels (10/20 cumulative)

Argent Savant: The picture says "This is the 'I Dream of Jeanie' prestige class." but that's fortunately misleading.

If your 9th+ level wizard is willing to give up a caster level, she can get +2 to attack with the Bigby's Groping Hands spells, +2 more AC out of Shield and Mage Armor free Extend Spell on her force effects, a higher caster level tjeck needed to dispel her force effects, Force Resisance equal to her class level (and the class is only 5 levels long), and the ability to make force effects go kablooey.

Not particularily strong, but not unplayble. The ability to make you own Mage Armor explode and turn Tenser's Floating Disks into low-yield land mines is pretty neat - there's probably actually a worthwhile trick in there too.

5/5 useful levels (15/25 cumulative)

Blood Magus:

No longer the Butt Magus. At least not until level 5, which lets you make a Homunculus, but doesn't grant a caster level increase. Note that another 5 levels in wizard would always get you an item creation feat, which could be Craft Construct, which would let you make a Homunculus plus many other constructs, as well as 5 caster levels.

4/10 useful levels (19/35 cumulative)

Effigy Master:

Remember what I just said about how something that lets you do less than Craft Construct is not worth a caster level loss? For the Effigy Master, you take the caster level hit at level 1, thereby insuring that nobody will ever take this class.

0/5 useful levels (19/40 cumulative)

Elemental Savant:

For the first four levels, you get full caster progression, energy resistance, immunity to sleep and +2 to overcome SR with your damage spells at the cost of only being able to sling one type of elemental damage. If you're not a elf and if you're smart enough to use save-or-dies or conjurations to get around elemental immunities, this is a pretty good deal. At 5th level you get a +1 to your Fireball (or Iceball, or Acidball) save DCs, but no caster level. And then at 6th level, you get Darkvision to add insult to injury for staying in the class this long

4/10 useful levels (23/50 cumulative)

Enlightened Fist:

This is for all those people who think Monk/Sorcerer is an awesome character class. You can qualify for it at level 5, as a Monk1/Wiz3+, or as a straight wizard 16 (or earlier with cheese). Since it increases monk ability progression whether or not you had them previously, it's almost tempting to take 3 levels of this instead of wiz 18,19 and 20 - but only almost, because then you remember that Monk AC is based off of wisdom, not Int. You get flaming fists of fury, even though your BAB is guaranteed to suck, you can sack unused spells to heal 1 hp per spell level (which is so inferior to False Life and Vampiric Touch that it makes me want to scream), and at 7th level, you get the awesome ability to cast a ray spell as a touch spell instead - for those people who find ranged attacks too complicated to use.

0/10 useful levels. (23/60 cumulative)

Fatespinner

If your wizard sank 10 ranks into Profession (Gambler), then she wants to take the first 4 levels of this class. The 5th level does not grant any caster level progression and instead grants the once/day ability to impose a +10 or a -10 modifier to the saving throw of someone within 30' and line of sight and of HD <= the fatespinner's HD. This is where I point out that you are at most two caster levels away from getting Limited Wish before you take this level, and that allows for a -7 to someone's save without any crazy range, LoS or HD restrictions as well as a boatload more versatility

4/5 useful levels (27/65 cumulative)

Geometer

For the cost of some ranks in Search, Decipher Script and Disable Device, losing out on wizard bonus feats and familiar advancement, you get Glyph of Warding and [/i]Greater Glyph of Warding[/i] added to your spellbook, the ability to Scribe Scrolls of Silent Spell, a massive cost reduction in scribing spells into your spellbook, the ability to find magic traps as a rogue, the ability to Scibe Scrolls of +1 caster level, and the ability to surpress Glyphs of Warding.

5/5 useful levels (32/70 cumulative)

Green Star Adept

If you take this class as a wizard you're nuts and you should just have learned Iron Body instead. However, if you take it as a multiclass who only took 1 level of wizard, you're only sub-optimal, doing notably better than you would be by alternating wizard and non wizard base class levels, but not as good as you'd do with an intelligent class progression. Additionally, The 10th level ability continues to propagate the fallacy that Cure spells don't work on Constructs - which has never been true and makes me want to slap designers who think it is..

0/10 useful levels (32/80 cumulative)

Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil

If you picked up Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus in Abjuration and sunk 12 ranks into knowledge: (Nature), this class is awesome. Although I would like to point out that there are a grand total of 10 PHB Arcane Aburations which grant non-harmless saves, and only 2 of them are less than 5th level. Still the feats are a relatively minor price to pay for the 7 levels of full caster progression, adding your class level to the difficulty of dispel tjecks against your abjurations and being able to pick and choose which parts of a Prismatic Wall you want to put between you and your enemies - eventually as an immediate action. At the top level you get a 1/day targeted dispel which lets you turn each dispelled effect on an enemy into the pain of passing through one layer of a prismatic wall - this is pretty good for debuffing, but probably better for a combo finishing move after you have cast a few harmful spells (Acid Arrow, Slow, Enervation, etc) on the poor sap

7/7 Useful levels (38/87 Cumulative)

Mage of the Arcane Order.

