Help with these decisions please.

[Firefak]

Hello, and thank you for viewing this. I'm currently in a... struggle you could say? I just made my FvS WF yesterday and I was thinking about it being melee potential as well as spellcaster. But truthfully... I don't think it'll work out in the long run. Stats are currently 17 chrisma 14 wisdom and 15 strength, by spreading it out between these three, I feel it'll be weak. Does this look alright to you? Or did I gimp it? And feedback is appreciated.

[Impatiens]

You have way more charisma than you need for low levels. There's really no need to start with more than 14 charisma as you only need 19 to cast the highest level spells and items count for that. You can, in fact, start with less than 14 and be fine, but many people like to start with 14 plus a +2 tome or charisma enhancements so they can cast level six spells (like Heal and blade barrier) even if they get hit with a disjunction and their items no longer work.

[jsaving]

If you want to be an offensive caster, you need to max WIS but can get by with mediocre STR and CHA. If you want to be a healer, you need a high CHA but can get by with mediocre STR and WIS. And if you want to dish out significant damage with your weapons, rather than following the usual tack of simply jumping around and letting your blade barrier do the work, then you not only need a high STR but also a high enough DEX for two-weapon fighting, and will consequently have mediocre WIS and CHA.

I think you're exactly right to be cautious about splitting your focus and trying to do everything a favored soul can do. The question is, what do you want this character's strong point to be? Knowing that can help others provide useful advice for your particular character.

[aristarchus1000]

I certainly would not go over a charisma of 14 (or 12 if WF) in any circumstance, you can use items to allow you to cast spells. The spellpoint difference is quite small, and not compelling enough to have high charisma (i believe it is 29 pts per 2 charisma in the end game, when you have well over 2600 sps, this difference is rather trivial).

I am comfortable starting at 11 charisma on my healer focused FvS. This allows him to melee reasonably well. +2 tome, +3 enhancement gets me to 16 charisma so that my heal spell isn't blocked by a disjunction. If I need other spells, I have eagle's splendor available to bump it up to 20. (if you plan on getting capstone, you can possibly drop to 9 charisma, but this can make your early levels difficult).

You can start at 14 charisma, but only because you want the extra 2 pts for UMD. As long as it is 1:1 per build point, I think that is a reasonable way to go.

[Firefak]

Well as my highest level character is currently a level 9 and yes my current level 4 FvS is a WF. So I don't quite have access to any tomes of sorts. My goal for this character is that I want to be a great combat caster, and a pretty good dps. So any help with that? And also how do you quote? It'd make it easier.

[Matuse]

Flip your charisma and wisdom stats, and you're most of the way there already. Put level-ups into wisdom. If you want Improved and Greater THF, you'll need to dig up 2 more points of strength from somewhere.

[rendet]

Well as my highest level character is currently a level 9 and yes my current level 4 FvS is a WF. So I don't quite have access to any tomes of sorts. My goal for this character is that I want to be a great combat caster, and a pretty good dps. So any help with that? And also how do you quote? It'd make it easier.

In order for you to be a great combat caster you will need to max wisdom on your WF for reliably high DC on your spells. You will need to always try and get wisdom as high as possible as that will be your primary stat. If you are a 28pnt build you will be hurting too bad from the 16 base wisdom, 14 base charisma to really put anything into strength. You will want to put all your other points into constitution for survivability. If you are a 32 point then your looking a little better but your strength will probrably sit at 14 base or lower. I say max wisdom because you said you wanted to be a GREAT combat caster and I assume you mean low DC failure and good spell pen. With the fvs class you really need to pick what you want to do most and just do that. If you want to be a great combat caster and have good melee dps i would personally go cleric. Especially with only 28points to spend. Hope this helps

[unbongwah]

As a pure FvS you will eventually want CHA of at least 19 - more precisely you need CHA 10 + spell level to cast a spell - but that can come from base stats, tomes, enhancements, and items. The harder-core FvS builds actually make CHA a dump stat and boost it with +6 items and +3 tomes. But it sounds like you don't have any of that stuff. So as a new WF FvS, I would start with CHA 12; that covers you through level 4. You can boost that to 15 with your FvS CHA enhancements; that gets you through level 10. Then you just need another +4 from an item and/or tome by level 18.

For a 28-pt WF FvS, I would start with base stats 14 / 8 / 16 / 8 / 12 / 12 then put your remaining points into STR or WIS. STR affects your melee skills, obviously, while WIS affects your spell DC (i.e., makes your offensive spells more effective). Decide which is more important to you and dump all your level-up points into that stat. I would recommend getting your base STR up to 15 so you can take the first THF feat; that lets you take the first WF 2HF enhancement to get a little more bang out of your swings. If you boost your STR to at least 17, you can take the next two THF feats & WF enhancements too.

[jsaving]

Well as my highest level character is currently a level 9 and yes my current level 4 FvS is a WF. So I don't quite have access to any tomes of sorts. My goal for this character is that I want to be a great combat caster, and a pretty good dps.

The first question is whether blade barrier provides what you consider to be "pretty good" DPS. If it does, then you should not burn any feat slots on THF or anything else related to melee, and should instead opt for a standard offensive-caster build along the lines of 12/8/14/8/18/14.

If blade barrier does not provide enough DPS for your purposes, and you actually want to dish out sizable damage with your weapons, then you have to begin sacrificing offensive-caster power. The first step might be to reduce WIS by one or two points to raise your STR. A more sizable sacrifice would involve picking up 1-2 levels of fighter or monk and reducing WIS a bit more so you'd eventually be eligible for GTHF. An even more significant sacrifice would be to enlarge the splash to six fighter levels for the kensai enhancement, but this would really preclude you from being the "great combat caster" you want to be and hence isn't really on the table at this point.

[Dylvish]

Hello, and thank you for viewing this. I'm currently in a... struggle you could say? I just made my FvS WF yesterday and I was thinking about it being melee potential as well as spellcaster. But truthfully... I don't think it'll work out in the long run. Stats are currently 17 chrisma 14 wisdom and 15 strength, by spreading it out between these three, I feel it'll be weak. Does this look alright to you? Or did I gimp it? And feedback is appreciated.

The following is an elven build but probably not hard to convert over to WF. Its for melee / caster. So far its been a blast, and it seems fairly popular. Hope it helps. Link below

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=219755