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What’s changed?
Brand new class to play with, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get right down to it by emphasizing what it introduces to the whole powergaming thing we're trying to do.
- Easy way to get dimension door (at will, even).
- Many easy skill bonuses.
- Immunity to fatigue is awesome for a barbarian.

General tactics
Horizon Walkers start out being a so-so class to boost your skills in certain areas, but later blooms to provide extremely powerful abilities you can't get outside spellcasting.

Terrain bonuses are generally small, +1 bonuses to attack and damage rolls, enhanced skills, and generally better abilities for the terrain (darkvision for underground, faster swim speed for aquatics, etc.)

Desert terrain mastery is great for anyone who can rage. Immunity to fatigue is extremely sweet.

You got darkvision? Make it better. The underground terrain mastery is awesome for doubling your darkvision range, making use of ranged weapons very feasable.

Shifting planar mastery is insane. Dimension door at will every 1d4 rounds. WOW. Take this ASAP.

Fiery and cold planar masteries are nice. You get great resistance to energy and bonuses against creatures of this subtype.
Aligned planar mastery is nice, but not great. If you spend a lot of time plane hoping and don't want to get weakened in a strongly aligned plain, but the other ability is only questionably useful against spells.

Cavernous planar mastery takes second place for best ability with 30 ft. tremorsense. That is like blindsight so long as your opponents are touching the floor, even in magical darkness. Quite sweet.

How far to take this prestige class?
This class is fairly good, but don't take more than you need. Most builds will only need one or six levels of this class, so don't worry about filling this class out if you only want a few abilities.

What are the basic ways to build an arcane archer?
Arcane tricksters can do amazing amounts of damage with a single spell. Your spells of choice will be touch and ranged touch spells so that you can apply sneak attack damage to them to do extremely high amounts of damage. Your other spells depend on your choice of a build.
- The Drow Hunter- Master archer of the dark, this dwarven hunter seeks to end the threat of drow to the world.
- The Scorched Fist- A heart of evil and a desire to bring total destruction to the celestials.
- The Zweihander- He's got a big freaking axe and tons of mobility. Stay on his good side.

The Drow Hunter
“Call me crazy, but them drow gotta die.”

Let's build us an archer. To start, we've got a dwarf here to take advantage of the darkvision ability he gains. He's tough, no two ways about it. Let's start with our build. We want an archer whose effectiveness revolves around mobility (dimension door... just too sweet to pass up). So let's go ranger 5/fighter 8/horizonwalker 7. Good, clean, and simple. Levels one to five should go ranger/fighter/ranger/fighter/ranger. First, you will get two bonus feats from fighter to sure up your archery skills. You will be able to keep your ranger skills up as well (since your are starting with ranger and your are "capping" your early build with ranger, keeping your early skills high and your skills up to par with high max skill ranks). Favored enemy is obviously drow, and you'll increase this again later on when you take your fifth level of ranger. Ranger level two should grab you rapid shot. Fighter levels early on should grab you weapon focus and precise shot, and you should get point blank shot at level 1 and improved initiative at level 3 (you gotta get the drop on these guys, after all). You should grab forest, hills, marsh, plains, and underground terrain mastery (undergound first). These will give you bonuses to hide, move silently, spot, and listen checks, as well as boosting your darkvision to 120 feet. Later feats should be bow feats like manyshot, improved precise shot, etc. Your level 6 and 7 horizon walker abilities should definitely be shifting planar master and cavernous planar mastery. The former will let you shift your position easily (awesome for a hidden sniper), the latter will ensure that even if you are enshrouded by magical darkness, you can tell where your opponents are if they chose to close. After horizonwalker, finish of 2 levels of ranger (grabbing more favored enemy bonuses against drow), and 6 more levels of fighter (for weapon specialization and greater weapon focus). If you have extra feats to spend, grab defensive feats, or weapon focus in dwarven war axe (great weapon you basically have for free... nice backup if you get into melee). In battle, sneak around while scouting ahead. Take shots at your foes early and fade with dimension door. Don't get into a fair fight... if the drow won't play fair, then neither will you...

The Scorched Fist
“Nothing you can say will spare you from my fury.”

