Blurring the Lines for Arcanes and Divines

Angry Wiggles’ Guide to the Mystic Theurge

****WARNING****

A great deal of this guide has recently been invalidated by this faq. While the contents within can theoretically be applied to the mystic theurge without using early entry, much of it no longer applies, particularly the parts that apply to early entry. The individual ratings according to the listed rating system are also no longer accurate. The guide will likely not be repaired to account for this faq. If the guide is repaired, it will not occur for some time. Please be aware of this going forward. There is still value to be had here, but less than there was before.

If your game master still allows you to use spell like abilities to qualify for early entry, or allows you to enter mystic theurge at an earlier level, as is a common house rule, than the remainder of this guide is applicable as it stands. Otherwise, it will be of far less use to you than I intended in the months that I spent writing it. For that, I am sorry. I will no longer be continuing to work on or maintain this guide at this time, and will be turning my attention to other projects, so benefit can be gained there.

How to Read this Guide

And Other Disclaimers

Like most pathfinder guides, my guide will use the standard color ratings for each entry, followed by a short explanation of how or why said entry was given the rating it received. The color ratings are as follows.

Blue is a wonderful choice. This is either especially useful, or powerful enough to be overwhelming a large majority of the time.

Green is a good choice. This is going to be generally useful, and many theurges can benefit from this option.

Orange Is conditional. These options are generally either less useful than other options, or are narrow enough in their usefulness that you won’t be able to take advantage of them very often.

Red is bad. These choices are either so narrow in their usefulness that they are almost never viable, or are just generally bad options for theurges.

This guide is very much opinion based, and while I would like to believe it is something akin to comprehensive, Paizo publishes faster than I have days off of work, which creates some difficulty for me in covering it all. I also at several points have attempted sarcasm and humor within this text. You’ll find that I’m terrible at it, so I’d like to offer the following disclaimer. If anything in here can be taken in multiple ways, and one of those ways is found to be offensive, rude, crude, threatening, belittling, or indicative of severe mental disorders on the part of the author, I assure you that I meant it the other way. If you wish to disagree with my ratings on any of these entries, agree fervently, offer suggestions for more things to include, discuss various combinations and how they relate to each other, or simply feel like belittling me publicly, feel free to drop into the comments thread on the Paizo forums here and do all of those things.

A lot of my understanding of pathfinder is relatively recent and comes from reading other guides and forum discussions on these topics. I have referenced several guides written by other, more illustrious, members of the pathfinder community, and have likely forgotten to reference many others. Much of what is contained within can be traced back to discussions and arguments made by those such as Treantmonk, Professor Q, Rogue Eidolon, Beckett, and Ashiel. I have done my best not to copy anything, but it’s entirely possible that the invisible biases created by reading their work have guided my hands into outputting similar strings of words. If any such instances have occurred, I can assure you, it’s only because they are all such fabulous authors. If anyone has issues with it, I would be happy to correct them, though.

Additionally, I very much enjoy the fruits of Paizo’s labor, and would love to encourage people to purchase more of their products. To that end, I will do my best to not provide the actual details of any of these texts. The guide will also be written under the assumption that if you want to know more about a given entry, you will turn and open your legally obtained book or watermarked PDF and read further. No, I’m not attempting to guilt you into buying things that support the companies involved in my hobbies. Not in the slightest. I don’t know why you would ever even suggest that.

Why Play a Mystic Theurge?

At first glance the mystic theurge feels like a whole lot of bad options, lost spells, and frivolous multiclassing, but don't be fooled! The mystic theurge makes what is arguably one of the most capable spellcasters that pathfinder can provide. “How in the world is that? They sacrifice so much to even get into the class!”, I imagine myself hearing you asking. The solution is simple, they sacrifice far less than expected when built correctly, and their strengths lie outside of what is typically expected of casters. Mystic theurges, more than any other spellcaster, have longevity and versatility. When every other spellcaster has run out of toys and gone home, they will still be slinging spells as though they just woken up. They will have a wider array of spells to draw from than any other caster, and pride themselves on their versatility and ability to react. Some theurges will build with a combination of prepared and spontaneous casting classes, allowing their combined spells abilities to grant them a somewhat-penalized ability to draw on almost any spell they know with their prepared class. This grants them an unparalleled ability to react to the situation at hand. What’s more, the ability to combine arcane and divine casting in a single character opens up vast swaths of options that are rarely, if ever, options for other characters. Some of these include using Blood Money to pay for raising the dead, creating holy water for no cost with False Focus, and animating the dead from two separate caster levels for an even more terrifying undead horde.

