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Toymaker
 
PostPosted: Sat, Oct 20 2018, 18:17 PM 

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Joined: 10 Sep 2018

I am trying to finalize my concept. I'm going for a heavier mage based set up.

This is what I got so far;

1. Wizard courteous Magocracy / Brew potion 1. 2.
2.
3. Craft Wand
4. int+1
5. SF Conj
6. SF Trans
7.
8. int+1
9. GSF Trans
10. SF Abj
11.
12. GSF conj int+1
13.
14.
15. GSF Abj SF div
16. int+1
17.
18. Weapon Focus: Some kinda sword
19.
20. GSF DIV int+1
21. ESF Conj
22.
23. Epic spell: dragon knight
24. Ranger Heavy Armour prof / Epic spell: epic mage armor int+1
25.
26.
27. Epic spell: mummy dust ESF Trans
28. Rogue int+1
29. Rogue
30. Greater Ruin


 
      
thunderbrush
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 22 2018, 11:20 AM 



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Well. A couple things.
Weapon focus for a mage (unless elven) is limited to simple weapons. So...meh..dagger?
Your AB, APR and damage will be dismal, given the wizard progression outside of tensers. It's even worse without improved critical.
I would swap EDK out for EMA. The AC will be clutch, even after you get O asf plate and a shield. BBoD is a far better summon.
What does your stat spread look like? Con is going to be a serious concern.
Ensure you save skill points and dump discipline on your ranger level.
I'm curious to see more specifics.

*edit * If you keep edk, ditch emd or ruin (not recommended)

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Raua
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 22 2018, 15:43 PM 

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The only way Spellswords really work is if you do the standard 24 caster / 4 Fighter / 2 Rogue or some variation there on.

"Spellswords" work essentially like this, you take EITHER 2 levels of a full BaB class (like fighter, Ranger, Pally, or Barb) OR 4 Levels of a 3/4 BaB class (like Rogue, Bard, Druid, or Cleric) in pre-epic, to pull your BaB high enough to get more than 2 attacks per-round at maximum level.

In terms of mechanics of builds like this, most end up with a 20 in their physical stat (either STR or DEX--Strength being preferred), which, combined with the average spellswords BaB at level 30 being 16; Some maths for you!

16 BaB
+11 STR/DEX Bonus
+8 From weapon (assuming GMW'd to +5 with Weapon Focus and Epic Weapon focus)
+10 From Tenser's

With your Average single round of Hasted combat looking like this;
45/45/40/35

Which is Decent, but it takes a lot of buffs to get to there.
Your AC will end up in the low-to-mid 60s as well, which is pretty good too! (but that would be the same if you were a normal mage too!)

All in all, based on what you have there looks to be a much more "Magey" focused character, and I'd advise doing the standard caster build of 27 Caster/1 Ranger/2 Rogue or 29 Caster / 1 Ranger

That being said, if you want them to be a spellsword, I can happily draw something up for you!

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thunderbrush
 
PostPosted: Tue, Oct 23 2018, 7:37 AM 



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Location: The belly of the beast

I like monk for the dump level for the discipline. Alignment restricted though.

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bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Wed, Oct 24 2018, 4:45 AM 

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Transmutation doesn't really do anything on amia so I personally advise against it - but abjuration is good since you get immunity to some annoying effects

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bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Wed, Oct 24 2018, 4:49 AM 

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Also unless you really want it for to I would ditch corteuous magocracy. Use the extra feats you would spend on that and transmutation focus to take strong or luck of heroes (both if you're human) and great fort/epic fort. I'd even take the reflex feats so you can round out all your saves and not have to worry about Apes but you can skimp for toughness which gets you more up.

But you're better off as a caster than a spellswords tbh. Casters are just better.

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angst360
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 25 2018, 22:39 PM 



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Joined: 10 Jul 2014

I would respectfully disagree with Bob.

Casters used to be better, but there was some nerfage in the last rebalance, at least from my experience. I have a sorcerer that ain't what he used to be.

I have a dev-crit spellsword on an ecl +2 and it is a lot of fun. I regretted only having an APR of 3 before he was finished, now it ain't so bad. And he is pretty decent without tensors, which I usually save for a boss. A very flexible build. The dev-crit isn't about damage, its about buying time while you work on the rest of the spawn. A spellsword can run a lot longer than a caster between rests. But I suppose it all depends on style and your overall intent.


