Easiest wizard/sorcerer spell access for an undead swordsage?

Question

We're playing 3.5 gestalt, and I have an undead unarmed swordsage (with a drop of totemist). Now he wants access to some spells, most notably Greater Mighty Wallop.

Is there any way to leverage a character's HD, initiator level, undead nature or even totemist levels into wizard/sorcerer caster level and spell access, or at the very least into access to and caster level for Greater Mighty Wallop?

My level composition is Unarmed Swordsage 10/Totemist 2//Oscelamo Jiang Shi (toned down) 5/Exoticist fighter 2/Master of Nine 5. Exoticist gives me a Heavy Metal Ward Cestus, just in case.

The game is mission-based, so no consistent party.

Answer 1

You're 12th level, and Greater Mighty Wallop is a lvl 3 spell, with a duration measured in hours (5, at minimum). Realistically, your best bet is magic items of some sort. An Eternal Wand of Greater Mighty Wallop (lvl 20 caster) is going to cost you around 43,600gp and will cover you all day long and then some. That's pricey for you, but it's also five size categories. It's also more than you can use unless your starting weapon size is small or smaller, given that Mighty Wallop tops out at Colossal. If your starting size is Medium, you can get it at Clvl 16 instead, for 4 size categories and a duration of 16 hours, at a price of a touch under 35,000gp. Eternal Wands have two casts per day, though, so that's still more than enough coverage. If you're already Large for whatever reason, then lvl 12 is enough, for 12 hours per casting of +3 size categories at a price of a bit over 26,000gp.

In order to use it, you're going to need to either be able to cast arcane spells (by whatever means) or make a UMD check of 21 (to emulate the class feature of a level 1 wizard's use of arcane spells) Getting a small number of points in UMD shouldn't be too terrible for you, even if your charisma is poor, though it's less reliable. If you roll a 1, you can't use that particular item for 24 hours. Still, at total UMD of +4, you have an 80% chance of being able to use it on any given day.

A custom magical item to do the same thing that does not require the arcane caster ability is also possible. It'll be more expensive, though, and potentially more difficult to convince your DM of. Alternately, you could just hope to get lucky with your party members. You say you don't have party consistency, but "is an arcane caster" and "has relatively high UMD" show up with enough frequency that you could just not worry about it and hope your party has someone who can handle it who is available and trustworthy. That also works pretty well with getting a small-to-moderate amount of UMD - if you have someone in the party, it works, and if you don't, you can roll the dice and take your chances.

Presumably you're already looking at effects like Improved Natural Attack (either as a feat or via fanged ring). You'll want to talk with your DM to find out how those stack with Greater Mighty Wallop before you go making any further purchases.

Answer 2

Casting greater mighty wallop without a spellcasting class

You can... but it’s heavy, heavy cheese, not just “oh, you’re a 12th-level undead initiator? sure, you can have some spells.” And it may not be possible without ret-con or heavy psychic reformation, since a couple of the feats are 1st-level-only.

The typical approach to getting class-less spellcasting is the Magical Training feat from Player’s Guide to Faerûn, which is a Regional feat (i.e. only available at 1st level), and requires you to be an elf from Evereska or Evermeet or a human from Halruaa or Nimbral. Outside Faerûn, it may be unavailable entirely, adapted to other regions, or the whole regional thing might be dropped entirely: you would have to ask your DM.

From there, you can take the Precocious Apprentice feat from Complete Arcane (page 185, not in the feats chapter). This is another 1st-level-only feat. It allows you to learn a 2nd-level arcane spell, and to get a single 2nd-level spell slot to cast it per day.

Combine that with the Sanctum Spell metamagic feat, also in Complete Arcane, which lets that 2nd-level spell count as a 3rd-level spell while in your designated sanctum, so that you “count as” being able to cast 3rd-level spells. Then you can activate the Dragonsblood Pool magical location from Complete Mage (it’s probably best to designate the pool as your sanctum, so you are able to cast a 3rd-level spell at the time you activate it). Now you have a 3rd-level spell slot per day for a whole year.

Note that absolutely none of this has anything to do with your HD, type, or classes. With enough feats, you could do this from 1st level.

If you wanted a divine spell, the Mad Faith feat from Heroes of Horror would replace Precocious Apprentice, Sanctum Spell, and the Dragonsblood Pool, and would leverage your undead type. It can get you a 3rd-level divine spell slot if you have severe depravity—and depravity does nothing bad to an undead creature. But, of course, Mad Faith requires 1st-level divine spells, and Magical Training doesn’t work on for those, and in any event greater mighty wallop is not found on any divine spell lists.

As for actually getting greater mighty wallop, that’s easy—Magical Training allows you to choose wizard as the spellcasting class you cast spells like. That means you can just scribe it into your spellbook the same as any other wizard. Wizards are even allowed to scribe spells they can’t cast yet, so there’s no awkward concern about the order of operations here.

Boosting caster level

This is harder. You might be able to use Practiced Spellcaster (you cast like a wizard—does that go far enough that you could select wizard as your class with Practiced Spellcaster? probably not...), but even if you can that only gets you to caster level 5th.

For the same reasons, you probably can’t use a prestige class either. I mean, you qualify for jade phoenix mage, and it would continue to advance your initiator level and maneuvers, but you (almost-certainly) won’t be able to actually apply the spellcasting progression against anything. But if your DM somehow accepted all of the above, maybe they’ll also buy that you count as a 0th-level wizard or something and jade phoenix mage can “stack” with that? Extremely dubious.

If those are out, and they almost-certainly are even RAW, we’re left with just nickel-and-diming everything. An orange ioun stone, some reserve feats, a prayer bead of karma maybe.

Oooor... we could just cheese caster level, too. There are numerous infinite caster level tricks out there. We could continue the spellcasting cheese (more feats, it can literally go right up to 9th-level spells) to get greater consumptive field and then pour oil down an anthill, for example.