Help with Wizard

[Koran Redaxe]

My DM has said that we will be doing a "nigh-on impossible" campaign. In fact, he boasted that we would be dead in the first session. So, to prove him wrong, I have decided to consult the combined wisdom of the playground on how to make a good great wizard. I wan him to focus on Necromancy or Transmutation.

[ryu]

Do you have any set of expectations beyond simply hard? Like how many levels above normal CR do you expect your encounters to be? How many dirty tricks and removed standard safeties are in play? For that matter what's the rest of the party making so we can plan symmetries better? Any banned material limitation or houserules we should really know about?

[Kraken]

Starting level and anticipated level you'll finish, and in general as much character building info as possible would be helpful. If, for instance, you're starting at level 1 and will be playing to level 8-12, I would say go druid instead, because you'll get a lot more bang out of your early levels. Wizards start to match druids around mid levels, before roaring ahead the further you get past level 10.

[nintendoh]

Just go necromancer master specialist uttercold. Uttercold makes everything easier.

[Koran Redaxe]

We will be starting at level 10. My DM stated that most encounters will be 1-3 levels above the party. We have a Warmage, a Paladin, a Druid and a Rouge/Assassin at last check. The campaign is supposed to be for Good aligned characters, but neutral is allowed. I don't believe we have many unusual house rules, except that the DM allowed us take the assassin prestige class without being evil. We plan on ending at level 18-20. Complain if I missed anything.

[avr]

Just make sure that you take a bunch of battlefield control spells which allow your party to divide the enemy up and kill them in detail, and/or which seriously debuff the enemy, and encounters at CL +1-3 shouldn't be a problem.

[Koran Redaxe]

Could you give some examples. All I can think of off the top of my head is Evard's Black Tentacles.

[Kraken]

One further question, how well do you know the tendencies of the DM with regard to how often and to what extent they'll invoke rule 0 to bend the rules? For instance, I once had a DM who thought my character was overpowered and took the passive aggressive route of having my abilities not be effective whenever doing so suited his purposes. If, for instance, I built you an wizard/incantatrix that relies on having buffs persisted all day to make them nigh invulnerable, my previously mentioned DM would have just said 'they're dispelled' without any real check. A real example of an on the fly nerf from him was when I made a core only wizard and cast stoneskin. Cannon fodder NPC background archers started doing over 10 damage, sometimes 20 per hit, without a crit, against a buffed AC, from hundreds of feet away. Is that the sort of thing your DM would ever do? Other symptoms include enemies making their saves a seemingly disproportionate amount of times (hill giants would consistently hit DC 22 reflex saves in the same campaign with this DM), enemies seeming to have an arbitrarily large amount of hit points, and enemies being able to take more actions than it seems like they otherwise should be able to because he says they have that ability ('the lich has an ability that let's them cast 3 spells per turn'). If not, that opens up your options quite a bit, but if it is the sort of thing he'd do, then we'd all need to think about things that are difficult for a DM to plausibly mess with.

[Edenbeast]

I'd suggest transmuter with the war weaver prestige class (heroes of battle), which will allow you to buff your party very efficiently.
From a roleplaying perspective, necromancer and paladin don't go well together. Unless you intend to forgo the evil type spells, and instead focus on debuff and save or die spells.

[ryu]

Could you give some examples. All I can think of off the top of my head is Evard's Black Tentacles.

Other good examples would be pretty much most spells with fog or cloud in the name, pretty much any spell with wall in the name, anything that summons or creates minions is immediately worth at least looking at.

I would also look up handbooks on battlefield control, the polymorph subschool of transmutation, and if you really want to be effective early a guide on planar binding. Seriously. The kind of spells you can get early access to by binding minions are hilarious.

Also Kraken the correct response to that kind of DM is to leave. No gaming is a superior life to gaming with hatefully large amounts sheer spite.

[avr]

Could you give some examples. All I can think of off the top of my head is Evard's Black Tentacles.
Many of the best examples are in other schools, especially conjuration, but here are a few in transmutation or necromancy:

Spiritwall
Transmute rock to mud
Fear
Enervate
Slow
Stony grasp

& of special note, magic jar lets you steal monsters for your own purposes. The hunting cry of the tyrannosaurus rex may be yours if the GM is incautious.

