Making a Wizard

[Con_Brio1993]

edit: This should have been posted in 3.5e. My bad.

So I'm actually planning on making a wizard for a game I am in. I've only ever played spontaneous casters, or physical fighters so I am requesting a bit of help.

I have done some digging, and have a basic idea of what to take. I'm afraid I may be taking too much metamagic, or that I'm missing something incredibly valuable by ignoring prestige classes. Anyway here goes.

Let me know if you see anything really dumb, or if there is something that can be drastically improved with a few simple changes (not a fix that requires various dips into 6 prestige classes).

Character Concept: Wizard assassin. A wizard seeking wealth and thrills, he takes assassination jobs of any kind no matter what the target. Evil overlord? Done. Old lady who runs a local orphanage? Done. He doesn't use any fancy poisons or weapons like mundane assassins do. Nor does he train his body in the art of stealth. He uses his wits, magical items, and his expansive list of spells to get things done.

32 PB

Human

STR: 8
DEX: 10
CON: 16
INT: 18
WIS: 10
CHA: 10

School Specialization: Divination
Banned School: Evocation
Familiar: Bat

Level 1 feats: Improved Initiative, Silent Spell.

An assassin needs to make the first move, and should ideally have a way to cast spells without having to shout.

Level 3 feat: Craft Wondrous Item
Level 5 feat: Craft Wand

Good, now I can craft all the tools I need. Well, except for rods. I'll pick that up later.

Level 6 feat: Still Spell

With silent spell this seems pretty useful if I need to cast in a crowded place without being obvious about it.

Level 9 feat: Craft Rod
Level 10 feat: Quicken Spell

Alright, now I can craft everything I need. Quicken Spell is pretty standard.

Level 12 feat: Spell Focus - Necromancy
Level 15 feats: Greater Spell Focus - Necromancy

Since I banned Evocation, Necromancy is my way of actually killing my targets.

Level 18 feat: Mobile Spellcasting
Level 20 feat: Extraordinay Spell Aim

I don't exactly know what to do with these final slots.

[Mnemnosyne]

You're taking 20 levels of actual wizard? 3 feats are not worth losing prestige class benefits at higher levels. After level 5 at the latest, you want to drop out of wizard and start picking up prestige classes.

As for feats, craft feats are...at least to me...questionable. I love them, sure, because I can make my own stuff, but having to devote multiple feats throughout my career to that? Ugh. I would almost rather lose two caster levels and take a two-level Chameleon dip just to have that floating feat. And that's not a good option either. At most, I would take Craft Wondrous Item and leave it at that - the rest of that stuff you can just buy.

As for your metamagic feats, you're making poor choices for a wizard. Wizards have to prepare their spells with metamagic ahead of time, so it can't be applied on the fly. Sadly, that makes Still and Silent Spell far less valuable in my opinion.

If you haven't already, make sure to read Logic Ninja's guide to Wizards (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104002). It's a basic guide, good for starters though. I disagree with some of the information on it, but even if you accept it all as true, you won't make a bad wizard at all.

I would consider switching to a Conjurer, but it's true that the second banned school can hurt. However, if possible, switch to a Domain Wizard with Conjuration or Transmutation as your domain. That is flat out in all ways better than a specialist except for a Conjurer specialist (and Conjurer is only in the running because of Abrupt Jaunt).

At level 5, take Spontaneous Divination as your ACF. Don't take that feat. The feat is nothing compared to the ability to spontaneously cast every divination spell ever. By RAW, you don't have to know it and it doesn't even have to be a wizard spell. It states, "You can spontaneously cast any spell of the divination school by sacrificing a prepared spell of equal or greater level." You know how Clerics have that awesome Commune spell that always provides an accurate answer with no chance of wrong results and only a 100 xp cost? Well, now you have it too.

At level 6, take a level in Mindbender. That gives you the Telepathy class ability. Then you can use your level 6 feat to gain Mindsight and pinpoint anything within 100 feet with an int score. Anything. Only mindless creatures can sneak up on you now. There's only one or two things that even provide a potential (arguable) counter to this ability, and nothing blocks it, so you can see right through walls and any other obstacles with it.

After that, consider other prestige classes. Incantatrix is one of the most powerful (and comes with lots of bonus metamagic feats and some ridiculously awesome metamagic trickery). It may be too powerful, though. Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is a very nice defensive one, making you almost unkillable. At some point, if you can spare the entry feats, picking up Archmage is often a nice idea for at least Arcane Reach and Mastery of Shaping. Check the Paragnostic Apostle class - there's almost always something beneficial it can give you, and you lose no spellcasting. Mind over Matter is always nice, Penetrating Insight can be helpful, etc. Red Wizard is another good class, if you have followers that can pump you up through Circle Magic (want to cast all spells at CL40? Or heighten, maximize, or empower spells? This is your way to do it, if you have people willing to sacrifice their spell ability to empower you).