This is a late-horizon walker build, and provides a neat use of the blackguard prestige class. Why? Because this is a monk build, baby. We've got monk 9/blackguard 4/horizon walker 7. This build again stresses mobility, but moreso than the last build. We will focus on using the quarterstaff as an effective weapon. Our character was once a monk in a LE monastary that often consorted with fiends to acquire new secrets. So the celestials swooped down and leveled the monastary, slaying all the important members and those who resisted, while allowing the younger initiates to live to repent. One monk decided to get his revenge. Our monk will take improved grapple, deflect arrows, and improved trip as his monk feats. We'll need at least a 13 strength to grab power attack, cleave, and improved sunder as his early feats after taking weapon focus in quarterstaff to pull it off. Your feats are tied up in requirements til level 12, but after that point grab diehard (because as a blackguard you can heal yourself) and probably consider something like combat expertise if your armor class isn't quite hight enough. This character has sworn to take out the angels with his abilities, and that's just what he'll do. Using his mobility, this character darts from fight to fight. His horizon walker abilities will buy him the standard stuff along with the aligned ability. This will let your blackguard use his abilities and spells against celestials while protecting himself from similar problems his enemies can wield. If denied his quarterstaff, he can fight unarmed easily, and a monk's belt will give him an added boost very, very easily and cheaply. In battle, this character moves from place to place, providing support in key areas with his high mobility, delivering a power attack where needed. Against other foes, he can stand and flurry as needed, and can deliver smites and sneak attacks as well. Considering his high mobility, this character can take advantage of many opportunities that might be missed by others. And then those damned celestials will pay...

The Zweihander Shaman
“Smash smash smash. All I ever do is smash...”

Let's get our rage on, baby. Our character is a shaman warrior for his tribe, a knowlegable man who is practiced in the arts of warfare and is still a pasable spellcaster. He is primarily there to support the party, and to lend his huge axe in battle when needed. And when push comes to shove, he can still fly into a rage when needed. Our build is barbarian 4/bard 9/horizon walker 7. The character supports his party through bardic music (primarily shamanist chants and the like) and by providing magical buffs. Aside from the prerequisite endurance, this character is well advised to take advantage of his huge axe with power attack, weapon focus, and the like. Diehard is also nice, especially with access to some cure spells in his host of abilities. Versatility is key for this character: he should be able to support the party where it is needed whenever it is needed. Pick the standard horizon walker abilties, but also grab desert terrain mastery. This build offers us another option: if we go horizon walker light, we can change it to barbarian 4/bard 9/horizon walker 1/eldritch knigh 6. This build gives you 14 effective caster levels of bard while maintaining that nice +17 base attack bonus. Your are primarily a warrior who is able to support himself and his allies with a bit of spellcasting and magical support in the form of bardic music. Spells to grab are spells for versatility and the obvious buff spells. In combat, you are a warrior first and foremost, so don't be afraid to stay near the front lines. Your HD is only slightly worse than a d8 on average, and with a good constitution score and your rage, it is probable comparable to the fighter's HP total. You're good at dealing damage, though your staying power needs your magic to bolster it. Be judicious in using your spells and rages, and make sure to think before going into combat. Just remember that you can rage early, because you won't have to worry about getting tired afterwards. Variations on this idea might use a barbarian/dwarven defender to take advantage of this immunity to fatigue, but for now I'll leave you with this shaman.

Conclusion
The horizon walker has a few neat abilities that can be used by many different characters to achieve many different ends. If you've ever wanted to be the master traveler, this class is for your. And if you've ever wanted to be the master of mobility, then this class is still for you. Keep moving and hit hard and you'll be doing well.

What’s changed?
The loremaster is largely the same prestige class it ever was, but again make sure you read over your spells to make sure nothing unexpected has changed on you there.

General tactics
The primary purpose of the Loremaster is to add a few small bonuses to spellcasting characters (like a bonus feat, bonuses to saves, etc.)

Lore is a nice little ability that will eventually let you sit down and identify items without casting a spell.

Bonus languages are primarily nice if you do a lot of summoning. Being able to order around your creatures is nice.

Pick knowledge skills in something appropriate to the campaign. If your DM is big on religious prophesies, grab knowledge (history) or knowledge (religion), or even knowledge (prophecy). You’re the go-to man to know about everything.

You have a healthy number of skill points to invest in things that single-classed spellcasters could never invest in. Being able to fall back on some good skills is a very good thing.

