There are optional rules about Guild Training (esoteric training and exoteric training) whereby a spellcaster can re-gain lost levels of spellcasting. Specifically, at about 5th level one spellcasting level can be regained - eg A 5th level wizard could take a level in any class but still count as a 6th level wizard in terms of spells per day, gaining new spell levels, etc - and then at about 13th to 15th level (depending on how many Fame/Prestige Points the GM awards), the character can regain 2 more levels of their primary spellcasting class plus one level of a 2nd spellcasting class.
My question is: which class(es) would you suggest taking for a Wizard? (I like wizards.)
Eg I could take one level of cleric at 6th level, followed by a 2nd level as soon as I'm allowed which would then count as 3 spellcasting levels and qualify for Mystic Theurge without ever dropping any wizard spellcasting. The cleric levels wouldn't ever be high, but having at least 4th level cleric spells is better than not having them!
Is there a better route to follow?
There are a lot of prestige classes that lose spellcasting progression (and so aren't a good idea to take) that become more viable with the Guild Training.
Not sure where those rules are from, but they sound really overpowered.
In any case, there are a couple obvious choices here. As you mention, Cleric for mystic theurge access would be a decent option. Alchemist with the mindchemist archetype would also work nicely, as cognatogen is a +4 alchemical bonus to intelligence (so it stacks with pretty much everything) and gives you a nice boost to your DC's. A level in crossblooded Sorcerer for two bloodline arcana would be another great pick. A level of Gunslinger leading into Eldritch Knight would give you an interesting combat option.
Those rules sound insanely overpowered. Where are they from?
The cleric/mystic theurge would be good if you plan on going to very high levels.
Monk is a pretty good choice for defense. Now you have some really good saves and you can defend yourself if somebody gets close to you.
Really depends on what you want to do and what the party makeup is.
The rules are from Inner Sea Magic, Dasrak. It's a patch for the Mystic Theurge, more or less, that if you attain enough fame and prestige in a certain guild you'll be able to pick up esoteric training and eclectic training, allowing you to regain spell access from a multiclassing option.
If you know for sure you can attain the PP and Fame to get these abilities, then any other spellcasting class could be useful. The most obvious are the 9-level classes: cleric, druid, sorcerer, witch, oracle. Why? Because you gain access to their entire spell list with one level, at least for using magic items. Of these, sorcerer is redundant unless you want to go the blasting route, in which case the standard crossblooded orc bloodline routine is still an option. With cleric, choose two domains with 1st level abilities that are of use. You'll never be a great caster, but it can't hurt to have access to a few lower level spells. Druid...probably not that useful, a lot of the class's power is locked up in its abilities despite the strength of its spell list. Oracle is an option if you find a curse that isn't going to bother you much and gives you access to mysteries; one to consider carefully. The witch overlaps enough you aren't going to gain a lot from it, as you'd only have a few hexes maximum.
For PrCs... not many options.
He can be pretty certain that he will get the prestige. The method they are gaining access to the ability is not the same as in Inner Sea magic and yes it is fairly powerful.
Options involving being evil would work particularly well given the campaign.
Another PC Sorceror has taken an Oracle level (for revelations from Lore Oracle), and levels as evangelist to take advantage of the availability of the rule
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Wizard 6 / Cleric 4 / Mystic Theurge 10
With the guild training options that comes out to an effective caster level of 17 for both Wizard and Cleric.
Wizard 5 / Paladin 5 / Eldritch Knight 10
This yields 9th level spells and a BAB high enough for 4 attacks.
Magus 6 / Wizard 14
Take 'Broad Study' for the Magus and you can use spell combat with up to 9th level Wizard spells.
Et cetera. Lots of variations. Those options make a lot of things which otherwise don't quite work, suddenly viable.
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Is there a better route to follow?
Offhand, on accumulating fame and hitting the 35 points for the +3\+1 effective caster levels quickly and probably a little ahead of schedule I have a few suggestions.
The first is that you'll likely have to do the write-up for the guild yourself...there are a small handful of examples in Golarion lore so unless your GM's campaign matches up to one of the established examples either you or your GM will likely have to tailor something to fit. You might be able to finagle it that an existing organization like the Pathfinder Society or one of the secret organizations (like Palatine Eye) would also count as a Guild but you can’t depend on it. If you are the one doing the work, tailor the guild to fit whatever the campaign is going to be about and that you have some means of staying in touch throughout the game (this is where having a society that covers a large geographic area makes things easier). If based out of Osirion for example, make the Guild about collecting antiquities and lore. That way when you collect the occasional bit of fluff or piece of mundane artwork (or even junk dungeon dressing), you can turn it over to the guild for a periodic bump to fame. Not to mention if you keep at least an aspect of the Guild’s fluff related to something that you’ll be doing in the campaign it will be much easier to collect a point of fame just for completing an adventure (even if your Guild didn’t send you on that particular mission).
