Low-level core Wizard build suggestions?

[fracas]

Basic info: Starting level 3, SRD material only, rolled ability scores: 18, 16, 10, 10, 10, 8

Current build: Human Focused* Transmuter 3 (wizard transmutation specialist)
Str 8 Dex 10 Con 16 Int 18 Wis 10 Cha 10

*Focused Specialist in this game is just picking a third banned school in exchange for one more slot at each spell level. My prohibited schools are Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy.

Skills: Max ranks in Concentration, Knowledges (Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Religion, Planes), Spellcraft.

Feats:
Wizard Familiar- Hawk
Human- Extend Spell
1- Spell Focus Transmutation
3- ?
Planning on Leadership at 6th due to relatively few strong core feats, but I probably won't live that long.

Questions:
-I'm required to take spell focus to play a focused specialist (great for that extra slot) but SF: Transmutation seems like a joke at low levels. The only lvl 1-2 transmutation spells that allow a save in the SRD are Enlarge/Reduce Person. Conjuration is the other big school of course, but all it has are Web and Glitterdust. Maybe Illusion is the way to go since that seems to have all the Save-or-Suck spells.

-Recommendations for feats? I'm avoiding ray spells due to low dex... I could switch the 16 to Dex, but having a 10 in Con would just be suicide.

-Banning evocation seems to be popular in the handbooks, but in low level core there aren't many other options for doing damage. The rest of the party is a paladin3 and a cleric2/fighter1, so I'm all there is for area effects. Battlefield control is all well and good, but sometimes you just need to burn the crap out of an army of mooks. Flaming Sphere is great for eeking extra damage out of limited spells per day, Burning Hands was made for the aforementioned mooks, and Gust of Wind is great for moving my fog spells around the field. I have to wonder if in this case either a more standard gnome illusionist build or a sorcerer wouldn't be a better choice?

-Recommendations for gear? So far I have a light crossbow, a dagger, and wands of Grease, Enlarge Person, and Protection from Evil.

[Keld Denar]

I'd honestly suggest Conjourer. Don't forget about Grease. Between Grease and Glitterdust, you really don't need much else. You can still pack an Enlarge Person or two, depending on your Int. At level 3, Glitterdust is staggeringly strong.

Plus, this opens up the Cloudy Conjouration feat (CMage) which is tons of fun for screwing with people. Also, Abrupt Jaunt from the PHBII which'll save your bacon so many times, garunteed!

[MrRigger]

SRD material only, so no Complete Mage. No orbs, either, and no Power Word: Pain (though you banned Enchantment anyway). Color Spray is a good option for you, and well, so is staying out of range. You're a squishy wizard. RP to reflect that.

MrRigger

[Eldariel]

Pyrotechnics for another level 2 SoX Transmutation. Use with e.g. Bullseye Lantern. That said, yeah, SF: Trans picks up later on. Conjuration is the best on low levels; Grease, Web and Glitterdust is indeed all you need. Then you get Stinking Cloud and so on, to cover all 3 saves with one school.

[fracas]

Sounds about right. Too bad Spell Focus won't help the DC of that balance check on Grease. Oh well.

If I'm targeting high save DCs maybe the way to go is SF and GSF: Conjuration and either high elf or gnome. +2 int = +1 to all save DCs whereas gnomes get it only for illusions... and int would get me bonus spells too. On the other hand, gnomes get nicer class abilities and a con bonus instead of a penalty. So elf has slightly stronger offense at the expense of significantly weaker defense... gnome wins, methinks.

Or are there actually good low-level wizard feats in core that I'm missing somehow? Metamagic seems like mostly a sorcerer thing and I don't really want to deal with the XP loss from item crafting.

Scratch sorcerer as well. It has a lot going for it, but I'd be missing top-level spells at two of the three levels I'm expecting to survive through. Suck.

EDIT: I guess Augment Summoning wouldn't be bad if I'm getting Spell Focus: Conjuration anyway...