Compared to straight wizard, this is a straight powerup. The downside is that you had to sink a feat into cooperative spell and lose familiar advancement and your wizard bonus feats. Additionally, this class costs you 750 gp to get into and 30 gp per month to put that into perspective, that's roughly 10% of what Enalias spends on wine. In exchange, you get Speak Language as a class skill, 2 bonus languages (whatever, you know Tongues already), 2 bonus metamagic feats (which make up for the lost wizard feats), access to 2 additional spells to scribe into your spellbook (which could be meaningless or make up for the initiation fees depending on your game) and a really wacky limited spontaneus casting ability. On the not-quite so up side, the 10th level special which comes with your caster level is a mere +2 to Cha based tjecks when dealing with lower level members of the same prestige class, which should make you think about maybe finding a level in another class.

9/10 useful levels (47/97 cumulative)

Master Transmogrifist

Stop the pain. This is a class based around Polymorph, except it adds additional confusion and gets abilities inferior to the abilities you could get by getting a full caster level progression instead of falling 4 levels behind. There is some serious cheese potential lurking here, but it's all been done before and better elsewhere - like by the core Druid or Magic Jar, and I'm really not going to bother searching for the new Shapechange abuse which Infinite Variety makes possible - since you need to be Epic Level to pull whatever it is anyways. I rate this one "fire the designer for incompetence".

0/10 useful levels (47/107 cumulative)

Mindbender

You can qualify for this as a 5th level wizard, although it takes a lot of cross-class skills to do so.

Level 1 gives you a caster level and telepathy. Level 2 gives you no caster level, but Suggestion 1/day and +1 to Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate. Going back to take another level of wizard instead would have given you at least one 4th level spell 1/day, which you could take as Suggestion or something better and +1 to all your caster level tjecks, spell penetration, level based damage and so on. Is there anything in the later levels worth the sacrifice? Well level 3 gives you another caster level and Detect Thoughts 2/day. Level 4 gives you no caster level, but another +1 to those skills and an (Sp) ability that is just like Charm Monster 1/day, except that the duration changed to permenant and the stipulation that you can only have one monster charmed at any given time with this ability. Obviously, this is worse than just being able to cast a 4th level spell, which could be Charm Monster 1/day, and at this point, you've given up at least a 4th and a 5th level spell per day to get here. Joy. Level 5 gives you a caster level and another use of Suggestion per day. At 6th level, we get no caster level, but we do get Enchantment Spell Power +2, so now our enchantments are only 1 level behind those of a SC wizard, pretty good for the enchantment specialist PrC, natch? We also get another +1 to those skills, and another use of our Charm Monster ability per day (and now we can have 2 such pets). At 7th level, we get a caster level, 2 more uses of Detect Thoughts per day and Dominate monster 1/day - which should make us rejoice, since it's been 6 levels since we could do anything at all that the wizard wasn't doing better, on the downside, the duration is fixed at 24 hours and does not scale. At 8th level, we get no caster level, but to add insult to injury, we get another use of Charm Monster with another pet and another use of Suggestion. Remember that the wizard is getting 7th level spells now, not 4th level spells. At 9th level we get a caster level and no special, which is odd, the way it was going I thought we'd get to detect thoughts 1 more time per day or maybe even Comprehend Languages. At 10th level, we get shafted on the caster level again, but again get the Enchantment Spell Power to stay 1 level behind the wizard and then we get the big deal ability - Thrall. Unfortunately it's not the Epic/PsiHB ultra-dominate ability, since that would make the mindbender not suck. Oh no, it's the unbeleivably sucktastic ability to make our Dominate ability permenant on a single target. This is where I point out that in one more level, the straight wizard gets a 1/day Dominate Monster ability with a duration of 17 days - effectively allowing her to have up to 17 critters permenantly dominated.

1/10 useful levels (48/117 cumulative)

Seeker of the Song

As the Firesign Theater observeed, "There is a Seeker born every minute". I do not doubt that the designer had that quote in mind when he wrote this steaming pile of advanced bard suckage - although I'm also willing to consider that he may have been inspired by the Champions 4th edition iconic and unconscious martial artist of the same name.

This is a PrC for Bards who spent 13 ranks on Knowledge (Arcana). It gets fewer skill points than the Bard, a crappier skill list, no bardic knowledge and no spell progression. Instead you get +2 (insight) to Saves and AC, DR 2/- and Freesom of Movement whenever you use bardic music. That's right this whole class is designed around underwater singing. Additionally, you get some bardic music powerups, which include granting allies elemental resistances, Burning Hands, a 10d6 ice line, a ray-based verion of Chain Lightning, the ability to force spellcasters to succeed at concentration tjecks opposed by your perform tjeck, dispel magic, 10d6 acid ray that lasts 2 rounds, an ultra-short range dimension door, a 15d6 sonic ray, and at 20th character level, you can use bardic music as Dimissal. You also get the ability to use two bardic music effects at once and activate the second one as a swift action. If you were sticking with Bard, it might be worth taking the first level to get the AC boost and cone of fire at the cost of 2 skill points, reduced bardic knowledge and no caster increase, and I'll even be extremely generous and assume that there's some undiscovered cheese somewhere that makes taking the 2nd level Combine Songs ability worthwhile despite the amount of suck you have to take compared to a single-classed bard.

