Hello, I'd like some advice regarding spells, feats etc. with a Core Gish I'm building for PFS, with the intention of playing through the whole of Emerald Spire. The character concept is of a person who wants to achieve both mental and physical perfection by combining magic and arms. I know it's not the most mechanically viable concept, but I find it fun to make unexpected things even with the limitations of core.
I'm not really sure whether to go with Fighter or Barbarian for the martial level, but I'm leaning towards Fighter since rage and the lack of a bonus feat make Barbarians less versatile in combat. The caster class will certainly be Wizard, because I'd love the flavor of a greatsword as the arcane bond, even though a familiar would propably be more powerful. Transmutation also seems like a crazy good school for a gish with the bonus to a physical ability score. Naturally I'd be going Eldritch Knight as soon as I meet the requirements.
First - I'd skip the barbarian because you can't cast your wizard spells while raging. Fighter or ranger get you the requirements you need for Eldritch Knight.
Do you get traits?
As far as mixing melee with casting, have you considered going straight Bard or Ranger?
Does it have to be Core? Obviously, the Warpriest and Magus both blend martial abilities with magic.
One crazy idea - consider playing a straight transmuter with just really high strength and con. Buff yourself really high with your spells and see how that goes. Might work for you, might not. I haven't run the numbers.
Skip it. Core have no solution for gish fundamental problem, witch is action economy. 0 ways to quick cast like Fervor or Spell Combat.
If this does not deter you, then here is some bullet point.
Arcane Archers, while the less exciting, are the most solid route for gishs. Easy to qualify, solid base stats, and mostly focused on martial while using magic to buff or solve unexpected situations.
Arcane Strike is not that good.
Arcane Armor Training + Mithril Chainskirt is the more simple and quick route to solid armor. If you have lots of Dex you may want to upgrade into a Celestial Armor.
Fighter is the most flexible base martial class so I would raccomend it over Ranger.
If you want to play something out of the ordinary, Paladin-Sorcer have some very nice saves. Arcane Sorcer can still have the Bonded Greatsword.
Absolutely stay away from barbarians, they do not mesh well with casting. Regarding Wizard schools, divination is always usefull, trasmutation is good for the more straight bonuses.
I've thought about this some because it's hard to do the fighter/mage thing with Pathfinder and here's my advice - spend a lot of resources on Use Magic Device and then play a straight fighter, ranger, or paladin. You'll end up closer to your desired fighter/mage. Maybe take a level of bard to get UMD as a class skill?
Arcane Armor Training & Mastery combined with mithral armor allow you to wear a full plate with just 5% spell failure. Alternatively you could go with Still Spell - needs less feats and money, but higher spell slots.
Fighter 3 adds armor training I, combined with mithral this means full speed with a full plate early on (if the GM rules that it stacks). Given that Eldritch Knight levels help to qualify for fighter specific feats, you could stop at fighter 3 (I'd recommend that).
Arcane Strike should be useful here, you nearly get full progression on it - assuming you stick with few fighter levels. Keep in mind it uses the swift action which is also necessary for quickened spells.
Speaking of quickened: Some level 1 spells beg to be quickened later on. True Strike, Shield, Enlarge Person and Expeditious Retreat come to my mind.
Other useful spells might be Mirror Image, Greater Invisibility, Greater Magical Weapon, Fly, Haste, Keen Edge and Permanency. Basically everything which bolsters your melee defense, offense and versatility.
Charm and summon are good choices for a regular wizard, but you will be significantly weaker at it - less caster levels, lower DCs. The same applies to damage spells which aren't that strong even for a full wizard.
Finally: If the GM allows it, you could create your own magical items via Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Craft Wondrous Item.
For an Eldritch Knight, I'd recommend an elf using an Elven Curved Blade. A Finesse build alleviates your armor issue, but it keeps most of the power of a two-handed Str build.
