Level 5 Gish Wizardry Options

[Afgncaap5]

So, for the first time ever, a campaign where I'm a wizard (well... Necromancer 6/Knight Phantom 4 (don't ask)) has lasted to the point where I've got 5th level spells to choose. And looking over the options, I'm a bit dazzled at all the goodness available. Any suggestions for what goes great with a gish?

I've got a weird theme for the character, so I'm heavily weighting things that look awesome in terms of being a gish, necromancy (either flavor-wise or school-wise), and coldness (again, either flavor-wise or energy-wise, so Frostburn and Spell Compendium are being friendly), but I'm definitely ignoring those preferences for spells that seem just too awesome not to have. I'm hoping that I'm about to reach a city that'll actually have some spell books I can borrow for my own research to fill in the gaps, but I was wondering if there were any good thoughts on the two 5th level spells I can learn this level and next level?

[Karl Aegis]

Overland Flight is always good. Waves of Fatigue aren't bad. Hitting anything with fatigue makes them unable to charge, negating some power attack builds.

[sideswipe]

being a necromancer, what are your banned schools?

[Zweisteine]

The spells in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321715-The-Gish-Handbook&p=16674487&viewfull=1#post16674487) aren't labelled by level, but I'm sure a few are level 5...

[Afgncaap5]

being a necromancer, what are your banned schools?

I went with Illusion and Enchantment for story reasons. Not the easiest of choices to run with since common sense tells me to get rid of one but not the other, but I've actually had no regrets seeing it in action.

[jiriku]

Acid sheath (Spell Compendium) + Energy Substitution [Cold] (Complete Arcane) will give you an aura that deals 18 cold damage to anyone who attacks you and adds +1 damage per die to all of your cold spells. Can't beat that.

The cold version of mass fire shield (Spell Compendium) gets the whole party in on the fun.

Draconic Might, dragonic polymorph, and dragonsight (Spell Compendium) are all solid buff spells that offer useful abilities at that level. They make good contributions to your arsenal.

Kiss of the vampire (Libris Mortis) is a little unusual. I like it because it's very economical with your spells; on a gish built to use it, you could use just the one spell to romp all over an encounter. However, the attacks it generates are standard action touch attacks, you may find it doens't work for your particular build if you've devoted a lot of resources to using weapons or generating multiple attacks per round.

[atemu1234]

I went with Illusion and Enchantment for story reasons. Not the easiest of choices to run with since common sense tells me to get rid of one but not the other, but I've actually had no regrets seeing it in action.

Well, illusion is fun, and if you ban Evocation, you lose remarkably less.

[ericgrau]

Thirding overland flight. That plus wall of force hands down. Your gish flies all day overcoming many obstacles and round 1 of a good majority of fights you single-handedly decrease the fight's EL by 2. Enough to change a fight from hard to routine. Greater enlarge person could be nice too if you like reach, grappling or tripping. Plus you can hit allies with it too. Either way you cast greater enlarge person in the morning so during the fight you can cast something else.

Something more thematic is wall of limbs. It looks like necromancy even though it's actually evocation. Like wall of force it's a decent barrier, though not as absolute, and it has a hemisphere option which wall of force doesn't have.

With mass fire shield (cold), I believe it deals backlash damage per hit not per attack which doesn't add up to much damage. Even with multiple allies, multiple attacks per round and multiple rounds. D&D fights are brief, early damage is better than late damage and first round attacks aren't full attacks. If it is per attack then that might be roughly twice as much damage which would be decent.


Waves of Fatigue aren't bad. Hitting anything with fatigue makes them unable to charge, negating some power attack builds.
And against the other 90+% of foes it more or less amounts to a -1. Unless they're immune.

[Lerondiel]

So, for the first time ever, a campaign where I'm a wizard (well... Necromancer 6/Knight Phantom 4 (don't ask)) has lasted to the point where I've got 5th level spells to choose. And looking over the options, I'm a bit dazzled at all the goodness available. Any suggestions for what goes great with a gish?

I've got a weird theme for the character, so I'm heavily weighting things that look awesome in terms of being a gish, necromancy (either flavor-wise or school-wise), and coldness (again, either flavor-wise or energy-wise, so Frostburn and Spell Compendium are being friendly), but I'm definitely ignoring those preferences for spells that seem just too awesome not to have. I'm hoping that I'm about to reach a city that'll actually have some spell books I can borrow for my own research to fill in the gaps, but I was wondering if there were any good thoughts on the two 5th level spells I can learn this level and next level?

This won't help your spell selection (well put me down for Teleport if none of your party has it, for the best way out of trouble and back to your fave trading cities) but -

Do you have any metamagic feats? A juiced up Vampiric Touch never hurt a necromancer gish :)