The first question that must be answered by any theurge build is simply “What do I want to excel at?” This is important because, as a 10 level prestige class, this cannot be ridden all the way to level 20. At least one of your spellcasting classes will stop progressing after you hit 10 levels of theurge, while the other will either return to its base class or continue into another prestige class. The class which falls off will generally stop progressing around character level 13 or 14, and with 10-11 levels of progress in the spellcasting of the less focused class. This gives theurges a “sweet spot” of competence in the areas straddling the center ten levels of our 20 levels of progress. In this range, where we are throwing double the spells expected of someone our level, theurges will outlast and outmaneuver every other caster option. However, theurges only ever have access to one of their classes’ spellcasting progressions beyond 6th level spells, and that’s still perfectly acceptable. At that level, casters are absurdly overpowered without the lovely benefits of theurge, and the ability to respond to virtually any scenario still places them worlds above other casting-centric builds. Once we are certain of what we want to excel at, it is then our responsibility to plan around what we intend to do with our primary class’s spellcasting beyond level 10 of theurge.

The hardest part of building a mystic theurge is the qualification of the prestige class. This used to be limited to a single route, involving leveling both classes through their early levels until second level spell slots were obtained. This meant that you wouldn't begin dual progression until level 7 at the earliest, and wouldn't obtain third level spells until level 8. This put the best theurges achieving third level spells a minimum of one level behind even the slow and partial spellcasting of the bard, but with much less to show for it. But no more! A new FAQ entry states that spell-like abilities count as the ability to cast spells for the purposes of qualifying for feats and prestige classes. This is good news for our long-neglected theurges, as there are a fair number of second level spell-like abilities that can be obtained from racial traits, domains, inquisitions and oracle revelations. This now means that the primary issue limiting our entry is the requisite three skill ranks in knowledge(arcana) and knowledge(religion).

Qualification:

Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks

Spells: Able to cast 2nd level divine spells and 2nd level arcane spells.

        Once we know our goals as a caster, and know what we intend for our primary class to be, it’s important that we find a secondary class that supports this. Our secondary class is typically one of a different casting style than our own, being spontaneous if we prefer prepared, or vice versa. This allows us to better take advantage of the Combined Spells class feature, despite the slightly later level in obtaining those spell slots.

Early Entry and You, Making It All Work

There are five basic methods of entry into mystic theurge, which will be detailed below. These allow you to build a wide array of theurges for a wide array of purposes. As these are capable of providing vastly different power levels, each race, class, or other manner of focus will receive a rating unique to each method of entry. One thing is for certain, however. This FAQ is the theurge's bread and butter.

What this means is that we can use spell-like abilities to qualify for mystic theurge, so long as they are equivalent to second level spells. This immediately becomes the most powerful option for building theurges by leaps and bounds. However, the second level spell-like abilities are somewhat limited in source, making it frustrating to qualify without choosing a specific race, class, or both. The options for specific races and class entries are listed below, although they will be given more detail later.

Well, how do we know whether or not that ability meets our arcane or divine requirements? That is, thankfully, outlined in this FAQ.

The combined might of these two FAQs seems subtle at first, but it opens up this class to many tricks that were not accessible before. Including many spell like abilities granted from items that, admittedly, are very expensive. However, given the number of gold making shenanigans that can only be attempted by crossing arcane and divine paths, that may be considered by some, but it will not be rated as a method of entry further in this guide. The basic methods of entry are listed below, and will be rated further in detail later in the guide.

Race:

Aasimar – Arcane or Divine

Drow – Arcane

Duergar – Arcane

Half-Elf – Arcane

Lashunta – Arcane

Skinwalker (Werecrocodile-kin) - Arcane

Svirfneblin – Arcane

Tiefling – Arcane or Divine

Class Feature:

Cleric – Trickery Domain – Divine

Oracle – Wood Mystery – Bend the Grain Revelation – Divine

Oracle – Wood Mystery – Tree Form Revelation – Divine

Cleric, Druid, Inquisitor – Fate Inquisition – Divine

Feat:

Believer’s Boon – Used to obtain Trickery Domain or Fate Inquisition (debatable)

Long-Nose Form – Character level 3rd, Tengu only.

