Let's not forget that Slow affects a lot more creatures than Bestow Curse does.Well, you don't use Bestow Curse against a horde of mooks. You use it against the Summoners Eidolon, or similar big bad meele monster.
What I mean to say is that there are far more creatures out there immune to ability damage than slowing thus making slow a much better choice to know and/or prepare.
Well, you don't use Bestow Curse against a horde of mooks. You use it against the Summoners Eidolon, or similar big bad meele monster.
And then absorb a full attack from what's left over.
I don't doubt that EK uses Bestow Curse better, though.
Spectral Hand is an option, that costs you another spell slot and another round of casting.
What I find a problem with multiclassing is casters. Every caster's spell list is different in some way. Maybe it a new spell list like Bards or it's spontaneous vs memorized in the case of Wizards and sorcerers. So what you end up with is no synergy.
Now when it comes to martial type classes BAB stacks with BAB. Most feat directly effect combat. Most class ability work together. A fighter's weapon training works the rogues sneak attack. The rangers favored enemy works with barbarian rage. You have something to work with make interest martial multi-class combination.
When you try that with a caster it just plain doesn't work. Spell levels and Caster levels from two different caster classes don't stack even if both are arcane or divine. Most of the class features don't work together either for the most part. So you end up forking you character into two different directions. There adding the two abilities to make a equivalently capable character when multiclassing a caster.
I'm not sure what can be done here other that just not using multi-class characters who are caster and rely on prestige classes to make what you want available.
The problem with a bestow curse vs slow discussion is that it's very dependent on playstyle. If the majority of combats are against a CR+2 solo challenge then I think bestow curse can be a worthwhile spell to memorize. If your playstyle includes a lot of minion creatures in most encounters, slow really shines.
I almost always use alot of minions so slow is almost always in a caster's bag of tricks. Bestow Curse is almost always a situational memorize.
For the same spell level as Bestow Curse I'd almost always prefer to cast enervation as my debuff. No save ranged touch is almost always a better choice than a will save, SR applicable melee bad touch. Ranged touch means I can cast it early (maybe during the surprise round) and I don't have to actually move up and get close to the beastie (thus opening myself up to a full attack counter). Sure if I'm invis and flying the stealth bomb -6 con attack run is pretty nice and can definitely weaken a big foe but that's a relatively big investment in spells.
we need more hybrid PRCs. and a few multiclass assistance feats. we also need affiliation related PRCs. better ones that are worth taking. ones that are competitive with thier base class counterparts. doesn't have to be every combination off the bat, but at least a few of them.
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we need more hybrid PRCs. and a few multiclass assistance feats. we also need affiliation related PRCs. better ones that are worth taking. ones that are competitive with thier base class counterparts. doesn't have to be every combination off the bat, but at least a few of them.
I was looking over the PrC's and the only ones that have any type of synergy w/ their prereq classes are assassin and arc archer IMO. Everything else is kinda meh.
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I DM an Eldritch Knight in my group and he's the most powerful member in the party consisting of a full-time Hexblade, Favored Soul, and a multiclassed OA Samurai/Psychic Warrior/Elocator. Except for when he runs out of spells, but he can still last a good while before being taken down even at that point.
I just wanna point out that saying the EK is good because it is better then a very bad class, a sub par class that can be made very bad with poor spell selection and a truly aweful build does not make it actually good....
Man, if slow is this broken, I might just have to ban it altogether. I mean, a 13+Casting stat save to pretty much every enemy in the encounter? And they basically just die?
C'mon, say it ain't so! It was this way in 3.5 too!
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Okay some more reading...and as for slow vs curse...for battle slow wins, hands down. What bestow curse lets you do is curse somebody, run away and come back later to deal with them...or curse them again and come back and repeat as needed. Bestow curse is a something you plan out...or something to throw against the PC with the perm. duration. There are some spells that are just really good for NPC to use and not for the PC and bestow curse is one of them.
As for useful rays...they no longer exists in PF. I´m sorry, but the new spell list really does not support a dedicated ray/touch spell user...at all. Doing so is beyond sub-par now. Hell even with all the splat spells in 3.5 it was sub-par.
As for fixing MC by prestige class...well that is one way to do. Wizards got pretty decent with it towards the end...course by then you needed to take 3 or more prestige classes on top of at least 2 base classes to make 1 working fighter mage. A working single fighter mage prestige class needs full casting and full BAB since to get to BAB 16 and CL 18(for the sorcerer based gish) your looking at 2 levels of martial class 8 levels of arcane and 10 prestige. Without this basic req, you have a failed PRC for MC those two archetypes. Course you could make a 15 level PrC that requires 1 martial and 4 caster class...but even then you can only take away one more CL...in fact for MC prestige classes, I would have preferred the 15 level approach over the 10.
I went through a very painful 3.5 campaign trying to get anywhere with Ftr/Wiz/Eldritch Knight. What I was aiming for was something sort of Jedi-Knightish, primarily a melee guy who would occasionally changeup by blasting his foes with magic missile or do some nifty utility effects. I was expecting something roughly along the lines of a cleric in terms of combat effectiveness ... not the main tank (that was the pureclass Paladin's job) but somebody who could meaningfully contribute.
In practice ... he was pure gimp. A glass jaw kept him out of melee, especially since heavy armor wasn't a viable option until very late in his career, and with a magic missile that only did 2d4+2, he might has well have been pelting most foes with spitballs. He wasn't versatile, he wasn't anything ... except a waste of cure spells.
THIS is the problem facing multiclassers, particularly with this combination. I never wanted a fighter casting wish spells ... but I did want a warrior-mage who, when he cast a magic missile, could actually hurt his opponents.
The DM was sympathetic to my plight and came up with all kinds of attempts to help out, some of which were more effective than others. We did finally decide to try setting "caster level" = "character level" and bumping the hit die to d8, but the game ended before we got the chance to see if that helped.
-The Gneech