Elf Fighter 1/Transmuter 5/EK X
14/17/12/16/10/8
Traits: Magical Knack, Warrior of Old
F1: Weapon Finesse, Toughness
W1: Spell Focus (necromancy)
W2: Arcane Armor Training
W3: +1 Dex (move Transmuter bonus to Con now)
W4: Arcane Strike
W5: Still Spell
EK1: Power Attack, Weapon Focus (ECB)
EK2:
EK3: Weapon Specialization (ECB)
EK4:
EK5: ???, ???
At low levels, your spells are focused on key buffs (such as shield), and miscellaneous problem solving. Your damage lags a bit in the level 3-4 range, but starts picking up when you get Arcane Strike at level 5, can enchant your weapon to a +2 (or keen) at level 6, and get Power Attack at level 7. Once you get 3rd-level spells, you'll be relying on spells like haste and heroism to stay relevant in combat.
Does the sorcadin into dragon disciple build count as gishy enough? I've never tried it, but I've heard good things.
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Why not just play a bard? There is enough overlap in buffing spells, you have better combat ability, and you get performance. You can also pretty easily go into Arcane Archer or Dragon Disciple if you want to boost combat ability further.
+1 this myself, but he says he really wants Arcane Bond. (Too bad no archetypes, because there is a Bard one for that)
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Emerald Spire goes until around lvl 13 or so, and to that end, your level to build for terminates there.
The "Classic Gish" is Fighter 5/Wizard 5/EK 10, but for your purposes it would be Fighter 1/ Wizard 5/ EK 7, giving you a BAB of 10 or so at "max" lvl. This translates to 2 - 4 attacks with a singe weapon - two weapon fighting (not recommended). Your casting class level will be lvl 11, so it could be useful to go Wizard (since you'll have lvl 6 spells).
The classic gish is really about choosing what you want your poison to be. You can be a tanky wizard who wears the heaviest armor around, wields a big dumb tower-shield and casts saveless spells with still spell to effectively be a front-line spell knight; a ranged fighter that relies on a combination of casting and archery to kill enemies; a front-line fighter who pummels enemies to death with natural and breath weapons; or you could make some god-awful spawn of the above.
If you go Wizard, then keep in mind that there are two major choices for you: Divination and Transmutation. At first glance, transmutation just wins hands down: you will receive a +2 enhancement bonus to any physical attribute of your choice. However, Divination lets you act during a surprise round. If you're playing low-dex, that might be worth it. One major thing to keep in mind is that it is impossible to add dex to dmg in Core, so if you're going the dex route then Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster or a crit fishing build might be your best bet.
The unfortunate reality is that you have to make some pretty bad choices: are you going to be good at dealing damage, avoiding damage, absorbing damage or casting spells. You have to choose as to if you want to do one extremely well, two moderately well, three with mediocre success or all four poorly. You have to make that decision and ultimately decide what you're going to excel in. The EK is MAD like the Fighter can be, but worse with the addition on INT being at least a little required.
The PrC you should be looking at are:
Arcane Archer (Possibly built like a general archer: STR + DEX with an emphasis on saveless spells or buff spells, but you could just as easily focus on Dex + INT).
Arcane Trickster (Probably ray focused to make up for bad BAB, you're constantly Sneak Attacking with the Rays [even just Ray of Cold or Acid Splash] to keep your damage up. A ring of invisibility is absurdly good for this build).
Eldritch Knight (You can easily go two - 4 different direction here: From the two-handed character that bashes things to death with Power Attack, the super fast dex based crit-fisher, the super-tank that DGAF about Arcane Spell Failure via Still Spell or the higher bab wizard who hits with touch and ranged touch spells more often and effectively than the basic wizard.)
Dragon Disciple (There is really only one major build here: BEAT THINGS TO DEATH! DRAGON-KIND! RAAAAAAHHH!)