2/10 useful levels (50/127 cumulative)

Sublime Chord

This time, you are a Bard who not only sunk 13 ranks into Knoweldge (Arcana), but also took 6 ranks of Profession (Astrologer). Again, you get fewer skill points and a worse skill list. But this time you get bardic knowledge, 1/2 the usual bardic music progression and a pumped-up spell progrssion that eventually lets you cast up to 9th level spells. If that's not good enough, you get some new Bardic music abilities: rasie the caster level of the next spell you cast (dependant on a Perfrom tjeck result - you will get at least +2 caster level when you have this ability, and you can get up to +4), at 6th level you get to use bardic music to put people in an extremely short-term Temporal Stasis, and at 10th level, you get to blow 2 uses of bardic music fireball that does damage equal to your Perform tjeck result (which should be about 40 points normally, or roughly 125 points if you prepare for it with a little cheese). That's still not terribly impressive taken the effort to get you there, however the tradeoff of 5 uses/day of bardic music, the Bardic Music abilties: song of freedom, inspire courage +3, Inspire Heroics and Mass Suggestion and 10 skill points in return for 9th level spells and some alternate musical effects is a pretty gosh darn good one. Addtionally, starting the PrC spell progression at 5th level makes this class a consideration for monstrous advancement, and the phrasing they meant to let you continue increasing caster level lets you do a weird and abusive caster level reset. The only real downsides, are that your art sucks, and they put this right after the Seeker.

10/10 useful levels (60/137 cumulative)

Suel Arcanamach

I must begin by insisting that the correct pronunciation of this tongue-twister is "Fnord". Then I scratch my head a bit before concluding that this class is a poor match for the Bard 8 that seems to qualify for it, and is probably better entered as a monk2/sor1/paladin 5 or a rog2/wiz1/ranger 5 or via use of the Cosmopolition feat or somesuch. Anyways, once you get into the class, you get d8 hit dice, 4 Skill points per level, 2 good saves, medium BAB and a new CHA-based spell progression that goes up to 5th level sorc/wiz spells, but is limited to abjuration, divination, illiusion, transmutation. You also get to reduce arcane spell failure chance (but not in a way that would stack with the Bard light armor casting), your arcanamech spells are 6 points harder to dispel than normal (remember that your caster level would be 8 higher if you had stayed in bard). You get to add a targeted Greater Dispelling on to one of your melee attacks 1,2, or 3 times per day. At 3rd level, all your personal buffs are auto-extended in a way that might be stackably good, but only applies to your Suel Arcanamech spells. For the life of me, all I can figure is that Frank was misreading tenacious spells to apply to all of an Arcanomech's spells when he took a level of this PrC in his contest build. This class is largely like taking the first 10 levels of Druid, except that you have to fulfill prequisites, have worse armor, don't get cantrips, cast spontaneusly, have a more limited spell list and spell selection and get tenacious spells, dispelling strike and auto-extend in place of animal companion, nature sense, wild empaty, woodland stride, trackless step, resist nature's lure, wild shape and venom immunity. If it didn't have prerequisites at all, that would be close enough for me to call it playable, but it does, so it is a complete waste of space.

0/10 useful levels (60/147 cumulative)

Wayfarer Guide:

If you already qualified as a loremaster, there is no reason not to take the first level of this class and improve your teleportation range and capacity. And unless you can get it before you would otherwise be able to cast 5th level spells, there is no reason to ever take the second level.

1/3 useful levels. (61/150 cumulative)

Wild Mage

At last. This is my kind of class, by which I mean that it's biggest trick is punching itself in the face for added power. Really. But first the basics: To qualify, you have to take some cross-class skill ranks and a feat from I don't know which book - Magical Aptitude is non-core and not in this one and there is no pointer to whichever book it is in. You get full progression, but all your spells are now cast at your caster level +1d6-3. You get a neat, but limited ranged deflection ability, the wild mage classic of getting to roll twice on the bag of tricks or wand of wonder charts, immunity to confusion, continous nondetection, the ability to dump 1st+ level spell slots to get wand of wonder effects (rolling on the chart twice), and at 10th level you get to punch yourself in the face - which is to say that the smartest thing you can do with Wildstrike is to hit yourself with it to turn your cantrips or gnomish racial abilities into wand of wonder charges 50% of the time (rolling on the chart twice).

10/10 usable levels. (71/160)

And a final score of 44.375 % for usuable PrC levels - and that means that I have to give WotC props for their improvement in that department.