With the above in mind, keep an IC journal and turn it over to the Guild periodically. Keep it related to the focus of the Guild, but it should earn you a periodic point of Fame if you keep up on the homework (a few paragraphs should be enough). You can also do ‘blue booking’… referring to the blue composition books… if you are a reasonably entertaining writer to do ‘off board’ interactions (or stories) between your character and various guild members or related items. It doesn’t all have to be about killing monsters and taking their stuff (and your DM might appreciate that you are not a murder hobo). If you have access to the old Dragon Magazine monster ecology articles, those might be a useful template to squeeze a few more Fame points out of your DM.
If you have access to the Leadership feat in the campaign, use it to set up a chapterhouse or lodge for the Guild. It may be a little bit more expensive but Ultimate Campaign (iirc) has all the rules you need to handle that sort of downtime activity. Various pbp sites can help you keep track of everything (like rpol) and keep a common spot for you, your DM, and other interested parties to share as well. As a side note, as a rough rule of thumb, 1 Fame point seems to be worth about 4,000 gp.
Last suggestion I have for accumulating that 35 Fame is to do spell research and invent unique magic item formula. As what is most likely going to be an arcane focused guild, each unique discovery\formula should at least net you 1 point of Fame. Just a few suggestions on how climb the Fame ladder a bit faster.
Mystic theurge is the obvious choice so I won’t cover that ground. There is a definite dearth of dual caster progression PRCs (and not a lot of PRC or multiclassing love to start with) from Paizo. As far as what 3 levels to mix and match with a wizard… as a quick suggestion you could go exploiter wizard and grab Bloodline Development and then dip a level of Sorcerer. On top of that grab 2 levels of Alchemist for the Tumor Familiar Discovery (and most likely the Infusion Discovery via Extra Discovery feat) with Poisoners Gloves to improve your action economy. N. Jolly’s alchemists guide is a great resource.
Lots of good advice here - thanks everyone!
I hadn't even considered the alchemist or magus and will have to look at those very carefully. I don't want to lose any wizard levels, so 6 levels of the 2nd class is out.
My last wizard was a gunslinger into Eldritch Knight, which is when the GM (Cap'n Hawkins, above) first allowed us to use the guild rules, so I'd prefer something different to that.
I'd thought about using Sacred Fist (warpriest archetype) rather than monk, but the idea is similar.
This character is unlikely to be for our current campaign (Way of the Wicked), but for whatever we play afterwards. So inventing my own guild might be worth while as soon as we decide on a theme!
Anyway, thank you all again. And feel free to suggest additional ideas.
Me actually being the Sorcerer with 1 level Lore Oracle, I also took the Enlightened Philosopher Archetype, as the Mystery bonus class skills overlap is slightly mitigated, i.e.:
* Sorcerer already has Appraise, so you pick up Linguistics as a bonus instead.
* All Know skills is the same with Lore/Enlightened so no change there, and since you only have one level, there's no problems higher up.
* Plus Ring of Revelation to get the other one you want (AC vs. +CHA to all Know Skills, depending on which one you chose first); this gets seriously high numbers as CHA increases...
So you can have 1 level of Oracle and 2 levels of a.n.other class (to shore up something you as a player find yourself doing a lot and want to suck less at: so something with better saves or rerolls, or adding dice after a roll?).
I've glanced through the alchemist and magus classes and guides.
To sum up:
Classes to gain defenses/more survivability: Monk, Paladin, Sacred Fist. These gain better AC, unarmed attacks so always 'armed' even when needing a free hand plus wand/rod/etc, and/or better saves. They each need investing in particular stats to be worth taking.
Classes to gain wider spell list knowledge, mostly for using magic items: Cleric, Oracle, Sacred Fist, Druid. Also need stats.
Classes to gain useful abilities: Magus, Alchemist (Mindchemist) - cognatogen and adding Int bonus twice to knowledge skill checks; access to some divine spells; possibility of using certain discoveries like tumour familiar, or vestigial arm/tentacle to hold more rods. These mainly make the wizard slightly better at being a wizard. Int synergy.