If you got a high-int route, then spell storing everything is going to be your best friend. Your magic is likely going to be reactive instead of proactive, making it so you can potentially deal loads of damage regardless of if you're hitting or being hit. Just things to keep in mind.
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Have you considered Dragon Disciple? Take a spear and Use claws/bite when they get close. Buff on your turn and move to catch a AoO or 2. Use buffs, No Save spells, and Utility. Core only feats do not hamper a solid built DD.
They can get real Beefy and Survivable with huge NA bonuses and D12 HD.
The issue with EK is you do not get to see Spell Critical. When it comes to Gish the Magus and Bloodrager just blow Core only options to smithereens.
a person who wants to achieve both mental and physical perfection by combining magic and arms.
What better embodies Physical and Mental Perfection more than a Dragon? They are the Pinnacle of your Plane. Entire Towns tremble before them and they can single-handedly kill armies.
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I'm aware that the Magus and Bloodrager do the same thing much better, but I won't be seeing those classes at the table since we'll be playing Core mode. The Dragon Disciple is actually a good idea though, the only issues with it are the lack of BAB and less spell progression.
Less BaB but Depending on how many levels in DD you go it would be the same Spell progression as F 1/W 5/EK 7. The fighter puts you on Sorcerer Spell progression. The -1 from EK puts it on par with 4 levels of Dragon Disciple.
The BaB is not that big of an issue. When your getting +4 str from DD, spells like Heroism, Enlarge, Haste, and the UMD skill. A dragon Disciple also has better saves then the EK.
Also with a Gish you hardly need more than 5th-6th level spells. If you take 4 levels in DD you reach 6th level spells. If you take 8 levels of DD you end up with 5th level spells. But you gain many bonuses Like Feats, Breath weapon, Form of the dragon, Natural armor, +2 Con and Int bonuses, more D12 HD.
Hello, I'd like some advice regarding spells, feats etc. with a Core Gish I'm building for PFS, with the intention of playing through the whole of Emerald Spire. The character concept is of a person who wants to achieve both mental and physical perfection by combining magic and arms. I know it's not the most mechanically viable concept, but I find it fun to make unexpected things even with the limitations of core.
Personally, I'd go barbarian 2 (take the Moment of Clarity rage power, so you have the option of casting a spell while raging)/bard 3/dragon disciple 4 (+4 Str, +3 natural armor)/bard +4. Use Perform (Oratory), flavored as chanting epic poems/innovative cursing/tactical orders, for Bardic Performances and Versatile Performance (allows you to be a great "face," as well as a combat monster); use Inspire Courage (competence bonus on attack and weapon damage) when not raging; take heroism (+2 morale bonus on attack rolls stacks with Inspire Courage) as a 2nd-level spell ASAP to buff yourself while adventuring (10 min/level duration), not in combat.
You don't get much in the way of blast spells, but are good at (self-) buffing and have some decent debuffing/battlefield control options; you can also wear light armor (mithral breastplate; which barbarian gives proficiency with) without worrying about spell failure.
Alternately, a wizard version could go barbarian 2 (Moment of Clarity)/bard 1/wizard 2/dragon disciple 4 (advance wizard spellcasting)/eldritch knight 4. You only reach 4th-level spells as a wizard, but are much more capable in melee combat (rage, dragon disciple bonuses) than the "normal" fighter 1/wizard 5 eldritch knight and gain the versatility of learning/preparing any sorcerer/wizard spell you can find.
If you want a character to be an "archer gish," then [fighter or ranger*] 1/wizard 6/eldritch knight 2/arcane archer 3/eldritch knight +1 is probably the best route. Some don't consider ranged combat to be part of the "gish" concept, though.
*- Fighter for the bonus feat, ranger for the ability to activate wands of cure light wounds and other ranger spells without Use Magic Device checks (and Favored Enemy; constructs, outsiders, and undead are fairly common opponents throughout the Emerald Spire).
