I'm playing a 6th level Dragonborn [Wings aspect] Mongrelfolk Dragonfire Adept tomorrow, and I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do with my feats. The character's intended focuses are battlefield control with his breath weapon and no-save utility invocations.
Sources allowed: pretty much anything that's 3.5 and not Dragon mag, subject to DM approval.
Stats: Str 9 Dex 14 Con 24 Int 8 Wis 10 Cha 8
Feats: Entangling Exhalation, Ability Focus (breath weapon), Flyby Attack
Breath Effects: Fire, Frost (2nd), Slow (5th)
Invocations: Endure Exposure, See the Unseen/Magical Insight, Voracious Dispelling
I'm considering taking a dip in Incarnate around 9th level so I can shape the Fellmist Robe soulmeld. I know I could take a feat to let me shape the Robe, but the Incarnate dip combined with the Bonus Essentia feat (investing the essentia in the Robe, of course) will give me a constant 20% concealment against the vast majority of foes. I anticipate that foes will have trouble getting within melee range of me, thanks to my flight, entangling, and being slowed. I'd like to hear your opinions on the topic.

Thanks,
malboro_urchin

^^
Disagree for entirely different reasons personally. Only some things have SR, which is the only way to resist a number of spells. Thus there are spells which cannot be resisted at all by certain foes.
On the other hand everything has AC. Physical attacks are thus, always resisted.

I think I understand what you're saying: spells with SR: Yes and no save allowed, correct? I think the problem is, as I'm sure others have pointed out, is that SR is in an awkward design-space position. Attacks have to get through AC and occasionally miss chance (that is, did the attack hit or not?). If the attack fails, try again next round; you don't lose the ability to attack.

Spells have to get through saves (often with either negated effects, or even a different effect entirely on a successful save) and SR (requires a caster level check, completely different from the enemy having to beat a fixed DC with a save; failure to pierce SR results in the spell being negated entirely). If you, as the caster, don't succeed in piercing either defense, you've lost the full effectiveness of that spell slot; if you've only prepared one casting of that spell, you've lost the spell until you next rest. I'm no designer, but if it were my decision, SR would either be far more common in lieu of saves or nonexistent. I think that for such a limited resource, one form of resistance is enough.

I see, my apologies for the interruption

malboro_urchin

My apologies for posting delay; my weekend was busy, and included both preparations for an accounting test and an incredibly difficult encounter when our gaming session met.

TL;DR:
a)  MMSF is awesome, especially at low levels
b)  Buying spells is awesome, even necessary IMO
c)  Mirror Image is good, but don't knock Mage Armour.  Greater Mirror Image, on the other hand...

I agree with all of these points. 2 spells per level for a conjurer, when I pretty much need ALL OF THE 2ND LEVEL SPELLS because they're so damn good, is not enough. its 300gp per spell, and I think I can afford that now that we've happened across some more gp and magic items. I'm carrying a few unidentified magic items (a necklace and a wand) and the rest of the party has some other gear.


After fighting an enemy wizard and meeting the duskblade, the party was dropped down a trapdoor garbage chute. We fought some eye-things (lurking stranglers I think? I make a point of not memorizing monster info or looking through the Monster Manuals because I don't like metagaming that much) and 2 oozes (not at the same time).
The last fight (and remember, we were all at level 3 in a low-op environment):

Us: Me (focused specialist conjurer 3 with abrupt jaunt), barbarian (dwarf with reckless rage, extra rage, power attack, and I believe a level of fighter for the feat), duskblade (his race is a mystery and plot-related, and I don't know his feats), scout (plans on taking levels of ranger with swift hunter), cleric (a bit of a luck theme to him, summons things and buffs the party), and a kobold bard that we met whilst in the dungeon

Them: 2 CR 6 augmented ambush drakes and some trap in the corner made of crystal that cast a few spells (I think earthen grasp, something prismatic, a spell that did int damage).

We got our asses handed to us. We rolled poorly, our barbarian hardly hit. Eventually, the barbarian lost most of his ac to both raging and dex damage from the ambush drakes' poison. It didn't help that the drakes got 22's and 23's to hit. The barbarian was also hit several times with slow breath, and he ended up fighting most of the fight from prone (I don't remember how he fell). Our duskblade took int damage and couldn't cast, then took either str or dex damage and couldn't do anything. The cleric burned his spells for healing, because otherwise the barbarian would have died. I went through all my spells (no reserve feats or anything just yet). I had 3 grease spells prepared, 2 sculpted. I had at least 1 glitterdust. I had a web spell. I went through all of it, and their saves were stupidly high, like fort +11, ref +6, will +5. My dc's are either 15 (1st level spells) or 16 (2nd level spells) and I don't have the feats available to take spell focus. The only thing I could have done differently (as we didn't rest before the encounter and were never given any indication that we should have ran away, or that the encounter would be that difficult) was prepared less greases and more benign transpositions so that the barbarian could have at least gotten to stand up without provoking an AoO that he couldn't handle. My wizard ran from the combat after blowing all his spells to little/no effect. I had to leave early (someone else played my char) but I gather that the DM pretty much threw us the encounter near the end. It was unpleasant.

I did gather that spell focus (conjuration) wouldn't have done much (I dunno if a 5% chance is worth a feat that could be doing so many other things) and that sculpt spell for free saved our asses. The LAST thing we needed in that encounter was the enemies making their saves against my spells while my allies failed their saves.

