Author Topic: Little bit of wizard help.  (Read 1795 times)

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Triskavanski

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Little bit of wizard help.
« on: February 04, 2011, 02:49:36 AM »
I'm making a Nezumi Necromancer.
The idea is that he will be casting various forms of diseases, poisions and other things. In MMO terms, he is to be a debuffer.

I'm looking for variants on the wizard (Necromancer) class that can assist with this. I will be taking 2 flaws as well, one of which will possibly remove my familiar unless I find a variant that just absolutely screams "USE ME!"

The feats I'm looking at are
 (From the feats book http://www.amazon.com/Feats-Aeg/dp/1887953736 )

Infernal Pact - make a pact with a demon of some sort, become evil, sacrifice something (HP, fortsave or whatever. DM specific) - this is used to get other infernal feats such as immunity and poison blood, over all a crap feat that is only take to take the real awesome feat Poison Blood.
Immunity - Become immune to all diseases, but can still be a carrier. Pay 250 xp. Nagging cough the DM can use at the wrong time, once per day. (My DM isn't too much of a dick to do this sort of thing all the time.)
              I might be able to use a jedi mindtrick on immunity if there is another feat by the same name though.. But the idea of playing a rat who is a potential carrier is petty good.
Poison Blood - my blood becomes toxic, anyone touching me has a chance to be poisoned when I've got a wound. Can then use my blood for the poison spell feat.
Poison Spell (DoUD) - Victims of my magic have to make a save vs poison.. not sure if this only applies after the fail the first save or what..
Pox Magic - Magic becomes infected with disease, +1 save, +5 DC to identify, If a victim fails a fort save from the spell, they lose a con point
Frightful Necromancy (CM) - whenever hit by a necromancy spell, the victim becomes shaken (as long at there was a save, regardless if they save or not.)

So this means with touch of fatigue I can cause - Poison effect, Con loss, Fatigue, Shaken..

my stats I rolled using a grid..
STR 18, DEX 15, CON 17, INT 18, WIS 11, CHA 14
...and due to its nature, I can't switch them. Not that I really wanna anyways.

I'm also thinking of picking up a few traits from dandwiki provided the DM allows them, particularly the small trait that would make me small sized, but only gives me the 3/4 carrying capacity +1 to ac and ab, +hide, and bad juju when it comes to being kicked around.

What 2 (Or 3) schools should I drop? If I drop 3, I can get the ability to cast almost as many spells as a sorc per day, 3 of which would have to be necromancy.

Solo

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2011, 03:13:40 AM »
I think you should take a level in Cancer Mage.

"I am the Black Mage! I cast the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

The Legend RPG, which I worked on and encourage you to read.

X-Codes

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2011, 03:26:57 AM »
Hmm... Disease isn't really useful for PCs unless you're talking about Festering Anger or spreading Ghoul Fever throughout a hamlet for laughs (never for ghoul minions, because ghoul minions suck ass), and Poison Spell is nice if you have a readily available source of contact poison (injury poison maybe).

If you want to be a "debuffer" necro, then you're probably looking at primarily using ability damage/penalties and fatigue.  Early on you'll also have a nice selection of fear spells, but, as enemies start becoming immune, you'll want to switch off to negative levels and maybe also curses.  Poison as a secondary shtick supplements most of these nicely, and will give you something nice to do once you've "debuffed" your targets, but note that having Poison at very low levels really isn't that useful.  Ability scores and HP are actually pretty similar at that point, and it's a lot easier to do a lot more HP damage than it is ability damage.  Given a little time, there's an easier way to go this route entailing fewer feats and not screwing anyone who tries to cast a Healing spell on you.

I don't say this lightly, given how much ire the book rightly receives, but your character could benefit greatly from a little material out of Serpent Kingdoms.  There's a Yuan-Ti graft in there that gives you a poisonous bite (and a decent one, at that) for a mere 8k gold, and a feat that allows you to spit the poison created by said bite up to 30' as a ranged touch, and also makes it a contact poison (great for Poison Spell out of DotU).  For a single feat and a very meager gold investment you replace two and gain a cool trick that you can do when running low on spells.  While the source is known for poorly-balanced material, the stuff I'm noting really isn't that bad at all.