Chapter Three; Arcane Feats

This chapter starts off by revisiting the hair-splitting over Warlock invocations, which are (Sp) abilities with somatic components and are therefore subject to ASF. There's some mildly interesting stuff about which metamgic feats can apply to SLAs as well as spells, but nothing cheese-shaking. Then we find out that you can use the caster level on any of your (Sp) abilities to meet PrC caster level requirements. This alone should increase the power of advanced monsters in your game. But immediately afterward we learn that (Sp) abilites cannot be used to meet "able to cast Xth level spells" requirements, which is guaranteed to make a whole lot of monster+PrC builds illegal. And then we get the unsurprising ruling that having spell X as an (Sp) ability does let you qualify for PrCs which have a "able to cast spell X" prerequisite. Then the Weaponlike spells and feats for them stuff is reprinted from Skip Hates Sorcerers. Then we get into the actual feats. Here are the ones that stood out to me:

• 
  
• Battle Caster: Now your bard can cast in medium armor. Yay! But shields are still taboo
  
• Black Lore of Moil: this poorly-named (insert circumscision joke here) feat , lets you blow gold to have your necromancy spells deal extra negative energy damage. This is useful for healing your undead minions faster and for letting cleric archers pack even more damage into spell storing arrows.
  
• Communicator, Insightful, Necropolis Born, Night Haunt, Soul of the North, Spell Hand, : Hey, blow a feat to get 3 first or lower level spells as SLAs usable 1/day. This is way strong if taken at 1st level, and way subpar later.
  
• Craft Contingent Spell: So far, the most broken thing in the book.
  
• Delay Spell: Has anyone ever taken this one? It's soo not worth +3 spell levels. Even by the logic that Maximize is.
  
• Double Wand Wielder: I like mariliths. I think this lets them use 6 wands/round, but I could be reading it wrong.
  
• Draconic <Whatever>: Neat idea. However, probably not enough feats available in the standard game to make these worthwhile to the typical sorcerer.
  
• Energy Admixture: :sigh: more multi-typed damage.
  
• Extra Spell: Still an insult to 3rd level Sorcs.
  
• Mage Slayer: This was needed. Every Kraken everywhere should take it.
  
• Persistant Spell: It's back in 3.5 and while 2 levels more expensive, it's not improved in any notable way. It's still only for making your popeye music play all day and it still doesn't care about the original duration.
  
• <____> Spell Specialization. Interesting that these apparently combine with Weapon Specializations in weaponlike spells. There's cute but ineffectual build here by just taking a single wizard level and Practiced spellcaster and then sinking your fighter feats into Greater Specializing in touch spells.
  
• Sculpt Spell : Lets you get teh funny which the Explosive Spell text did such a good job of preventing.
  
• Transdimensional Spell: It's nice to have a countermeasure for Rope Trick available, but having that countermeasure be "Fireball the sleeping PCs" probably isn't the way to go.

[Username17]

That is indeed looking a lot like 40%. Honestly, I didn't even read the new Acolyte of the Skin. I am so demoralized by partial casters that I usually don't even read them to see if they might have buried treasure in them. The chances of treasure good enough to warrant coughing up spellcasting is so low as to not warrant contemplation as far as I can tell.

So... what did you think of the magic items?
[attempts to look innocent]
[fails]

-Username17

[User3]

Alienist is pretty cool for that conjuring guy, who now gets evocation-like attack spells(that are no SR spells). Combine it with Frostburn mega-conjure cheese, and you are good to go for the Power-Conjurer.

[Bloodstone]

Magical Aptitude is non-core and not in this one and there is no pointer to whichever book it is in.

3.5 PHB, p97. It's a +2 to two skills type feat, so you've likely just ignored it.

[Username17]

You can qualify for this as a 5th level wizard, although it takes a lot of cross-class skills to do so.

I hadn't noticed, did they take the Leadership requirement off? Remember that in 3.5, things are done in an explicit and stupid order, so you can't use your feat for becoming 6th level in order to qualify for taking a class at 6th level.

Presumbly this is to accomodate their brain fart about letting people take racial levels that don't grant hit dice or allow people to advance their feat progression.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

The fact that they're still producing 50% caster progression PrCs tells me the designers are utterly clueless. Everyone who played the game figured out that half caster level progression sucked the first time it was implemented in Tome and Blood. The designers still have not figured this out...

It's pretty sad really.

[Zherog]

I think it's done intentionally, to be honest. I think they're (generally speaking) fully aware that 1/2 progression sucks mechanically. But they put them in to satisfy the "pure roleplayers" who would bitch and holler about things being too powerful.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I don't get that, Z. Now those peeps will just bitch and holler htat a pure wizard is too powerful b/c it has full caster progression. I mean, can you believe it? FUll caster progression? What are they thinking?

IMO, they just don't care that much. They figure if you don't notice how crappy the class is, you'll be happy. If you do, you're prolly smart enough to change it, and at least they got you thinking taht on principle it should miss a few caster levels to balance out the powers.

I just wish they'd codify that principle, and just make it abundantly clear that strange combinations, overly powerful spells and abilities, and crappy stuff is to be changed by the DM whenever necessary.

[Zherog]

1100806964[/unixtime]]I just wish they'd codify that principle, and just make it abundantly clear that strange combinations, overly powerful spells and abilities, and crappy stuff is to be changed by the DM whenever necessary.

