arcane trickster negatives?

[It´sAllAimAssist]

can someone who understands the ruleset better than me asnwer a quick quistion.

What are the downsides to using one level vivisectionist to open up Arcane trickster then going 10 levels trickster and back to wizard over going pure wizard other than loosing one caster level ?
or is that the only thing you loose=one caster level?

I am pretty far into the game now and respecing my wizard to gain a fair bit of sneak attack damage over loosing a couple of spellslots and a caster level seem very much worth it.
he mainly CC and buff atm with some dps on the side when needed..though Nok Nok and ekun pretty much wrecks stuff anyway.

Edit I mean as a caster, I´m not going to melee or anything but the extra sneak attack is for spells.

[Mork]

you lose a few skills points and some class skills vs rogue

you gain mutagen

[Dixon Sider]

You will get new spells one level later. You also have to have an undesirable spread for your skills. The reason its so OP is because the feat that adds the extra sneak dice counting towards arcane trickster is questionable. Some people might not let you do that in the PnP version. Your taking a specialization that should require a 3 level investment and making it a 1 level investment.

[It´sAllAimAssist]

ok, thank you for the answers!

[1ttffsse]

for wizard it is absolutely a no brainer in this game. for sorc it is still really good especially by the end, but the spell prog hurts if you are the only caster in the group.

[thebeing]

Wizard gets 3 bonus wizard feats from those 11 levels.

However, if you're not going to reach level 20 it is just 2 feats lost.

You would also lose some daily spell slots because of the vivisectionist level - arcane trickster only provides the daily spells to the class you choose (not sure if you even could pick Vivisectionist since it doesn't have arcane spells at level1).

[Mork]

personally .. i'm in love with the scroll savant(universalist)

its just too good to go pure wizard with it.

[1ttffsse]

viv and high intelligence gives you true strikes for days though and that is another bonus on an INT caster.

[haplok]

Absolutely worth it IMO.
A no-brainer deal, unless you've made a holy vow to never use damage spells or something.
It increases your damage output by like 30-100%, depending on spell.

Of course it REALLY shines once you get the AT capstone and can add sneak damage to aoe spells.

[It´sAllAimAssist]

Originally posted by haplok:

Absolutely worth it IMO.
A no-brainer deal, unless you've made a holy vow to never use damage spells or something.
It increases your damage output by like 30-100%, depending on spell.

Of course it REALLY shines once you get the AT capstone and can add sneak damage to aoe spells.

yeah I´ll respec once I can cap out AT that was my plan,

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by MyFloorisSlippery:

can someone who understands the ruleset better than me asnwer a quick quistion.

What are the downsides to using one level vivisectionist to open up Arcane trickster then going 10 levels trickster and back to wizard over going pure wizard other than loosing one caster level ?
or is that the only thing you loose=one caster level?

I am pretty far into the game now and respecing my wizard to gain a fair bit of sneak attack damage over loosing a couple of spellslots and a caster level seem very much worth it.
he mainly CC and buff atm with some dps on the side when needed..though Nok Nok and ekun pretty much wrecks stuff anyway.

Edit I mean as a caster, I´m not going to melee or anything but the extra sneak attack is for spells.

Arcane Tricksters are a good Prestige Class overall. Their spells attack vs. Touch AC and sneak attacks are super easy to do in the Kingmaker CRPG compared to the pen and paper RPG (that's why Arcane Tricksters have a special ability that lets them sneak attack even when they shouldn't be able to up to 4 times a day).

If you're asking for a negative it's the Spell Resistance that some enemies have. If you fail against it your spells do zero damage (whether magical or sneak attack). In that sense an Alchemist would do better since Alchemist bombs aren't affected by Spell Resistance.

[Shadenuat]

Not a lot of negatives unless you run a full CC build or something gimmicky like Bomber.

If you're asking for a negative it's the Spell Resistance that some enemies have.

Good thing SR is scattered around the game and there's not a lot of it and there are enough spells which ignore it starting Level 1.

[Cutlass Jack]

Arcane Trickster is invaluable purely on the basis of Ranged Legerdemain alone. It completely ignores the rules about only being able to attempt lockpicking a box once per level. I think its because it does it by summoning a fresh pair of hands each time you use it. And the new hands never attempted the lock before. :P

That combined with being able to clear traps at range without aggroing monsters makes it something I can't live without. I'd much rather enjoy that most of the game over a capstone.

Sure it gets a -5 to the attempt, but thats easilly offset with the trapspringer gloves sold right in your capital.

[Pink Eye]

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

Arcane Trickster is invaluable purely on the basis of Ranged Legerdemain alone. It completely ignores the rules about only being able to attempt lockpicking a box once per level. I think its because it does it by summoning a fresh pair of hands each time you use it. And the new hands never attempted the lock before. :P

That combined with being able to clear traps at range without aggroing monsters makes it something I can't live without. I'd much rather enjoy that most of the game over a capstone.

Sure it gets a -5 to the attempt, but thats easilly offset with the trapspringer gloves sold right in your capital.

You know always thought about that. Is it bugged? Because I don't think Arcane Trickster is supposed to pick a lock multiple times.

[Cutlass Jack]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

Arcane Trickster is invaluable purely on the basis of Ranged Legerdemain alone. It completely ignores the rules about only being able to attempt lockpicking a box once per level. I think its because it does it by summoning a fresh pair of hands each time you use it. And the new hands never attempted the lock before. :P

That combined with being able to clear traps at range without aggroing monsters makes it something I can't live without. I'd much rather enjoy that most of the game over a capstone.

Sure it gets a -5 to the attempt, but thats easilly offset with the trapspringer gloves sold right in your capital.

You know always thought about that. Is it bugged? Because I don't think Arcane Trickster is supposed to pick a lock multiple times.

I'm sure its not intentional. Its an unintended side effect of the workaround they did to make the ability work. It should just be letting you make your trickery role at range. Instead it summons a critter to do the check for you.

[Exto]

I heard Arcane Tricker and Sword Saint are OP, so I've been staying away from them. I wish I hadn't known that they were OP because I wanted to try both.