EDIT2: Cloudy Conjuration and Abrupt Jaunt are great of course, except that this is an SRD-only game as I noted in the first post. :(

[Telonius]

SRD only, though ... that does put a bit of a crimp in your style. Honestly, I wouldn't go for the focused specialist. The Wizard's biggest power comes from his versatility. Specialist is fine, but if you're limited to the SRD, any more than that and you might as well be playing a Sorcerer.

Here's what I'd do. If you have to be a transmuter, ban Evocation and Enchantment.

1 Extend Spell, Spell Penetration
3 Combat Casting or Skill Focus (Concentration)
4 Craft Wondrous Item
6 Leadership

There are two schools of thought on my suggested third-level feats. Combat Casting gives a larger bonus to a smaller set of circumstances; Skill Focus gives a smaller bonus to all checks. Personally I'd judge it by the DM. Have you ever known him to call for a Concentration check other than when somebody is casting? If not, use Combat Casting. If so, Skill Focus.

[Eldariel]

Sounds about right. Too bad Spell Focus won't help the DC of that balance check on Grease. Oh well.

If I'm targeting high save DCs maybe the way to go is SF and GSF: Conjuration and either high elf or gnome. +2 int = +1 to all save DCs whereas gnomes get it only for illusions... and int would get me bonus spells too. On the other hand, gnomes get nicer class abilities and a con bonus instead of a penalty. So elf has slightly stronger offense at the expense of significantly weaker defense... gnome wins, methinks.

Or are there actually good low-level wizard feats in core that I'm missing somehow? Metamagic seems like mostly a sorcerer thing and I don't really want to deal with the XP loss from item crafting.

Scratch sorcerer as well. It has a lot going for it, but I'd be missing top-level spells at two of the three levels I'm expecting to survive through. Suck.

EDIT: I guess Augment Summoning wouldn't be bad if I'm getting Spell Focus: Conjuration anyway...

Extend Spell and Quicken Spell are v. good; that's about it, and you can't really use Extend Spell before level 5, Quicken before 9. Crafts are good. Spell Penetration is fairly good in Core; I always pick 'em up. Improved Initiative is also v. good. Though your ability score spread is really mediocre; losing out on Dex is very painful in terms of AC and initiative.

[Keld Denar]

EDIT2: Cloudy Conjuration and Abrupt Jaunt are great of course, except that this is an SRD-only game as I noted in the first post. :(

Bah, I saw Focused Specialist (a varient in Complete Mage) and totally glossed over the core-only note. My bad.

[fracas]

Yup. And I can't even grab Nerveskitter to help out with initiative. Given that I'm working with a +0, improving it seems like an exercise in futility. This is going to be a battlefield game (as opposed to, say, a dungeon/forest crawl) with us being basically foot soldiers so battlefield control is definitely the name of the game.

I like the idea of switching from trans to conj or illusion. Levitate+ protection from arrows+gust of wind would mean I could float over the field in relative safety and drop death from above. If I drop Focused Specialist and ban necromancy instead of evocation all I'm really losing is false life and ray of enfeeblement. Rays are gonna suck with my poor dex, and false life is only a single spell, sweet as it is. Blindness/deafness is nice, but glitterdust does a lot of the same thing as an area effect. At lvl 3, same deal. I lose vampiric touch, but if I'm close enough to deliver a melee touch I'm probably already screwed. Evocation gets me Fireball (in a battlefield game with core-only spells and no other AoE-capable party members? You can't possibly say it's not useful, if for no other reason than that it saves my buddies the time it takes to kill a 20' radius of mooks that would otherwise be webbed or whatever).

Thoughts on human vs high elf vs gnome? I assume high elf will generally be everyone's last choice, but another +1 to all saves and a couple bonus spells would be nice...