[Killer Angel]

My DM has said that we will be doing a "nigh-on impossible" campaign. In fact, he boasted that we would be dead in the first session.

Why is he claiming such a thing?
Is his way to tell "I want you to optimize, for your own good"?

[Rubik]

I'd specialize in conjuration or transmutation, if I were you. Avoid necromancy; there's too much there that can be negated via a single spell. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/deathWard.htm)

Or just follow the Easy Bake Wizard Handbook. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325933-Easy-Bake-Wizard-Handbook) You don't want to have a spellbook, nor do you want a familiar. Both are weaknesses you can't afford in a high stakes game. You'll also want spontaneous divination so you can figure out what you'll want to prep beforehand, as well as figure out what's in the next room. Hell, be as spontaneous as you can for everything. You might also want to look at a third eye: sense. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#sense) That way you can look through doors and around corners.

Consider taking the reserve feat that lets you summon elementals at will. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?118749-Ways-to-boost-Summon-Elemental) It'll come in handy to spring traps and scout for you. Make sure you speak some of the elemental languages (especially terran, since earth elementals get earth glide and can swim through stone to look through walls and such), so they can report back.

A shirt of wraith stalking from the MIC would be great, too, since it makes you undetectable vs undead.

And take at least one Crafting feat, preferably Craft Wondrous Item. Find a way to give yourself a negative level, fail the save to make it permanent, craft all you want pre-game, and pay for a casting of Greater Restoration to put you back at full XP for your starting level. Craft EVERYTHING you own. You might consider making sure someone in your group has access to UMD and interweaving your backstory with them. Craft a homunculus to craft for you in your own enveloping pit (which your UMD-monkey can open for you), and have it craft while you adventure. You may also consider investing in some crafting cost reducers. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1000.0) Make sure to use the rules in the MIC for stacking multiple bonuses on a single item for maximum benefit. Some of the items therein are extremely useful and extremely cheap, with the only real drawback being that you can only wear one item at a time. Stack multiple items together (like weapon crystal abilities, for instance), and have all of them simultaneously. Offer to craft the entire party's gear for a 10% surcharge (so you can make yourself 10% more items; everybody gets a great deal out of it, with you coming out on top).

Also, the war weaver PrC is great for you. Buffing the entire party with a single spell is a great use of your action economy AND your spell slots.

Get several feats via items and use the dark chaos feat shuffle (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?119456-What-is-a-quot-Chaos-Shuffle-quot) to swap them for feats you want to use while adventuring. I managed to nab almost 2,000 feats by stacking item properties on top of each other through item crafting. That's a LOT of feats. Note that the easy bake wizard segues well into the DCFS, as elves have a lot of weapon proficiencies granted by simply being an elf.

[Seward]

Other good examples would be pretty much most spells with fog or cloud in the name, pretty much any spell with wall in the name, anything that summons or creates minions is immediately worth at least looking at.


Most importantly, for fighting high EL encounters, you want effects that just plain work, regardless of crap like spell resistance or high saving throws. My go-to spells are solid fog and wall of force for this reason, forcecage and Maze as you get higher level. The idea is to waste enemy actions while always leaving a target for the rest of your party to buzz-saw, concentrating all of your force while dispersing the effect of enemy actions.

One real issue with 3.x D&D at high levels is that saving throws for monsters advance faster than caster DCs, especially if you routinely fight EL+3 and above. Single target save-die spells are pretty much worthless unless something else has debuffed the saves (eg, level drain, forced rerolls) because the odds that you'll stick the spell vs just waste your action and a high level spell slot aren't favorable. Area save/screwed spells can still be worthwhile because you'll likely affect SOMEBODY and not have wasted your action. Spells that actually remove enemies (such as Banishment) are better than those that just put some penalties on them, because the payoff is so much larger on a failed save.

Weirdly, direct damage can be helpful at higher levels just because it "stacks" with everything else the rest of the party does, as long as you do enough that it reduces the number of actions needed to melee or archer-down the opposition. Dead is after all the best condition to inflict on an enemy. Always make sure you can do some direct damage, at least as much as a typical melee swing, just to finish off weakened opposition or let the fighter move on to somebody else.

