At which lvl does an ultimate magus feel useful?

[D4rkh0rus]

The entry would be beguiler 1 wizard 4 with practiced spell caster and illumian for 10/10 progression to wizard...

At which level would this build feel useful (it basically advances as a sorcerer + a few beguiler levels).

By useful I mainly mean not running out of spells in the first encounter...

[sideswipe]

you should be looking for ways to use your spells so that the encounter ends after 1 or 2 max. the point of beguiler is combat evasion. you defeat encounters by making them run away or tricking them into not engaging.

wizard is more of a use caster than a combat power caster. since you have not specified feats and specialisations.

for example. use an illusion instead of a fireball, or use spells that hinder your opponent so much that the other combat focused classes just have to mop them up at their leisure.

if you were to specialise as the wizard for a specific combat role it would drasticly change your tactics.

[D4rkh0rus]

Wizard would be a focused specialist conjurer with abrupt jaunt. Banning evocation, enchantment, and either necromancy or illusion...

Feats aren't decided but mainly metamagic ones like empower, sculpt, chain. Not taking persist.

[sideswipe]

then you have quite a few attack options as conjurer gets summoning, blast spells and cool things like glitterdust at low levels.

[Rebel7284]

Useful? Always. Plenty of low level spells like Silent Image, Enlarge Person, Grease, etc remain useful even if you're a level behind.

Ask your DM how Versatile Spellcaster works. If you can sacrifice slots cross-class, it gets super, super powerful.

[Psyren]

How are you running out of spells so easily when you've only lost 1 level of wizard? This sounds more like a problem with your spell selection and tactics than with the PrC.

[Dalebert]

I don't get it. You start off with a lot of extra spells via the level dip to beguiler. The main drawback isn't spells per day. It's being one level behind as a wizard when it comes to getting higher level spells.