[fracas]

Spell Penetration is nice but doesn't seem to generally pick up until higher levels. I usually grab it with my lvl 6 or 9 feat depending on whether I want that or leadership first. Give my sorc cohort the spell penetration since he's the blaster.

[Eldariel]

Thoughts on human vs high elf vs gnome? I assume high elf will generally be everyone's last choice, but another +1 to all saves and a couple bonus spells would be nice...

Gray Elf? I'd hit it. Human isn't terribly exciting, especially in a low level game, and Gnome is...ok, but only if you care about touch spells. If you could get some Dex, you could max your Hide and Move Silently; chances are there's something to hide in and on low levels, the CC ranks would get the job done.

And sure, Fireball can be useful for clearing out lots of mooks. It's also a 3rd level spell though and you wondered if you'd ever get there. Conjuration has some nice AoEs, though they don't deal damage. Stinking Cloud and company can really wreck numbers, and of course there's eventually Cloudkill but that's level 9, so... Still, it's something at least.

[ericgrau]

Web and flaming sphere are the all stars at this level. You can also try grease, color spray, enlarge person, glitterdust and pyrotechincs. Though color spray (HD cap) and enlarge person (extra damage received overtakes extra damage dished out soon) will be obsolete soon except in special cases. Likewise sleep might be ok if you still fight lots of weak foes.

Other than flaming sphere level 1-2 damage is pretty lousy, and should be seen more as a utility fall back. Using the buffing round to charge your familiar with a shocking grasp (instead of wasting your own precious combat time), hitting something fragile yet far away or incorporeal with magic missile that nothing else will hit, etc.

I wouldn't get extend spell b/c at higher levels you'll want to blow a measly 3,000 gp on the lesser rod instead. I'd avoid metamagic for now and get feats like spell focus. Unless i'm planning a metamagic intensive build and need to load up early on feats that I'll be using later.

For gear I'd put most of it into more spells for your spellbook. Then there are scrolls of a bunch of different level 1 utility spells and a masterwork crossbow. Can't afford much else.

[OldFart]

Focused conjurer rather than transmuter works better with core only and wanting to focus on battlefield tactics. Human is less valuable in core - there aren't that many useful feats. Gnome v. Grey Elf - as much as the stat bonuses and size modifier make a case for the gnome, in the end +1 DC everything > +1 DC illusion, and +1 1st-level spell > gnome SLAs. For feats – definitely SF: Conjuration. Other than that – maybe Augment Summoning, depending on your alignment and thus Summon Monster list. Summon Swarm can be a good (albeit dangerous) multi-foe spell, is deadly against CR 3 foes, and the +2 DC matters.

[fracas]

Yeah, I think Grey Elf is conclusively better than Human and Gnome - offensively at least: If my Human feat is Spell Focus: Conjuration and Gnomes essentially get Spell Focus: Illusion, then both are inferior to +1 DC to everything. I agree that +1 1st lvl spell is also better than Gnome SLAs, but probably about equal to Human's extra skill points.

Only catch: the Con penalty. That stings, especially compared to Gnome's Con bonus.

I have 16 Con right now, and I rolled a 2 and a 3 for my 2nd and 3rd hit dice. That means I'm sitting on 3*3=9 hit points from Con and 4+2+3=9 from levels. 18hp total, and a +4 Fort save.

If I go Gnome, I get an extra 3 for 21hp and +5 Fort. If I go Elf, I lose 3 for 15hp and +3 Fort.

Gnome vs Elf gets me an additional 6hp and +2 Fort. 6/21=28.6% more hp. Gnome also gets me +1 AC and +4 hide and move silently. That's a pretty significant increase in survivability, especially if I last long enough to snag some boots+cloak of elvenkind.

Furthermore, considering that the other party members have strong Leeroy Jenkins tendencies (mounted halfling charger-paladin and grappler-fighter/cleric, what do you expect?) I tend to rely heavily on creative uses of mirror image/silent image (and liberal summoning of celestial dogs) to not die. Eventually someone's gonna make a will save and I'm gonna spend a turn or two getting smacked around.

