Mystic Theurge?

[MKartMaster]

*tosses a piece of bloody meat into the wild dog pack as it tries to settle down*

Check out Arcane Armor Proficiency from the D20system Ultimate Feats Manual.

Now maybe you'll see why I worry about this class. There is a chance these feats will make it to sundren.

Quick Googling leads me to believe I would have to pay to look at these feats legally. Care to summarize?

Judging by your worry, it's probably something like "ignore ASF in one category of armor. take multiple times. stacks" or "ignore X% of ASF. take multiple times. stacks." Either of those, IMO, would be pretty damned powerful. I hope I'm wrong.

[EDIT]: The best I can find, after more Googling, is "While wearing light/medium/heavy armor, you may cast a spell as a full round action to reduce the spell failure chance by 10/20/30% (minimum 5%)." It was three feats, each one requiring the feats before it, as well as the proper armor proficiency. ie, Arcane Armor Prof (Heavy) required: Armor Proficiency(Light), Armor Proficiency(Medium), Armor Proficiency(Heavy), Arcane Armor Proficiency(Light), and Arcane Armor Proficiency(Medium). 6 feats to be able to cast spells as a full round action and not actually get better than 5% failure from 35% failure. That's not exactly overpowered, so I suspect you are talking about something else.

[Bashir]

I gotta say Still spell pretty much takes care of the ASF problem right?

sure you sacrifice your highest level arcane spells, but if you are a sorc you can spontaneously metamagic your spells. and its enough to buff and nuke a little even if you aren't a sorc. your heals will go off no problem cause divine casters don't suffer ASF penalties.

If you are gonna spend more than one feat on this. get the full auto still spell line. the arcane armor proficency sounds like it works best with mithril full plate and heavy shield.

and i haven't actually played a lot yet on this server. but it doesn't seem like the kind of place that mithril full plate and heavy shields would be the kind of thing you would come across.

[Kazaguruma]

Hell, I'd make a theurge anyway... Even if they don't get complete spell progression in either casting class, having access to both arcane and divine spells already opens up way more options than any wizard. And as far as weakness, take practiced spellcasting and grab some metamagic feats. Gravy. :3

There's actually a build for PNP that gives you full casting in both areas of magic without going epic, using the class Loremaster which gives you spell progression in any one class without specifying arcane or divine.

Besides, just the RP posibilities of someone that can pull that much magic out of their ears is just... *drool*

[sharringtonm]

If the feats make it into server,

It would work like this: You spend a full round preparing to cast the spell (the feat will suck up this round when you activate it. Then next round you may cast your spell at -asf.

And its not 6 feats its only 3 for heavy armor. Clerics get the armor proficiencies for free.
SO basicly your elf MT could run around in full plate, fully buffed with his divine spells, with his duel wielded scimitars (or rapiers or whatever) and be able to cast his highest level arcane spells by just extending the casting time on them an extra 6 seconds. Still Spell is nice, but the draw back of a.) losing the higher level spells and b.) Having to memorize it in advance (for wizards) makes this a viable alternative. No prememorization needed here.

Yes it is scaled at 10%,20%, 30% per feat taken.

For a pure mage, these feats wouldn't be desirable, but for a MT or EK.... they raise a whole new range of options for them.

[MKartMaster]

I dunno, I can't think of many arcane spells a MT would actually want to cast in battle.

Save-Or-Effects (including battlefield control) would be ineffective, since your casting stat would be low (something like 2 or 3 or 4 points lower on the Save DC) and blasty spells would be ... well, blasty spells.

If you take blasty spells, you're now a cleric with blasty spells; if you take blasty spells with the AAP feats, you now have a character who buffs before battle, then spends half the time in battle setting himself up for casting them, a quarter of the time actually casting them, and another quarter doing other things (maybe moving?).

Unless I missed something, you're sacrificing half your spells-per-time output to gain access to cleric spells. And you still have 5% ASF, unless that's not in there?

You're also sacrificing 3 feats to wear full plate, which is a lot considering a straight up Wiz3/Clr3/MT10/etc would only have 6 feats, 7 if human or that other race that grants a bonus feat.