The might be codifying that idea, actually. Supposedly, DMG2 (coming out in June) is going to contain info on how to write "balanced" prestige classes. Personally, I think that section is gonna be a laugh to read through.

[Josh_Kablack]

1100770994[/unixtime]]

Magical Aptitude is non-core and not in this one and there is no pointer to whichever book it is in.

3.5 PHB, p97. It's a +2 to two skills type feat, so you've likely just ignored it.

I swear I'm going senile lately. Will you accept writing that at 3 AM as an excuse?

[User3]

For the life of me, all I can figure is that Frank was misreading tenacious spells to apply to all of an Arcanomech's spells when he took a level of this PrC in his contest build.

To be fair, Frank got his Complete Arcane info from me, as relayed by cellphone. Send the blame any misreadings my direction.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1100807068[/unixtime]]

1100806964[/unixtime]]I just wish they'd codify that principle, and just make it abundantly clear that strange combinations, overly powerful spells and abilities, and crappy stuff is to be changed by the DM whenever necessary.

The might be codifying that idea, actually. Supposedly, DMG2 (coming out in June) is going to contain info on how to write "balanced" prestige classes. Personally, I think that section is gonna be a laugh to read through.

Oh noes. Could they post those rules somewhere for us to plow through before it goes to print?

[Username17]

I actually don't give a damn what these guys do, they are in there for the same reason as the Assassin - it's an arcane spellcasting class. The Sublime Chord sets the caster level of all of your arcane spellcasting classes to the sum of your arcane spellcasting classes. And Ur Priest sets its own caster level to 10 plus half of all those classes added together.

So with enough arcane spellcasting classes in a pile you win D&D. I'm not taking them for the special abilities or the spell lists. Do you think that I give a damn what 1st level Suel Arcanomach spells I have access to? Fvck no! I didn't even ask K what they were, because it's not important.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

Chapter Four: Spells

This chapter starts off with another section about weaponlike spells, just in case we missed it in the last chapter. The Swift and Immediate action rules are reprinted in a sidebar - which makes me happy, since I think that this is the first book I actually own which contain them. Of course it would make me happier if they put them into PHB Errata where they should be. then we get new spells to add to the class spell lists for Assassins, bards, Clerics, Druids, Rangers and Sorc/Wiz, followed by the Warmage and Wu Jen spell lists.

Then we get to the actual spells, and we are off to a roaring start, with the combo-riffic Absorption. This is supposed to be like a limited Rod of Absorbtion effect - except it's half of the key to an infinite loop. Only the problem of not getting 12th level spell slots and the cost of having enough Greater Empower rods around stop you from using your this spell and a planar bound succubus as an unlimited spell recharge battery.

Next we get reprints of some OA spells. followed by Anticipate Teleportation - which is a nice try, but not actually very effective at what it's supposed to do.

Then we get some filler and some Dennis Crabapple McClain art for it. Ouch.

Next we get a swift action spell that gives +10 to overcome SR against a single creature for 1/round per level. This is a nice bone to throw to Evokers.

Then we get Bands of Steel which is a great way to hose PCs once the enemies get to use 3rd level wands, but only denies Medium or smaller PCs their actions, so is not actually much use against monsters.

Then we get some more boring stuff like reprints of OA spells and Minis Handbook spells and cones which deal 1d6 fire damage/level. Then we get Body Outside of Body which is a wonderful spell that's both sucktastic and surprisingly good at the same time. You get 2 or more duplicates, which is frequently abusive, except here they don't get to cast spells or use spell-completion or spell trigger items, which since you've got at least 13 levels in Wu Jen, means that they're high-level commoners who look like you, which is pretty worthless. The trick is that they have all your feats and class levels, and therefore get all the other abilities due to your class levels, which for Wu jen is nigh useless. However for a Bard or Cleric reading a scroll via Use Magic Device, it can be pretty sweet, getting duplicates who can Turn for you or use bardic music for you without cutting into your uses per day, since they have their own. And Depending how you want to split hairs over Spells vs (Sp) abilities, this might be the scroll every Warlock and a whole lot of monsters should keep on hand.

...more to come...

[MrWaeseL]

That Giant Size spell is very poorly written.

[Wrenfield]

Lots of combo-rific stuff in this book.

The Geometer PrC scribe cost reduction and Boccob's Blessed Book make for an excellent combo at higher level play.

Suel Arcanamach is a good gateway PrC for martial types who want an interesting edge (much like 3.0 Templar was for many of my builds).

The Wild Mage PrC plus the Practiced Spellcaster feat is pretty darn worth it. Especially if you combo it with Argent Savant (a PrC with nice class benefits but 1 down on the spellcaster progression) to get max benefit out of the PS feat.

Lots of other stuff too ... like Josh said though - the Craft Contingent feat is just brokenly awesome. Very very nice.

[Terror_Beach_Party]

There seems to be some confusion as to if arcane PrC's attached to Warlock increase both Eldritch Blast damage *and* new invocations learned. I think because of the book's table formatting or somesuch. Anyone have any info. on that?

