Author Topic: Arcane Gish... "Tank"  (Read 10126 times)

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Rejakor

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #40 on: October 20, 2011, 01:51:43 PM »
Why Sacred Exorcist? 

Seems like a bit of a waste.  Also, BAB is NOT important.  Ever.  Arcane Disciple: Anything With Divine Power, and bam.

Rebel7284

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #41 on: October 20, 2011, 03:24:50 PM »
Why Sacred Exorcist? 

While better BAB is nice, the better boon is turn undead.  There are several powerful divine feats (Law Devotion, Travel Devotion) that work very well for a gish.

Seems like a bit of a waste.  Also, BAB is NOT important.  Ever.  Arcane Disciple: Anything With Divine Power, and bam.

While this is nice in theory, in practice this approach has several limitations.

1. MAD:  You need the Wisdom to cast the spell as if you're a cleric.  14 Wisdom on an already slightly MAD character can be difficult.  Sure you can overcome this with a +4 Item, but then you're spending a significant chunk of money.
2. Action Economy: Divine Power is 1/round per level only.  Spending actions buffing means you have less actions left for winning.
3. Limited Use OR Opportunity cost: Prepared casters can only memorize one domain spell per spell level each day.  Spontaneous casters must still use a spell known to learn which limits them further (there are plenty of great level 4 spells).
4. Feats are a very limited commodity.  Gishes are already trying to fill multiple roles in addition to many good gish PrCs requiring a feat tax.

Point 2 and 3 can be overcome by prepared casters that can find a way to apply Persistent Spell for free.

While Arcane Disciple is an option, it's certainly not an auto-include by any stretch.

Also, OP, you never answered my question, why are the divine PCs not tanking?  They are better suited for it.
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SorO_Lost

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #42 on: October 20, 2011, 06:01:57 PM »
Why Sacred Exorcist? 

Seems like a bit of a waste.  Also, BAB is NOT important.  Ever.  Arcane Disciple: Anything With Divine Power, and bam.
Sacred Exorcist gives Turn Undead, which in turn lets an Arcane caster use Divine Metamagic with Persist Spell.

Which is very helpful if you wanted to Persist Divine Power all day...
Tiers explained in 8 sentences. With examples!
[spoiler]Tiers break down into who has spellcasting more than anything else due to spells being better than anything else in the game.
6: Skill based. Commoner, Expert, Samurai.
5: Mundane warrior. Barbarian, Fighter, Monk.
4: Partial casters. Adapt, Hexblade, Paladin, Ranger, Spelltheif.
3: Focused casters. Bard, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Martial Adapts, Warmage.
2: Full casters. Favored Soul, Psion, Sorcerer, Wu Jen.
1: Elitists. Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard.
0: Gods. StP Erudite, Illthid Savant, Pun-Pun, Rocks fall & you die.
[/spoiler]

Rebel7284

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #43 on: October 20, 2011, 06:18:11 PM »
Why Sacred Exorcist? 

Seems like a bit of a waste.  Also, BAB is NOT important.  Ever.  Arcane Disciple: Anything With Divine Power, and bam.
Sacred Exorcist gives Turn Undead, which in turn lets an Arcane caster use Divine Metamagic with Persist Spell.

Which is very helpful if you wanted to Persist Divine Power all day...

ARCANE DISCIPLE [GENERAL]
Choose a deity, and then select a domain available to clerics
of that deity. You can learn to cast the spells associated with
that domain as arcane spells.

DIVINE METAMAGIC (Errata)
When you take this feat, choose a metamagic feat that you have. This feat applies only to that metamagic feat. As a free action, you can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead and use it to apply a metamagic feat to divine spells that you know. . . .

This doesn't work.
Negative level on a chicken would make it a wight the next day.  Chicken the other wight meat. -borg286

ninjarabbit

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #44 on: October 20, 2011, 09:41:15 PM »
Plus divine power can be dispeled and usually doesn't work in an antimagic field or a dead magic zone.

Lycanthromancer

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #45 on: October 20, 2011, 09:42:37 PM »
Plus divine power can be dispeled and usually doesn't work in an antimagic field or a dead magic zone.
Unfortunately, that screws everyone (except possibly warforged soulknives).

But for what it's worth, if you have a reach weapon, you can still get the benefits of Divine Power vs someone in an Antimagic Field.
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SorO_Lost

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Re: Arcane Gish... "Tank"
« Reply #46 on: October 20, 2011, 10:02:03 PM »
Plus divine power can be dispeled and usually doesn't work in an antimagic field or a dead magic zone.
So what? they wasted an action dispelling you, you wasted a Swift Action for Waithstrike and hit them anyway. Grats, you're standard action may have reduced by the damage dealt to you this round to only 3/4s, unless I'm a JPM and don't care about additional attacks. If I continue to be this lucky, maybe the dispeller will toss a net to Entangle me instead of casting Solid Fog.

Also, given the number of ways a PC can use to increase their CL and further on top of there there are methods to boost your CL for preventing Dispel (but not the other way around), I'd say really the action was wasted on nothing more than anything.

This doesn't work.
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Tiers explained in 8 sentences. With examples!
[spoiler]Tiers break down into who has spellcasting more than anything else due to spells being better than anything else in the game.
6: Skill based. Commoner, Expert, Samurai.
5: Mundane warrior. Barbarian, Fighter, Monk.
4: Partial casters. Adapt, Hexblade, Paladin, Ranger, Spelltheif.
3: Focused casters. Bard, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Martial Adapts, Warmage.
2: Full casters. Favored Soul, Psion, Sorcerer, Wu Jen.
1: Elitists. Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard.
0: Gods. StP Erudite, Illthid Savant, Pun-Pun, Rocks fall & you die.
[/spoiler]