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I’ve always been a big fan of the mystic theurge prestige class, but thought it really fell flat in its delivery. It started up too slowly to be fun in low level games, lacked flavor in the mid-levels and essentially boiled down to a game of “How do I get 9th level casting” at high level, leaving the character feeling a tad bit un-theurge-y. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading through the various threads discussing the issues with Mystic Theurge as well as various people’s attempts at fixing them. I even made my own attempt at a fixed prestige class, but wasn’t terribly happy with the kludges necessary to avoid having a theurge with access to 9th level spells. After fiddling around with it and playtesting my fix I eventually decided to shelve it until I could figure out a better way to fix it than a 16 level prestige class.
I was at a loss for how to approach the class until the arrival of the ACG. While the book is far from perfect, it did provide something quite useful: a template for a half-caster. In ACG the half-casters (i.e. warpriest and hunter) cap out at 6th level casting. This made me wonder if a mystic theurge capped at 6th level casting could be a viable and fun hybrid to play. I spent some time working it into what I believe should be a functional and balanced hybrid, and would love some feedback on the end result. The goal of the reworked class is that it should function as a high-tier caster while doing so with the toolkit presented by 1st- to 6th-level cleric and wizard spells. A group should be able to function with a theurge playing the role of the group’s arcane or divine caster, and the theurge should be viable with a focus on blasting, control, or support, while still providing good utility.
Schtick:
- Access to both Divine and Arcane Spells, Lots of spell slots!
- Some very limited ability to cast both simultaneously
Problems:
- MAD and it shows!
- DCs too low to be useful for fail or save/suck control spells.
- No effective way to make use of excess resources at mid- and high-levels.
Abilities
- 6th level cleric/wizard spell lists, separate slots for arcane and divine spells.
- Twin-casting: Limited number of uses per day, cast one arcane and divine spell simultaneously as full round action.
- Embrace the MADness: Benefits from both Int and Wis encourage theurges to improve both. Flexibility in which stat used to cast makes it harder to cripple casting with wis or int damage/drain.
- Bonuses to DCs when Twin-Casting mean that top level theurge control spells are competitive with top level wizard spells (well, wish excluded anyway).
- Flexibility use of slots: Recall or duplicate spell slots, twin-cast to burn through spells faster, burn slots on metamagic. Recall/Duplication and metamagic abilities additionally reduce the need to fill every slot, making high-level theurge’s daily spell choices less tedious overall.
Limitations
- Unarmored Caster: Arcane spell failure applies to divine spells as well as arcane ones.
- Low BAB and d6 HD
- All spells effectively require divine focus.
- Must learn divine spells like arcane spells, no instant access to full cleric list.
Additional Flavor
- Bonded Symbol: Benefits of Arcane Bond, but essentially imposes divine focus requirement on all spells. Some tweaking to avoid catastrophic loss of casting if symbol poofs.
- Blended Casting: Harder for other casters to identify spells cast by theurge, harder to counterspell theurge when twin-casting than a cleric or wizard of similar level.
- Capstone: Theurge no longer differentiates between arcane and divine spells, giving more freedom to the theurge at 20.
- I spent quite a while on calculations to compare DCs between pure spell casters (cleric and wizard) against the Theurge. The goal is that at most levels the top level theurge spells should have DCs +/- 1 of a cleric or wizard while twin-casting. When not twin-casting the DCs will be 3-4 lower. This strongly encourages theurges to save twin-casting uses to deliver critical control spells instead of burning it on rapid buffing.
- At low levels a theurge has ~10% more spell slots than a specialist wizard or cleric, increasing to 20% at mid-levels and 40% at high level. When weighted by spell level, the wizard comes out a few % ahead in total weighted spell slots at low levels and 10-15% in total weighted spell slots at high levels. Between the improved DCs, better action economy and slot flexibility, I’m ok with the theurge being behind 10-15% in weighted spell slots in the end. The weights used are (0.10, 0.13, 0.18, 0.24, 0.32, 0.42, 0.56, 0.75, 1.00) for 1st-9th levels respectively. It’s been a long time since I came up with those numbers, and I can’t remember my rationale other than that higher level spells are significantly more powerful than lower level ones, so I’m open to alternate weighting methods.
-Twin-casting is designed to generally allow the theurge to cast two spells of his max spell level – 1 simultaneously. Assuming four 4-round fight adventuring days, the theurge should have 1-2 rounds of twin-casting per fight at low levels, increasing to 3-4 per fight at high-levels. This should roughly equate to 20-25% usage at low levels and >75% at high levels.
- I’m on the edge about the fast recall/memorization and spontaneous metamagic, but feel the class needs something to help deal with its abundance of slots at high levels. The idea is to encourage flexibility (and quick spell-list selection) by trying to have the theurge keep a large supply of open slots for metamagic and re-memorization. The weakened channeling ability also addresses this by being powered off of spell slots (albeit already filled ones).
