I believed that I've talked about it before that I think building planeswalkers from Magic the Gathering is difficult for two main reasons. The first is that they start and, for the most part stay, much more powerful than a Pathfinder PC. The second is that the more popular and well-known planeswalkers have almost too much representation, it's impossible to get all of their abilities translated into a build, meaning that I have to pick and choose. However, I've decided that I'm going to start looking at some of the less represented planeswalkers and occasionally trying to make builds for them. It's worth noting that this build and the gear for it is picked in a vacuum without consideration for what adventure it may be in, so certain options might be better in specific situations. Also, this will be the last caster build I do until Secrets of Magic comes out!
Let's get into the build for Venser from Magic the Gathering!
VENSER
CHARACTER Venser
SOURCE Magic the Gathering
GOAL Venser is a planeswalker hailing from Dominaria. His central color is blue but he’s aligned to white as a secondary color. Venser is primarily represented through two cards – Venser, the Sojourner and Venser, Shaper Savant. The former can exile one of your permanents and then return it at the next end step, make it so that your creatures can’t be blocked, and create an effect to exile other permanents whenever you cast a spell. In his Venser, Shaper Savant card, he is represented as a creature rather than a planeswalker and is a pure blue human wizard with 2/2 Power and Toughness. He has the flash keyword, meaning he can be cast as an instant, and when he enters the battlefield, he returns a target spell or permanent to its owner’s hand. Substantially less fancy, but definitely handy. His father was a scavenger in the swamps of Urborg and following his death, Venser had to make due on his own. As an adult, he dwelled within his workshop, salvaging parts from Phyrexian remains before being dragged into the adventures of other planeswalkers.
LEVEL 1 Even somebody as brilliant as Venser has to start with his ABCs – his ancestry, background, and class. Venser is a human, as stated by his Shaper Savant card and I liked the skilled heritage for him, allowing him to become trained in Crafting for free and also getting a free upgrade to it at 5th level. While 2 Toughness is nothing to write home about, we do see Venser getting in the thick of it quite a bit, so our two free ability boosts will go to Constitution and Intelligence for his problem-solving capabilities. Our Natural Ambition ancestry feat is going to help us get a jump on our class feats because, surprise-surprise, we’ll be taking a spellcasting class, meaning that we don’t usually get a class feat at 1st level.
After his dad died, Venser continued to live in Urborg, scraping by to survive. So while it doesn’t do a lot for his character, we’ll be taking the scavenger background. This does offer a boost to Intelligence that we’ll take as well as one to Strength. It makes us trained in Survival and Urborg Lore (or somewhere setting appropriate) and gives us the Forager skill feat so that we’re better at finding food for more people.
As I already revealed, we’ll be taking a spellcasting class. The best fit for Venser, in my eyes, is the wizard. There’s a part of me that thinks maybe I should have waited for inventor to release for this guy or maybe dipped into that (possibly started in playtest inventor and then taken a Wizard Dedication) but I’m trying to refrain from the playtest stuff until its full release and I wanted to get this build done before Guns and Gears finally released. So we’ll stick with a wizard who is adept at the conjuration school of magic, since teleportation and the like falls under that, and take the staff nexus arcane thesis because none of the others really fit and this kinda deals with the idea of building things. As a wizard, we receive an automatic boost to Intelligence, and then another four boosts that we’ll apply to Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma (Str 12, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 18, Wis 12, Cha 12), leading to a well-rounded array with a single outlier. Naturally, we’re automatically trained in Arcana but we also become trained in Acrobatics, Athletics, Nature, Occultism, Religion, and Thievery. Normally, we don’t get a class feat, but since I took Natural Ambition, we will receive one. My choice here is more reflective of Venser’s general colors, which I base a few decisions throughout this build off of, rather than his exact mechanics, but the blue coloration means that Counterspell is a must-have. This is a little rigid, but once we get up to Clever Counterspell, we’ll be set.
