[3.5] What should a 13th level wizard do with their downtime? What spells to cast?

[Mr Adventurer]

...when they don't have any crafting feats?

What I mean is, there must be loads of spells that are useful to cast only once, or once every now and again, but that you wouldn't prepare for your adventuring.

For example, you might take the time to cast Hardening on the party's weapons. Or you might do some creative Planar Binding.

I'm sure there must be some clever uses of spells or obscure spells that are useful to use in this way, but that you just wouldn't use on a day to day basis.

What ones have you used, or do you know about?

[defiantdan]

Depends what kind of DM you have. You can spam wall of salt for wealth generation. Begin your minionmancy. contruct a fotress or castle. Bind Midguard Dwarves to do your crafting. cast cantrips for entertainment.

[atemu1234]

Well, depending on how your DM feels about it, you could always try selling your spellcasting abilities for gold. By the rights of the Dungeon Master's Guide, you should be making about 50 x Spell Level gold each day with each spell expended. Or more, if I'm not remembering the rule right.

Or, if you have the gold, go shopping at the local magic mart, and hope something cool is there.

[Darrin]

What I mean is, there must be loads of spells that are useful to cast only once, or once every now and again, but that you wouldn't prepare for your adventuring.


Well, kiss of the vampire (SC) + valiant steed (BoED) springs to mind.

Cast fire trap on all your flasks/pockets/etc.

There's quite a bit you can do summoning/binding a djinn and using their major creation SLA to create 20 ft^3 of vegetable matter, but that gets into "infinite money" shenanigans.

[KingSmitty]

Prestidigitation. You gotta Brush your teeth sometime, man.

[Hiro Quester]

Doesn't every wizard get Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat?

There are so many spells that are completely situational, that I would not prepare every day, but which are very useful to have on a scroll for those rare occasions.

1st level: Comprehend Languages, Endure Elements, Mount, Disguise Self, Magic Weapon, etc.
2nd level: Knock, Arcane Lock, Obscure Object, Alter Self, Rope Trick, Spider Climb, Whispering Wind....
etc.

[DMVerdandi]

EDIT (Thought you meant actual downtime, not the resting period in between fights)

Cast divination spells. Cast all day buffs. Chat with the team about strategies, regular topics, etc.

[Coidzor]

Doesn't every wizard get Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat?

Well, there are some things you can trade that away for, and there's only so many scrolls one will want to make, and most of those are utility scrolls and relatively low level at that, so that's typically 8 hours and 1 spell down for the day and plenty of spells and time to do other things with that day, too, like work on one's composite walls for one's wizard tower or fortress or what have you.

You can also make your spell book increasingly nastily trapped and warded or make copies of your spellbook and ferret them away in various places. Or even make a whole bunch of bug-out bolt holes that you secure, fortify, hide, and memorize the location of each one so you can teleport to any given one of them.

[JoshuaZ]

Research new spells. The research rules allow for custom spells but a DM may not be ok with that but there's no reason you can't use the time to research spells that are on the wizard list that you don't normally have. Heck, if you know any other wizards then simply trading for spells is a good use of time.

[Mr Adventurer]

EDIT (Thought you meant actual downtime, not the resting period in between fights)

Cast divination spells. Cast all day buffs. Chat with the team about strategies, regular topics, etc.

I do mean actual downtime! :)

[DMVerdandi]

I do mean actual downtime! :)

Oh, well my suggestions were

1. Research to gain exp
2. Running a wizarding shop (Offer divinations, buffs, troubleshooting, etc )
3. Acquire political power

[Boost]

Acquire a plot of land. Start using Stone Shape and other transmutation/fabrication spells to carve out a massive, impenetrable fortress. Invest a few ranks in Craft (Trapmaking) and fill it with deadly traps. Cast spells through all the corridors to mess up any interlopers.

[Randomguy]

Fabricate + shrink item. Make yourself some stuff that you can later deploy in combat. If all else fails, make yourself some giant rocks to drop on the enemy from above.

[Deophaun]

Acquire a plot of land demi-plane.
Fixed.

