Hello! I am in the process of creating a character for a fairly new game (3 sessions under the belt so far) and am very attracted to the Archivist for their wide range of spells and how awesome they are at helping other party members with Dark Knowledge.
The character will be starting at 1st or 2nd level, and if all goes well this campaign will go all the way to 20 or possibly beyond.
All 3.5 books are allowed, anything else can be approved on a case-by-case basis but there needs to be a very good reason for it to be allowed. As far as what spells are available, anything in those books exist in the world, and I will need to rely on gather information and creating a network of contacts, especially for harder to find spells (something from a Divine Bard or Divine Wizard variant, for instance).
The party make-up is currently a Shifter Druid who is planning to go Moonspeaker, a Psychic Warrior basically filling the meatshield role, a jack-of-all trades rogue, and possibly a monk (the last two are being played by completely new players, and the last one has been missing most of the sessions so at this point I'm assuming she won't be involved).
My primary focus is buffing my party mates, with hopefully an adaptable secondary focus (crowd controlling, debuffing, blasting, or healing as need be). I am not interested in making a grossly overpowered character but our DM throws some pretty challenging stuff at us, and given what I've experienced with him before, balance will be rewarded (as opposed to being really awesome at just summoning or something like that).
Character details:
After thinking about it for awhile, I'm pretty much settled on Whisper Gnome, but a convincing argument for Strongheart Halfling/Human may sway me. We have a stat array of 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 10 or 32 point buy, so these are the stats I'm looking at currently:
Str: 8
Dex: 12
Con: 18
Int: 18
Wis: 12
Cha: 12
These are the feats I have planned out so far, with 11 levels of Archivist and 1 Sacred Exorcist (we're allowed 1 flaw):
1: Knowledge Devotion, Extend Spell
3: Trivial Knowledge
6: Persistent Spell
9: Divine Metamagic: Persistent Spell
12: Extra Turning
Beyond taking Archivist to 11, I'm unsure where to go from there. I understand that Archivist 20 is viable, but I am trying to find other options. Any thoughts about what I have now and where to take the character past 12 will be greatly appreciated. Feel free to bring up any details I should have included and I will be happy to reply and/or edit this post.
Thanks in advance for your time!
-Omar
Edit: I was very quickly talked into incorporating DMM: Persist despite some initial hesitation.