Improved Critical + Terror

[supot]

On a Wiz with 1 Wiz past life, thinking of letting go of Greater spell penetration for Improved Crit.

-For when Wail and Finger are on cooldown
-For beholders or anti-magic
-To save sp while soloing

Good idea? Bad idea?

Thanks for the feedback

[Lonnbeimnech]

When Wail and Finger are on cooldown cast circle of death or power word kill
for beholders hit diplomacy or bluff to get them to point their antimagic eye elsewhere, then finger them
To save sp while soloing get a torc a shield and a few archers

Unless you've built you character to melee, it's not going to be effective; 10 bab and low str, not a good idea.

[supot]

i have never tried using diplo or bluff on beholders or on any mob actually... nice idea. before i redistribute my stat points, what would u say is better, diplo or bluff if i could only choose one..

if i recall correctly, one is vs many mobs, one is vs 1 mob, correct? which one would work better in beholder situations, im thinking the one vs 1 mob only?

Thanks

[Kinerd]

Diplomacy moves you to the bottom of the target's (or targets') aggro list(s). If there is someone else on the list, this will cause the monster to look at them.

Bluff allows you to generate sneak attacks on a monster even if it is aggroed on you. If no one else has the monster's aggro, it will aggro on you without alerting its companions. This would not be useful for beholders in the traditional sense, but it is lovely for certain fights such as the VoN 3 triple boss.

With that said, as a wizard you should be able to handle beholders regardless of skills. The time-tested damage mitigation technique of not being there applies quite well to beholder anti-magic cones if you have anyone else to catch its eyes, and if you don't Diplomacy won't help you. Failing that, SLAs work in anti-magic. As an archmage you can prey on the beholder's Reflex save with Web, move behind it, kill it. I imagine the PM direct damage SLAs make relatively short order of it as well, especially if you prime it with an auto-enlarged Frost Lance or other big damage ray.