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I've been interested in some dangers that might exist in combat when someone shuts down magic items, say a quickened dispel magic and a sunder on the fighters favorite sharp stick, and how to try to defend against such nastiness if you're a cautious PC or BBEG.

So how do you defend against this? You could use an orange ioun stone for +1 caster level, and theoretically you could use a moon circlet if you only work on your sharp stick during the new moon... but then making a +4 sword would take a year.

Are there any other ways to make caster level higher or defend against dispelling magic items?

What about if its a magic item that has other spells cast on it? (Say hardening, greater magic weapon, and weapon of awe amongst other things) How does the dispel check work, and how would you defend against it?

I've been interested in some dangers that might exist in combat when someone shuts down magic items, say a quickened dispel magic and a sunder on the fighters favorite sharp stick, and how to try to defend against such nastiness if you're a cautious PC or BBEG.

So how do you defend against this? You could use an orange ioun stone for +1 caster level, and theoretically you could use a moon circlet if you only work on your sharp stick during the new moon... but then making a +4 sword would take a year.

Are there any other ways to make caster level higher or defend against dispelling magic items?

What about if its a magic item that has other spells cast on it? (Say hardening, greater magic weapon, and weapon of awe amongst other things) How does the dispel check work, and how would you defend against it?

So I was thinking of putting together a sword and board fighter with a couple levels of monk for some of the feats and evasion, and was trying to figure out how to leverage the most out of that idea, and I noticed:

Vicious Stomp (Combat)

You take advantage of the moment to brutally kick an enemy when he is down.

Prerequisite: Combat Reflexes, Improved Unarmed Strike.

Benefit: Whenever an opponent falls prone adjacent to you, that opponent provokes an attack of opportunity from you. This attack must be an unarmed strike.

So I assume I can take this as a fighter combat bonus feat.

Can I also use this while armed with a scimitar and using a light shield then? Is this a good idea for a feat?

So I was browsing some threads about sundering weapons and gear, along with make whole and I cant seem to wrap my head around what to do when you have someone break their shiny stick if its real nice. Except say "well, its broken. Guess that dragon had another one just like it in his horde" to keep wealth by level normal, which feels a bit kludgy to me.

Make whole works great, and seems pretty reasonable if the broken shiny stick is just broken, but when it's destroyed you need double caster level to repair it; So a +3 weapon needs an 18th level caster to fix it.

That sounds fine and well, except I don't know any downtime way of boosting caster level. You can either go for the 1/2 cost and time of making the item rule and try to figure out item creation or try to hire the in town magic weapon and armor smith, or you can shove the busted piece of junk into your treasure horde to be sold when you have enough caster levels to make make whole work.

Is there any higher level spell that would be appropriate that doesn't require you to hire a 30th level caster to fix a busted +5 weapon for example? All I can guess is death knell, which sucks as its only +1 caster level and is limited to clerics and witches that don't mind pissing off the party paladin, or limited/full wish, which is GM adjudication depending on weather or not he's having a bad day.

It seems like there should be something between 2nd and 9th level to make repairing items go from 1/2 cost to something a little less expensive, even if it isn't free.

I first looked over the class of rage prophet and thought it looked like fun flavor for an interesting class. A barbarian oracle that can actually make good use of barbarian charisma powers.

Then I realized that the class made no sense at all. BAB is 3/4ths unlike eldritch knight. It looks like it borrows the same advancement table as the dragon disciple without the power advancement. As is, its mechanically its better to take 2 levels of barbarian and just go full oracle than to take any rage prophet at all; The prestige class grants almost nothing for the loss of caster levels and oracle mysteries, where dragon disciple grants bloodline power advancement and faster BAB than strait sorcerer.

Even moment of clarity doesn't make much sense as a rage power prereq for it, since you can rage on and off as a free action with the lame curse. Strait oracle and two levels of barb you get the same BAB, more spells, same rage rounds. The only thing you lose is extra barb levels for determining effects of rage powers, but that's meaningless since you have to spend feats to get rage powers that actually are affected by barb levels anyways, and you can't qualify for most of those feats without more barb levels...