To those of you talking about wealth by level: When does the DM just say: "You have gold as per the DMG, buy stuff" except at character creation? The gp we find is divvied up among the party equally, and a good portion of our wealth is tied up in magic items, many of which we haven't identified because we want out of the dungeon we're trapped inside.

I would recommend picking up Fog Cloud, since with a reduced Sculpt Spell on it, you can use it to block off just the right lines of vision, or just one large area. Normally, the small upgrade variants of spells aren't too hot (Minor Image, for example), but the ability to cast it at range makes FC much better than Obscuring Mist.

Doesn't this only apply to ranged attackers/spellcasters? We've mainly been facing melee enemies, and our two main damage dealers are a duskblade and a barbarian, so wouldn't fog cloud just hinder them?

I would also recommend a Summon Monster spell at some point, but it gets a lot better at SM3, so you could wait until level 5 before before picking up a summon spell. For increased mobility, Levitate or Swift Fly(SpC) are really good, although Swift Fly is a bit more situational. Lastly, given the fairly low level right now, Blockade(CS) is really versatile, although be sure to pick it up in scroll form.

The party cleric has summon monster covered. He took the elemental summons variant from either Manual of the Planes or Planar Handbook, and has used the air octupus or squid to grapple enemies to great effect. I don't see why Blockade is any good. It's just a block of wood that blocks line of sight. Melee can just walk around it and try to hit me (though they'd fail because of extended mage armor, small size, and abrupt jaunt)

Thanks for your comments
malboro_urchin

I seem to remember that there exists a spell that has a duration of rounds/lvl and teleports you short distances dimension door style but I don't know where it is or If I confuse it with something else like a psionic power.

In addition to inconstant location, for completeness' sake, this reminds me of the flicker shadow magic mystery from the Tome of Magic, which, ironically enough, is power granted to binders when they bind to the vestige Tenebrous!

I had 6 skills available to max out, and I chose 4 knowledges (the planes, arcana, nature, and dungeoneering because those tend to be the most useful for ID'ing monsters, and our cleric should have religion covered), spellcraft, and concentration. I took the Collector of Stories skill trick. Evidently, I forgot to mention some things in the original post. Furthermore, I've checked out Paragnostic Apostle. Many of the knowledge skills required for abilities that I'd find useful (like the +1 CL on teleportation spells) require knowledge skills that are unhelpful in ID'ing monsters (the ability that benefits teleportation requires 5 ranks in know geography for example), and most of the abilities don't seem too useful given the spells I want to use.

Thank you for all your replies, and for taking care of all that quoting for me! I want to drop abjuration, and the party cleric said he'd cover the protection spells and dispel magic where needed. I really like the low level debuffs in Necromancy, like ray of weakness (I'm away from books right now so that may be wrong). The Focused Specialist ACF grants me a ton of longevity in spellcasting. At 3rd level, right off the bat, I get 4 2nd level spells per day, 3 of which must be conjuration, and don't forget that I do get a bonus spell per spell level up through 4th level due to 18 int, so I have at least 1 generalist slot per level. If anyone has suggestions for how to use Silent Image other than illusory fog and free concealment for the party, those would be appreciated as well.

malboro_urchin

P.s. @phaedrusxy I saw and enjoyed reading your house rule regarding knowledge checks to ID monsters. Very thorough, and I'd love to have it implemented in our game, though the calculations involved may hinder that.

Hi all! This is my first non-introductory post, so if I misformat, or if the post is difficult to read or in the wrong place, please forgive me. I recently started creating my first wizard, and after reading treantmonk & the Logic Ninja's wizard handbooks, I decided that I wanted a focused specialist conjurer. I anticipate that our characters will get to no higher than level 9.
Sources allowed in addition to core: Complete series, PHBII, Spell Compendium
Race: Strongheart Halfling
Wizard 2
Stats:
Str 6
Dex 16
Con 16
Int 18
Wis 8
Banned schools: Enchantment, Evocation, and one other school that will NOT be Transmutation. Illusion has silent image and color spray, but Necromancy has nice save-or-lose debuffs and Abjuration has protection from X spells & dispel magic.

Feats at 1st level: Metamagic School Focus (conj), Extend Spell (not sure if I should take Extend or a different +1 metamagic)
I intend to take Sculpt Spell at 3rd level.
ACF's: Abrupt Jaunt Immediate Magic

The rest of the party: we have a duskblade who plans on using blade of blood to nova, a barbarian who's new to the game, a scout, and a cleric who buffs, heals when needed, and is fond of luck rerolls.

I'm having trouble deciding what spells I want in my spellbook. at 1st level, I get 9 spells known, and some spells I definitely want include benign transposition, grease, mage armor, wall of smoke, and enlarge person. I'm on the fence regarding obscuring mist, as we've only once come across an archer, and I don't see how that could be useful in melee when our damage dealers include a barbarian and a duskblade. I'm also considering learning color spray, though the range on that is a bit of a turnoff for me. I'm worried about my early game spells because I anticipate having to spend the majority of my wealth scribing all those amazing 2nd level spells (glitterdust, web, cloud of bewilderment, baleful transposition, etc) into my spellbook.

Thanks for your input and I appreciate your help.

  malboro_urchin

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