Now, to make up for not taking those Silent and Still spells, make an Item of Legacy. These things can be damned awesome. I would start with a Ring of Counterspells as the base item (4000 gp, highest value a legacy item can start with). You can then give it the ability to, 3/day, spontaneously apply metamagic to some of your spells. It does have a price in abilities - you lose a couple spell slots and a couple caster levels. The caster levels can be made up with other magic items to raise CL, or with practiced spellcaster. I think it's worth it, but opinions may vary. This is my personal recommendation for an Item of Legacy design for a spellcaster:
{table]Level|Ability
5|Extend Spell 3/day up to 3rd level.
6|Sculpt Spell 3/day up to 3rd level.
7|Still Spell 3/day up to 3rd level.
8|Silent Spell 3/day up to 3rd level.
9| Faerie Fire at will.
10|Magical Cipher (at will detect magic, read magic, arcane mark). Alternate: Feather fall 24/7.
11|Cunning, never flat-footed.
12|Invisibility at will.
13|Suggestion at will.
14|Sculpt Spell 3/day up to 6th level.
15|Still Spell 3/day up to 6th level.
16|Silent Spell 3/day up to 6th level.
17|-
18|Mind Blank.
19|Death Ward.
20|Freedom of Movement[/table]

[Con_Brio1993]

That's quite a lot of information to take in.

A few questions/comments that come to mind upon first read:

1. Where exactly is the option for a Domain Wizard?

2. Still and Silent do have to be prepared ahead. I'm not doing anything fancy though. I'd use it only for charm/dominate person because that is useful in social situations where I need to be discreet. Or I'd save it for what I have planned out as the killing blow. Assassins do plan things out. But I'll heed your advice.

3. Where does Spontaneous Divination come from? Also it sounds too broken to be true.

4. Heh, I was actually thinking about that Mindbender dip, but I always assumed it wasn't worth it if you were going Wizard. Glad to see it is still useful. I'll take it.

5. Archmage sounds ok, but those abilities cost spell slots which seems it may harm my overall utility.

Ok so, I'm now a bit confused as to feats and character progression.

Wizard 5, Mindbender 6, and then what? I can't take Archmage until after level 12. What do I do in the inbetween levels?

Also what feats do I take if Silent/Still spell aren't so useful, and neither are any of the item creation feats (sans Wondrous Item)?

[Mnemnosyne]

Domain Wizard is from Unearthed Arcana, page 57. Spontaneous Divination is from Complete Champion, page 52. On Spontaneous Divination being too good, it sorta can be considered to be, but Divination can also be something of a weak school (it doesn't have a lot of combat uses, for instance). However, your DM may (perhaps is even likely to) rule that it only allows access to Wizard divination spells, despite RAW clearly stating any divination spell, period. It's still good enough to take, even then.

Still and silent aren't useless for a wizard, but I would say they are definitely far less useful than other metamagics in general. Basically, I'm pretty sure they're a suboptimal choice, and if you make a legacy ring like I suggested you'll get to use stilled, silent spells anyway. Alternately (if Legacy items are disallowed), get metamagic rods of silent/still spell. The 3/day limitation on either of those methods shouldn't be too great a problem. The only thing you really lose going this route is being able to prepare an emergency spell in case you're paralyzed, and if you have the legacy item, even that's not a problem, unless it's already been taken from you.

Archmage abilities cost spell slots, but you don't really want to take all 5 levels of the class, you just need to cherry-pick the best abilities. Arcane Reach is one of those, as is Mastery of Shaping. Those will cost you a 6th and 7th level slot, but the ability to automatically use touch spells at 30 ft. range is a very nice one, as is the ability to use area spells and leave holes in them for your allies. Spell Power is another good one (and some people take it more than once, since it uses only 5th level slots) but there are other ways to raise caster level too, so that one's more questionable.

