Tenebrous Healbot

[Bauglir]

Ok, this idea's been kicking around my head for the past few weeks. The Healing Blast ability of an Eldritch Disciple requires a Turn Undead attempt to activate, this being what keeps you from automatically healing all damage between battles (and being able to heal pretty decently in battle, too, although you've probably got enough turn attempts for that). Binding Tenebrous as a Vestige gives you the ability to Turn or Rebuke Undead every 5 rounds, and I think this might be something you could use to trigger Healing Blast.

However, I can't think of a way to get this to work without losing too many levels. You need to be at least a 5th level Binder (with Improved Binding), a 3rd level Cleric, and you want as many Warlock levels as you can get (preferably with Hellfire Warlock). The prestige classes that provide dual advancement with binders don't help here, because you can't qualify for Anima Mage and Tenebrous Apostate is too slow (and requires you to have an evil deity).

Any suggestions?

[Kuroimaken]

Anima Mage wouldn't work for this anyway, because it advances arcane spellcasting, not divine. Wouldn't you be better off with Ur-priest and then going into Eldritch Disciple?

[heffroncm]

Ur-Priest won't work.  To become an Eldritch Disciple, you must worship a Chaotic or Evil deity.  Ur-Priests don't worship deities.

You could probably get your DM to wave some of the fluff on Ur-Priest, or the 'worship deity' recquirement of Eldritch Disciple.  You can also probably get him to houserule 2d6 Eldritch Blast in place of the 2nd level arcane spells of Anima Mage.

Even if you get your DM to houserule both Eldritch Disciple and Anima Mage favorably, you're looking at level 11 before you get to your trick.

(Binder 1 / Warlock 3 / Anima Mage 4 / Ur Priest 2 / Eldritch Disciple 1)

Seems like it'd be a fun thing to play, from a mechanics point of view and a concept point of view.

As to doing it without some sort of houseruling, I don't see as it's possible.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, it is actually fairly fun. Doing it in a gestalt campaign, but there the problems are so much easier to surmount. Anima Mage would work, though, because it could advance Warlock casting if one could get into it as a warlock. But you'd need to dump 3 more levels on Wizard or something, and that seems counterproductive.

[Kuroimaken]

Yeah, it is actually fairly fun. Doing it in a gestalt campaign, but there the problems are so much easier to surmount. Anima Mage would work, though, because it could advance Warlock casting if one could get into it as a warlock. But you'd need to dump 3 more levels on Wizard or something, and that seems counterproductive.

Why is that? Wouldn't advancing the Warlock casting already factor in the entry?

[Bauglir]

Right, but we want as much Warlock as we can get, anyway, because Warlock level determines Eldritch Blast damage. We don't need Divine Casting beyond 3rd level, anyway. Anima Mage would save some levels because we wouldn't have to spend as many on Binder.

[ksbsnowowl]

Does this guy needed to kill things too? Or is he only a healing machine?

Apostle of Peace could be your good version of Ur-Priest, but of course those have their difficulties as adventurers...

[JanusJones]

Technically you can't use Tenebrous's "turns" to fuel divine feats, according to a CustServ ruling.

But who the hell cares what THEY say?!  I say go for it!!   

[Rebel7284]

Technically you can't use Tenebrous's "turns" to fuel divine feats, according to a CustServ ruling.

But who the hell cares what THEY say?!  I say go for it!!   

Do you know what their reasoning was?

[JanusJones]

The typical non-logic.  More or less "we didn't think about it being able to be used for that, so we retroactively say it can't be."

I hate WotC.  And love'em.

Sigh.

[Kuroimaken]

The typical non-logic.  More or less "we didn't think about it being able to be used for that, so we retroactively say it can't be."

Dude, they're idiots. Always have been. You can't expect them to get smart NOW.

[Bauglir]

I'm guessing the logic was, "Tenebrous allows you to turn undead, but doesn't grant you an actual turn attempt, so you can't do it." Ah well, it's hardly overpowered. Most broken things require you to spend multiple turn attempts at once (DMM, for instance), which this doesn't allow. And this just makes a half-way decent healer. A cleric's still better, just not as good with endurance. That and healing can easily be circumvented.

As far as dealing damage goes, I'd always figured I could just not use healing blast whenever I wanted to hit stuff. EB damage might not be high, but it passes the time and annoys some foes.

[Kuroimaken]

3e's Warlock always seemed kinda lackluster to me. My first reaction to it was "Dude, at-will magic? SO OVERPOWERED!". Later, when I saw what magic was REALLY all about, and I saw that the Warlock couldn't do it, the whole class just looked very Meh to me.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I'm with you on initial reaction. As I've played it, though, I've started liking it. They're decent without being on the level of "Rocket-Launcher Tag" that most magic-users reach at high levels. Just enough invocations to be versatile enough (if you're creative about how you use them, of course, and that includes using skill boosters properly), and they're really hard to kill if you build em right. And that's always something that draws me to a class. One of my DMs tends to improve enemies so that things of the appropriate CR actually ARE a challenge, and while this does result in occasional character death, it ends up being fun. And also leading to paranoia in my case, to the point where my character in the level 18 campaign that he ran was practically undetectable by anything but high-powered divinations. Also Devils, but meh. They didn't come up much, and when they did, the rest of the party did a decent job. But now I'm rambling.