So your plan is to assume the DM will give you all the bullshit tactics for cheaper spells that most DMs already balk at Wizards using, even though it is way more easily done by Wizards.K wrote:It's a mistake to see an archivist as a poor cleric when you should see it as a buff wizard.
For example, you can just wear full plate and a tower shield and cast Sleep and Grease before 2nd level assuming a little luck with the loot and the ability to buy items. That is a straight out-of-the box app using Domains that requires very little DM favor (basically just using the Spell Compendium). Who the fuck cares about hitting things with a weapon with a MAD non-warrior character when you could cast encounter-winning spells every turn while in heavy armor?
Second, the economics of an archivist are pretty nice with only a little thought. Rather than buy scrolls of high-level spells, you can just buy divine writings at 150 GP a page using the straight Wizard spell copying rules that Archivist function calls.... and if you assume the existence of multiclass arcane/Archivist Geometers, then divine writings are always 150 gp regardless of spell level if you are willing to accept slightly higher DCs to learn (scrolls of 1st level spells are always going to be cheaper than writings).
The spell selection of an Archivist is equal to "all the spells ever" because there are lots of divine classes that get to add spells to their list from other lists. For example, just the Fiend-blooded PrC from the same book as the Archivist proves that divine versions of every illusion, necromancy, enchantment, or fire descriptor spell in any spell list could exist as a divine writing because a high-enough level Fiend-blooded divine caster cast could add those spells to his divine spell list.
On a related note, I've always wanted to play a Geometer who used the rules for tattooing his spell formulas on his body from Complete Arcane. I'm pretty sure that I could get all of a reasonable campaign's worth of spells onto my character's body.
And then, after you have plundered all the spells you can including bullshit like talking about how your level 20 Fiend Blooded caster has all the spells and gives them to you, you are going to cast the same spells as the Wizard, except not sometimes because sometimes you can't get them, and you are going to do this with a character who casts off two attributes instead of one, and do this in Heavy Armor that you are not proficient with.
Yeah, if someone told me I could make all my Wizard spells divine and get a d6 HD, and all I had to do was cast off two attributes, I would laugh at them, and keep casting off one.