Of course, I tend to miss something when I go over things like this.

[Jaeram]

*sighs* I suppose if you look hard enough there will always be a way to power build everything eh? Although this is the first I've heard of this Arcane-Armor Proficiency feat.

[MKartMaster]

*sighs* I suppose if you look hard enough there will always be a way to power build everything eh? Although this is the first I've heard of this Arcane-Armor Proficiency feat.

No, I think the Character Optimization Boards are still working on the Samurai.

[Jaeram]

I never even knew that board existed... lol. Hey, what's wrong with Samurai? I think I would make one if Sundren had them, along with Samurai looking armor.

[Gairun]

What many, many people are still missing about the MT and it's ability to be a powerhouse is the fact that you don't start at level 15. You start at level 3 on sundren. Virtually any character class is powerful at level 15, some more so in differing situations. Trying to get a MT to the power level that sharringtonm is talking about on sundren would be a monumental task in and of itself.

Now having said that I would still give you a big thumbs up sharringtonm if you could manage to get that PRC in Sundren as I would enjoy the challenge of working on an underpowered character that a MT would be for 85% of his career.

Also if your casting spells in battle that means your not going to have many buffs, and at 1d4 hit points a level and low AB progression, chances are your going to die quick. The character your describing would need a lot of feats spent on lets see, two weapon fighting, improved two weapon fighting, a few on the armour casting feats, and would need a high dexterity to even qualify for the dual weilding feats, which would hurt his casting abilities. The build may do well charging into battle (with only minimal bufs) with a wizards hp pool and attack bonus (With the -2 to both hands for dual weilding) and spamming hammer of the gods and fireburst for the first three rounds before he dies. Oh and it will take two rounds to cast one spell, I would name this character the oneshot firecracker.

*Vicously devours the raw meat*

[Jaeram]

I would name this character the oneshot firecracker.
*Vicously devours the raw meat*

Actually, I wasn't really talking about a dex cleric using two weapon fighting. The dex is mostly for ac purposes, oddly enough, and with light armor you can use skills such as tumble still without the whopping -16 skill modifier you would get with plate and a tower shield.
I'll try a fast work up idea using a human cleric base worships mystra.
base stats 10/14/10/16/16/10 (worst case scenario for stats where you choose class combinations that use a different casting stat, I chose cleric and wizard.) Natural Leader back ground to improve your party support more. Spell Casting Prodigy / Dodge (obviously if you don't want to make dex you could do something like spell casting prodigy + practiced spell caster cleric, and then at level 3 you could take practiced caster wizard as well). 'good' cleric domain (gives +4 fear resist to self and party) (in hind sight might choose a different deity for another domain that you won't already have the spells from wizard) Magic Domain because this was quick. Take Wizard level, picked rabbit (to replenish lost saves from natural leader) or beetle if you want more Hp. level 3 weapon finesse (higher atk bonus) or mobility. I could go further from this, but hopefully you et the jist. Essentially speaking once you get level 2 spells you can use bulls strength and bears endurance to give yourself decent scores for those, and cats grace to give yourself an extra 2 ac (if you are wearing that light armor) and by putting your first point in to dex you open yourself up to two weapon fighting if that is what you want to use, with light weapons and weapon finesse you would still be getting an attack bonus due to the high dex. Because you aren't going to have all the fancy cleric stuff, you don't need to worry about the charisma too much, unless you want that for rp i just 10 it out so that he's considered average in that category, above average in others. You should be able to get those level 2 spells at level 4, which isn't bad. By going the dex route you also only risk a 10% ASF which I tend to just overlook because it isn't going to be that big of a deal. I think once he gets to those level 2 spells he could start to hold his own, although he would be more prominent as a party figure (which is why I would probably choose a different domain than knowledge).

While I could take this further and try to work out all the feats at x levels that would be a pain. This was just my idea of how I would probably do it, because for some reason I like the idea of purposely gimping my character and making him have to 16 out 2 stats for his spells instead of just one by class optimizing him with something like sorc/FS. *shrug*

Because of all these party based buffs etc. is one reason I could see using bard, because they get a lot of party based stuff in their spells and aoe stuff (besides their song although keeping even the first level song going all the time would incur a decent bonus for the party). Although I would probably go cleric/wizard myself.

