ive been recently playing around with the idea of multiclassing a fighter and arcane caster, either wizard or sorcerer although ive ended up with sorcerer as it fits my intended party plan better. Does anyone here have experience in multiclassing fighter and caster? there's alot of good self-buffs in that list, how good of a tank would it make? how about damage dealer? is it worth it to use any armors like the green/purple/blue elven chainmail? are shields ever worth it? how much spell failure can a caster withstand without making their life too hard? if i focus mainly on self-buffs, is there any point taking caster levels higher than 10? Any insight or experience playing fighter/sorcerer or fighter/wizard would be appreciated
About the shield, the elven shield will not hamper your caster and you don't even have to be proficient with it.
If you use Still Spell you'll be able to get around the armor penalties (I think). There's however a bug that limits what spells you can use with your metamagic feats on a multiclass character. Not sure if this happens with a Fighter though (Since they don't cast spells) but its always been a problem for my Paladin/Sorcerer Otherwise you can always strip before a battle, cast your buffs, put your armor back on and then march forward into the fray. The naked character models are ugly, but sometimes you have to make such sacrifices... I would have gone with Bard/Fighter personally (Bards are so totally casters). You'll still be able to self buff with Invisibility, Displacement, Heroism and Mirror Image plus you'll gain other benefits as well. You'll have a viable diplomat and you'll be to sing a jaunty tune to support your comrades. Plus you'll be able to get around that metamagic bug since Bards are before Fighters alphabetically (Assuming the bug does happen on Fighters). Sorcerer/Fighter should be able to work fine. One of the game's tougher bosses is a Sorcerer 18/Fighter 2. If she can prove to be a threat, I can't see why your own Sorc/Fighter cannot!
I usually go with an elven Fighter/Wizard (Diviner) as one of my two crafters. I start with a level of Fighter (with PBS and Precise Shot), then take eight levels of Wizard to enable crafting of Frost and Shock weapons. Then it's back to Fighter all the way to 20th. This gets him to a +16 BAB (5 attacks with Rapid Shot) tricked out with all the archery feats. For armor, I go with a mithril buckler (eventully crafted to +3). a certain wizard's robes (when I get them) and mystical tattoos (when I can afford them). I'll usually put him in a mithril shirt or one of the Elven armors until I get the robes and tattoos. I honestly don't cast much in combat anymore, instead relying on a hail of bowfire. I do use Stinking Cloud in a few places, though, and the occassional Enlarge Person (on my lone melee combatant, mostly to improve his reach) for especially tough fights. My other crafter is a human Fighter/Cleric, again starting as a Fighter, then taking 12 levels of Cleric (all the way to Flaming Burst weapons and the all-important Periapts of Wound Closure) before finishing out with the other 7 levels of Fighter. This results in all the archery feats on top of a +17 BAB.
I always have a hard time deciding between +6 amulet of health or the periapt, (sp?) of wound closure.
Could you tell which spells have been causing this bug for you? i tested some low level spells with my sorcerer/fighter test character just now to see if it happens but didn't happen with the couple of lvl 1 spells i tested. I did think about bard too but the party im planning doesn't really need the bard songs for anything, and my party already has a diplomat in another character. Although if the bug does indeed happen for fighters too, i might have to reconsider my party setup to include a bard haha. sirchet: haha yeah i totally forgot elven shield since i almost never use it although is shield even smart choice in this case, considering the shield spell seems to replace shields anyway? daryk: thanks for sharing the experience, although my plan is to make a melee character out of this
Huh, come to think about it. I wonder if Power Attack or Combat Expertise can work with True Strike (Preferably Quickened with Quicken Spell)? If it does, that would make a Wizard (Or Sorc)/Fighter quite powerful O_O I think it spelled as "Preapt"? I'm not sure... is it even a real word? Typically high level ones like Disintegrate or Cone of Cold. I can still assign metamagic feats to level 0 - 2 spells but with the ones at higher levels its an impossible task. EDIT: There's a post detailing all about the metamagic bug. From what I can tell Fighter should be safe if you plan on using any metamagic feats. Link
yeah, final confirmation comes from my own tests, fighter/sorcerer was completely fine even with high level spells using still spell and no bug appeared. i also tested true strike out of curiosity of my own and it works like a charm, the bonus it gives to your hit basically covers both power attack and combat expertise at same time. and it works. only downside is that true strike only works during one hit so using it with quicken spell for example would only be worth it against enemies like balor or other boss types you wanna get rid of quickly.
Take the Craft Wands feat , then make a few wands of the spells you might use in combat. using a wand while wearing armor doesn't matter, your wizard can be wearing full dwarven stone armor and use a wand with no penalty. Fireball, Web, and Dispel Magic should be enough to hold you.
True Strike should last until the end of your next round if it is RAW, so a good use against melee enemies is: (round 1) cast True Strike, allow enemy to approach, (2) max power attack. The only issue is that it is cumbersome to turn PA on and off. Maybe that can be hot-keyed. On the note of a Sor/Ftr, you basically need to choose between a modest AC and access to your high level spells OR having a maximum spell limit that is one level lower because you need to use Still Spell for most spells (but you get to wear full plate). If Co8 is RAW, there are some spells which do not have a "somatic" component (i.e. move your hands to cast the spell) so they don't have arcane spell failure. Some examples off the top of my head from D&D 3.5 include True Strike, Blindness/Deafness, and Dimension Door. The latter is not such a problem because a lot of your buffs have long enough durations that you can cast them all outside of combat. Anything with a 10 min/lvl or 1 hour/lvl duration meets this requirement, and even spells with 1 min/lvl can last for several battles in TOEE. Also, if you are mostly using buffs you can neglect your Cha a bit to help your Str and Con a bit. You'll want high ability scores to make this work.
