Necroccultist and Necromancy School

[Azariez]

Recently I have mulled the idea of creating a character with these two classes. It's been tough to find a focus as it seems to blend a casting class with a martial one.

So my questions to the community are, has anyone else tried this combo and if so thoughts? And if a spell is the same but comes from two locations how does arcane failure work?

Maybe this point needs a separate thread but I have always wondered if an occultist, spiritualist or physic gain spells that function the same as those from an arcane source does spell failure still count for those arcane spells?

From a rules stand point I would assume the player would just need to keep track how the spell was cast. With that said other spell powers do stack from separate sources. ie. spell focus necromancy would help spells across the board correct?

[Mighty Glacier]

I have some (very brief, but some) experience with necroccultist, and it seems like a fun archetype to a fun class. What drove me away was two factors: (1) the Necromantic Servant scales really poorly and is a good use of mental focus only at the first three levels or so; and (2) it replaces Object Reading which I thought was a really cool class feature. There are better necromancy-focused class/archetype combos, and better occultist archetypes, so I kinda gave up.

Azariez wrote:

Maybe this point needs a separate thread but I have always wondered if an occultist, spiritualist or physic gain spells that function the same as those from an arcane source does spell failure still count for those arcane spells?

No arcane spell failure on psychic spells. Any spell a psychic spellcaster casts is a psychic spell (as in, the type of magic, not the class "Psychic" - this is confusing). It doesn't matter which classes get access to the same spell.

To look at it another way, suppose a spell that was on wizard, cleric, and psychic spell lists. The wizard can't say, "it's a psychic spell, so it has no arcane spell failure". Likewise the psychic can't say, "the spell is a divine spell and therefore it has a DF component".

[Azariez]

Thanks for the reply Mighty Glacier,

I agree with Necromantic Servant dropping of the map around lvl 3 or so. The only interesting part would be a boost to necromancy spells and that you could get a "free" +2 belt at lvl 2 by taking transmutation.

From my post I do not think I articulated my question very clearly. Let's say I took two levels of the Occultist and then two levels of necromancy Wizard. The spells would be on the same list but with two different forms of casting. In this scenario would the player need to keep track of which source they are coming from or would the fact an occultist is able to cast these cover the shared spells?

[pH unbalanced]

You would need to track your Wizard prepared spells separately from our Occultist spells, just as you would have to do if you were a multi-classed Wizard/Cleric.

[Mighty Glacier]

So let's say our occultist 2 / wizard 2 had these spells:

Occultist Spells Known (CL 2nd; concentration +5) (These do not have arcane spell failure)
1st (3/day) — cause fear, inflict light wounds, lead blades
0 (at will) — bleed, grave words, mage hand

Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 2nd; concentration +5) (These have arcane spell failure.)
1st — cause fear, detect undead, restore corpse, 1 slot open
0 (at will) — acid splash, detect magic, detect poison, disrupt undead

And they cast cause fear. They choose whether they cast it as an occultist (in which case it's a spontaneous psychic spell) or as a wizard (in which case it's a prepared arcane spell). That's the way multiclass works: there are no "shared" spells or class features (Prestige Class shenanigans like Mystic Theurge notwithstanding). Everything is separate.

Both would benefit from Spell Focus (necromancy) etc.

[Azariez]

Mighty Glacier wrote:

So let's say our occultist 2 / wizard 2 had these spells:

Occultist Spells Known (CL 2nd; concentration +5) (These do not have arcane spell failure)
1st (3/day) — cause fear, inflict light wounds, lead blades
0 (at will) — bleed, grave words, mage hand

Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 2nd; concentration +5) (These have arcane spell failure.)
1st — cause fear, detect undead, restore corpse, 1 slot open
0 (at will) — acid splash, detect magic, detect poison, disrupt undead

And they cast cause fear. They choose whether they cast it as an occultist (in which case it's a spontaneous psychic spell) or as a wizard (in which case it's a prepared arcane spell). That's the way multiclass works: there are no "shared" spells or class features (Prestige Class shenanigans like Mystic Theurge notwithstanding). Everything is separate.

Both would benefit from Spell Focus (necromancy) etc.

Perfect explanation, thank you for the reply.