Finally - it is quite often the best action a wizard can ever do to simply dimension door or teleport the party brutes into melee range of the enemy. Telekenesis and similar shenanigans can also help. A fighter in the 11-20 range can pretty reliably kill anything he gets next to of his own CR, and two of them, or fighter+rogue, or druid+animal companion or whatever will do FAR more damage than any spell you can prep on a single target. So if something needs to get dead, have your melee delay until you can port them to the enemy, and then avert your eyes to avoid getting blood splatter in your face when they come out of delay and open up.

Spells like Dimension Door are also handy for when things go badly, they help greatly in pulling off a party retreat, or doing things like avoiding getting arrested without having to massacre the townsfolk.

If your melees aren't that effective, help them out by crafting magic items to fix the problem, or set them up with GMW+4 on their weapon so they can pimp it out with other enhancements or whatever. At level 16 you aren't using your L3 slots for much anyway, so shell out GMW for the weapon users, Heroism for the guy who misses attacks or saves, maybe flame arrow for the archer, etc.


My advice works for a bog-standard wizard, without any need for much beyond core. So it will work in pretty much any campaign. It doesn't rely on any one trick, beyond the idea that the rest of the party is capable of killing enemies one-at-a-time if given the opportunity. The wizard who tries to win the encounter herself will have a much rougher time of it, and burn a lot more spell slots to accomplish the same outcome.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Most importantly, for fighting high EL encounters, you want effects that just plain work, regardless of crap like spell resistance or high saving throws. My go-to spells are solid fog and wall of force for this reason, forcecage and Maze as you get higher level. The idea is to waste enemy actions while always leaving a target for the rest of your party to buzz-saw, concentrating all of your force while dispersing the effect of enemy actions.
Solid advice, though "wasting actions" is a pretty broad field and depends on your enemy. Against a caster Solid Fog isn't going to do much, since he'll either continue throwing AoE spells at you or just teleport out. Daze is generally a good idea to inflict since it prevents actions and almost nothing is immune. Nauseated also works, but immunity is a lot more common.
If you favor certain BFC spells try to get your melee immunity to them. Freedom of Movement is generally nice to have, and getting them Blindsight takes care of any fog spells. If you're lucky your melee is a warforged, making them immune to a big chunk of BFC without you having to do anything, so you can throw those Stinking Clouds and Cloudkills with impunity.


One real issue with 3.x D&D at high levels is that saving throws for monsters advance faster than caster DCs, especially if you routinely fight EL+3 and above. Single target save-die spells are pretty much worthless unless something else has debuffed the saves (eg, level drain, forced rerolls) because the odds that you'll stick the spell vs just waste your action and a high level spell slot aren't favorable. Area save/screwed spells can still be worthwhile because you'll likely affect SOMEBODY and not have wasted your action. Spells that actually remove enemies (such as Banishment) are better than those that just put some penalties on them, because the payoff is so much larger on a failed save.
Your best bet is looking for spells that still have an effect even on a save. No-save spells are of course better, but they're rare.


Weirdly, direct damage can be helpful at higher levels just because it "stacks" with everything else the rest of the party does, as long as you do enough that it reduces the number of actions needed to melee or archer-down the opposition. Dead is after all the best condition to inflict on an enemy. Always make sure you can do some direct damage, at least as much as a typical melee swing, just to finish off weakened opposition or let the fighter move on to somebody else.
I can't really agree with this one. Non-optimized caster damage is pretty weak, so you're generally better off doing just about anything else with your spell slots. If you need damage summon something, or cast a spell that does BFC or debuffs in addition to damage. You'll want at least some metamagic on your spells before blasting becomes worthwhile, or you're just wasting slots.


