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What about a human becoming a Warforged?

The other reason why it won't work: the usual "loss of prereq = loss of use of feat" rule, which would prevent a reincarnated character from using the racial feats from their previous race, and now that I look at it, Wand Bonding has a racial prerequisite.

Of course, Channel Charge works similarly in a full caster build, and Wand Surge + Unfettered Heroism would work as a variant here. And tactically, those work best for triggering wands that don't gulp down charges, while this build is entirely about going full throttle and unloading ammo like Chow Yun-Fat in a John Woo movie.

Feb 4, 2013 -- 8:50PM, frost.fire wrote:

also tempest assuming the wand chamber works like a magical "shotgun" what spells would you suggest going in there?

...I missed this earlier.

Which wands go into the rod depends pretty heavily on which of your class features the DM will allow to work with the rod. Note that each paragraph below will inherit the choices from the previous paragraph as well, and that you can mix-and-match the wands you load into the rod based on your situation (any time you get about a minute's downtime, you can completely rotate what's loaded in the rod from your arsenal, so it's pretty flexible once you can afford it).

In the most conservative interpretation (where none of your features work with the rod at all because it's a command word item that isn't a wand itself), I'd look into binary spells - basically any of the common wand spells that are picked because they don't rely on saving throws but will still see a lot of use. The only difference from common wand choices under this interpretation is that you'd want wands to use in the first round of combat - spells that you'd use in anticipation of combat are best kept in loose wands. Since the wands appear to be able to be independently targeted, action-economy spells or spells that can buff multiple targets look like they're ideal choices here (classic core examples would be Haste or Invisibility, but no-save debuffs (Glitterdust) or area control (some illusions) might work here too). In effect, the rod becomes a Spell Matrix or Spell Sequencer effect. This is also the interpretation that gets the most benefit from the homunculus option - an Expeditious Messenger homunculus can trigger command word items like the rod without costing you actions, and since under this interpretation the rod produces identical results if you trigger it or if a homunculus of yours triggers it, you don't lose much by handing it off.

If your passive abilities pass over to the rod but your active ones don't (because the rod is activating the wands as if you had triggered them, but you're activating the rod instead of activating the wands so you're not actually using a spell trigger wand yourself), you can begin to look into basic offensive spells or those that depend on your caster level. You'll get a heavy CL/DC boost this way, but your spells won't be able to benefit from your metamagic. Offensive action-denial spells or area-effect spells such as Stinking Cloud or Black Tentacles come to mind here - your single full-round action allows you to quickly set up a defensive lockdown effect, fighting on your terms. Due to the high CL boost, dispels also become a possible option here - three targeted dispels at a decent CL can really ruin someone's day, and since your features boost the CL, it won't cost you as much as it would normally. This is also the minimum level of generosity that is needed before I'd consider any damage spell at all, assuming you want to play that game - it'll allow you to grab minimum-CL (read: inexpensive) wands of CL-dependent effects (possibly even with a saving throw, given your DC boost) and unleash quite a bit of firepower all at once. However, if you're playing the damage game, I'm not sure offhand if this would actually be better than the wand quickdraw / dual wand use / metamagic spell trigger volleys. (It'd probably be less expensive, particularly if the effect gets minimal benefit from metamagic but maximal benefit from CL.)

Under the most generous interpretation (where all of your class features transfer over), you treat the rods as an extension of yourself and load them with anything you'd normally use in a volley. This interpretation is probably nuts, especially if it transfers Wand Quick Draw / Dual Wand Use to the rods (in effect giving you six wands to trigger at once), so it probably won't see play and I won't write more on it.


In all cases, summoning spells deserve special mention. You're spending a single full-round action to cast three 1-round casting time spells, and each summon is an extra set of actions in and of itself (and due to the acceleration effect, you'll get those extra actions in the same round you trigger the rod!). Furthermore, summoning spells are pretty versatile since you pick your allies on the spot and can mix-and-match your effects at will. Finally, the rod appears to trigger the wands via command word, regardless of whether or not the spell is on your spell list (and without a UMD check) - this means you can slot in a mixture of different summoning spells (Monster, Nature's Ally, Undead, etc.) based on your situation. This effect is kind of CR-limited, though, since you can't fit spells higher than 4th level into a wand. On the other hand, it can still see use for slightly less straightforward tactics (for instance, batch-summoning a lot of low-level critters and having them Aid Another).

