A plea for help: Sneaking Wizard GISH thing

[Hoihe]

My experience is that with CL 25, in far too many epic Areas, a PC will be drained of life—and fun!—by being dispelled far too often. And even if you learn to be key-quick and “dodge” this Dispels with HiPS, it’s not really reliable. Okay, maybe it is a challenge to play, and that is appealing, but also tedious.

And absolutely, if you are going DEX, you want Evasion + Uncanny Dodge, to keep that precious AC cause you will get flat footed if taking on multiple mobs at a time.

You may as well consider low magic gish, such as Wiz3 / Rogue 7 / Assassin 10 / AT 10. Great SA dice, take practiced spellcastwr for Assasin to extend duration of spells, and you even get access to Hide in Shadows from Rogue 7. Rely on UMD—lots of UMD—and make a good go of balancing DEX and INT.

I recommend instead


Wizard 15/Swashbuckler 5/duelist7/shadowdancer 3.

Quite good sneaker, good AC, AB is a little low but you got EW, HiPS, (mass) curse of impending blades, corrosive touch.

Can do Yuan-ti temple solo without buffing, allowing for spells to be used for debuffs or dealing damage. To defeat the boss, you need to breach or assay (recommend breach to take out her death armor) before you drop your curses lowering her AC/AB (you can lower AB by 11 by combining Shadow Spray with Interposing hand, AC by at least 3 using curse of impending + corrosive touch).

Its weakness is that DM events demand you buff up, and your 19 cl will cause you to suffer - which is why I RCR'd to wizard 5/swashbuckler 14/duelist8/shadowdancer 3.

It's way less fun due to only circle 3 spells, but can get 59 AC unbuffed for 1v1 encounters and drains 1 AB per crit. Your only real spells will end up being Ray of Enfeeblement, Touch of Idiocy, Force Wave, balagarn's iron horn, (mass) Curse of Impending Blades and Shadow Spray - these all lack cl scaling and got not save, so they actually work.

The spells are a bit useless when soloing normally, but the mass curse + iron horn/Force wave pay off big time in DM events vs massed mobs or low-str casters. Shadow Spray is great vs massed mobs, as it gives you an effective +1 AC.

The second build can solo frost giants at level 30 unbuffed (including duel the king 1v1 unbuffed) through smart use of athkatlan/HiPS/EW/Weakening Critical/(I)CE. And making sure you only fight 1v1.

But again, it has only 9 cl and level 3 spells - you will be either using your debuffs/KD spells or using your spellbook as a free source of UMD (IMA, Mirror Image, Shield).

Wizard15/swash5/du7/sd3 if you want to go for the real duskblade experience, but be useless in events due to having less AC/AB. Can solo frost giants and yuan-ti/black dragon confirmed. Fire giants is a nope. You'll want to carry a stack of wands or scrolls of Lesser Breach, Lesser Mantle, Interposing hand, Assay Resistance. If you are in a DM event, you also want a wand of mirror image, displacement, shield, IMA. You can skip shield by using a Shield+3 rapier at cost of DPS.


Wizard5/swash14/du8/sd3 if you want to go for a utility-mage that fights mostly unarmed (fairly close to the hexblade experience, actually). With good gear, it can solo quite well. Theoretically can do Fire giants + general too, but I am yet to test (crit immunes are its weakness, so depends on fire elemental spawns. If a yellow-name fire elemental spawns, you're screwed.


Both builds I played with a final split of 10/21/10/22/10/12. Dex can be upped to 22, but I took True Believer as an epic feat for sake of RP insurance. If you don't want RP stats, you can drop cha/wis to 8/8 and dump it all into dex for extra AB (your weakness, your damage is fairly OK). If you don't care for RP skill spread, you can afford Atkhatlan, ICE, One Weapon and Deadly Defence - you got enough int to pump your necessary skills (spellcraft, H/MS, Parry, tumble to 30 all) to the required levels even with cross-class penalty. If you want skill points for RP skills, you'll need to take level 1 Able Learner which costs you either ICE or Deadly Defence (do you want 59 unbuffed AC or +2.5 dps?)




If you go dual-wielder, you could replace Duelist with invisible Blade or Assassin and lower survivability, but I wouldn't. You can dual-wield as duelist too, just replace OW and some other feats with TWF feats.

[Rudolph]

This one reaches undispellable CL and deals solid damage by way of Crossbow feats and Manyshot. It is optimized for lvl 30 (with HiPS only coming in then) and top tier equipment, but maybe the concept can be tweaked towards something more playable...
https://nwn2db.com/build/?305737

[EasternCheesE]

If you seek for more "stabby" type of self-buffing rogue, here is what i managed to squeeze from it:
https://nwn2db.com/build/?333993

I play this build in UD and, while not being super strong, it definitely gives me fun times.

Pros:
1) Free buffing for up to 6th circle of spells.
2) Quite a survivability compared regular rogue who doesn't shoot his gold on mirror images and displacement (which you get for free and enough of lvl 2 slots for mirrors)
3) Assassin spells for minor concealment/dr and 4/day cat's grace (and true strike when you try to land your first Expose weakness stack).
4) Both EP and EW (though, EP comes very late, otherwise you will have very late access to lvl 6 spells).
5) 13d6 sneak attack + 5 dmg from combat insight (19 int with +3 item for 6 int mod). It's quite same as 14d6 SA and quite good compared 16d6 SA traditional rogue/asn get (without epic feats).
6) Invisible needle for funsies (you may swap it for, say, 1d6 sneak or ICE)
7) +2 AC compared traditional rogue/assn (since you can have spiderskin for +5 Natural and greater reduce person for another +1 AC).

Cons:
1) 7 APR (you literally can't get 21 BAB with medium BAB classes and 5 levels of lol BAB class).
2) Low STR (but it's on purpose since he doesn't need STR for dmg after getting combat insight)
3) Limited lvl 6 spellslots (3 without items)
4) No shadows hield access (but, ghostly visage and spiderskin partially cover it, except for death protection).
5) Lowish AB, but i still find it being enough to hit mobs. To cope with it, it has Taunt for -2 AC on enemy before the fight for easier landing the first stack of EW.
6) 16 CL (12 +4) means that you are no way better than UMD users, but, you get all that stuff for FREE!

Basically, it's not a powerbuild and was never planned as one, but it still deals with his daily fights in UD quite well.
In fact, at lvl 30, your Assassin CL will be higher than wizard CL.
As of my calculations, basing on item gicker costs, you save a whopping sum of money on those scrolls (since they are cheaper than pots/wands) that those rogues have to pay for:
Greater heroism - 690
Lesser mind blank - 515
Least spell mantle - 320
Aeili's astrological Augment - 321
Spiderskin - 275 (but i get +5)
IMA - 170
Deez's repulsive shadow barrier - 1000 x2 (can have it extended for 32 min of duration)
Mirror image - 60 x 5 (which i can stack into my spellbook without much of issues)
Bull's strength - 60 x 5 (3 min vs 16 min duration)
Bear's endurance - 60 x 5 (3 min vs 16 min duration)
Cat's grace - 60 x 6 (3 min vs 19 min duration
Reduce person - 60
Shield - 50 x 3 (5 min vs 16 min i have)
Protection from alignment - 20

5521 raw gold cost in shops.