Finally - it is quite often the best action a wizard can ever do to simply dimension door or teleport the party brutes into melee range of the enemy. Telekenesis and similar shenanigans can also help. A fighter in the 11-20 range can pretty reliably kill anything he gets next to of his own CR, and two of them, or fighter+rogue, or druid+animal companion or whatever will do FAR more damage than any spell you can prep on a single target. So if something needs to get dead, have your melee delay until you can port them to the enemy, and then avert your eyes to avoid getting blood splatter in your face when they come out of delay and open up.
Don't do this. Get your melee to buy a swift action teleport item, if they don't get the idea themselves. Also most serious melee have pounce, making teleporting them right next to an enemy actually counterproductive since they won't get charge bonuses. They just need a clear charge lane, which at higher levels with flight generally isn't a problem.
The same applies to animal companions who are generally either chargers, tramplers or grapplers. Only the third benefit from being teleported on top of an enemy, and most of them won't need it.

You're going to accomplish far more with your action by casting even a 2nd level spell like Glitterdust or Web, or even Grease. Lock your enemies down and your melee will deal with them by themselves just fine.

If your melees aren't that effective, help them out by crafting magic items to fix the problem, or set them up with GMW+4 on their weapon so they can pimp it out with other enhancements or whatever. At level 16 you aren't using your L3 slots for much anyway, so shell out GMW for the weapon users, Heroism for the guy who misses attacks or saves, maybe flame arrow for the archer, etc.
GMW is only a good idea if you can chain it. Using all your third level slots on that is a bit of a waste when you could cast Haste instead. It's also a generally a pretty full level, with gems like Sleet Storm, Greater Mighty Wallop, Battlemagic Perception, Sonorous Hum and others that remain effective at all levels. A lesser rod of Chain Spell is definitely a good investment.

For my own parties it's considered common courtesy that the melee buy a Pearl of Power of the relevant level if they want a particular single-target buff, while the casters take care of group/multi-target buffs themselves. Since almost every caster gets the lesser chain rod that means mostly touch spells.
If your DM is stingy with gear we also generally share out responsibility for crafting among the casters, so everyone takes just one crafting feat and can use the rest on their build.

[Seward]

lets see - I don't really disagree with you, but want to clarify my own thinking

teleporting out of a solid fog is wasting an action. Solid fog can capture several enemies so if even two waste actions teleporting out you're ahead of the game, and it's just as effective as "daze" without getting any saving throw even against a single target most of the time. Fair point on AOE spells. Don't use it on the rare enemy with solid AOE abilities especially if they have a "spotter" or some way to roughly perceive through the fog such as blindsense or a good listen check. Solid fog is for melee critters, archers or those that require seeing their target (which is most mind-controllers, for example, requiring either gaze or "target" type spells) for their nasty effects. That's a large subset of all the monsters out there.

Agree on the partial save effect spells, as long as the "some effect" is still meaningful. I don't consider the disintegrate 5d6 damage on save to be meaningful, but the spell is incredibly good to make barriers vanish - it'll always reliably remove a force effect, or a physical barrier. My beef is with spells like flesh to stone which are all-or-nothing single-target and have no utility function. Pathfinder has a number of effects that work for 1 round even with a save, those are plenty good - one round is an eternity in combat.

The direct damage I mention can be in the form of a wand or scroll or something. Just have SOME way to finish off badly damaged bad guys. Usually a few low level spell slots, maybe backed by a lesser metamagic rod is plenty. I agree that unless you optimize for damage, direct damage won't be enough except in situations where they're hurt enough that you can finish them without the real damage dealer in the party having to waste actions on them and waste most of their damage in overkill. (you CAN optimize for damage, but in a balanced party it isn't the best use of a wizard most of the time). Seriously I'd way rather have a magic missile or scorching ray prepped than glitterdust or web if the problem is a hydra with 10 hp left next to the party melee who brought it to that point with his AC-destroying shock-trooper charge. Web is useless unless you're in a confined space, glitterdust has such a small area it's a single target save/suck debuff which should be prepped almost entirely for its anti-invisibility effect at levels past 5. Whereas 5d4+5 "can't miss" will absolutely drop the hydra into negatives (it might wake up again, but it'll be all the way dead when that barbarian goes again), and you're unlikely to miss all three rays of a scorching ray, and even one hitting will do the same.