Since you need item creation of metamagic feats anyway, might as well invest in the good ones, like create wondrous item.

How far to take this prestige class?
Loremaster is a good, core precursor to another full spellcaster prestige class (such as archmage). The class is overall not exactly powerful, but in exchange for one feat, you gain access to lore, which is a decent ability for any game (from hack & slash dungeon romps to intrigue in the city).

What are the basic ways to build a loremaster?
The loremaster is there to know everything and be able to take advantage of knowledge to win the day. If this was 3.0, I would say mix this up with the divine oracle (from Defenders of the Faith), but as it stands, the loremaster can make for a very skilled diviner.
- The Arcane Explorer- The wizard who treks the multiverse in search of answers to his many questions.
- The Oracle- The cleric, and the diviner par-none. Not only can he see it, but he can tell you everything you could ever want to know about it.
- The Taleweaver- A caster bard who adventures to learn every story there is.

The Arcane Explorer
“You wonder why I travel ceaselessly. I in turn wonder why you do not.”

The quintessential adventuring wizard. He’s out there, day and night, to learn about everything there is to know. He’s a historian, a linguist, an anthropologist, and a student of planar exploration. Whenever he finds anything new, he adds it to his multitudinous collection of journals and studies. Our build is going to be wizard 7/loremaster 10/archmage 3. We want to get craft wondrous item and craft wand (free scribe scroll at level 1) as our prerequisite feats for loremaster. Grab skill focus (knowledge arcana) to qualify for both loremaster and archmage. Spell focus in divination and transmutation are the last things we need to qualify for archmage. Now this character is designed to observe and analyze a situation with divinations in advance. The day before he’ll examine every bit of the dungeon the party wants to raid, learning the layout and positions of enemies. When there, he’ll be the one conjuring up magical scouts (arcane eyes and the like) and making sure the way is clear for the party. All the while his impressive lore and knowledge will let him identify foes in advance (“We’ll want to use fire against the things up the hall, and whatever you do, don’t sneeze!”). Remember how the prepared wizard is invincible? Well this guy exemplifies this. He’ll never go anywhere without carefully scrying and analyzing the path and the target itself, and once he knows what to expect, he’ll go in with exactly the correct spells prepared. I’d recommend specializing in divination as a wizard and dropping enchantment. The school is decent, but if you hold onto illusion you can still deal with creatures who have weak will saves, and illusions are more difficult to defend against than enchantments. When combat starts, you should already have it well in hand because you know what to expect. Keep speaking with your party and make sure they know what to do. You bring the gift of information to the party, and if we remember the all-important lesson we learned from GI Joe, “knowing is half the battle”.

The Oracle
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this...”

Just like our wizard friend, this cleric is a diviner. His difference with the wizard is that he is able to handle situations he didn’t prepare for. Our build is basically the wizard, except we’re going to go cleric 7/thaumergist 5/loremaster 8. This character is going to use scouts in addition to simple divinations. We’ve sacrificed access to greater lore in the hopes that a planar cohort might be able to tell us a thing or two about things when summoned. Feats of choice here are going to be spell focus (conjuration), skill focus (knowledge the planes), etc. You are going to want to throw out summons early, summoning the most powerful thing you can to handle a specific situation. Before the battle begins, you’ll again want to scry the area, but instead of preparing a host of deadly spells you will want to prepare the correct summons. Use your planar allies or cohorts to scout an area out carefully, then select the correct summons for the fight. In combat you are playing the role of the HQ communications officer: deploy your special ops planar cohort to the right area. Get information on the enemy. Send out a patrol of blink dogs. And so on and so forth. Make sure you know what you’re going into before you set off for another adventure through divinations. You want to be going into an encounter prepared, with the correct spells and summons ready. Your strength is again knowledge: you are forewarned for nearly every encounter. When exploring, try to send a planar cohort out scouting for yourself. The correct one can be an excellent scout, and they are normally intelligent enough to report back with meaningful replies. In the end, your role in the party is the same as the Arcane Explorer: you want to keep your party prepared for whatever encounter is on the way.

The Talespinner
“… and if I’m not mistaken, Marcob the Great had a scar on his right cheek, not his left."