Unusual Origin – Used to obtain augury as a divine spell like ability, Gillmen only.

Method A: Racial and Divine Class Feature

        Lost Spell Progression: 1/2

Easily the strongest option for those who seek high level spell slots as soon as possible. By combining the options presented to you by both arcane racial SLAs and divine class features, you can qualify completely for mystic theurge using a racial SLA and one granted by a divine class. If you work exclusively with prepared spellcasting this only puts you one level behind your standard sorcerer in terms of spell progression on the slower of your two tracks.

Method B: Racial and standard leveling

        Lost Spell Progression: 1/3 or 1/4

If, for any of a multitude of reasons, you don't want to take one of your options for domains, inquisitions or revelations, you can take a race that offers a good SLA and progress this way. You lose slightly more in your secondary casting slot, but if you are playing a support or battlefield control character, this shouldn't bother you much. There is some variation in the type of racial spell-like ability, so either arcane or divine focused theurges can excel here, although the divine theurges will have better luck with the availability of arcane racial SLAs. If you’re planning on focusing on a single spellcasting class and simply want the versatility or longevity of the theurge tacked on to that, this is a more than acceptable option.

Method C: Divine Class Feature and standard leveling

        Lost Spell Progression: 1/3 or 1/4

Just as with method B, you can progress as a competent mystic theurge with almost any race of your choosing. You will lose slightly more in your secondary spellcasting class, but the ability to choose any race will trump that loss for a good many people. Given that the divine SLA granted by a class is obtainable on the first level, it is generally the better idea to have your primary casting class here be the arcane class that you intend to level. Like entry method B, this is still a very useful option if all you’re seeking is the versatility in casting that comes with theurgical studies.

Method D: Racial and Divine Class Feature casting with a dip level

        Lost Spell Progression: 2/2

While placing yourself a full spell level behind the other casters with both of your progressing classes may not make a whole lot of sense at first glance, there are a number of very good options for dipping levels that can be used to make you one of the most powerful, survivable, or varied spellcasters on the block. True, this entry method is not as singularly powerful as entry methods B or C, while being more stringent in its requirements than either of them. It makes up for that in a number of clever ways that will be covered in more detail in the dippable levels section of the guide. In the vast majority of cases, options rate almost identically for this as they do for Entry Method A. In light of that, this will not be rated separately, but rather Method A and Method D will contain the same entry.

Method E: Dual standard leveling.

        Lost Spell Progression: 3/3, 3/4 or 4/4

The only route prior to the new SLA ruling is now our worst option, placing us at least 1 ½ spell levels behind every other caster on the block, and limiting us to 2nd level spells until level 8 at the earliest. This method is to be avoided at all costs, and will not be covered further in the guide.

Class Abilities:

Now that we understand our basic methods of qualification, let's take a look at what we can do.

Spells per Day: This is the meat and potatoes of the Mystic Theurge. Every level they gain, they gain the spells per day of one arcane spellcasting class and one divine spellcasting class that they belonged to. They increase their effective level for the purpose of the number of spells that they know as well, should they be increasing a spontaneous casting class.

Combined Spells: This is a fantastic ability for theurges that combine prepared and spontaneous casting classes. This allows you to take any spell that you have prepared that day and spontaneously cast it using the spell slots of your other classes at the cost of one increased spell level. It also lets you prepare spontaneous spells in prepared slots the same way. Primarily, this is used to gain better reactivity so that we can respond to unanticipated threats, or to get off that one vital cast. However, with some higher level builds it can be used to create some amusing exploits, such as preparing Summon Monster VII in a sixth level cleric spell slot by preparing the summoner version of the spell. This also allows us to prepare classes we know via our spontaneous casting classes, or use this with dual-spontaneous theurges according to this faq.

Spell Synthesis: Even only as a once per day activity, this is a nice feature to have. Everyone has been in that one battle where they could have turned the tide with just one more action. This will let you do that, turning the tide at that precise moment when needed. It makes for a perfect capstone ability thematically, as well as mechanically.

