Take any metamagic feat at 1st, and Sanctum Spell (Complete Arcane) at 3rd. You can prepare 1st-level archivist spells and 1st-level wizard spells with Sanctum Spell, so that they are 2nd-level spells when cast in your sanctum. That meets mystic theurge’s requirements, RAW, though you might need to be in your sanctum while leveling up.
The only approach I can find for taking both feats earlier than that without Flaws as an elf is to abuse Fiendish Codex I’s embrace the dark chaos and shun the dark chaos on your elf Martial Weapon Proficiency feats. Embrace the dark chaos replaces one feat with an Abyssal Heritor feat, and then shun the dark chaos replaces any Abyssal Heritor feat with any other feat you qualify for. Those are each 8th-level spells that cost 250 XP to cast, so in theory you could hire someone to cast them for 2,450 gp each. 4,900 gp to swap your proficiency with shortbows or whatever to some metamagic feat so you can take Sanctum Spell. Of course, realistically, your DM should never let you do this and even if they did, as a 1st- or 2nd-level character you’d have to find someone willing to cast those spells for you, which is going to be rough. You also need to get the money, which is roughly double the recommended wealth for those levels.
Alternative races have an easier time:
Humans get a bonus feat, so that just neatly solves the problem.
Illumians (Races of Destiny) can take Improved Sigil (krau) (idem), which is even better than Sanctum Spell for this purpose—you can cast 2nd-level spells without worrying about any sanctum.
Any alternative race does make obtaining trackless step difficult—as this answer describes, your options are probably
- a polymorph effect for
- bamboo spirit folk (Oriental Adventures), which gets trackless step as a racial feature, or
- some kind of elf for wildrunner (Races of the Wild), or
- take the Improved Greenlore feat from the third-party (but officially licensed) Birthright Conversion Manual.
Both the bamboo spirit folk and the Improved Greenlore approaches do run into that “class feature” issue in arcane hierophant’s requirements, which nixes them RAW—quite a minor technicality, but when attempting early-entry shenanigans on the basis of technicalities, it’s probably fair for a DM to make you take the technicalities that hurt you along with the ones you’re abusing.
There is an alternative to arcane hierophant for your purposes, though: Fochlucan lyrist (Complete Adventurer). Its requirements are very difficult, harder than arcane hierophant’s, but perhaps more amenable to optimization since it doesn’t have that hard line as arcane hierophant does with “class feature.”
Addressing each requirement,
Intense skill requirements: To begin with, since we aren’t taking Precocious Apprentice, make your 1st-level class archivist rather than wizard: that gives you +1 hp and +8 skill points for free. Beyond that, feats to make these skills into class skills are a must, at least for Perform.
Flexible Mind (Dragon vol. 326) makes any two skills into class skills for every one of your classes. Between that and your Intelligence focus, you should be able to get all of them by the time you finish mystic theurge, even paying cross-class prices on quite a few.
Apprentice (entertainer) (Dungeon Master’s Guide II) makes both Diplomacy and Perform class skills for all of your classes. It is, however, a 1st-level-only feat, which means without Flaws or the dark chaos feat shuffle, you are back to having to take Sanctum Spell or Improved Sigil (krau) at 3rd level.
Anyway, there is no debate or question about whether or not this works.
Evasion: ring of evasion, quite affordable by the time you run out of mystic theurge levels. Absolutely solid, RAW, though some DMs may object.
Bardic knowledge: arguably, loremaster. The reason this is only “arguable” is because the loremaster doesn’t grant “bardic knowledge,” it grants “lore.” But lore is identical-in-all-but-name to, and stacks with, bardic knowledge. So the issue becomes, what exactly do you need to meet a requirement? Unfortunately, it very well might be the name that you need, which is the one thing you don’t have. Dipping loremaster does give back the level gained by starting mystic theurge at 3rd, but it does advance wizard spellcasting.
You can avoid the loremaster level by swapping archivist for cloistered cleric. You lose Intelligence SAD, but you gain a level of spellcasting progression, plus you get domains, which can allow you to trivially pick up the metamagic feat you need for Sanctum Spell at 1st regardless of race. Cloistered cleric at 1st also gets you a ton of skill points to use.
If you actually need “bardic knowledge,” per se, then you’re basically forced to dip bard and none of this is worth it. So RAW here is somewhat dubious.
Druidic: arguably, loremaster again, as discussed in this answer, but even if the DM accepts that, you need four levels of loremaster—not worth it. The tibbit (Dragon Compendium) suggestion, on the other hand, is rock-solid, though it interferes with getting Improved Sigil or Sanctum Spell at 1st. However, that answer, and the broader Q&A there, also offer other suggestions for learning Druidic. RAW here is basically undefined—druids aren’t supposed to teach you Druidic, but they can, and it’s hard to gauge how plausible it is or isn’t that you’ll be able to learn it. Otherwise, though, the tibbit approach is pretty shaky, and beyond that the only absolutely-solid RAW option is dipping druid.
So basically it comes down to whether or not Improved Greenlore or bamboo spirit folk are available, and meet arcane hierophant’s requirement, versus whether or not “lore” counts as “bardic knowledge” and you can learn Druidic without being a druid. Note that even if you are forced to dip bard or druid (but not both), doing that for Fochlucan lyrist is superior to wildrunner for arcane hierophant.
Also, consider the cloistered cleric approach: avoiding a level of lost divine spellcasting progression is pretty valuable, and dual ability dependency is hardly the end of the world. You also have an opportunity to use both arcane hierophant and Fochlucan lyrist that way, since it frees up your race choice and lets you use either bamboo spirit folk or tibbit.