A bard and storyteller of the finest sort, the Talespinner is our last loremaster build. This character is very much a support caster. Between his decent bardic music and his full bardic spell progression (which isn’t too shabby), he should be able to make a decent backup spellcaster for the party. Our build is simply bard 9/sorcerer 1/loremaster 10. Bard spells aren’t exactly top-notch divinations, so something to consider would be taking a single level of wizard or sorcerer in here to fill up on low-level divination spells. I’ve chosen sorcerer just because you can easily get 5 easy divination spells, keeping your bard spells free for use later during your development, and you don’t miss out on any bardic music you wouldn’t be losing to loremaster anyway. Again, the only reason we’re getting this level of sorcerer is to round out our required divination spells. The lore ability will stack with bard levels, meaning your are absolutely the go-to man to find out anything about anything. Invest some ranks in knowledge (history) to get your lore bonus up to a minimum of +21 (assuming no intelligence modifier) at level 20, which means you will know even the most obscure fact on a roll of 9 or better on your check. You will get inspire courage +2 and inspire greatness, meaning you’ll have good bardic music abilities. You will have level 19 bardic spellcasting (meaning you lose one spell known and one spell per day). Not too shabby. In combat, you want to support your allies. You can scry like the cleric and wizard, but you lack some of the nicer divinations (like arcane eye), but you can still support your team very well with the rest of your spells. The best part? After combat, you’re still a top-notch diplomat and enchanter. Seek information to win the day, then make sure everyone gets the story right afterwards… once they all buy you drinks, anways.

Conclusion
Loremasters certainly aren’t figures of awesome power, but as an information gatherer and interpreter, they are the best. If you want to play a good diviner, you can do worse than to play a loremaster.

What’s changed?
A brand new class that exists for the purpose of making a summoner cleric viable and powerful.
- A core method of making using the planar ally spell extremely effective.

General tactics
You are never alone. Even when separated from the rest of the party or stuck in another plane, you can summon an ally up and have a helpful brute.

You are built to be a summoner pure and simple. Your job is to flood the battlefield with powerful allies to tip the scales in your favor.

Your summons automatically last twice as long as normal, so don’t hesitate to throw them out early as preparation for combat.

Odds are you will have good caster levels, so don’t forget that you are more than capable of throwing out a “normal” array of spells to support your allies.

A meat shield is never more than a single spell away.

Investing in leadership is always a good idea, especially when your cohort can be a high-roller from the fifth layer of hell.

With cleric levels, you are extremely good at buffing allies and yourself up, meaning you can make your summoned allies very powerful indeed.

A summon spell on contingency can basically mean you have the same near-invulnerability that even a high-level wizard has.

How far to take this prestige class?
This class is almost always taking five full levels of, though if you want to bail out early, either jumping off at level 3 or 4 is a fair choice.

What are the basic ways to build an thaumaturgist?
Being a thaumaturgist is all about being a good summoner, or at least a caster who can put summoning to good use.
- The Baatezu Keeper- An evil cleric who works in close tandem with his fiendish ally.
- The Field Marshal- A battle cleric whose army is always on call and is always ready to do battle with evil.
- The Shaman- Calling forth otherworldly spirits, this stealthy cleric protects the lands of his people.

The Baatezu Keeper
“My pet and I will drink from your skull tonight!”

Okay… we all know that clerics can make pretty good fighters with proper preparation. So how about we work on making him absolutely deadly in efficiency with a little hired help in the form of a devil? Let’s just go for a classic cleric build, going cleric 15/thaumaturgist 5. The absolute earliest level you can get a planar cohort is level 12, so the maximum ECL of a critter you can make your cohort at this point is a measly 10. Work with your DM to pick an effective critter to work with. Make sure you pick an ally that compliments your own strengths. If you are willing to wait until level 14, you can get a bearded devil companion, who can do healthy damage, strike up a rage, and avoid the problem of his relatively weak armor and hit points by stabbing over the shoulder of any allied tanks in the party. At level 16 you can have an erinyes join the party, whose flight, archery, and charm abilities coupled with excellent stats makes for a strong ally. A chain devil makes for a good tank, thanks in large part to his regeneration ability, though as a cleric healing isn’t really an issue for your allies. I personally feel that the erinyes makes for the most valuable ally, coupling a bit of spellcasting with good long-range archery support. Whichever pet you chose, make sure you develop a combat style that compliments it. If your ally uses a reach weapon, consider building a heavy tank cleric who focuses on defense to form a wall for your ally to attack over. If you have a flying ally, definitely consider getting your cleric a ranged weapon and access to some sort of flying spell. Other than that, do not forget that first and foremost you are a good summoner: call more allies to help if things ever start looking bad. And remember that if you have a demon or devil cohort, your cohort is probably a summoner too, able to summon up a bit more support if things go bad. All in all, you should be able to make a pretty brutal team if you just remember to work with your cohort as much as possible.