Finally, on a different topic: I note that another poster agrees with me that evocation is actually pretty solid in low-level core. Flaming Sphere and Shocking Grasp and Magic Missile and Burning Hands are all pretty useful. Flaming Sphere is highly efficient in terms of damage per spell level and I can control it without breaking an Invisibility spell cast after the FS. Magic Missile hits incorporeals, Shocking Grasp is great for keeping the hawk busy, and of course Burning Hands is gold for toasting mooks stuck in a web spell... or climbing down my throat.

[Jack Zander]

Why are you putting your 8 in Str instead of Cha? Surely having a higher carrying capacity would help more than a +1 to your social skills.

[fracas]

Disguise Self and Alter Self can both add to my disguise checks which are an important part of my continued survival. "I'm not a squishy wizard, nope, just the harmless mook carrying the camping gear/angry looking frenzied berserker that nobody would ever ever want to melee with." Cha gives me another +1.

Besides, what all should I be carrying? At low levels, a few wands and a crossbow and dagger. In a few more levels I gain several wands and maybe a doodad of +Int, and then a Haversack to carry it all.

[Jack Zander]

Meh, with the bonus that disguise and alter self give you, that +1 won't really make much of a difference. If you are adamant about using the disguise skill, you'll get more by putting ranks into it rather than boosting cha by 2 points.

I just think str in general is better for a wizard than cha. You'll never know what you may have to carry or lift or, heaven forbid, swing a club at.

[fracas]

I s'pose it's good for delivering touch spells at least (although if I wanna succeed at one it'll most likely involve true strike) but with both other party members being beaters I'm not too worried about carrying capacity. As for swinging a club? If it comes to that I'm most likely already dead. 1d6+1 isn't much better than 1d6, and a +1/+2 attack bonus is probably gonna miss anyway. Sure there's a possibility that it'd save me, but I'd go with maxing something I'm already actually good at. 5% less chance of having my disguise broken is 5% less chance of needing a 5% increase in chance to hit with a club. ;)

[Eldariel]

I just think str in general is better for a wizard than cha. You'll never know what you may have to carry or lift or, heaven forbid, swing a club at.

This...is not really true. Y'see, there's a few important spells that have Charisma-based checks (Charm-line, Planar Bindings notably) and if you Shapechange or use a similar spell granting Sups, many of your Supernatural Abilities derive saves off Charisma.

Also, what's the whole "+1 doesn't matter"? Of course it does; it matters exactly as much as those 2 skill points, which cap out soon and are quite expensive due to being cross-class. Otherwise we wouldn't discuss the whole matter. Wizards can dump Cha but I'd personally 100% dump Strength first. You have spells to do your lifting for you if it really comes down to that.

[fracas]

Eldariel: generally agree, although a couple specific points:
-I've banned enchantment, so charm spells aren't an issue
-I'm most likely not going to hit even medium levels, so shapechange and planar binding aren't an issue

That said, there are plenty of other valid examples, and if I need strength for some crazy reason there's always bull strength. Considering how likely I am to make cha-based checks for disguise/alter self vs how likely I am to make str-based checks to swing a club or carry something heavy, I think it makes more sense to put my permanent bonus in cha.

[tiercel]

If battlefield control is the name of the game (moreso than usual), Conjuration won't do you wrong. I took a conjurer into the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil's Crater Ridge Mines: grease, glitterdust, web, stinking cloud, win.

Seriously, if you're hardcore dungeon-crawling, Conjuration rules the battlefield so hard it's not even funny. Web hardly even cares if you pass the save. Stinking cloud knocks victims within out of the fight as well as cutting off lines of sight (not to mention intimidating ppl *behind* the cloud from entering it to get to you). Glitterdust is area-effect blind, as well as nuking Hide/invisibility. Even grease is tastily multifunctional, ranged area-effect tripping being only the effect that first comes to mind; it's also a ranged disarm, or a ranged grapple-escape buff.