[User3]

There seems to be some confusion as to if arcane PrC's attached to Warlock increase both Eldritch Blast damage *and* new invocations learned.

Yes and "yes and no."

Eldrtich Blast definately. A +1 Spellcasting class means biggers blasts.

As for Invocations known, it gets tricky.

You definitely get new Invocations. The tricky part is that Warlocks get as a class ability the ability to learn higher end invocations(Lesser, then Greater, then Dark). One intrepretation is that you get those class abilities since they nominally belong under "knowing more Invocations." Another interpretation is that you get new Invocations known, but only at the levels(Least, Lesser, Greater, and Dark) that you got as class abilities from Warlock levels.

Since the former interpretation doesn't suck, I'd advocate that one. However, the rules seem to support the latter in a literal reading.

[Username17]

Sure. The relevent quotes are:

A warlock does not gain any of his class abilities,

Invocations are class abilities. This line of text seems to exclude them totally. But after going on for a while about exactly what happens to the eldritch blast ability that you already have, it says...

A warlock also gains new invocations known at these prestige class levels as though he had gained a level in the warlock class.

emphasis mine. OK, let's consider the class features that are the Invocations ability:

As a warlock gains levels, he learns new invocations, as summarized on Table 1-1 and described below.

Table 1-1 is the class level table. It has a column of "invocations known" on the right hand side that is 1 at level 1, 2 at level 2, 3 at level 4, 4 at level 6, 5 at level 8, 6 at level 10, 7 at level 11, 8 at level 13, 9 at level 14, 10 at level 16, 11 at level 18, and 12 at 20th level. There is, therefore, no particularly discernable pattern to all of this. But it gets screwier. The abilty to learn better grades of invocations is not explicitly stated in the class description. It's not explicitly stated at all. The best grade you can learn at each level is shown in the "special" column of Table 1-1, which unfortunately doesn't tell us anything at all about whether it's a class feature or not.

At any level when a warlock learns a new invocation, he can also replace an invocation he already knows with another invocation of the same or lower grade.

What's really interesting here, is that the ability to swap your old invocations around isn't a new class feature each time you get it, like it is for the 3.5 sorcerer. That means that if a PrC gives you a new invocatio, you can swap one of your old ones out, because that's not a new class feature you'd be gaining, but a property of invocation learning from the class feature you already have.

----

So there you have it. What have we learned? For the rules lawyers out there, +1 Spellcasting classes don't say that they are added to your warlock class for the purposes of getting new invocations. They say that getting one level of +1 spellcasting gives you new invocations as if you had gained one level of warlock. So by a literal interpretation, an 8th level warlock can take all 10 levels of a +1 spellcasting class and get no new invocations, because she just got new invocations as if she went to 9th level 10 times, which provides nothing at all in that regard (her eldritch blast and invocations would, however, be usable at the 18th level).

What else have we learned? We have learned that the ability to get greater and dark invocations is only implicitly granted to warlocks under any circumstances, and thus is entirely arguable as to whether it is actually granted under any particular circumstances.

What do they mean? They mean that you take the levels of spellcasting granted by the PrC and add it to the warlock class for comparison to their stupid chart. Unfortunately, they wanted to pretend that they were capable of writing legalese when they made the rule and ended up with something that when read in that fashion is garbage talk.

So yes, a 6th level Warlock with 10 levels of bonus spellcasting from classes is supposed to be able to pick up a dark invocation with that final level. Unfortunately, it was written so poorly that this will be debated until 4th edition comes out.

This also means that you want to get into PrCs that reward you with stupid sub-par caster levels as soon as possible - like green star adept. Becase you don't have spells per day or spells known, you are the pimp.

---

Final note of quackery: you can cast any spell at a lower level than your maximum, down to the minimum level to cast the spell. The Warlock has no minimum level because he doesn't have a spell progression. So if you want you can zap off your own spells at caster level 1, or even 0 - this is good if you happen to want to suck up your own spells for hit points.

-Username17

[User3]

I find it odd that a book loaded with new spells, especially of the arcane variety (the kind that historically are most often broken) does not have any supporters or naysayers of said spells.

I'll be getting the book early next week in the mail.

Are there any newly published spells that look ripe for abuse -- or are a must have for your resident arcanist?

[Username17]

OK, here's a list of some important spells to remember:

Absorbtion: Absorbtion + Improved Metamagic + Empower Spell + 10th level spell slot = unlimited spells cast as a sorcerer from your Wizard's spellbook. It's very, very powerful, but it requires you to be 21st level under normal circumstances, so nobody cares.

Animate Water: Druids apparently needed more power. An entire 5' cube of water is a Large Object, so 1st level druids can tag out for a CR 3 creature. It's pretty specialized, and sucks in a lot of ways, but at low level it's pretty impressive.

Anticipate Teleportation: Noone has made a ruckus about this spell because it sucks. The only thing it is good for is completely owning Blink Dogs. CR 2 Blink Dogs.

Arc of Lightning: One of the better and more interesting Evocations. And it's a Druid spell, of course.

Assay Resistance: This spell makes Planar Binding more powerful.