Prestige classes: Evangelist - no downside to this. Any others?
To a large extent, my final choice(s) will depend on what the rest of the party choose to play. Divine full casters are generally rare in our group, so getting a level of cleric or equivalent early might be necessary.
Hrm... looking at the Occult books, 4 levels of Supernaturalist. Druid grants a druid access to all Spirits by RAW and not just elusively an animal spirit ...
The supernaturalist gains spirit, spirit bonus, spirit surge, and taboo abilities as a medium 3 levels lower than her druid level.
There are some other useful doodads that might make loosing a level of wizard worthwhile with a Druid\Wizard Mystic theurge (like occult skill unlocks) but still trying to parse Paizo's overall writing and editing process given the quality of their work leaves me scratching my head at times.
Thanks Grue. It's an interesting idea.
From a first glance, it looks like it needs more levels than 3 to work, like a normal Druid. However, I haven't read any of the Occult rules yet and will take a longer look before deciding anything.
I intend to use your guild writing suggestion later too.
Thanks Grue. It's an interesting idea.
From a first glance, it looks like it needs more levels than 3 to work, like a normal Druid. However, I haven't read any of the Occult rules yet and will take a longer look before deciding anything.
I intend to use your guild writing suggestion later too.
Yeah it still requires 4 levels of Druid to snag the (Medium-3) Spirit binding by the RAW interpretation. However, level 3 still gives you access to 1 psychic spell (that can be retrained as you gain levels) and there are a few nice ones on that list to cherry pick.
I'm not sure on the Evangelist PRC when interacting with another PRC like the mystic theurge with the aligned class feature so YMMV with your DM. It would cost you another caster level but a Wizard-1\Supernatural Druid-4\Mystic Theurge-1\Evangelist-10 would be at character level 16 make a 14th level wizard, 15th level caster for druid with the option of downgrading to the Mesmerists spells per day on the Druid side (6 spell level caster) by RAW and picking up 1 spell per spell level from either the cleric or wizard (if you wanted to double up) depending on which spirit you channeled for the day.
Granted I think Paizo's over focus on archetypes and the overall fact that most of the concepts presented with far too many of the archetypes can be done just as well with their respective vanilla base classes. Others are of course infamous trap options and many of the concepts would have been better served as PRCs in the first place...but heh...there is always room for more base classes;-)
An unbreakable fighter would be a worthy addition to one of the three classes. Not dying from a lucky hit from the enemy is valuable as is the health and prof.
I don't think this is as useful as some of the other classes: better AC from monk/sacred fist to avoid being hit in the first place is better than Diehard. The proficiencies are less useful to a wizard than having a free hand (unarmed strike can be done by kicking) to hold eg metamagic rods. Extra hit points is always nice, but Toughness could be taken instead of Diehard and be more use most of the time.
That would leave you two more class levels if you wanted to dip say monk and something else. Clerics with good level 1 abilities like travel,war, and other domains are worthwhile. If you were a sorcerer I'd say oracle dips are REALLY good but your a wizard Harry.
Chuckle. I just prefer wizards. Plus, my current character is an oracle.
Cleric also opens up Sacred Summons since any summon monster spell counts once you have an aura.
Grue: my GM doesn't like using Evangelist to align eg Exalted. He might allow it to work on MT, but that would delay MT progression for yet another level, which weakens the level of clerical casting. And getting to Evangelist 10 is the major perk of the class, so I'd have to get all 3 cleric levels before character level 9, which is long before the regained wizard levels kick in. My main aim is to avoid dropping any wizard casting levels at any point.
Another oddity I'm not entirely sure of because of how similar things are handled (notably Bloodline powers interacting with spells from other caster levels), a one level dip into the Psychic and taking the Rebirth psychic discipline for Mnemonic Esoterica may permit a character to grab 1 spell from any class list up to the highest-level spell (-1 spell level) you can cast (not restricted to just using your Psychic caster level).
By reaching into the recesses of your past lives, you gain knowledge beyond that of most psychics. Select a single additional spellcasting class. Once per day when you prepare your spells, you can add one spell from this class's spell list to your spells known and class spell list for 24 hours. This spell must be 1 level lower than the highest-level spell you can cast, and you cast it as if it were psychic magic.
You can decide to change the spellcasting class from which you draw this spell each time you gain a new level.