If that's still not enough for you, all the summons are also in the Conjuration school as well, in case there are still squares on the battleboard not being occupied by an ally or a spell effect of yours.

It's not like the fun stops as you get higher level: black tentacles, solid fog, wall of stone, acid fog... start stacking your areas of effect of various spells and your enemies will be increasingly hard pressed to just *move*, much less do anything to you.

You will hardly have to even cast a non-Conjuration spell, especially if you can rely on party members to deliver direct damage to stuck foes. You provide the barrel, they shoot the fish.

That said, it is nice to have *some* damage source, and it hurts to totally lose Evocation... but... less than you might think. (Especially if you are cluttering up the place with summons. Augment Summoning is Core, too.)

[fracas]

Agreed - for my purposes, conjuration > transmutation.

Last questions:

1. I think we've determined grey elf to be the optimal race, yes? This seems doubly so since with alter self I can go goblinoid or gnome for small size benefits and stealth, lizardfolk for +5 natural armor, etc. And with a headband of intellect +2, the Int bonus from grey elf nets me an extra 2nd level spell to cast alter self with. :)

2. To be Focused or not to be Focused? An extra spell slot at every level is sweet, but losing evocation still hurts when you find yourself needing to do some damage (eg when a companion gets KO'd and you need to pick up the slack).

3. Feat selection? So far I'm going Spell Focus: Conjuration and Augment Summoning. However, that Conjurer option that gives free Augment Summoning is also in the SRD and looks pretty tasty since I'm not planning to do item creation due to XP cost. I wonder if I could get the DM to accept Sculpt Spell... would be loads of fun with Grease.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If its SRD-only, would you be able to get Rapid Summoning and Enhanced Summoning (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#conjurerVariants)? You can also find the Persistent, Reach, and Repeat metamagic feats (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/divineAbilitiesFeats.htm) on the SRD, though they're not that useful in the low levels. Improved Familiar for an Imp, Quasit, or Pseudodragon could be a better choice than Rapid Summoning if you're not taking any prestige classes soon. You can take Improved Familiar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#improvedFamiliar) as early as 3rd level, and then not even have a familiar until you're high enough level to get the one you want.

[fracas]

Already got Enhanced Summoning... considering Rapid but not sure about it. Having a familiar running around dropping touch spells for me would be nice, and of course there are all kinds of fun things to do with Share Spell, plus scouting (my familiar is a hawk).

[Eldariel]

Last questions:

1. I think we've determined grey elf to be the optimal race, yes? This seems doubly so since with alter self I can go goblinoid or gnome for small size benefits and stealth, lizardfolk for +5 natural armor, etc. And with a headband of intellect +2, the Int bonus from grey elf nets me an extra 2nd level spell to cast alter self with. :)

Trogdolyte = +6. Yeah, in low-level Core games, Human isn't all that due to the average weak power of the feats.


2. To be Focused or not to be Focused? An extra spell slot at every level is sweet, but losing evocation still hurts when you find yourself needing to do some damage (eg when a companion gets KO'd and you need to pick up the slack).

You can certainly use Summons and such for that role but yeah, there's a sort of a sweet spot for Evocation when you hit level 5; you don't really have other sources of AoE pain yet. That said, if you have a party I'm not sure it's necessarily the best way to go about it.


3. Feat selection? So far I'm going Spell Focus: Conjuration and Augment Summoning. However, that Conjurer option that gives free Augment Summoning is also in the SRD and looks pretty tasty since I'm not planning to do item creation due to XP cost. I wonder if I could get the DM to accept Sculpt Spell... would be loads of fun with Grease.

That's the most useful low-level feats you can take in Core, I suppose. If you do go this way, Focused Specialist gets better since it gives you extra incentives to run Conjuration anyways. Rapid Summoning is worth considering; you should check up on Obtain Familiar. With Rapid Summoning, that path gets a ton more alluring.