As for other prestige classes to take...if you want to go into Archmage, and you went specialist wizard either for Abrupt Jaunt or just because Domain Wizard wasn't allowed, a single level of Master Specialist nets you Spell Focus in your chosen school as a bonus feat (so it cuts the necessary feat tax to enter Archmage to 2).
Loremaster is a solid, non-overpowering prestige class you can go into, and the one useless feat tax (the skill focus knowledge) can be recovered via class feature (one of the secrets grants you any one feat). In a way, that's almost beneficial - you can think of it as simply delaying your feat choice, so you meet the prerequisites of a higher level feat.
Mage of the Arcane Order is another very solid class that can't really be argued to be overpowering (any more than Wizard already is, anyway) and it gets you some additional versatility since it allows you to cast a limited number of spells that you didn't memorize today/don't know.
Paragnostic Apostle, as mentioned, has some decent selectable abilities. Mind over Matter gives you +2 to AC spells, so your Greater Mage Armor goes to +8 instead of +6 and any other AC spell you cast is improved. Penetrating Insight is nice for beating spell resistance, and depending on what you do a lot, some of the other abilities are decent.
Then there's Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil. This is where the prestige classes start to get strong - Io7V means that once you take 7 levels in it, you do not die. Period. Well, obviously there are ways, but it's going to be incredibly hard to kill you even when you're not particularly well prepared.
And of course, Incantatrix. This is often called the most powerful wizard PrC, and it's not entirely wrong (although Hathran is arguably stronger, but let's not go into that since it's a very specific class with very specific flavor and entry requirements). If abused, incantatrix can pretty much completely put you into ridiculous power levels. If used judiciously it can just be pretty nice, for lots of extra metamagic feats and not abusing those effectively free metamagic abilities. In some cases, I would take it even if I never used its 'apply metamagic to spells for free by making a spellcraft check' abilities, just to get those bonus feats and the capstone.

As for what feats to take if not silent/still and the item creation...start with prerequisites, of course. Decide what prestige class(es) you're going to be, fill all those prerequisites, then see what you've got left. For example, if you decide to go Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, you've got a hefty feat tax, you need 3 out of 5 feats (up to level 9, since earliest entry is 10) to fill prerequisites. One more is already taken by Mindsight, which leaves you only one free feat. Mage of the Arcane Order on the other hand, can be entered at 6 (well, 7, since you want Mindbender for Mindsight at 6) and you only need to dedicate one feat to it (the other metamagic feat you want anyway). If you're taking Archmage, that's a 3 feat tax (2 if you can take a Master Specialist dip) that you're best getting out of the way early (cause you can do more with later feats than early ones).

Good general feats (in my opinion, and opinions will probably vary a lot on this topic):
Craft Contingent Spell is awesome. With this, you can bypass some of Contingency's pesky limitations like maximum level or maximum number of contingencies in effect at once. You can also apply contingencies to other people. Sure, it costs money and a bit of exp, but that's a pittance compared to being Not Dead because your contingent teleport whisked you away and your contingent revivify brought you back to life, for instance. Or still having all your items because your contingent antimagic field triggered when someone cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction in your general direction.
Extend Spell is a good low level feat that can remain useful at higher levels, but it can also often be replaced with a metamagic rod. Take it early on and retrain it out later if you find yourself not using it much, or keep it if it's useful.
Quicken Spell is good at higher levels. Take it at 9 or 12, try not to delay until 16. +4 is harsh, but can still be very much worth it.
Spell Focus, as well as Spell Penetration. I consider these relatively similar in that they make it easier to land spells. They can be good feats. But personally I try to find other ways to accomplish those effects. I tend to take them only if they're necessary for a prestige class, but they're not bad choices in general.
Extraordinary Concentration (min. level 12). If you can make the concentration checks AND you use concentration duration spells a lot, take this. Otherwise, skip it.
Extraordinary Spell Aim (min. level 12). If you're not going Archmage and you can make the concentration checks, probably worthwhile. If you take Archmage, skip it.
Fell Drain can be decent, depending on how it's ruled to work. If it's ruled to do a negative level every time the spell does damage, take it and apply it to spells that do damage over several rounds. If it only works once per target per casting, it can still be worthwhile on low level spells that damage multiple targets.
Chain Spell is expensive at +3 but can be worthwile if you're buffing...however I often skip this unless I have Incantatrix.
Sculpt Spell. Very nice metamagic that at only +1 can be used very often, for a lot of purposes.

Between those and any prereq feats, you should probably have considerably more than you have slots for.