Though, if you can't go the whole genesis route, at least don't make anything that has a visible entrance (or noticeable existence). Use something like xorn movement and a scroll of sphere of ultimate destruction to give you a nice isolated underground cavern. Bonus points if you can UMD a commune with earth to make sure you aren't close to any other open spaces.

[Darkweave31]

I personally enjoy fleshing out the universes I built over the previous few levels. You know, galaxies, planets... oh and topiaries, witches love topiaries.

[Grek]

Auction off castings of Control Weather.
Plane Shift to one of the various planes full of gems and fill your boots.
Make weird meat statues with Stone to Flesh, then practice cooking them.
Use Stone Shape, Move Earth and other such spells to play architect.
Layer your home in Permanent Images.
Geas people to becoming "the very best, like noone ever was" at some mundane task like acting, weaving, cheesemaking, etc.
Wall of Iron + Fabricate to corner the ironmongery market in an afternoon.
Use Teleport (or Greater Teleport, if you're lazy) to corner the market on the spice trade.
Use Planar Binding to find out what happens if you mate an Abyssal Basilisk with a Celestial Basilisk and whether the resulting eggs make a good omelet.
Illusory Script/Explosive Runes/Shrink Item/Sepia Snake Sigil in preparation for later shenanigans.
Use Secret Page to make yet another duplicate of your spellbook, hidden away in a secret vault.

[gooddragon1]

Cast explosive runes on smallest denomination paper currency to get more bang for your buck... and so you can detonate them all at once with dispel magic.

Note: Do not carry them on your person, have someone/thing else carry them for you.

[KillianHawkeye]

The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!!

:smallbiggrin:

[Mr Adventurer]

work on one's composite walls for one's wizard tower or fortress or what have you.
You can also make your spell book increasingly nastily trapped and warded or make copies of your spellbook and ferret them away in various places. Or even make a whole bunch of bug-out bolt holes that you secure, fortify, hide, and memorize the location of each one so you can teleport to any given one of them.

Yes, exactly! This kind of thing is good, though I should say that we don't have a base of operations: we travel a lot.


Research new spells. The research rules allow for custom spells but a DM may not be ok with that but there's no reason you can't use the time to research spells that are on the wizard list that you don't normally have. Heck, if you know any other wizards then simply trading for spells is a good use of time.

This is great. I've started researching a new spell (a Greater version of the Haunt Shift spell: I've raised a Zombie Dragon and I'm going to Haunt Shift it into my weapon to make it totally heavy metal!).


Oh, well my suggestions were
1. Research to gain exp
2. Running a wizarding shop (Offer divinations, buffs, troubleshooting, etc )
3. Acquire political power

Research to gain XP? What do you mean?

We are also working on acquiring political power. Most of the rulers seem to be wizards too so it's tough to carve out a real base - it's more about making alliances.


Acquire a plot of land. Start using Stone Shape and other transmutation/fabrication spells to carve out a massive, impenetrable fortress. Invest a few ranks in Craft (Trapmaking) and fill it with deadly traps. Cast spells through all the corridors to mess up any interlopers.

You're saying I should build dungeons? :)


Fabricate + shrink item. Make yourself some stuff that you can later deploy in combat. If all else fails, make yourself some giant rocks to drop on the enemy from above.

I'm not sure the DM will allow the old Shrink Item Bomb trick, but it's a good idea to use that spell in principle. The only thing is that the target for Shrink Item is really small! I'll have to have another think about what it would be good to use it on; what are some good suggestions?


Cast explosive runes on smallest denomination paper currency to get more bang for your buck... and so you can detonate them all at once with dispel magic.
Note: Do not carry them on your person, have someone/thing else carry them for you.

Again, the DM is not likely to look favourably on such stacking shenanigans. I have been carrying around an Explosivbe Runes note for a while now though! Perhaps it's time to upgrade it to a Maximised higher CL version.


There are some good ideas here. One good example is Planar Binding, since it takes much more than just the base spell to pull off properly (Magic Circle, various negotiation-boosting spells, etc). What else can you do when you could have any spell to 7th and spare time on your hands?

[Mr Adventurer]

What about good Contingency spells and triggers for them? Anyone got any good combos?