Spellbook: Cantrips – dancing lights, daze, detect magic, mage hand, message, prestidigitation, read aura, shield, telekinetic projectile; 1st – color spray, magic missile, mending, shocking grasp, summon construct, thoughtful gift
LEVEL 2 We already have Counterspell so to prep for the future Clever Counterspell, we need to start with Recognize Spell. While Clever Counterspell is one of the few feats in the game that has a heavy feat tax, it feels a little bit less so to me because half of those feats are skill feats. Also, jumping right off my talk about picking feats aligned to his colors rather than actual mechanics, we’ll take Energy Ablation. I have to be honest though – I’m not sure how great this feat actually is. It could be handy in a fight against mixed creatures, but a lot of creatures that throw elemental damage of some sort at you tend to have at least resistances to that same element. Though, admittedly, not always. And when all we have prepared is shocking grasp against something with electricity resistance, this’ll be handy.
Spellbook: 1st – acidic burst, hydraulic push
Gear: dull grey aeon stone
LEVEL 3 We’re gonna be getting an automatic skill increase to Crafting thanks to our heritage so we’ll instead put this level’s skill increase to Arcana, bumping it to expert. There aren’t a lot of general feats I like for this build, so we’ll be swapping out basic general feats for skill feats at a few levels since those qualify for general feats. This first one will be Magical Shorthand so that we are better and quicker at learning new spells to put in our spellbook.
Spellbook: 2nd – rime slick, invisibility
Gear: +1 staff, dull grey aeon stone, ring of discretion
LEVEL 4 We can use the Trick Magic Item skill feat to gain the usage of scrolls, wands, and staves even when their spell doesn’t show up on our arcane spell list. I don’t know if I’ve missed this class feat before, but Linked Focus makes it so that when we Drain Bonded Item to cast a conjuration spell, we regain a focus point.
Spellbook: 2nd – obscuring mist, see invisibility
Gear: crafter’s eyepiece, +1 staff, hand of the mage, dull grey aeon stone
LEVEL 5 We get a new set of four ability boosts that we’ll put to Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 19, Wis 14, Cha 14). We’re going to get an automatic skill increase to Crafting, raising it to expert, thanks to our ancestry but our actual skill increase will be to Thievery, getting that up to expert as well so that Venser is better at taking stuff apart. Our ancestry feat will be Arcane Tattoos – Conjuration. I don’t think Venser actually has any tattoos, but this gives him an extra cantrip in his preferred school, so that’s handy.
Spellbook: 3rd – haste, magical fetters
Gear: +1 striking staff, crafter’s eyepiece, hat of the magi, hand of the mage, dull grey aeon stone, ring of discretion
LEVEL 6 With Crafting at expert, we can pick up the very important Magical Crafting skill feat so that we can build magical items, leaning into what Venser did, lore-wise. While not entirely represented through his cards, Venser does do quite a bit with building and fixing things. Since Venser looks much more heavily armored than your typical wizard, I want to represent that with the Sentinel Dedication. This is a very nice dedication feat as with just this single investment in it, we’ll get expert proficiency in light and medium armor when we get expert unarmored defense.
Spellbook: 3rd – lightning bolt, slow
Gear: +1 scale mail, +1 striking staff, bag of holding (type I), crafter’s eyepiece, hand of the mage, brooch of shielding
LEVEL 7 We immediately raise our Crafting skill up to master proficiency with this skill increase and then use our general feat to get Inventor so that we can make our own formulas.
Spellbook: 4th – blink, creation
Gear: staff of conjuration, +1 scale mail, wand of manifold missiles (1st), +1 striking staff, crafter’s eyepiece, hat of the magi
LEVEL 8 Most of what Venser deals with seems to be metal so we’ll take the Specialty Crafting – Blacksmithing skill feat. From our class, we’ll pick up our Advanced School Spell so that we gain an extra focus point as well as the dimensional steps. This gives us more abilities to teleport around and coupling it with gaining the dimension door spell at this level is also going to help with that.