Although, one thing that surprises my about MT is the d4 HP/lvl, I figured with the big divine classes being d8 and the big arcane classes being d4 they'd hit the middle ground on that one and go d6.

Sorry for the long post.

Edit :

Also, I don't see any reason to get up in arms about a mage in armor. If the mage armor spells worked like they were supposed to, that would be a relatively normal thing, AND mage armor allows a full dex bonus (6 AC from spell, 4 AC from dex is totally achievable for a mage, and better than a fighter in full plate even).

I totally forgot about mentioning mage armor. Yeah, mage armor with light armor will give you it's bonus as well, and then if you are still using light armor when you get level 3 spells imp. mage armor raises it for you again. I believe the shield spell will also give you some ac if you are using duel wield. (mage armor + shield on my wizard (1st level spells) gives him +7 ac, take off 2 ac for leather armor from mage armor and it should still be +5). I really apologize for the long post now lol.

[Dark presence]

I think any fear of those aforementioned feats is really unnecessary. As it was mentioned it basically would double the time to cast spells, for up to three whole feats! Feats don't grow on trees, and you won't get any wizard bonus feats as a MT until after level 15 (unless you didn't max out MT for some reason).

Also, I don't see any reason to get up in arms about a mage in armor. If the mage armor spells worked like they were supposed to, that would be a relatively normal thing, AND mage armor allows a full dex bonus (6 AC from spell, 4 AC from dex is totally achievable for a mage, and better than a fighter in full plate even). I'd rather spend 1 feat on an extra 3rd level spell slot than three to double my cast times.

[MKartMaster]

Although, one thing that surprises my about MT is the d4 HP/lvl, I figured with the big divine classes being d8 and the big arcane classes being d4 they'd hit the middle ground on that one and go d6.

Actually, this always struck me as odd as well. With the way NWN2's HP system works, this would essentially mean 2 extra HP per level. That doesn't seem really overpowering to me, and it makes sense since practicing with arcane and divine casting would probably put you in some slightly more strenuous situations than just arcane on its own.

[Gairun]

I think it's justified.

Your basically so focused on the mental side of things I can understand the 1d4/level reasoning.

[Bashir]

well most divine classes have combat capabilities that tie in with it.

mystic theurge isn't about that in the least. its about the pursuit of knowledge without discrimmination. absolute focus on the powers of magic.

so exercise, combat and endurance training, travel and adventure is the furthest thing from a mystic theurge's mind. a morning stretch after falling asleep in a book in your personal library is the daily routine for these masters of magic.

saying that i think a d4 is perfectly fine.

i see what you are saying though. the class could use a helping hand in terms of power. but maybe that can come in the form of a bonus feat at 4th and 8th. bonus class skills like use magic device. Or a lower requirement. or some knowledge related benifit.

im sure that no matter what is decided on in the end. that everyone will want one.

[MKartMaster]

im sure that no matter what is decided on in the end. that everyone will want one.

Which is probably why we're having the discussion on balance in the first place.

We gotta find a balance between "ROFLOL, you expect me to take that class?" and "OMGWTFBBQ TOTAL PWNAGE".

I mentioned it before, but I don't think anyone commented on it. What if we made it require Caster Level 2 instead of Spell Level 2? This way we could set the entrance level to level 5 (having taken 4 levels, 2/2, previously). Maintain a d4 hit die, 2+INT SP, Poor BAB, poor/poor/good fort/ref/will, and +1 Arcane/Divine spellcasting each level. Looks to me like this version would be you gaining 2 (slightly stunted) spellcasting progressions at the expense of just about everything else.

Also, I was browsing the vault link someone posted earlier, and one the DL's mentioned that they couldn't get the MT to allow spell selection every level for both classes. I don't know of whoever makes the class would be able to find a way around this, but a possible solution I (quickly) came up with was to have it (hopefully) alternate which classes get spell selection which levels.