For a different kind of Core Gish, have you considered Reach Cleric? Build for taking attacks of opoortunity and combat maneuvers with a polearm (or Whip, but it's feat-intensive), and doing spellcasting as your standard or even full-round actions (which doesn't keep you from taking attacks of opportunity).
Reach Cleric guide and discussion thread for this.
You could also do something similar on the arcane side with an Eldritch Knight or Bard build, although a lot of options for the Eldritch Knight route got nerfed to unusability recently, and for arcane or divine, you probably don't have access to helpful tools like Elven Branched Spear, since you are in Core only.
Edit: Moved original comment because I got super-Ninja'd: Not sure why some people recommend going from Bard (or any other 6/9 or even 4/9 caster) into Dragon Disciple, since you are getting reduced rate spellcasting progression stacked on the reduced rate at which your spellcasting progressed even before you entered the prestige class.
Not sure why some people recommend going from Bard (or any other 6/9 or even 4/9 caster) into Dragon Disciple, since you are getting reduced rate spellcasting progression stacked on the reduced rate at which your spellcasting progressed even before you entered the prestige class.
Focusing on melee combat/self-buffing over SoL/SoS spells. The +4 Str and +3 natural armor make the character better at tanking than a straight bard; especially if stacking rage bonuses on top of it.
Even a 4/9 caster (bloodrager) would benefit from four levels of dragon disciple: lose one level of spell progression/CL (not great for a 4/9 caster, anyway) and +1 from BAB (dragon disciple is a +3/4 BAB PrC) to gain an "always on" +2 on melee attack rolls/damage and +3 AC.
^Even so, you are making your spellcasting REALLY weak (even for self-buffing this way). Progression of 9/9 spellcasting at 3/4 gets you 6.75/9; progression of 6/9 spellcasting at 3/4 gets you 4.5/9, and although Bard and Magus have a few early entry spells, I'm not convinced that this makes up for the extra loss in spellcasting progression. With 4/9 it is even worse: 3/4 spellcasting progression of this gets you 3/9.
The D&D 3.5/PF prestige class subsystem suffers from difficulty in making prestige class that work with both full-casters and semi-casters. Now if the spellcasting progression rate depended entirely on the class you were currently in instead of your entry class (which I understand is the case for D&D 5th Edition), this problem would go away.
The Core Eldritch Knight is a wizard who downgraded himself from awesome to merely very good in order to upgrade his fighting skills from terrible to mediocre.
What might work for you is:
Fighter 1/Sorcerer 4/ DD 4/EK 4.
Upside: you end up with more punching potential.
Fighter 1: Bab + 1
Sorcerer 4: Bab +2; Draconic Resist element 5, +1 NC.
Dragon Disciple 4: +3 bab, +4 str (class bonus, so it stacks with everything), bite + claws when using bloodline claws, +2 NA.
Eldritch Knight 4: +4 bab, Bonus Combat Feat.
Downside, your caster level is -3 instead of -2.
Fighter 1: -1 CL.
Dragon Disciple 4: -1 CL.
Eldritch Knight 4: -1 CL.
So, with this build you'd hit harder and more often, but you'll only be able to cast lvl 5 spells.
^Even so, you are making your spellcasting REALLY weak (even for self-buffing this way). Progression of 9/9 spellcasting at 3/4 gets you 6.75/9; progression of 6/9 spellcasting at 3/4 gets you 4.5/9, and although Bard and Magus have a few early entry spells, I'm not convinced that this makes up for the extra loss in spellcasting progression. With 4/9 it is even worse: 3/4 spellcasting progression of this gets you 3/9.
The D&D 3.5/PF prestige class subsystem suffers from difficulty in making prestige class that work with both full-casters and semi-casters. Now if the spellcasting progression rate depended entirely on the class you were currently in instead of your entry class (which I understand is the case for D&D 5th Edition), this problem would go away.
