Roahin: Reposting over here.

Yeah, they have it fixed. Not that it makes a big difference for Tristian. He picked Good as his primary domain and all of those spells are on the regular Cleric spell list as it is.

Roahin: The Tristian thing is a bit more poignant for me because of a recent issue with a main character build I was trying (and failing) at.

I'm a huge fan of Asmodeus and since Tieflings were released, I'd been wanting to do something with him. The problem is that a Devil-Spawn Tiefling is so goddamn backwards. The +2 Constitution and +2 Wisdom seem like they'd lend themselves to a martial Cleric like a Crusader pretty well. But the fact that they had that huge glaring caveat "If you take a Sorcerer or Eldritch Scion level, you bypass the -2 Charisma penalty!" on them weighed on me to the point where I couldn't NOT take a level. I mean, no other Tiefling bloodline includes a way to offset their racial penalty. Yet, neither Sorcerer nor Eldritch Scion particularly benefits from Constitution or Wisdom though. And neither one are good multiclassers with a martial Cleric.

So, fine. I went straight Sorcerer. Asmodeus is a fire God, and me being a Lawful Evil Devil-Spawn that spams fire everywhere is the next best thing to actually being a Cleric to him. But I noticed pretty quickly that his spells were running out rapidly. By around level 10, I'd noticed that I'd be on empty and spamming cantrip rays without full-clearing a map while Tristian, despite lacking my masculine 5th level spells, had far out-damaged me and was still spamming more spells with plenty yet in reserve. About the time I was halfway through Varnhold Vanishing, I got frustrated and deleted the character. See, I couldn't even imitate Tristian and go Theurge myself. The Devil-Spawn Sorcerer thing only works with classic Sorcerers, not Empyreal ones.

So, having had Tristian's MT build actively playing alongside a pure damage spamming Sorcerer and realizing that the MT completely and thoroughly blew it out of the water, colored my opinions strongly.

InEffect: think you can do draconic sorc(with DD levels) with the devil-spawn, no? get like 14 cha(12 with a malus) to cast buffs and stuff(+items), Take a traditional monk level to make use of wis... might be bit rough at the start, but it should work ok-ish, no? buff up and use beast/dragon forms to fight. And being MAD won;t hurt you as bad cause you don't care too much about the casting stat

but I do agree most thiefling subs are really backwards. And they don't get a racial either.

Roahin: The Devil-Spawn has to take the Infernal Bloodline to avoid the Charisma penalty, so Dragon Disciple is right out. And besides, a Wisdom/Constitution/Charisma race is just godawful for a buffed physical damage build. It's a shame too, like I said, I really like Asmodeus and Devil-Spawn. Meanwhile, the CE equivalent Demon-Spawn get much more attractive +2 Strength/Charisma with an irrelevant -2 Intelligence with the conjoining Abyssal Bloodline giving all those Transformation and Strength-buffing abilities.

ithildur: So, having had Tristian's MT build actively playing alongside a pure damage spamming Sorcerer and realizing that the MT completely and thoroughly blew it out of the water, colored my opinions strongly.

It's not that I don't believe you, but it does bear some explanation I think. How did a dedicated sorcerer fire blaster get blown out of the water as far as doing his main thing by someone 3 caster levels behind with lower DCs?

ithildur: Ok, he's talking outlasting the sorcerer then with more spellslots, which is obviously in an MT's favor. That's one way to do it, sure, it's nice to be able to cast all day long.

Like you I tend to prefer maximum nova potential (though I don't mix/max or optimize nearly as hard) and enjoy playing gishes that can go nova while also being decent at mook fights. The trash fights after a certain point just aren't worth wasting a lot of spellslots on if you have decent hitters in the group. Let them do most of the gruntwork with some buffs, occasional CC; save the really nasty nova stuff to ensure tough boss fights/nasty surprises are going to be a win.
I understand that a lot of players don't like to have casters stand around plinking crossbows during the mook fights. But I'm a bit old school, with an appreciation for the days when low level wizards got to cast literally ONE or TWO spells for the entire day (2e/BG1), and had to come up with other ingenious ways to be useful other than tossing darts. It also fits the stereotype, some variation of 'let the peons do the dirty work; I'm here when you need REAL power'. :)

CookieJamZZ: If i were to respec Kanerah to the same class, dark elementalist with the same stats but starting from level 1, what would be the best build for her?

nemy123: Just starting out the game and wanted to go with a crit Sword Saint. Now I've read here and there that Sword Saint can get pretty high AC with Int/Dex and mad criticals, but I'm just not far enough into the mechanics to get it working by myself and the few infos to go on. A fair amount of Int also seems to make sense to me as it'd allow for lots of skills for RP/story purposes.

Didn't see anything matching that in the builds provided so far. Anyone able to help? Thanks in advance guys.