Spellbook: 4th – confusion, dimension door
Gear: gloves of storing, staff of conjuration, pathfinder’s pouch, +1 scale mail, +1 striking staff, bag of holding (type I)
LEVEL 9 Since Crafting is up at master now, we’ll get Arcana up there as well with this level’s skill increase. Building off of our Arcane Tattoos ancestry feat, we’ll pick up the Ornate Tattoos ancestry feat to gain unseen servant as an innate arcane spell, allowing Venser to create himself an assistant when he’s tinkering in the workshop.
Spellbook: 5th – banishment, summon dragon
Gear: +1 resilient scale mail, gloves of storing, boots of bounding, staff of conjuration, wand of manifold missiles (1st), +1 striking staff
LEVEL 10 This time around, we’ll put our ability boosts in Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma (Str 14, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 20, Wis 14, Cha 16). This increase to Intelligence gives us another language and makes us trained in Stealth. The Quick Recognition skill feat is another feat that we need to pick up Clever Counterspell, so we’ll grab it here. We’ll pick up Scroll Savant for our class feat, which is a nifty feat that allows us to make temporary scrolls at the beginning of each day. This will help us move around more though we won’t be able to make scrolls of blink or dimension door until next level.
Spellbook: 5th – chromatic walls, mind probe
Gear: wand of manifold missiles (3rd), +1 resilient scale mail, Cordelia’s construct key, gloves of storing, staff of conjuration, +1 striking staff
LEVEL 11 Since we took Trick Magic Item earlier, we might as well invest in some of our other spellcasting tradition skills, starting with Nature and raising it to expert proficiency. However, if this is not the route you want to go with the character, I would instead pick Thievery so that we’re better at disabling things. For our general feat, we’ll pick up Incredible Initiative, letting us get a jump on foes and using our teleportation magic to get into position before they can react.
Spellbook: 6th – teleportation, true seeing
Gear: +2 striking staff, wand of manifold missiles (3rd), greater hat of the magi, +1 resilient scale mail, gloves of storing, boots of bounding
LEVEL 12 With the Impeccable Crafter skill feat that we pick up here, we become better at crafting items that fall into the category of our Specialty Crafting, receiving the effects of a critical success whenever we roll a success on our Crafting check for them. We also finally get to pick up Clever Counterspell as our class feat here. Between all the ways we have of recouping spells through our staff, scrolls, and other abilities, we don’t have to be too afraid to spend spells to stop the magic of our foes.
Spellbook: 6th – chain lightning, collective transposition
Gear: +2 resilient scale mail, +2 striking staff, greater staff of conjuration, wand of manifold missiles (3rd), Cordelia’s construct key, invisibility armor rune
LEVEL 13 Going along the same line of thought for increasing our Nature skill, we’ll take a skill increase to Religion this level to boost it to expert proficiency. I don’t think you find many hardier travelers than planeswalkers, so our ancestry feat will be Hardy Traveler, increasing our Bulk limit and a circumstance bonus to our Speed for overland travel.
Spellbook: 7th – duplicate foe, plane shift
Gear: +2 greater striking staff, +2 resilient scale mail, greater crafter’s eyepiece, greater staff of conjuration, wand of manifold missiles (3rd), greater hat of the magi
LEVEL 14 Grabbing Quick Identification lets us figure out the nature of the magical items and other contraptions that we pick up faster. While this doesn’t really reflect anything mechanically, Reflect Spell is another step along the path started by taking Counterspell that’s kind of fun as when we successfully Counteract a spell, we turn it back on its original caster.
Spellbook: 7th – force cage, time beacon
Gear: boots of speed, +2 greater striking staff, fortification armor rune, +2 resilient scale mail, greater staff of conjuration, ring of counterspells
LEVEL 15 In the home stretch, our ability boosts will get applied to Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 16, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 21, Wis 16, Cha 16). Naturally, Crafting will be our first skill to reach legendary proficiency thanks to this level’s skill increase. While we should be hard to catch and pin down, we’ll pick up Toughness and give ourselves some extra HP since we have such a low base.