Note that the character progressions above are only up to 13th level, not 20th, as the OP specified this was for adventuring in The Emerald Spire.
If you look at the full 20-level progression, then it is not even close to being as bad as you are stating:
Barbarian 2/bard 3/dragon disciple 4/bard +11 ends with +15 BAB (same as a straight bard, but will be better in melee with the +4 Str) and spell progression as a 17th level bard (still gains 6th-level spells).
Barbarian 2/bard 1/wizard 2/dragon disciple 4/eldritch knight 10/wizard +1 ends with +16 BAB and spell progression as a 15th level wizard (gains 8th-level spells at 20th level). Better BAB and better (overall) spellcasting than a 6/9 class; a magus (which is non-Core, anyway) has better options for doing both at the same time, though.
[Fighter or ranger] 1/wizard 6/eldritch knight 2/arcane archer 3/eldritch knight +8 ends with +17 BAB and spell progression as 17th level wizard (still gains 9th-level spells, just at 20th level instead of 17th). Nearly equal to both a full-BAB martial and a 9/9 spellcaster.
(Non-Core) Bloodrager 5/dragon disciple 4/bloodrager +11 ends with +19 BAB and spell progression as a 19th level bloodrager. Again, by giving up +1 BAB and one level of spell progression, the character gains +4 Str (effectively gaining a +1 attack bonus and +2 damage bonus on all melee attacks over a single-classed bloodrager) and +3 natural armor (reducing hits/damage by non-touch attacks ~15%); this is a horribly bad deal how?
^Your particular examples are a lot better than some of what I have seen. For one thing, some of them have Wizard as the spellcasting class that gets progressed, and since this is 9/9, it can afford to take some hits from Dragon Disciple slowed spellcasting progression of Arcane Archer or Dragon Disciple. The other thing is that you specify only dips of up to 4 levels in the prestige classes other than Eldritch Knight (which is nearly full progression), so as you say, you only take 1 or 2 levels of spellcasting progression delay. This is quite different from other examples I have seen fairly recently that go to 8 or even 10 levels in Dragon Disiple, which would be okay if you were progressing Sorcerer, but really starts to hurt if you are progressing Bard, Bloodrager, or Magus (see the computations that I posted above).
There are plenty of options!
Bards+Paladin! Pretty much can be built into some sort of gish like character right out the box. Max out charisma and STR take 2 levels in paladin for incredible saves, you can even cast in light armor without any problem!
Sorcerer + Paladin + dragon disciple is a classic!
I know you said you really wanted arcane magic but a druid can be a very good martial combatant + full caster right out the box.
Your main problem will be action economy like many people pointed out. Spells that can be used to buff yourself out of combat will be key to your build, you could also grab a few summoning spells, as a character especially if you are playing core only you will have to be very smart about your spell selection and plan ahead.
Going only to about level 13 will solve the biggest EK-problem (swift action economy) since you won't have Spell Critical and (probably) Quicken.
I've played an EK from levels 5 to 9 once with mostly core stuff. I went with high-ish Int to make my spells useful, relying on a decent starting strength of 16 and my feats to make melee combat viable. It works quite well if you limit spells with saves to a minimum.
I was wearing a Mithral Breastplate. My level 9 build looked like this:
Human Fighter 1 / Transmuter 5 / EK 4
Str 18 (16 + Transmuter bonus), Dex 12, Con 14, Int 19 (15 + human + level increases), Wis 10, Cha 7
1 - Additional traits* (magical Knack, reactionary), Power Attack, Weapon Focus
3 - Arcane Armor trainig
5 - Arcane Strike
6 - Wizard bonus feat (extend or CWI)
7 - Arcane Armor Mastery, + any one feat (furious focus* is great if you use a 2handed weapon)
9 - weapon specialization
*I needed additional traits as I didn't get any free traits in that campaign. And Furious Focus is beyond your reach, of course, but ir shouldn't be too hard to find a useful alternative.