 
      
bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 25 2018, 22:51 PM 

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A caster who knows their class will wipe the floor up and down with a spellsword, who almost invariably lack the ab to hit their 64 ac consistently, any day. I don't even need ac to nullify spellswords. Dev crit requires you to A) hit B) crit and C) have the target fail their save. C) is the biggest one because most will only fail on a 1. Dev crit is a waste of feats unless you only plan to fight pve stuff.

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angst360
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 25 2018, 23:06 PM 



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bobofwestoregonusa wrote:
unless you only plan to fight pve stuff.



Well, I did say it is a matter of style and overall intent. Not everyone builds for pvp. There are a lot of ways to seek enjoyment within the game, we are just looking at it from two different points of view.


 
      
MightNMagic
 
PostPosted: Fri, Oct 26 2018, 4:25 AM 

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Eh, a few things...

Spell foci don't really do anything for a spellsword, honestly. Just a waste of 3 feats.

You'll need Extended and Maximize just to have the proper loadout of spells to get from rest to rest.

With Tenser's going, you'll have 100% spell failure so Epic Spells like Greater Ruin won't be available to you. Items that aren't potions won't work either, so Craft Wand is debatably useless as well.

Dragon Knight really isn't worth it, even with Conj foci for a spellblade. It's not as durable as Mummy Dust's construct and it's constant fear aura just makes more work for you as you'll have to chase your feared targets halfway across the map to kill them. Dragon Knight is for pure casters, not meleers.

As for blabbing about PvP, frankly for most people, PvP happens once in a blue moon and doesn't even mean a thing if you lose so who gives a flying fig about PvP? There's only a few builds even capable of winning all PvP with any measure of consistency and unless you only want to see maybe 5 crappy niche builds on the server repeated ad nauseam, forget PvP. Amia is about being generally competent and a versatile asset - not a one trick pony that sucks outside of that one trick.

You're better off wanting a group to want you and being able to solo most of the bosses than "bein' good at da PvP" and sitting around a city, unable to do anything alone other than Fire Giants.

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bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Sat, Oct 27 2018, 11:33 AM 

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Dragon Knight is the only good summon other than BBoD and (in very niche situations) the shade from shades. The fear aura dominates PvP and is am excellent panic button for pve. That combined with bioware TS makes it a hard counter to SD tricks. As a wizard I literally ignore summons if I've cast my ac buffs because they can't hit me.

angst360 wrote:
Well, I did say it is a matter of style and overall intent. Not everyone builds for pvp. There are a lot of ways to seek enjoyment within the game, we are just looking at it from two different points of view.


You can do both trivially easy on a caster without having to struggle with maintaining good saves, MASD, a discipline score, and general lack of focus in what your builds "job" is. Spellswords have a sort of confusion that lends to not being able to chug heal potions when something that can actually hit you shows up because you're on tenders and the lack of serious spellcasting or high DPS when the chips are down. Since most spellswords stop at 20 int they also lose valuable spell slots. They're mechanically confused and people talk up their potential a lot. But really spellswords just waste a lot of important feats on weapon related abilities that could be used to make a more survivable, mechanically viable character.

You can blow through most dungeons on Amy casting focused build if you know the spawns.

Also to address this - Rashad no build "wins all PvP" and there are plenty of builds that solo bosses and PvP just fine. It isn't a matter of builds "the three builds amia knows" hell I play a super generic wizard build. I can hand my builds to a lot of the player base and they would probably just run dungeons with them like always. The idea is not to build with tons of obvious weaknesses that you can fix by pumping feats into saves or compensating in other ways without sacrificing offensive capability.

If I were talking purely PvP stuff I would talk about team dynamic and synergy with partner more than anything anyway. How you work together matters way more which is why the infamous groups that did a lot of PvP were so successful before being shut down by a force of players so large they were overwhelmed.

Besides - DM events happen too. Helps to have more tools than five casts of maximized tensers to spare.

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bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Sat, Oct 27 2018, 11:37 AM 

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All that said, spellswords are viable. They're just not as good at their job as a dedicated whatever they're standing in for at the time. But you can honestly switch to caster whenever you want. While the lack of slots sucks you don't need more than 20 INT to get by as a wizard.

But I do genuinely admit you should probably drop every spell focus except for abjuration. The utilities it offers to a buff based melee caster are great but the rest don't do much for you.

And for the love of god. Take the saving throw feats for fort and reflex and take toughness. You will thank me later.

Recommended feats that you should try to find room for:

1) Luck of heroes
2) Strong soul (if you have a human bonus feat)
3) Great Fortitude
4)Lightening Reflexes
5) Epic Fortitude
6) Epic Reflexes
7) Toughness (if you have room)

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