Basic Class Choices and Attributes:

Physical attributes are of minor importance to the theurge. Strength has no real benefit, and dexterity is used little apart from its standard purposes for saves, AC and ranged touch attacks. Constitution is useful for hit points and saves, as always, but it isn't particularly necessary for any of our class features.

Mental Attributes are the key for the theurge. All of our class abilities are based off of our casting, and the stats are fortunately going to depend on our choice of casting classes. Glancing at the options for stats and classes listed in the chart below, it quickly becomes apparent that there are a few combinations with fantastic attribute synergy, and a few with none at all.

Beyond the choices of attribute synergy, there are yet more options to consider. Most notably which types of spellcasting we want to focus on.

Dual Prepared:

This is the assumed build for most people, as the idea of losing more levels of spell progression than absolutely necessary is something that is typically balked at. These builds are, by necessity, dependent on multiple attributes. Given that these can usually only operate off of Wisdom and Intelligence, they are more limited than other options by race. The large number of spells per day makes these theurges quite capable, although they lack the reactivity of those that combine prepared and spontaneous casting. The truly massive lists of spells known are the selling point of these builds. When a dually preparing mystic theurge is aware of what their walking into, they will be more dangerous than any other theurge can be.

Prepared + Spontaneous:

While there is an obvious draw to taking both casting classes as prepared classes to gain access to spell slots sooner, there is definite power to be had by investing one of your classes in a spontaneous casting class. The Combined Spells class feature works wonderfully with a combination of prepared and spontaneous casting, drastically increasing the spell list of the typically limited spontaneous casters. The one level increase caused by this is negligible when compared to the amazingly capable and reactive characters it leads to. With this combination, your wizard/oracle will never have to prepare feather fall more than once, nor waste a precious spell known for it, but will always have it when it’s needed. A higher level cleric/sorcerer can spontaneously cast Breath of Life when the fighter goes down, even if they’ve already cast it, allowing them to reserve their divine spell slots for more reliably needed spells. This level of versatility makes up the bulk of the Mystic Theurges power, making this one of the best builds for many theurges.

Dual Spontaneous:

Generally speaking, casting with both of your primary classes being spontaneous is far too painful to be worth consideration. You are both severely limiting your early game power by keeping away from 2nd level spells until a minimum of 5th level, but you’re also removing a large portion of the theurge’s characteristic versatility. What strength it does have lies in the fact that, with the exception of Inquisitor, all of the spontaneous casters work off of Charisma. This build is to be used by the theurges of only the narrowest of foci, and only after careful balancing of the build. It is also worth noting that despite the original wording specifying prepared spells this faq allows us to use combined spells with our dual-spontaneous theurges.

THE REST OF THE GUIDE

1. Class Specific Features
2. Races
3. Skills, Feats, and Traits
4. Equipment
5. After Mystic Theurge
6. Discussion Thread

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Books covered

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook [CRB]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Class Guide [ACG]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Player’s Guide [APG]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Race Guide [ARG]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign [UCa]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Combat [UC]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Equipment [UE]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Magic [UM]

Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting [PCCS]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary [B1]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 2 [B2]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 3 [B3]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 4 [B4]

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Gods [ISG]

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Magic [ISM]

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide [ISWG]

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Paths of Prestige [Paths of Prestige]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Andoran, Sprit of Liberty [ASoL]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Animal Archive [AnAr]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Bastards of Golarion [BoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of Angels [BoA]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of Fiends [BoF]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Elements [BotE]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Moon [BotM]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Night [BotN]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Champions of Balance [CoB]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Champions of Corruption [CoC]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Champions of Purity [CoP]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Dwarves of Golarion [DoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Gnomes of Golarion [GoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Humans of Golarion [HoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Kobolds of Golarion [KoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Magical Marketplace [MM]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Orcs of Golarion [OoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the North [PotN]

Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the River [PotR]

Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the Sands [PotSa]

Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the Stars [PotSt]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Quests & Campaigns [Q&C]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Taldor, Echoes of Glory [TEoG]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Undead Slayer’s Handbook [USH]

Pathfinder Player Companion: Varisia, Birthplace of Legends [VBoL]

Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: The City of Seven Spears [CoSS]

Current todo

Continue deep delve into campaign settings and player companions

Get sample builds online

Review wordcasting for potential inclusion