How to optimize epic progression for an arcane/divine spellcaster?

Question

My player has decided to play an arcane/divine spellcaster. He has just completed progression of an arcane hierophant and is advancing next 7 levels in mystic theurge class.

The campaign will end up with the player characters over 30th level. As a beginner gamer, he often asks for advice, however this case looks troublesome. I guess, he could advance up to 10th level of a mystyic theurge, which would be kind of a poor choice, as he only increases the arcane and divine spellcaster levels. Epic mystic theurge looks awful with it's alternately arcane/divine progression, even though it provides one bonus epic feat.

Is there a way to increase both Arcane along with Divine spellcaster levels and gain other benefits like extra uses of turning undead or bonus metamagical feats?

The player is currently Neutral Good Human Cleric 3/Wizard 3/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge 2.

Materials from Dragon Magazine and published third parties are acceptable.

Answer 1

Unless this character happens to have the Death domain, arcane hierophant and mystic theurge are the only classes that advance an arcane class and a divine class simultaneously. Even if he or she does have the Death domain, the class that requires it, the true necromancer, is awful, though it does dual-advance arcane and divine spellcasting (10 levels advance both, 2 levels advance arcane only, 2 levels advance divine only; yes, it is a 14-level class).

However, we can trick our way into a bit more dual-advancement: ultimate magus advances two classes, a spellcaster who prepares arcane spells from a spellbook, and a spellcaster who casts arcane spells spontaneously.

• The wizard prepares and casts arcane spells from a spellbook; that’s no problem.

• The cleric prepares divine spells, obviously, right? Weeeellllll.... they have a class feature literally called “spontaneous casting,” not even the sorcerer does that. And the Alternate Source Spell feat from Dragon vol. 325 lets you use your divine spellcasting for arcane spells and vice versa, so with that feat, the cleric class is casting some arcane spells. And that can include the cure spells they spontaneously cast. So the cleric in this case can spontaneously cast arcane spells. That... is what ultimate magus asks for.

So that gets us in. The wording of the actual spellcasting class feature of the ultimate magus is a little trickier: it specifies that it advances “a spontaneous arcane casting class to which you belonged before adding the prestige class level.” Does cleric now count as a “spontaneous arcane casting class” due to spontaneous casting and Alternate Source Spell?

That question has already come up before: Alternate Source Spell making cleric count as arcane, spontaneous casting making cleric wizard count as spontaneous. In both cases, I go through the problems, specifically that we have zero definition of either of these two terms. In both cases, I recommend against allowing it—but both cases were asking about trying to have a dual-advancement prestige class double-advance a single class. That definitely shouldn’t be allowed. But allowing ultimate magus to advance cleric and wizard? That seems fine to me.

So my recommendation is to allow the player to use ultimate magus here. I would probably not even make them take Alternate Source Spell, though it could be a useful feat for them to have in any case (particularly if they also have Practiced Spellcaster for both cleric and wizard, which they absolutely should).

Answer 2

You're heading into epic levels. My suggestion would be to take the Epic Spellcasting feat, which gives you an extra 6 to 9 ish extra spells per day, except these spells are super mega spells that are better than any other spells and also incredibly versatile because you get to make them up.

When developing epic spells, you should usually use mitigating factors to lower the Spellcraft DC to 0 so you don't have to spend time, money, and experience on developing the spell. Such mitigation does not mean that your spell will be weak, however! For example, a spell that summons a Half-Celestial Great Wyrm Gold dragon and binds it permanently to your service can be made to have a DC of 0 by granting the spell a casting time of 100 days and requiring some combination of ritual participation and XP expenditure. Since ritual participation greatly lowers the DC of a spell, and since you can easily summon casters to assist you (a permanent solar requires only 6,000 XP), you will soon be able to set aside XP costs in favor of ritual preparation, even without the boon of such a feat as Epic Leadership.

Don't shy away from 100 day casting time spells! With a simple Maximized Plane Shift to a Plane with the erratic time trait (or a casting of Maximized Genesis), such spells can be cast in less than a round of Material Plane time.

Because of the power of Epic Spellcasting, the actual class the character possesses is much less important than that they are both arcane and divine, and both prepared and spontaneous, and that they progress Knowledge(Arcana), Knowledge(Religion), and Knowledge(Nature) as much as possible.

Epic Spellcasting also makes progressing any other kind of spellcasting rather moot, since you can increase the attributes upon which your spellcasting depends to very large numbers for years via the Fortify seed. Since your ability to cast spells is thus entirely disentangled from your class progression choices, it makes sense to pick a class with fun class abilities that progress your character in other areas, perhaps adding new ways to cast spells or metamagic or turn undead attempts or unusual spell lists or what have you. Regardless of your choice, the impact of your choice will be much less than the impact of the choices you make in optimizing your Epic Spells, and deciding whether or not to take Leadership/Epic Leadership/Legendary Commander.

Answer 3

You are heading into the epic levels, my suggestion is to keep progressing as an Epic Arcane Hierophant. Rules for epic prestige classes are detailed in many manuals, and I'm pretty sure complete divine is one of them. Basically, once you have a 10-level prestige class (which Arcane Hierophant is) you can create an epic progression and some class features keep increasing as they did during the regular PrC or a tad bit slower.

Answer 4

I think there is a Harper prestige class in Faerun that does level up both. It doesn't gain specific Mage and Cleric class abilities like TU, but it's better than Theurge because of the skills, Hit Dice, attack bonuses and specific class features.