Triskavanski

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2011, 03:40:26 AM »
It was the PRC I was originally making the idea for... until I found out that it has no caster level progression, requires three feats, one of which being toughness and another overlapping Poison Blood.
I might be able to convince my DM to allow Poison Blood overtake Poison Immunity, but I still have to others to take and a list of feats I need to really make my necromancy be really scary.

I've already found one of my first level necromancy spells now, Deaths Call. They fail the fort save, they become fatigued, lose con, shakened.
Course I have to use it when no allies are within the spell effect otherwise I'll rip my own party apart as well. :D

I won't be able to use Serpent Kingdoms unfortunately. Not because its unbalanced, but because we don't have the book. That's one of our rules, especially after someone tried pulling "I don't know what book its from.. but my character used to be able to do this awesome stuff a while back.."

Disease isn't meant to be taken very literally. By it I mean any effect that causes things such as nausea, fatigue and other nasty effects as such.

We've got an artificer, bard, druid, truenamer. So over all, even if one of them had to cast heal on me, and I did poison them, chances are we will have ways of healing them as well. Poison blood though isn't going be taken at first level. I've got Pox, Fearsome Necromancy and Pact to take first. Then immunity at 3rd. And finally poison blood at 6. Sure I can reduce the amount of feats i have, but poison blood also grants me immunity to all poisons. Immunity to all diseases. This includes both magical and mundane. 

And actually funny you would say something about damages..  Here is the list of contact poisons I could have.
DC Initial Damage Secondary Effect
10       0                    Death
11      2d12 hp           2d12 hp
12 1d3 Con + 1 Wis 1d3 CO'11+ 1d3 Wis
13          0            Unconsciousness
14          1 hp             2d6 Cha
15             1 hp       ghoul touch
16          2d8 hp         1 Con
17           1d6 Str 1d6 Str
18           1d6 Con 2d6 hp
19          1d6 Dex 1d6 Wis
22             1d6Int 1d4 hp
25            1d6 hp 1d6 hp

And I can take it multiple times.

Triskavanski

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2011, 07:17:51 PM »
I'm second level, chose evocation, enchantment and illusion as my banned schools so I can have more spells per day in necromancy.

I've got 6 spells so far,

Deaths Call - AoE fortsaves
Chill touch
Ray of Enfe
Rot of Ages - ranged targeted fort save
Parching touch

I'm looking for a spell where you could detach your own hand and use it at a range, just cause its wicked awesome. I saw it sometime before but i can't figure out where.

And I need more spells to cast.

Endarire

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2011, 03:39:15 AM »
Wizard Necromancy is spiffy for debuffing.  You have waves of fatigue/exhaustion, ray of exhaustion, stolen breath (Spell Compendium 207), enervation, energy drain, shivering touch (Frostburn 104), and spiritwall (Spell Compendium 203) are all spiffy debuffs.

You could emphasize downing people with enervation.  Split Ray, Maximize, Twin Spell, and others turn a d4 into at least 16 negative levels at 4 per ray.  Arcane Thesis, Incantatrix, Easy Metamagic, Practical Metamagic, and Metamagic School Focus help greatly in turning enervation into killing, and ooh, free wights!
Hood - My first answer to all your build questions; past, present, and future.

Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

Triskavanski

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Re: Little bit of wizard help.
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2011, 04:33:23 AM »
Well creating the undead in non-emergency situations goes against my Necromancers teachings. To them, necromancy is a way to cure the worst disease of all time. Death. Doesn't mean that undead won't be created, but they tend to get names like Bob, and only live for a short time.

Before I get metamagics, I'm focusing on getting all my debuff bases.. Which is things like Poison spell. DM is kinda allowing me to take another feat in place of scribe scroll, as I can't find any variants that get rid of it (and only it).