Be advised that the spells take effect simultaneously (so spells that need to work in a particular sequence, such as Assay Spell Resistance or Energy Vulnerability, are poor rod choices - although swift-action/Quickened support spells like these can be used from a separate wand before triggering the rod) and that stacking rules prevent the same spell from taking effect multiple times (so you can't load the rod with three Celerity wands and trade one full-round action for three standard actions, for instance).

Feb 7, 2013 -- 4:01PM, 123456789blaaa wrote:

On an unrelated note I was recently perusing through the FCII when I came across some very interesting feats-the Mark of [layer of Baator] feats. They are very mechanically unique, flavourful, and sometimes quite powerfull. Have you experimented with them?

...I have to admit I hadn't even seen them before - or rather, I had seen them, but since they required a feat that is unavailable to PCs unless they count as devils (it has explicit text waiving this, but that depends on DM fiat), I had written them off. The only one in our group who, I think, has played around with devil mechanics at all is RT, and I haven't asked him (largely because I think he's playing around with them in his capacity as DM for a game I play in). If you know of any low-ECL devils, this might be worth looking into further. A few of those feats look quite interesting.


EDIT: Hmm. You know, I was just thinking about other ways to get into Cannith Wand Adept, and I think you can do something similar using, of all things, bard. They're the only other class I know of that has full CL progression and UMD as a class skill, and they're lower-tier than artificer. Use Binder 1 to conserve feats and possibly Practiced Spellcaster timed with the "dead" level of UT 1 on the way to Wand Adept, then progress as above. It might lose one effective level of Wand Mastery and it loses Metamagic Spell Trigger unless you either take it as a feat or use the Metamagic Wandgrip (CMage - another costly source), but unlike artificer no one will argue that using bard as the entry to this system is a net loss of power.

Feb 8, 2013 -- 6:12PM, 123456789blaaa wrote:

What exactly is a "devil"? Depending on the answer it might be possible to get the feats with minimal fuss (I've actually created a thread on the subject over on the minmaxboards). I think the discussion of the feats and how to get in merits its own thread actually. What do you think?

Go ahead, but I think you'd get better overall discussion at MMB.

As I understand it, "devil" is synonymous with "baatezu".

Interesting...personally I prefer warlock. The net result of power (for bard) may be greater but you lose bardic music and skill points. It's a little inelegant.

Warlock was actually high on my preference lists for that reason, but it's kind of hard to qualify for Uncanny Trickster with the warlock's tiny base skill points. Bardic music is typically a nonissue here because of the way wands are activated: "Spell trigger activation is similar to spell completion, but it’s even simpler. No gestures or spell finishing is needed, just a special knowledge of spellcasting that an appropriate character would know, and a single word that must be spoken." (I was thinking to look into all the variants for bardic music that no one uses because they're situational, and pick them up entirely because they're situational.)

You can get UMD as a class skill though (though multiple ways). The simplest is probably through the feat Apprentice:Spellcaster (which you have to take at level one). It also gives some other minor benefits like a +2 competence on Spellcraft checks, one additional spell known at 1st level for an arcane caster, The ability for Spontaneous casters to learn a new spell in place of one already known, and the ability for a Divine caster to choose a preferred spell that can spontaneously be cast in a similar manner to good clerics and cure spells. 

So all we need is Cha based spellcasting. There are a bunch of PRC's with self-contained spellcasting which we could use... 

Hm. I'd forgotten about Apprentice. If we're dipping into binder to conserve feats and using PSC to get up to CL 9 for Wand Mastery, then one of the levels that fits into the slack can easily be Factotum or something else with the appropriate skills.