[ericgrau]

Before picking grey elf and eating a con penalty I'd figure out your spell list. A lot of good spells have no save. Others do. If you're going to focus on summoning then, well, none of those have saves. Druids make better summoners btw, so I hope you're only doing this as a side thing in addition to other spells. Or at least tag the summons with multi-buffs that druids don't get like haste. Likewise spell focus is only good with spells with saves, but the only drawback this time is 1 less feat slot so it's not as tough of a decision.

I agree cha is dumpable but str is more dumpable if you can plan well enough to get away with it. Heck make your crossbow darkwood if you must. A +2 is very significant on the 20 sided die, and is in no way comparable to ranks that cap out. Especially if it's almost free.

[Veyr]

At level 3, Glitterdust is staggeringly strong.
Honestly... fixed that for you. Sure, the DC might start to become a problem (but not much of one), and some things may have ways around blindness, but blindness is always an incredibly debilitating condition for those that are affected by it, and being able to hit an area with it for rounds/level is insane. It works as a great anti-invisibility spell even later, too, for pointing them out to your mundane friends (though at later levels not having an invis solution seems... like a poor choice).

[fracas]

@ericgrau Wizard's strength is in versatility, which is what I'm aiming to maximize here. I'll definitely be using lots of save-or-sucks like Slow/Grease/Web/Glitterdust, but summons are absolutely useful. Both other party members are beaters and not very good at the whole keep-the-squishy-alive thing so I imagine I'll be dropping a lot of celestial dogs or whatever between me and whatever looks scariest. And like you said, area buffs like Haste get more useful as the number of team members in the area increases. Hence taking Leadership at 6th. I'm thinking I'll take a spiked chain fighter of some kind as my cohort, then take a bunch of sorcerers for my combat-level minions. Magic Missile firing squad ftw. Or heck, at higher levels a bunch of clerics with overlapping Magic Circles Against Evil would be sweet. Wanna hit us? Make 8 will saves. Especially if they're small size...

@Eldariel good catch on troglodytes... dunno how I missed that since I was just running one as a side character recently. :p

My party is just a couple pretty uncoordinated beaters. Like I said earlier, if one of them gets KO'd then it's probably a bad idea to rely on one low-op beater to dish out a party's worth of damage. Especially since our only healing is a fighter1/cleric2. I mean, acid arrow is conjuration and is nice in that it's no save, no spell resistance... but it requires a ranged touch and the damage is just stupidly low. Still, I'm open to suggestions. If, as you say, evocation is maybe not the way to go about dealing damage when needed, what would you recommend instead?

@Veyr noted. Glitterdust was already pretty high on my to-use list. Only catch is that even minibosses in this game seem to have the uncanny ability to always make the save vs sucking, which is one more reason to have some backup damage potential (although I suppose summoning a bunch of celestial dogs will do pretty significant damage...)

[Veyr]

At low level, summons are rather weak. The one-round cast time hurts like hell, and the rounds/level duration possibly hurts even worse. More importantly, the options from low-level Summon Monster spells leave a lot to be desired.

Actually, to continue this point... the options from Summon Monster in general leave a lot to be desired, if you're just a core Wizard. I wouldn't suggest considering them without at least the Rapid Conjuration variant from Unearthed Arcana, and even then I would really not want to even bother with them unless I had Complete Scoundrel and could take 5 levels in Malconvoker.

[fracas]

Yeah I'm not a huge fan either in general, but a celestial riding dog summon did save my posterior from a PO'd orc in the last session. I greased a bunch of orcs in the first round. Second round, I summoned a celestial riding dog and ordered it to ready an action vs charge and one orc got out of the grease. Third round, the orc charged me and sure enough I had my dog get in the way... could've had it try for an opportunity attack+trip, but didn't want to risk a bad roll killing me so instead it just got in the way, thus disrupting the charge. Fourth round, I enlarged it and had it attack once then move back to guard me. Orc advanced on it and took an AoO from reach. The dog hit, made his free trip attack, succeeded thanks to size modifiers, and finished the orc off when it tried to stand up... then the duration ended. Sure, I could have fired off a Grease, but then I'd be relying on luck rather than a reliable barrier and the orc would still be alive and only incapacitated for a round or three rather than dead.