Spellbook: 8th – disappearance, maze
Gear: +2 greater resilient scale mail, boots of speed, bag of holding (type IV), +2 greater striking staff, greater crafter’s eye piece, ring of maniacal devices
LEVEL 16 With legendary Crafting, we’ll be taking the Craft Anything skill feat. I think this is the first time I’ve ever taken this. This makes it so that as long as we can make the thing in question, such as with Magical Crafting, we can ignore most other requirements. Also, since we have incidentally focused slightly on summoning spells with being a conjuration wizard, we’ll pick up Effortless Concentration so that we can maintain any such spell that we have active while retaining all our actions.
Spellbook: 8th – polar ray, power word stun
Gear: antimagic armor rune, +2 greater resilient scale mail, ring of wizardry (type IV), boots of speed, +2 greater striking staff, fortification armor rune
LEVEL 17 The next skill to get to legendary proficiency will be Arcana, representing our mastery of magic. We might as well finish out the feat line we started with Arcane Tattoos and pick up Virtue-Forged Tattoos and gain aqueous orb as an innate arcane spell since it has to do with water and that’s the common element associated with blue in Magic.
Spellbook: 9th – disjunction, upheaval
Gear: +3 greater striking staff, antimagic armor rune, dragonscale amulet, +2 greater resilient scale mail, boots of speed, bag of holding (type IV)
LEVEL 18 Our increases to Nature and Religion become something of a moot point when we take Unified Theory as it allows us to simply use our Arcana skill for all actions we would use the others for. I still stand by increasing them when we did because it allows us to use Trick Magic Item until we get up to this point, but it might be worth retraining them at this point. For our class feat, Reprepare Spell will allow us to take 10 minutes to prepare a spell of 4th level or lower in an empty slot. Again, this increases our ability to use dimension door (at its base level, at least) as well as potentially Counterspell more regularly.
Spellbook: 9th – prismatic shield, weird
Gear: diadem of intellect, +3 greater striking staff, staff of power, antimagic armor rune, +2 greater resilient scale mail, ring of wizardry (type IV)
LEVEL 19 Because it has to do with working on devices and the like, we’ll take this final skill increase to Thievery to get it up to master proficiency. Since we can build a lot of magical equipment now, and kinda have been able to for a while, we’ll take Incredible Investiture so that we can wear more of it.
Spellbook: 10th – gate, remake
Gear: +3 greater resilient scale mail, diadem of intellect, clockwork helm, +3 greater striking staff, antimagic armor rune, dragonscale amulet
LEVEL 20 With this final set of ability boosts we’ll increase Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 18, Dex 16, Con 18, Int 22, Wis 18, Cha 16). This increase to Intelligence will teach us another language and makes us trained in Society as Venser finally starts to learn about other people. The Assured Identification skill feat prevents us from getting a critical failure to Identify Magic in most cases. Finally, just to give us access to more magic, we’ll take Archwizard’s Might to give us a second 10th-level spell slot.
Spellbook: 9th – foresight, meteor swarm
Gear: lavender and green ellipsoid aeon stone, +3 greater resilient scale mail, clockwork cloak, diadem of intellect, staff of power, +3 greater striking staff
CONCLUSION Well, I tried. This is a build that I might revisit in the future when Secrets of Magic and Gears and Guns has released because I like the idea of the inventor class for him. But I built a wizard adept at building magical gear and able to harness a wide array of magic with a slight focus on teleportation magic. Between Scroll Savant, Reprepare Spell, our staves, and the line-up of other stuff we have, we have access to a lot of spells per day. The closest I could get to his ability to temporarily exile a creature was the blink spell, which unfortunately only targets ourselves. Maybe there will be better spells for it when we Secrets of Magic comes out, but I worked with what I had for this. Invisibility in a concept makes a creature ‘unblockable,’ but I wasn’t really able to capture the rest of his effects, at least in my eyes. Hope you guys like it!
Be sure to lemme know what you think of the build. Does it work? Does it represent the character? Would you ever use it? What other characters should I build?
If you want to join in on the discussion of these builds and the ones I do for monsters or just hang out with a bunch of fellow TTRPG nerd, check out the Discord server. We also have a Twitter where we try to post teasers for the blog and are trying to get some milestones made up for. Next week, we're going back to Runeterra for a far ranging hero.
Have a fantastic Friday!
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