Swashbuckler/Mage multi or something fun?

Atsuke123

Hey everyone,

after spending hours and hours trying to figure out what class to play, i made my mind to go for a Swashbuckler/Mage multi.
So, I shadowkeeper'd my M/T to become a M/Swash, releveled via console and... I had my Swashmage with vanilla thief-appropriate backstab multiplier, which is just way OP. Does anybody know, how to change that value via Shadowkeeper?
My intention was to create a F/M/T, with the proper feeling of progression (in form of levels) and some drawbacks to not become vastly OP: No heavy armor, no backstab, no +apr, limited weapon choice. Just some sort of glass-canon melee who can cast awesome spells here and there to keep things interesting.
I already played a Blade through the trilogy, felt quite right, but not that overwhelming.

I also considered going for a Stalker, but I guess, the arcane and 3 levels of druid spells are not exactly "some awesome spells", at most "very few mediocre spells", and therefore, the Stalker might become some boring "backstab punchpunchpunch dead" after a while...

Or am I missing some super-fun (meleeable caster) classes?

demon9675

Unfortunately I'm not the right guy to help you out with Shadowkeeper; hopefully someone else here can.

But you should consider a "legal" swashbuckler/mage dual class as an option. I'd suggest doing it at level 10 (swashbuckler gets damage/thaco/ac bonuses every 5 levels, and if you dual at 15 it'll take forever to level your mage half up). I do prefer multiclasses, as the scaling is much more simple and straightforward, but dualing is certainly an alternative to mucking around with character editors (I fully endorse cheating and do it all the time, but it can sometimes be a surprisingly large amount of work).

semiticgoddess

Alternatively, you might add an effect by Shadowkeeper or EEKeeper (in the "Affects" or "Effects," respectively). Grant yourself a -5 penalty to your backstab bonus, and it should reduce it to 0 no matter your level.

Atsuke123

Thanks for the input guys, the shadowkeeper backstab penalty worked great.

I forgot to mention I installed the Rogue Rebalancing mod, with which, after further thinking, the Swashmage (multi) becomes way to OP: Really fast leveling, fighter's thac0, equal/better ac than a f/m/t (didn't do the math here, just guessing from the ac bonus every 5 levels)

So, Swashbuckler>Mage became interesting, although on paper, I don't like to be some sluggish lowbo mage until I gained my swashbuckler back. But on the other hand, I've never tried? Does it take a lot of time to regain my strength, considering a party of 4?

Edit: I'd dual at level 10, so it's 375k EXP to farm as mage, until the swashbuckler kicks back in

Skatan

Atsuke123 said:

So, Swashbuckler>Mage became interesting, although on paper, I don't like to be some sluggish lowbo mage until I gained my swashbuckler back. But on the other hand, I've never tried? Does it take a lot of time to regain my strength, considering a party of 4?

Edit: I'd dual at level 10, so it's 375k EXP to farm as mage, until the swashbuckler kicks back in

Kick out all party members and steal all the scrolls in Athkatla (before dualing to mage), then scribe, erase and re-scribe. It won't take long to regain your swashy class. If you save up on a couple of quest rewards it gets even easier, but then you should get them before kicking party members our since quest rewards are often per character and not divided by members. Do your homework on which quests gives which rewards beforehand.

iavasechui

doing that could break a romance though so you might not want to kick out certain characters.

Derilore

create the character as a swash (non multi) then change the class in shadowkeeper to mage/thief while keeping the swash as the kit.

It's not bad, played one myself. But without tensers your thac0 just isn't good enough to keep up. Its literally better to have a summon in melee than your swash mage as they get hit and deal out more damage. Between that and the low attacks per round I didn't care for it much myself.

As for melee casters, fighter mages (kensai mage/ berserker mages or just multiclass) are strong.

Another fun one is the fighter/druid. But seeing as jaheera is there and i almost always take her i cant see a reason to make one myself.

Oddly enough a cleric/mage can do more combat damage than just about anything else with the right spell combos. Here's on one my favs.

Minor sequencer : shocking grasp/draw on holy might
Polymorph self : spider
Contingency : Tensers (see enemy)
Righteous Might (max damage woot woot)

Go spider form, pop squencer, proceed to destroy pretty much anything with 10 attacks per round doing max damage on hit.

Add in some stoneskins, armor of faith, mirror images, fire shields, blade barriers, etc.

And when you have your fun there you can go into full caster bombard everything in sight mode with skull traps, holy smites, and all the other pew pew.

semiticgoddess

Nice to see the spider form get some love. Just beware than Tenser's Transformation prevents you from using innate abilities, including turning back to normal form, and in EE, Shocking Grasp unfortunately dispels spider form.

Righteous Magic also works very well with Ogre form and Iron Golem form, as it turns their 4d6 and 4d10 base damages to 24 and 40 instead.

Derilore

Shocking Grasp dispelling the spider claw is pretty much the point. You retain the attacks per round but are able to use any weapon.

For instance 8 max damage attacks with staff of ram and 25 str. or 10 with dualwield (improve hasted obviously).

Good point on ogre and iron golem though.

There was also a trick of spell immunity abj and tensers where you got the bonuses but were still able to cast, not sure if that works in EE though.

Skatan

Derilore said:

There was also a trick of spell immunity abj and tensers where you got the bonuses but were still able to cast, not sure if that works in EE though.

Sneaky. Can anyone confirm if this still works or not? Haven't heard of this before.