Besides, I thought summons were relatively strong in the early game and got weaker as the game progressed?

[Zaq]

Besides, I thought summons were relatively strong in the early game and got weaker as the game progressed?

Summons are . . . weird. At low levels, they're good if you can get them (after all, every attack roll early on has a halfway decent chance of affecting the fight), but the rounds/level duration hurts a lot, and since you don't have that many options, they all tend to be relatively similar. At high levels, if you're intimately familiar with what SLAs your summons have, having a summon spell prepped is like having all of those SLAs prepped in one slot, which is handy. They tend to be less useful as combat brutes, though, and are often pretty fragile. At mid-levels? Eh, it's a crapshoot. They can be good, or they can be a waste of time. It takes a lot of finesse and a little luck for a single summon to really change your situation at mid-levels, though.

This is all in reference to Summon Monster, of course. Summon Nature's Ally is a bit different. The upper-level SNAs don't have nearly as many SLAs as the upper-level SMs do (though they're not exactly useless), but the lower-level ones tend to be beefier. There's plenty of variance, though.

[tiercel]

Summons don't have to win a combat for you (and unless you focus heavily on them, they are unlikely to in most circumstances). Even before they can turn into a SLA toolbox for you, they are a way of trying to win the action economy battle -- every turn your opponent wastes on beating/incapacitating/dispelling that summon is a turn he's not targeting YOU. Even if a celestial riding dog isn't individually much of a statistical threat to your opponent, it's snapping and snarling in his face *right now*, which tends to move it up the priority list (and for less intelligent/mobile/ranged-capable foes, tends to be enough to keep them occupied).

That said, summon monster[i] starts getting more interesting around III, partly because of the duration issue but also because you can start to get DR 5/magic on those summons, which makes them a lot more problematic for generic minion enemies to bring down.

Obviously summons work a lot better if some annoying ranged yahoo can't peg you during that tedious 1 full round casting time...but then, you *are* playing a battlefield control mage, so just lay down your cover and *then* worry about if you want/need to summon backup to plug the gaps.

A final minor, but not unimportant note, is that as a mage some relatively clever opposing spellcaster *will* try to land [i]blindness on you (Fort targeting and a pretty good way to disable a caster). Having a summon or two in your pocket gives you something useful to be casting if you don't have a remedy immediately to hand. (And especially in the early to low-mid levels, you can't always afford to have countermeasures for everything.)

[olthar]

1. I think we've determined grey elf to be the optimal race, yes? This seems doubly so since with alter self I can go goblinoid or gnome for small size benefits and stealth, lizardfolk for +5 natural armor, etc. And with a headband of intellect +2, the Int bonus from grey elf nets me an extra 2nd level spell to cast alter self with. :)


I was going to post a similar question, so: What are the best options to alter self into given a humanoid starting race? Assume for this subquestion that alter person may be used for any number of different things besides just armor bonuses.

lizardfolk +5 natural armor and trog +6 is nice

[fracas]

olthar: I'm using trog for armor and underground hide bonus (stay in the shadows and cash my spells - even if someone sees me, who expects a trog to be a primary spellcaster?). My other listed forms are locathah for +3 natural armor, 60' swim speed, and +8 to swim with ability to take 10 on swim checks; and goblin for all-purpose stealth and getting into small places. With size modifiers, they have +1 ac (small), +4 hide/move silently/ride, and 30' move despite being small.

For non-core info, I'd recommend this thread: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871862/3.5Forms_for_Alter_Self