"Divine" Trickster?

[RtrnofdMax]

Caveat:

I am going on the record as not being in favor of the blanket ruling that the spell-like abilities should satisfy pre-reqs. I know why it was done, and I know that giving a general ruling can seem like the better option than going into every specific case; but, I don't agree.

With that off my chest, I'm going to have some fun being devious.

To take arcane trickster you need to satisfy 4 pre-reqs (plus alignment):

1) 4 ranks in a few skills - This can be satisfied by 4 class levels in one or multiple classes.
2) Ability to cast Mage Hand - This can be satisfied by a level of most arcane spell-casting classes, or by either the rogue talent Minor Magic or the trait Magical Talent.
3) Ability to cast a 2nd level or higher Arcane spell - As you all know at this point, this is easily satisfied by the racial spell-like abilities of Aasimar and Tieflings.
4) 2d6 sneak attack - 3 levels of Rogue or Ninja.

So nothing crazy yet, right? Well the write up for this class assumes so heavily that you can only satisfy the pre-reqs with an arcane spell-casting class that it doesn't bother to specify that it only advances Arcane spell-casting. I would say then that after your 3 levels of Rogue, there is no reason why you couldn't take a level of Cleric or Oracle and start advancing that spell-casting progression at 5th level when you take your first level of Arcane Trickster.

This probably won't satisfy the Devs requirement of a "game-breaking" situation arising from their SLA ruling, but it sure is strange and unintended.

[Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan]

While the SLA ruling makes this easier, This could have been done before, Rogue 3, Wizard 3, Cleric 1, Trickster and advance Cleric spells for 2 levels, and then dive into Theurge, hahaha.

[Gnomezrule]

You could also just go rogue bard and make sure you take healing spells and describe yourself in divine terms.

You could alternate levels of ninja/oracle.

[Happler]

Hmm, a "divine" trickster that is a rogue/druid...

The druid spell "Spike Stones" would be a great one to use. At Character level 14 (3 rogue/1 druid/10 trickster), they would cover 4,400 sq feet (one 20-fq square per CL, CL 11), and do 1d8(spell) + 7d6 (sneak) damage per 5' of movement and last for 11 hours (aka, a don't follow me spell).

Other fun spells for this combo:
Wall of Thorns, Flame Blade, Call lightning(storm), produce flame

(sorry, just trying to think of what spells may work well with that surprise spell ability that are not normally in the arcane lists.)

Thinking on it. This makes "Heat Metal/Chill Metal" much uglier.

out of the 7 rounds of spell you would get this (at the above levels) to 5 different targets (each no more then 30' apart):

round, damage
1, none
2, 1d4(spell)+7d6(sneak)
3, 2d4(spell)+7d6(sneak)
4, 2d4(spell)+7d6(sneak)
5, 2d4(spell)+7d6(sneak)
6, 1d4(spell)+7d6(sneak)
7, none

you are right, I do not think that this is game breaking, but adds some fun flexibility.

[Physically Unfeasible]

Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan wrote:

While the SLA ruling makes this easier, This could have been done before, Rogue 3, Wizard 3, Cleric 1, Trickster and advance Cleric spells for 2 levels, and then dive into Theurge, hahaha.

I think the point comes in making the wizard levels unnecessary. Although, as given - it's hardly the most powerful use of this ruling.

Scratch implying it has none though, actually, given that arcane spell casting comes with ASF, I suppose a gain is being a heavily-armoured trickster. That's kind of hard to wrap my head around.