If you decide to take Incantatrix, then you can focus on throwing a lot of metamagic on stuff because you'll have the bonus metamagic feats to do it. In that case:
Fell Drain - this is a nice one, cause it puts an unavoidable negative level on anything you damage. Once you hit Incantatrix 10 and get the capstone, you do this with only a +1 level adjustment. This makes it far better than if you're paying the full +2 level adjustment on it.
Split Ray, Twin Spell - two ways of doing the same thing, one applicable only to rays. Find a couple good ray spells, apply both of these to them, obliterate enemies.
Empower Spell - Better than Maximize.
Maximize - Still good if you're really focusing on the metamagic angle.
Chain Spell - Great if you're going to use the Incantatrix's free metamagic to do some buffing.
Persistent Spell - this is what really makes the incantatrix free metamagic awesome, cause you can make any spell persistent, including those that other people cast.
Arcane Thesis - You stick this on a really good spell and it makes it easier to apply lots of metamagic to it. Incantatrix capstone plus Arcane Thesis (applied in that order) can reduce a +2 metamagic to +0. Add Easy Metamagic (Dragon #325) and you can reduce a +3 to +0. One of the most commonly noted spells to use this with is Enervation - a Split Ray, Empowered, Twinned, Fell Draining Enervation with Arcane Thesis does 4d4 * 1.5 negative levels. That's an average of 12 negative levels for a spell that, if Twin has easy metamagic on it, is still a 4th level spell. Maximize it and make it a 5th level spell, and you get a minimum of 20 negative levels off of it. Note that all of this is without really abusing the incantatrix free metamagics through spellcraft rolls; we're only using its capstone ability and feats.

[Rapidghoul]

I only have one piece of advice to offer since so much has been said already. There's an ACF in Unearthed Arcana that lets you trade out Scribe Scroll and bonus metamagic feats for fighter feats. Skip Scribe Scroll and grab yourself Improved Initiative (freeing up your Human feat for something else like Spell Focus). If you're not married to the idea of a bat familiar, grab a hummingbird familiar (from Dragon Magazine) which grants another +4 initiative.
I also vote for Spontaneous Divination at 5 if you can swing it.

[Sudain]

Character Concept: Wizard assassin. A wizard seeking wealth and thrills, he takes assassination jobs of any kind no matter what the target. Evil overlord? Done. Old lady who runs a local orphanage? Done. He doesn't use any fancy poisons or weapons like mundane assassins do. Nor does he train his body in the art of stealth. He uses his wits, magical items, and his expansive list of spells to get things done.

Cool; you have a character concept! :D I like it. Now how does he go about it? Since you've limited your self to items, wits, and spells I'd look at those three things.

Items - What items would he use to kill? Are they mostly defensive?
Wits - I'm leaving that up to you :)
Spells - What are you going to use to kill? What % is for utility?

I would highly suggest sitting down with several books and read over all the spells you could potentially have access to that matches your focus(assassinating people). And then for each level of each school how many actually match the focus, or provide needed utility? Then go through those spells again find which ones just made you giddy(totally fine) and which ones you'd actually use on a job. Once you do this for all schools only then would I suggest selecting a school to ban. Once selected; validate your spell list by building a balanced(what ever you decide it is) spell list with the remaining schools.

Example:

Spells that help in finding your target:
1 Detect Secret Doors(D), Alarm(incase he's in a building and moving about - or invisable)(A), charm Person(E), Disguise Self(I)
2 DarkVision(T), Knock(T), Invisabilty(I), Detect Thoughts/Locate Object(D), See invisabilty(?)(D)
3 Phantom Steed(?)(C), Arcane Sight(A), Clairaudience(?)(D),
4 Nneumonic enchancer(t), Geas,lesser(e), Arcane eye(d), Locate creature(D), Scrying(D)
5 Contact Other Plane(D), Prying eyes(D), Dominate Person(e), Magic Jar(N), Overland Flight(T)
6 geas(e), Suggestion, Mass(e), true Seeing(d), Greater Dispell Magic(A)
7 Etherial Janut
8 Sympathy(e), Discern Location(d),
9 Foresight(D)



Schools I gave up and reasoning behind them:
When building a battlefield control specialist gave up Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy using focused specialist. My reasoning:

Enchantment: The ****s's already hit the fan; enchanting people isn't going help in combat(I lost charm person, suggestion, Geas, Confusion, symbol of spells, hold person) - it hurt but keeping it wasn't worth it.

Illusion: Again, the ****'s already hit the fan. I still gave serious thought to still keeping it for utility, except for the spells I was really interested in were concentration and doing that forced me to focus on the spell versus doing something else. Maybe there is a way around that, I didn't look into it. I lost Invisabilty, Image line, mirror image, dream/nighmare(I SOOOOO wanted those).

Necromacny: the spells that stood out to me really didn't lend themselves to AoE battlefield control or utilty; so it was the weakest school and got baned(for me) first.


