Love Song for a Vampire

One of the toons I am starting to enjoy playing more than I expected is my Wizard Grousewiz, who is on his third life and is following the prestige route Pale Master. Now as this is third life I have tried both options with and without a splash of monk. This is not telling people what the better option is as everyone will have their own opinion but this is more a chance for someone who is considering Pale Master and just wants to get other peoples' opinions.

Like an artificer and the druid you get a Pet in the form of a Skeletal Knight, I know that when I first saw Skeletons running around the Harbour I was a bit WTH. As the pet develops along with your development as a fighter he is equal to you level plus any epic levels. So quite a bit of punch as a base and one of the things that I love is the sword is considered a metaline bastard sword and can gain benefits from Artificers infusions so the spells like planar weapon could seriously enhance the pet. For those people who solo like me a bonus fighter is truly a blessing and there is another benefit which I will point out in a bit.

One Stop Shopping 

Make Your Choices Count

For the player there are Shrouds of various undead forms which get more powerful as you progress, I will admit that I have no love of the Zombie form so play the period where that is the only option as a pure wizard. It is a frustrating form as far as I am concerned but it prove useful at first teaching me the lesson that clerics are your worst enemy. Here comes the kicker, while in any Shroud you are damaged by light effects and are unaffected by positive energy or repair spells. However when you get your seventh level of wizard you obtain the spell Death Aura which will heal you in your shrouded form and also will heal you skeletal knight which as I said early is another bonus for your knight, plus rather handily it hurts other living enemies. As far as I know and I haven't tested this it will heal undead enemies so I tend to avoid quests that have undead dotted all over.

Okay got a few brains

The question of to splash or not to splash I guess is a personal one but having tried both options for my third life I have decided to splash. Just the simple benefit of evade helps make the decision for me along with the additional benefit in melee abilities which when you factor in your undead bonuses work with a great synergy. Now as I said this is a personal thing but I have had much more fun (and success) with the splash than without, although that could be done to personal play style. Now whilst there are 4 shrouds I have tended to stick to the Vampire form as it seems to work best for me, although this time I intend to take epic levels for the first time and thinking Lich with Improved shrouding will make my necromancy spells rock. The wiki contains a full breakdown of the abilities a Pale Master can choose from  as he develops.

When you are spending on Action Points the other thing I see as key is boosting your Pet with each tier, Corpsecrafter is a lovely bonus for one action point to boost the skeletal knight's abilities to cause damage. It grants +2/+4/+6 bonus to strength, dexterity and constitution, so the amount of damage the knight causes, the chance to not be hit and the chance to survive being hit all increase for a simple 3 actions points. So guessing we can call boosting him a no brainer (silly zombies will ignore us then?). And in shroud of the wraith we are not there simply because we have a level of incorporeality. So there are chances to have some real fun I have found but it depends a lot on your style of play. I like playing most forms of characters apart from healers, although self healing for a solo player is great I just don't have the same level of fun.

The Pet has a decent body count

However having a wizard who can self heal over time and heal the pet whilst causing damage has become a bit of real fun. I would say that when I do the desert I only tend to slay on two thirds of the map. The idea of the undead healing while I heal is a no go and certainly that is one of the main strengths of the Pale Master in my mind. And yes the only option really with Orchard is to play it as a straight wizard on with less of everything and problems keeping the Skeletal Knight healed. So I have almost no House J favour and a lot of quests get missed out. BUT I love playing this toon, the fact I decided to 3 life him so I get the 36 point build shows that I have become very comfortable with the play style and also with how to make quests amusing.

The one really strange thing I have found and I have no issues with is that when resting at a shrine whilst in vampire form it heals and restores spell points. I was expecting it to give me spell points but I was also expecting to lose health which it didn't do so having tried this while damaged I was not surprised to see the health climb rather than fall. Bug or deliberate it is something I have enjoyed and benefited from. Happy Brain Eating

Grousewiz