I'm planning on creating a prestige class based on the Arcane Hierophant. The Arcane Hierophant however is more wizard/druid bias and since I'm an Archivist I decided to create a variant with the Archivist in mind.
The problem: I can make the prestige class continue the advance of the Archivist's Dark Knowledge but I'm torn if I should add more class abilities. Is the continued advance of the Dark Knowledge enough? Or should I add more?
The BAB progression will follow the usual Mystic Theurge, same with the reflex, fortitude and will saves. The entry requirements would be two Knowledge skills (arcana and religion), ability to cast 2nd lvl spells (just like AH), and have Dark Knowledge as a class feature. it will have a d4 as its hit point gain, 4 + Int for its skill point gain. No alignment requirement and a +4 BAB to qualify. I'm still playing around some hypothetical abilities like the loremaster's secrets class feature.
It's the divine half I want to substitute with the archivist, so the druid part would be replaced by archivist.
Best Answer
This class is fairly powerful; it’s definitely an attempt to make a theurge actually keep up with the power of the (very powerful) expected entry classes. In particular, Perfect Inscription is quite dubious; it could potentially step on the toes of much-weaker classes, though I believe the increase in spell level will prevent that most of the time.
I’m going to include a few author’s notes/comments in the middle of this, by dropping out of the quote box. If they’re getting in your way, you can use the Edit History to see the version of this before I added them.
The fluff is pretty simple and straightforward, with a slight reference to Order of the Stick’s Xykon. It’s a little grimdark, but then the archivist is too, what with being from Heroes of Horror and having a class feature called Dark Knowledge. I explicitly and intentionally allowed the artifex to use these dark powers for the purposes of good, however.
By the way, the name is a reference to Ars Goetia, a section of The Lesser Key of Solomon, probably the most well-known occult book. It describes, or alleges to describe, how to summon and negotiate with 72 demons; these demons actually provided the names for the overwhelming majority of the vestiges from Tome of Magic, and Aleister Crowley’s edition provides the seals for all of the WotC-published vestiges (some of the online/Dragon vestiges use original seals).
I was torn on requiring Knowledge Devotion (and thus the Dark Knowledge (devotion) feature, below), since it’s a somewhat annoying to have yet another requirement on an already-difficult entry, plus it makes the class dependent on Complete Champion. I may come back to this and add an adaptation that doesn’s require it, especially if requested.
Otherwise, this is following the cue of the ultimate magus in allowing entry with only 1 level on one side. Unlike the ultimate magus, in this case it can be either side. So archivist 3/wizard 1 or archivist 1/wizard 3 is the expected entry.
Again, another cue from the ultimate magus, on losing another level in-class. I made the rules for judging “lowest level” a harder to dodge, because I think this class is a bit more powerful than ultimate magus. I don’t lose more levels, though, because without the tricks that let you control which side ultimate magus advances, losing more levels would be very painful.
This feature concerns me. It gives you access to a ton of effects, and potentially allows you to render other classes, already weaker than archivist or wizard, fairly pointless as you get to steal their few unique tricks. Still, the large increase in effective spell level, and various other limitations, will hopefully make this a much more difficult feature to use, one that sees more application on a fluff level than power level.
This stuff comes straight from the intelligent item rules, aside from the capabilities.
This seems kind of awkward; I’m considering changing it so that you have only one familiar book, but it has infinite pages. Thoughts on that would be appreciated.
This... is not as great a description as I’d like it to be. The description of major artifacts says that each major artifact should have a single, specific way to destroy it; the familiar book does not. That said, certain powerful spells do give ways to destroy artifacts, which is what I’m going for here. It would take a lot to get a 17th-level wizard to cast disjunction on the book, particularly considering the tempting possibility that one could convince the book to allow him to use the power contained therein.
This book is way too important to allow it to be trivially taken. Calling effects can be blocked, but at least this requires that someone who steals the book get it to a location that blocks them before the wizard notices it missing.