Backbiter: his spell is interesting mostly to note how explosively sucktastic the 3.5 weapon size rules are. It honestly asks you to determine whether you can target an object or not by who is going to pick it up within the next couple of rounds.

Blackfire As written, if they fail their save even once they become nauseated for the entire duration of the spell, which means that all they can do is hobble towards their enemies and try to light them on fire. As such, this is an intriguing spell that if efective Fort save or die, then a subsequent fort save or death the next round, and a fort save or death the round after. If you cast it into a mob, you can get a lot of creatures to light up.

Greater Blink This spell is astonishingly awesome. Nevertheless, at 1 round/level, noone really cares. You can have Ghostform at this level, if hypothetically they hadn't nerfed it up to level 8 in this very book.

Body Outside Body: Normally I don't give a damn about Wu Jen spells, but this spell is nuts. The duplicates can still use Spell-like abilities (like, for instance: those granted by your Inate Spell: Body Outside Body feat), and command-word activated magic items (such as a ring of three wishes). It's basically a single spell infinite combo. And what's up with a personal spell requiring access to your own body as a material component?

Burning Blood: This spell keeps creatures from acting and does reasonably big damage in the process. It is a great damage dealing spell. Damage Over Time is crappy, but if they can't act for the duration, who cares? Of course the best evocations are Necromany....

Energy Immunity: The original and best. Remember how much you suck because you aren't a Druid?

Enhance Familiar: It stacks with virtually everything and can be extended into tomorrow. All high-level Wizards should begin every adventure with this cast.

Fiend Form: That's any fiendish creature that could be summoned by a Summon Monster IV. Remember that there are extended lists and peple who get improved Summon Monster Spells. This is a 6th level spell that can give you Spell-likes.

Flensing: It does Charisma Damage, which means that it will randomly take down some Epic creatures.

Freezing Fog: Acid Fog is totally awesome, so why they felt the need to make a spell that was lower level, had a longer duration, and took longer to escape from is utterly beyond comprehension. This spell is a must-have combat spell in the 5th level slot. And may displace teleports in many Wizards' prepared spells roster.

...more later...

-Username17

[User3]

Absorbtion: Absorbtion + Improved Metamagic + Empower Spell + 10th level spell slot = unlimited spells cast as a sorcerer from your Wizard's spellbook. It's very, very powerful, but it requires you to be 21st level under normal circumstances, so nobody cares.

Won't a Red Wizard be able to do this combo with circle magic?

[Wrenfield]

Nice work, Frank.

My thoughts on the 1st few pages as well:

1. AIMING AT THE TARGET = My god. What a horrible spell for 5th level. A 5th level spell should have some semblance of scenario impact even into the higher levels. This one ... doesn't.

2. ANIMATE WATER = Frank, I think a 5' cube as an animated object can be only of MEDIUM size, not LARGE. If it was a 10' cube, it could be LARGE. Nonetheless, it's a good low-level spell. And your animated object gets double HP. Nice.

3. ANTICIPATE TELEPORTATION = I would much prefer Dimensional Anchor (1 level lower as well) than this spell. Especially when at higher levels you are dealing with powerful Outsiders that can teleport at will. Ugly spell.

4. ARC OF LIGHTNING = A nice "No SR" conjuration damage spell with a 15d6 cap. Especially for Druids who get it as a 4th level spell. If you run into solo opponents, summon an electric-immune outsider like a Demon to be your "2nd target".

5. ARROW OF BONE = Even though this is a 6th level spell, it might be worth Chain Spelling it to multiple arrows. Especially if you have a superstar archer in the group.

6. ASSAY RESISTANCE = Is it best to choose this ... or Lower Spell Resistance from Draconomicon? Situation-dependent really. If your party has a significant number of offensive spellcasters (large parties or mage/cleric-heavy parties), LSR is better. If you are the sole spellslinger in the group (say the Cleric is more a summoner or archer), AR is preferable. Both spells have their niches. As Frank said though, Planar Binding is awesome for this spell. As is for charms or dominates that must go through.

7. BACKBITER = Extremely situational as you never know what kind of weaponry your opponents will be wielding. Interesting in that once it is used, the DM has to determine if the victim of the spell will worry that future attacks with his own weapon may also "backbite" himself. If so, the caster may get a disarm effect out of the spell. Depends on if an Orc or Ogre would come to this conclusion after whacking himself with his greataxe...

8. BANDS OF STEEL = Decent enough. No SR, and even if the victim saves, is still entangled. Good anti-spellcaster spell (REFL save).

9. BLACKFIRE = Frank summed it up. Nice to attack with against foes in an Acid Fog or Tentacles spell.

10. BLADES OF FIRE = Crap. Although a TWF Ranger might use it. A Gish might cast it, but I'd rather use the slot for Alter Self to become a Tren and get +8 Natural Armor, a Stench attack, the Multi-attack feat, a Bite attack, Racial Hide bonus, and a Swim speed. Serpent Kingdoms book BTW.