The Field Marshal
“I pray not for war, but I won’t run from battle either.”

Now on the good side, we’ve got us the field marshal. This cleric is a cleric of war and battle. He summons allies with use of his superior tactical knowledge to give himself and his party every advantage. Again, we’re going cleric 15/thaumaturgist 5. Just to switch things up, this cleric is a double-purpose multitasker on the battlefield. On one hand, he is a great mounted fighter. On the other, he is excellent at providing magical support to his allies, using the mobility of his mount to take advantage of opportunities others might miss. With some investment in the mounted combat tree (mounted combat, ride-by attack, spirited charge) he is able to deal healthy damage by charging enemies in melee if needed. If possible, take the war domain and try to pick a deity with the lance as a favored weapon. This cleric’s true prowess comes from setting down summoned allies in the correct places on the battlefield. Throwing down spells like bless to enhance summoned creatures and your own party can be a huge help. Although you are a good mounted fighter, you should refrain from charging at the first sign of trouble. Your job is to prep the battlefield and your party for an encounter, making sure your side has the upper-hand. If you can solve an encounter through one quick charge, then by all means do so! However, always make sure you analyze a situation before deciding on one course of action. Saving spells for a later fight is a good idea, but not if it means your party won’t live through this one. Try to develop a fine sense of when a summoned ally is needed and when it would be wasteful. If you’re fighting one big foe, putting down a summoned ally or two is good for a few temporary meat shields, leaving room for you to start charging him. For a planar cohort, consider a celestial unicorn. Not only will you have a top-notch mount, but your mount will be an impressive healer and fighter in his own right.

The Shaman
“The spirits of this land keep us safe.”

Now let’s put together a summoner who not only summons some pretty powerful allies, but can buff and support them extremely well. This old cleric 12/thaumaturgist 5/hierophant 3 is a pretty effective character (and if you have access to divine feats, even more than ever). He does little fighting himself, relying instead on his summoned allies to do his work for him. If trouble arises, he calls on his planar cohort (a half-celestial human fighter) to go fight. With his hierophant abilities used to grab faith healing, spellpower +1, and gift of the divine, he can quickly turn his cohort into a deadly fighting machine. Using the spell imbue with spell ability, the shaman can even turn his cohort into a passable spellcaster for the purpose of buffing himself (with an animal buff, divine favor, and shield of faith, maybe). If you have access to divine feats, this is an enormous boon for this pair, as the shaman can give his cohort use of a turn dead to power the feat (though it might require the cohort to take levels of paladin or cleric first…) Faith healing is nice because many of your summoned allies (who you should be careful to select) will be easily healed thanks to this ability. The shaman can basically sit back and be a pure spellcaster while his cohort takes on the fighter aspect of his job. Together, the two of them are a very effective team, only this time it is the player who takes the support role for his younger and much more physically able cohort. And coupled with his own summoning abilities, he is more than able to conjure up an effective team to support his cohort, then further support them with his near-full cleric spellcasting. DM’s, an interesting twist on the old leadership thing might be to make the player the cohort instead of the NPC, and playing a summoned extraplanar warrior could be very interesting for a change of pace.

Conclusion
The thaumaturgist is a class meant to make a cleric into a good summoner who can use the planar ally spells with greater ease. If you like playing a cleric and you like summoning, this class is for you. The trick is just to learn when to use your spells (as all spellcasters must). Things are just a little more difficult for a thaumaturgist, who must balance his summoning spells with his other duties.

If I do stuff from the Minis HB or Complete Warrior (or ever get around to doing the Red Wizard), it will be entirely on an individual basis. It took me almost 5 months to do the core stuff, so I'm in no hurry to dive in to do the dozens of PrCs and classes introduced in those two books any time soon. Though I have been toying around with hexblade and dervish builds a bit recently...