- If anyone is really interested in the calculations, I have a fairly large and poorly labeled excel spreadsheet which contains everything including comparison of two-stat and single-stat theurge’s DCs as well as the spell per day comparisons. Message me and I’ll try to clean it up so it’s intelligible by another human being and make it available.
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Finally, before I post the link to the PDF, kudos to all of those who have made attempts at fixing the mystic theurge. I’ve stolen liberally from you all, and if you see something that looks yours-ish, please let me know so I can give you credit. I know there were at least three full builds I cribbed from for my original prestige class remake, of which I only remember Kobold Bard’s (from the GitP forums) remake which contained the idea for twin-casting as a central ability.
I’d love some feedback on the class (doubly so if someone happens to take it for a spin). If you have balance concerns, please double check the Nitty Gritty section for my reasoning before posting.
If you’re still reading, great! Thanks for taking the time to look through all this. I’m especially interested in the following:
- Does the class deliver Mystic Theurge fun without being too fiddly or overwhelming?
- Do the increased DCs and twin-casting work in practice to allow the theurge to function as control-type or blaster?
- Can the class be built such that a SAD theurge is hands-down superior to a MAD theurge
- Are there any unintended interactions with other classes or abilities/feats that cause unwanted craziness in the class?
- Obvious errors, omissions or oversights.
Also see Kobold Press's Theurge. Similar idea, but is a 9 + 9 level caster, in exchange having fewer spells per level (never gets past 2 + 2 before considering Int and Wis bonuses, but gets both Int and Wis bonus spells), and doesn't get some of the Spell Blending/Twin Casting benefits.
I'll take a peek when I've got a minute. From what I saw on the PBlog about the new multiclass stuff in Unchained, though, it seems like a Theurge might not be as difficult to make soon enough.
UnArcane: Thanks for the link! I'd not seen that one before, good to see a different take on the idea.
Puna'chong: Thanks! I'd kinda thought that myself, but it appears that the VMC (variant multi-classing) in unchained doesn't include spellcasting. Great for all sorts of ideas, but I think Theurge really needs both arcane and divine spells to capture the essence.
At least I can now make the gnome bard/merchant with snarky golem sidekick I've always dreamed of! :p
You cite low DCs as a problem, but are encouraging two ability scores and have 6 level casting. That seems contrary to better DCs.
I am all for encouraging two ability scores, but I think 9-level casting is important.
Diversity is more central to the theurge than specialization. I suggest a point pool to cast unprepared spells.
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^The DC boosting ability compensates for most of the disadvantage of not having 9th level spells.
If you want to go the point pool route and also want 9 level spellcasting, maybe an Arcanist archetype would be the way to go (trades out some class features for more spells per day and an expanded spell list.
I haven't looked over this too closely, but have you considered a spontaneous version?
I think the potential benefits for prep time at the table could be rather worthwhile.
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Also see Kobold Press's Theurge.
Heh, I was going to mention the same thing.
You can find the Theurge base class in the New Paths Compendium, from Kobold Press :)
Ciaran: The "Student of Theurgy" feature gives the theurge the use of the better of their two casting scores for DC's at low levels, as well as a flat +2 DC at higher levels. In addition they gain an additional bonus equal to half their lower casting stat's modifier when twin-casting.
Taken together, a 6th level theurge spell has a DC equivalent to a 9th level wizard or cleric spell when twin-casting. These bonuses take into account the fact that a wizard or cleric can focus resources on raising up a single stat. In theory a theurge could ignore one of his two stats, but he should end up with similar DC's and less bonus spells overall if he does so. I'm quite interested in ways to break this though, as MAD is intended to be ideal for the theurge.
Also I'd like to avoid a point pool since that's the arcanist's schtick. Perhaps a general "faster study from book" during the day ability would be the answer to more flexibility though, since I'm already encouraging the theurges to keep empty slots open.
Saba: The only issue is that without a significant number of slots at high levels the 6th level spells really fall behind in power. Some of this is compensated for by the increased DCs, but there's just no 6th level spell that's equivalent to wish.
I do agree with your point about 9th-level slots being important beyond just the spells though. Instead of having actual 7th-, 8th- and 9th- level spell slots, however, the theurge may burn empty slots to fuel metamagic spontaneously (with increased cast time, of course). Thus a theurge could use a 6th-level spell with 3 levels of metamagic just as a wizard or cleric could.
ZZTRaider: I've given a spontaneous version some thought, and would like to tackle it as an archetype once I've ironed out the base class. My main worry is that a spontaneous theurge would have so many slots they'd mostly sit unused even with twin-casting. I'd like to figure out a solution that makes it something more than just "Here's the same thing, with fewer spells known and more spells per day".