11. BLAST OF FLAME = Fireball got kicked in the crotch by this conjuration, No SR gem. Worth the 1 level increase. And avoids Minor Spheres of Invulnerability. Still, damage spells suck, so avoid like the plague.

12. GREATER BLINK = Be a Cleric with Divine Metamagic and the Spell domain. Then via Greater Anyspell, cast 5th level Greater Blink and persist it. Gonzo!

13. BODY OUTSIDE BODY = Frank's Infinite Loop is right on here - lots of combinatorial abuse potential here. Beyond that, a UMD-Bard/Seeker of the Song-2 could have the caster Bard and its double sings 4 songs simultaneously (since UMD is the only way to cast if a non-Wu-Jen - besides Wish). Whoop-de-do.

14. BRILLIANT BLADE = Total crap. Especially for a Cleric 8th level spell as it does not automatically win the scenario as an 8th level offensive spell should.

15. BURNING BLOOD = The best part about it is that it limits the subject to Move Actions for every failed save. Since many deadly actions for foes are standard action-based, this can act as a way to keep a foe from teleporting, attacking, or casting deadly spells (FORT-based saves). Nice too, is that even if your foe is fire and acid immune, you don't have to deal the damage to get the "Searing Pain" effect (single move action) according to the RAW of the spell.

16. CHAMELEON = An updated old spell. And awesome at 1 hour/level. Although your Druid needs to augment his Move Silently/Hide via other spells, PrC's, or gear to take advantage of this stealth spell. Otherwise, just cast it on the Rogue or Bard to get the +10 Circ bonus for him.

17. CLOUD CHARIOT = Total crap. Come on ... Teleport is 3 levels lower and vastly superior. It's okay if you are in hot pursuit of a dodgy, high-speed flyer. But that happens like ... never.

18. COBRA's BREATH = A Wu-Jen who gets within 10' of an opponent to subject him to a potential 1d3 loss of CON deserves the ass-whipping coming to him. Comparably, this spell is similar in operation to Colour Spray for a Wizard. Which has the almighty 1 round-stun effect that stays valuable even into higher levels (assuming your Rogue is nearby).

19. COMMUNE WITH LESSER/GREATER SPIRIT = Um, the book does not define what constitutes a "spirit". Which sucks in explaining the spirit's physical or metaphysical components to the players. I think "spirit" might be defined in the Complete Divine book under the Spirit Shaman core class. I'll check when I get home.

20. CREEPING DARKNESS = Awesome for a Wu Jen Spellguard of Silverymoon who has the Selective Spell ability. Drop these all over the battlefield while having you and your party using blindsight items/spells, and you'll have a ball ... especially against opposing spellcasters.

Perhaps more later - work beckons.

15.

[Username17]

Frank, I think a 5' cube as an animated object can be only of MEDIUM size, not LARGE.

Then... you're wrong. A Gelatinous Cube is a 10' square and is Huge. Half that in every dimension would be Large and a 5' cube.

Or to put it another way, a human is medium and is supposed to fit in the middle of a 5' square. An entire 5' cube would fit similarly inside a 10' square.

Or to put it another way, a 5' cube is 125 cubic feet, and weighs 3.4 metric tonnes. A human is about 4 cubic feet and weighs about a tenth of a metric tonne.

There is absolutely no way in which a 5' cube is not a large object. That doesn't make the spell really good, you spend 2 rounds of action to get one round of action out of a large animated object. But considering that it's considered a match for the enitre party combined all by itself, that's nothing to sneeze at at 1st level.

Won't a Red Wizard be able to do this combo with circle magic?

You don't really need circle magic, you just need to have a rod of greater empower spell. Once you have 10 or more absorbed spell levels, you can go ahead and cast 10th level spells. Once you have Empower Spell and Absorbtion, you technically know a 10th or 11th level spell (depending upon whether you have Improved Metamagic or not), so you can go ahead and use the Absorbtion levels to cast it. It's not capped by your normally available spell slots, after all.

So as an Incantatrix with a Warlock sidekick (or anyone else who has an At Will targetted SLA), you can just Absorb up an unlimited number of spell levels, which you can use to cast spells many levels higher than those pathetic pre-epic slots would normally allow.

-Username17

[User3]

Frank -

Per the 3.5 MM, a medium Animated Object has a space of 5'x5'. A large Animated Object has a space of 10'x10'.

The Gelantinous Cube on p. 201 is Huge and occupies a 15'x15' space.

Then... you're wrong. A Gelatinous Cube is a 10' square and is Huge. Half that in every dimension would be Large and a 5' cube.

Or to put it another way, a human is medium and is supposed to fit in the middle of a 5' square. An entire 5' cube would fit similarly inside a 10' square.

Or to put it another way, a 5' cube is 125 cubic feet, and weighs 3.4 metric tonnes. A human is about 4 cubic feet and weighs about a tenth of a metric tonne.

There is absolutely no way in which a 5' cube is not a large object. That doesn't make the spell really good, you spend 2 rounds of action to get one round of action out of a large animated object. But considering that it's considered a match for the enitre party combined all by itself, that's nothing to sneeze at at 1st level.