Caster Levels

Out of curiosity, do any of the new prestige classes (like Farstep Master) add to caster levels? I'm wondering what a good base class to go into Animator would be, but I don't want to trade off too much effectiveness. Although a golem might make up for any loss of class power. I'm not certain.

And on that note, does anyone else hate Pale Master not giving caster levels like I hear it does in PnP? I'm not making a complaint about Aenea here, but NwN in general. I play a necromantic focused wizard on another PW, which for RP reasons would naturally seem to lead to PM. Only that would be stupid, but I'd be giving up caster levels for melee ability, and frankly I don't find it an even trade. In fact, there's a serious lack of caster PrCs in NwN. Both PM and RDD add melee ability to your caster, but sacrifice your strength as a caster. In fact, there's no pure caster PrCs at all. The closest thing is Harper Scout, which is really just another form of Bard.

No, none of the Aenea PrCs add to caster levels.

It'd be great if PMs got them. Before my PM reincarnated, he could cast 9th level spells, with an almigty caster level of 4 :-o Not even his buffs were that great, much less the damagers.

Thought so. *sigh* I like PrCs, but only melee classes really have reason to use them. Caster builds give up too much, because caster levels are just too important.

Guess I'll just have to do that Fighter/Soulfire Warrior/Weapon Master, instead. I still want an Animator, too, but... it has the HP/BAB of a wizard, but gains no caster levels, so you sacrifice your base ability no matter what. The golems better be worth it.

Animator isn't limited to wizard/sorcs only. You can have a fighter/animator for example.

If you take the animator levels post-epic, you don't lose any AB, as all classes have the same AB progression post-epic.

A 30 wizard/10 animator isn't a bad combo either, even with the loss of 10 caster levels. 30 caster levels should be enough to punch through almost any monster SR, and still a very good chance of punching through SR on even the SR enabled PCs in the arena.

Yeah, but post epic means waiting til epic before getting to use any of it. That could be... annoying.

Playing a single class for 20 levels just so I can use a PrC? Might be too much for me. I'd rather sacrifice the AB or something.

I would like to see the caster PrCs implemented towards caster levels. If they were counted towards caster level, I would suggest making them count only partially. Something like ([PM levels x .75]+[FSM x .75]+Base Caster Class= Caster Level)

I dunno how difficult that is to script, but it would be great to gain a little bit of power from your casting PrCs. As for the Animator, why not a half a caster level per Animator level? Maybe even a quarter of a caster level. It seems to me that the Animator is more designed to help tank for Casters (though anyone can take it and get use from it, I more think it's for those that can't take a beating as well as others) so giving them at least a small boost to their casting power would be nice. Considering that the drastic drop in the spell DC from taking ten+ levels in a PrC, I personally don't see that it's worth it. I'll be testing it out with the FSM to be sure, but seeing as the spell DC is based heavily on Caster Level, I definitely think that the spell DC is going to take a heavy hit. Not to mention spell duration for round/level spells.

Uhhh.
Just a correction on one point, Kitten. DC has absolutely zero to do with caster level. Caster level determines spell penetration and damage dice.

DC is 10+spell level+spell focus'+casting stat. A cleric with evocation focus casting a level 9 evocation spell with 20 wisdom will get a 26 DC at level 17 and at level 40.

That said, it would be nice to see caster classes get caster levels, but I'm thinking more on the lines of Farstep and Pale Master, as they're more "true" caster classes.

Interesting... I never knew that..

Thanks for the correction

PnP Palemasters increase their caster level 1 every 2 levels (pm level x .5), I think it is (would have to check).

Spells per Day/Spells Known: Beginning at 2nd level, a pale master gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if he had also gained a level in an arcane spellcasting class to which he belonged before adding the prestige class level. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (improved chance of turning or destroying undead, metamagic or item creation feats, and so on). If he had more than one arcane spellcasting class before becoming a pale master, he must decide to which class to add each level for the purpose of determining spells per day and spells known.

In point of fact, Pale Master was nerfed quite a lot from the PnP version. I dunno why Bioware did crap like that, if they had to change classes so much to make them work/balanced in NWN, why didn't they just pick different classes?

EDIT: Actually, my mistake, that's 3.5... is there a 3.0 version?

I could make it so that prestige class levels count (at least partially) toward spell effects. It would just take manually editing 99% of the spell scripts in the game (and re-editing them if/when I add any more "caster type" prestige classes).

Not likely to happen, unless I suddenly find myself with a large amount of free time and without other NWN stuff to work on.

How about making a list of specific spells that each PrC counts toward?

Something like: PM levels partially count toward select necromancy spells instead of all spells outright.

That would help the casters out while cutting out a large portion of the script editing (If I'm reading the above right)

As for FSM, I'm not sure what spells you could make FSM levels count towards... Perhaps certain Abjuration or Conjuration spells might work. I'm not entirely sure.