Workaround for Familiars?

[Kemetic Monk]

My primary character is a Drow Female Sorceress...Yea, I know I picked the hardest character/class in NS4 but I've been running Drow characters for 30 years and see no reason to change. The hardest thing about being a NS4 sorcerer or wizard is the lack of a familiar to watch your back...especially at levels 1-5. You are forced to take Summon Creature if you want to survive, and as a sorceress it means you have one less spell to choose when you level up since you need to have as tough as summon as you can get.

My humble suggestion is to give magic users an artifact that will summon a familiar-type critter one-per-day and recharges upon rest. Make the artifact part of the basic gear and unsellable. The summon should be faction aligned (i.e. Spiders for Shadow Legion, Forest critters for the Circle, etc.) and should function as henchman as not to cancel out a summoned ally. This would greatly increase the survivability of magic users and give back an important aspect to the D&D world.

I guess from a role-playing standpoint extra-planar critters can get sucked into Aetheria too! It would be simple for the mages of the Ascendancy to accomplish this.

sowhatdoyouthink?

AKA Rarien Obladora, formerly of the House Obladora of Chez Nessad (Destroyed)

[LinuxPup]

How would that the hardest class? Drow sorcs are crazy powerful... unless you made it intelligence-based? There are summons... the summon I-IX spells, Epic Spell: Dragon Knight, and Epic Spell: Mummy Dust. Spell focus in necromancy improves undead summons, and conjuration improves the others.

I like the faction-based summon... I was working on making Blackguard summons based on faction a long time ago but got caught up with something else. If I recall it was going to be sword spider for SL, necromancer yuan-ti for AO, skeletal devourer for RK, and a lich or something for MA, LA getting the current minotaur one, and TC/NC summoning a bug report .

[Kemetic Monk]

Thanks for responding Drow Sorcerers take a hit from the HP (1D4 per LVL) and Con (-2) and the number of spells between Levels 1-5, and the XP factor. I'm currently level 9 and I can finally penetrate the deep tunnels & wilderness alone. Even when buffed you don't receive real protection until you get ghostly visage or stone skin. A big problem is that you have to rest after most encounters.

From the Wiki: The biggest pain to a Drow of course is his level adjustment. Being +3, this subrace is by far the one of the most difficult to level and takes patience and hardwork to use.

I know from running Drow that the power comes slowly but once I reach Level 10 & beyond I can handle most PvE encounters. My realize greatest strength is being part of a party but most Drow walk alone...

AKA Rarien Obladora, formerly of the House Obladora of Chez Nessad (Destroyed)

[Kromix]

ahahahhahah i leveled a ecl 3 wizard to 30 and then no more can do much after 30 without a party, and noone wants to party woth a party pooper ;p

[Shadowalker]

ahahahhahah i leveled a ecl 3 wizard to 30 and then no more can do much after 30 without a party, and noone wants to party woth a party pooper ;p

Kromix is right, mages are party support after 30, and he is a party pooper.

But then aside from the first cppl lvls, I seldom lvl alone, maybe I just get tired of talking to myself.

[Bargeld]

Just some survival tips for lowbie casters:

grab a bow (you will probably have a decent starting dex)
use the summoned dagger at lvl1
mage armor and shield are your best friends
expeditious retreat
extend spell early

By the time you hit lvl 5 or 6, a sorc/wiz can beat just about every other class in PvP simply due to expeditious retreat and MM/melfs/neb/buffs. The middle levels get much more difficult unless you plan on being a DC based caster. 32+ very few classes can 'solo' and be efficient about it. Once you hit 35 as a caster, all your DC based spells will be useless for leveling (with a couple exceptions).

The payoff for casters is in PvP, where they control most battles as long as they can keep their distance and stay alive.

If you want a drow that solos all the way to 40... make an assassin

Don't forget the almost entirely useless Gate spell!

[Daral0085]

Nah, gate isn't useless. I found it useful for leveling between about 19 and 25. In those levels, properly buffed, my planetar was ripping up efreets and holding his own against giants. By the time I moved on to Skara, he was becoming a liability, and by molemen/dwarves I removed him from my spell list.

[Amoenotep]

ideas and suggestions and not bounty hunter?

[Lokey]

No, I'd put the toughest caster levels higher than that. Outside druid, when you first get level 2/3 spells they aren't doing quite enough to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Caster mage: forget about ac for you and even your summon, especially at low levels. Disablers are your best friends: sleep (while useful), web and so forth. Later on this changes.

Yes, sorc has it tougher getting summons a level later. Tep needs to look at them anyway and trim down their uses/day of things like howl, gaze, etc...

[cRaZy8or5e]

ahahahhahah i leveled a ecl 3 wizard to 30 and then no more can do much after 30 without a party, and noone wants to party woth a party pooper ;p

Kromix is right, mages are party support after 30, and he is a party pooper.

But then aside from the first cppl lvls, I seldom lvl alone, maybe I just get tired of talking to myself.

Meh depends on where you go and what you have built. If you have a vanilla conj/evo focused mage then dwarves and gobbos are fairly smooth sailing. Generally the mobs/targets have to have a relatively low amount of hitpoints and you have to go slow. AND you need a summon when you run out of spells to either cover your retreat or hopefully finish off the enemy mobs. IF you're a wizard make him a crafter, and get yourself some ii wands.

Leveling a mage after 35 is a bit slow, but in my experience still faster than most dex toons. I've been grinding gobos with mine and I gain about 5k in xp every hour or so. I should have been finished by now, but every time I log on I'm sucked into pvp it seems.

There's some other cool tricks out there to use with mages and really all it takes is somebody doing some trial and error . . . but nobody's doing that . . . yet.

[Midterm]

Mages solo posi plane very well. Not as well as clerics but u can't have it all.

A few spoilers:

Glimmerskins: weak damage, use damage shields, and compliment with neg energy beams
Clerics/Paladins: All a matter of outdamaging them before they kill you. They are weak against negative AND magic damage
Xags: They spend like 10 rounds doing eye rays... if u can save against them, that's 10 rounds to kill em before they start using ruin, ice storm, bigbies, etc.
Aoas: Ruins the day for any caster, but they are melee only... get em stuck in certain places, and you summon can have a field day smacking em.
Energons: Bigby's crushing hands totally dominates them. Even for non conj-focused mages. Their AC is so bad even low 40s can hit them (Tenser's?)

[Shadowalker]

intentionally getting NPC's stuck, is a means of exploting a small bug in the area map IMO, and not a practice to make your own.

[Blystos Re]

intentionally getting NPC's stuck, is a means of exploting a small bug in the area map IMO, and not a practice to make your own.

Uhh...no, I think that using choke points and using a mob's pathfinding against it is perfectly within the limits. Now, if an area is bugged and something seems to be getting unduly stuck there, that's something else...but come on, who hasn't used a polar bear's big butt as a blockade against another polar bear?

[Bargeld]

intentionally getting NPC's stuck, is a means of exploting a small bug in the area map IMO, and not a practice to make your own.

After putting more than 2 seconds of thought into, it would imply that ranged attacking and casting off of cliffs is unethical.

[frogofpeace]

So is corner sneaking. Praise Torm!