Whats the point of this class? As far as I can tell the only thing you get out of it is a ghost touch and a greater rage at the cost of 3 caster levels and a whole bunch of mysteries and oracle goodies.

Or any other trait/feat that allows characters to make up caster level loss that makes prestige classes that have caster levels not so awful?

I mean an arcane trickster or eldritch knight can be fun, but they're decidedly behind the power curve without traits that make up for caster level loss when played at level.

I'm still confused why this is banned from PFS organized play, or how PFS members can petition for this to be changed.

It seems many of the multiclass prestige classes suffer from this, and mystic theurge is no exception. Going from level 3 to level 8 your character ends up as a waste of space casting 2nd level spells, with lower BAB, lower hp, and much lower caster level.

From 8 to 16 you slowly start to catch up, but are always behind with one token useful ability that you only get at capstone, while forgoing bonus feats and class powers, and caster level. There exist some feats that can help repair the deficit but these feats become enormous opportunity costs compared with single class characters that invest their feats in actually making their characters more powerful.

Combine spells is nearly useless. Spell synthesis is great, but only weak as a capstone.

I'd like to suggest a couple of changes, most importantly to the entrance requirement:

To qualify to become a mystic theurge, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks.

Spells: Able to cast 1st-level divine spells and 1st-level arcane spells.
Base Attack Bonus +2

So that mystic theurge is entered a full two levels earlier.

2nd level Theurgic Research: 3/4ths of the mystic theurge level is used for calculating class powers like channel energy, oracle's curse, domain powers, school powers, familiar benefits. This grants no new powers, spells, or abilities.

At levels 4, 6, 8 Theurgic discovery. Gain traits from the list: Magical knack, focused mind, and theoretical magician. Magical knack is taken once for either class to make up for loss of caster levels to enter theurge.

At level 5 add lesser spell synthesis, like spell synthesis except level 3 spells or lower with no dc or spell pen bonus.

Combined Spells: Get rid of extra spell level cost, max combined spells for slot swapping is the same as the bonus spells for spellcasting slot. A sorcerer/cleric mystic theurge with a cha of 20 and a wis of 18 would be able to use 2 sorcerer slots to fuel 1st level cleric spells and 1 cleric slot to fuel 1st level sorcerer spells.

At 16th level you have a cleric that has 2 8th level spells, a wizard that has 8th level spells, and a theurge that has 7th level spells. They all cast at 16th level, the theurge can cast more spells, but they're weaker. Once per day the theurge can combine spells.

What's better about this option is oracles and sorcerers can make use of the theurge class, and the leveling is less painful. Levels 3-4 are the only really awful ones. Sorcerer's and Oracles can avoid MAD but also lose more of their base class bonuses, as new bloodline powers/ mysteries won't be available while also suffering the extra 1 level penalty from spell progression.

The way this is set up theruge could be entered either 2/2 from any arcane/divine, or take 3/1 from divine/arcane. While 3/1 grants access to divine spells faster, this is slightly balanced by arcane spells being stronger and more versatile, though I can see an argument to restrict entry to only 2/2 splits for balance.

What do you guys think?

I'm having some problems figuring out baleful polymorph in pathfinder compared to 3.5. It seems like its very useful against say enemy spellcasters except perhaps druids with natural spell because it completely shuts down spellcasting, but it seems like its also not nearly as useful against melee type characters as the 3.5 version.

In previous games I've played, you would simply cast baleful polymorph at an enemy and turn him into a tortise and put him in a little cage, perhaps feed him a carrot now and then. Now I'm not sure that would do much to an enemy besides reduce his move, bump up his dex, drop his strength, and give a small natural armor boost. Sure, they drop their weapon, but how does the pathfinder implementation of baleful polymorph run now? Does this just give you a tortise that for some reason is nearly impossible to pick up?

Not only that but in many cases you can use it as a permanant buff. Turn the rogue into a monkey, he gets +4 dex, -2 str +1 natural armor, +2 size bonus to hit and ac, acrobatics bonuses, immunity to person spells. Yeah, he'd have to get tiny items, perhaps a little vest and fez, and probably wouldn't be able to speak, but still a permanent buff from how I read the rules.

So how does this spell get played now?