The reason I suggest this is because evocation is able to crank out a good deal of damage(which by definition will generally kill people - your stated goal). It may not be the right school for you; especially if you plan on focusing on save or die spells, summoning, turning people to stone, charming people into jumping off ravines, scry&die, etc... Just translate your focus into your spell list.

You will spend the majority of your time casting spells; so build that correctly first; THEN go for cool stuff like feats, items and prestige classes. Those are still quite important and helpful; but don't put the cart before the horse.


and his expansive list of spells to get things done.
One other thing to note, you wanted an expansive list of spells. I suggest having a lot of spell slots so you can DO things to be useful versus having the potential to have the right spell. Consider focused specialist(again 2-3 prohibited schools; quite painful but if you are focused on your goal it's actually a lot easier - I used the extra spell slots per level for the character point, and the general spell slots for utility). Also consider Ultimate Magus PrC - it allows meta-magic fun and two spell lists to burn through; every single day.

One other thing to remember: DnD is a group game; how do the other players fit into this?

[Tenebris]

Few general advices:

Eidetic Spellcaster (DR357 ?) is totally worth it :smallwink:

I've recently found out that Quicken Spell IS NOT mandatory if you can find better ways to use your swift action. Abjurant Champion cast his abjurations as swift action, Minor Shapeshift is also nice to stay alive. Plus thousand and one other things. QS is still helpful though, especially if you are not interested in those minor tricks.

Take Quick Recovery feat. It'll allow you to abuse Celerity spell. Your will save will need to be quite high though. It worked quite well for me on a high Cha Sorcadin, a 20th lvl wizard may have about 50% chance of success :smallannoyed:

[Mnemnosyne]

The reason I suggest this is because evocation is able to crank out a good deal of damage(which by definition will generally kill people - your stated goal). It may not be the right school for you; especially if you plan on focusing on save or die spells, summoning, turning people to stone, charming people into jumping off ravines, scry&die, etc... Just translate your focus into your spell list.

You will spend the majority of your time casting spells; so build that correctly first; THEN go for cool stuff like feats, items and prestige classes. Those are still quite important and helpful; but don't put the cart before the horse.
Evocation is considered the top school to ban because the one thing it supposedly does well (damage) it doesn't actually have any major advantage on. The Orb of X series are excellent for dealing damage, there's several other spells in Conjuration that can be used to deliver the damage...you just won't really be missing a lot from Evocation most of the time if you look for the good damage spells in other schools. Don't forget that a lot of Evocation spells allow spell resistance or saving throws, while the Orb series is straight up no save, no spell resistance, and even works when fired into antimagic since it's an instantaneous conjuration. And there's some decent area of effect spells in conjuration and conjuration/necromancy for when you need to blow up more than one thing. Vortex of Teeth is probably the only major direct damage spell you're going to wind up wishing you had if you ban evocation, and that one spell isn't worth it.

Building a spell list first is only really significant if you intend to ban 2-3 schools of magic - if you're going Diviner and only banning one, or Domain Wizard and banning none, you don't have to worry about a spell list before building the character, because you can always get almost any spell. And in the rare event you discover you banned a school with a spell you really want, there's actually a couple feats that can fix that. Spell Reprieve, I think it was called. But this is generally not a great idea (item reprieve, on the other hand, can actually be a pretty good idea depending on the school).



As for Eidetic Spellcaster...personally I don't consider it worthwhile. The main problem is it doesn't allow you to use the Secret Page spell to create spellbooks for free. Secret Page has a clause that specifically calls out its ability to copy a spell simply by casting it, and therefore is a wizard's go-to spell for making spellbooks without the 100 GP/page cost. It doesn't even allow a reduction in the cost by using a Boccob's Blessed Book. You have to pay full price for those incenses. Granted, it's invaluable if your DM is the type to take away your spellbook, but I have found that most aren't. If you take reasonable precautions and keep a backup, most DM's aren't going to screw you on the spellbook angle.

[Sudain]

Thank you Mnemnosyne, I have not looked into high level game-play or compared those spells thoroughly. I will have to make a study of it.

I would still hold that building a spell list holds value beyond the case of banning 2-3 schools. Those being that 1) You know what your standard spell load-out should be baring any foreseen situation (I'm going to be facing a fire breathing dragon... resist energy might be helpful here...), and when it comes time to get new spells you know what you should be getting hopefully saving on bookwork & money. My group is also bunch of laywers (:smallfurious:) so learning spells requires the gold/page limit and time, etc... which worked out. But it had the effect of me not wanting to learn or play with any spell that wasn't on my pre-determined spell list as I was already begging for gold on street corners (literally).

I will have to look into the secret page trick.