Lacking such a spell you're likely to end up using something like disintegrate in that situation for direct damage (and risk missing on a natural 1), or waste a powerful battlefield control spell like wall of force. Far better to just have a CL9 wand of magic missiles or just devote a low level spell slot or two to the problem, plus some cheap pearls to pull them back between fights. The more effective your direct damage is, the more times you'll just be able to kill an enemy and stop the counterattack that way but you don't want direct damage to eat into your bread-and-butter spells - it competes with low level buff spells or is outsourced to consumables.

Core campaigns have no swift action teleport items and the only way to get pounce is to wildshape into a cat. Many charge builds don't come together until relatively late Obviously, if such exist, the melee characters should have swift action teleport items and/or their own way to fly reliably and get clear charge lanes, and maybe you should be crafting items that will help. But one action can but 3-4 people in position to do full attacks. That's a pretty good use of an action as it can get 2-3 enemies outright dead before they can react. Even with optimized melees, a dimension door can reach enemies that an anklet of translocation can't, and a simple fog spell that blocks the sight lines of your melee can ruin a charge-build, but your dim-door will get ALL of your melees right next to the enemy (or if you prefer and the situation allows, 10' away and able to charge)

Dim door is also a pretty good counter to wind-wall or visibility-blocking type stuff screwing with your archer, if that's where a lot of the party damage comes from.

Chain GMW is awesome if chain spell is allowed (it's noncore and in Pathfinder doesn't exist at all). Pearls of power paid for by melees or anyone else who needs a buff (this can include your wizard if you want a cleric buff, say) are a very good idea to minimize the impact on slots - wizards don't really have enough to do what sorcerers do where they burn their low slots out in party buffs just to have something to do with them every day. Just make sure the buffs end up where they're needed somehow BEFORE any fighting begins, and make sure the resources spent on getting them are equitable.

[Koran Redaxe]

Originally Posted by Killer Angel
Why is he claiming such a thing?
Is his way to tell "I want you to optimize, for your own good"?

He is normally a good DM who wants everyone to have fun, but two of our group members have been complaining that our last campaign was too easy.

In response to Kraken's question, I don't believe he would do that, as he has been lenient in the past and tends to want us to enjoy ourselves. The advice has been great so far, thanks.

[Rubik]

If you look into making an easy bake wizard, make sure to read Gavinfoxx's post later on. It has some good supplemental instructions and tricks.


The direct damage I mention can be in the form of a wand or scroll or something. Just have SOME way to finish off badly damaged bad guys. Usually a few low level spell slots, maybe backed by a lesser metamagic rod is plenty. I agree that unless you optimize for damage, direct damage won't be enough except in situations where they're hurt enough that you can finish them without the real damage dealer in the party having to waste actions on them and waste most of their damage in overkill. (you CAN optimize for damage, but in a balanced party it isn't the best use of a wizard most of the time). Seriously I'd way rather have a magic missile or scorching ray prepped than glitterdust or web if the problem is a hydra with 10 hp left next to the party melee who brought it to that point with his AC-destroying shock-trooper charge. Web is useless unless you're in a confined space, glitterdust has such a small area it's a single target save/suck debuff which should be prepped almost entirely for its anti-invisibility effect at levels past 5. Whereas 5d4+5 "can't miss" will absolutely drop the hydra into negatives (it might wake up again, but it'll be all the way dead when that barbarian goes again), and you're unlikely to miss all three rays of a scorching ray, and even one hitting will do the same.I wouldn't bother with direct damage -- at least, not direct direct damage. If you need direct damage, you're best off using an effect that dubuffs while it damages, such as a Fell Drain Magic Missile, or using a utility spell that can deal damage in a pinch, like Summon Monster. That way if direct damage isn't crucial to the situation at hand, you still have ways to deal with situations that don't require damage using the same spells.

[Aleolus]

If I can throw my hat in the ring, I would actually recommend going with Archivist over Wizard for the following reasons:
1) More HP on average
2) Higher AC
3) More Skill Points
4) Same capability for learning new spells at any time, with a wider variety of spells to choose from (Archivist can add any 'divine' spell scroll to their book, Wizards can only add Sorc/Wiz spells)
5) Their Dark Knowledge ability is useful more often than not, despite its limitations

[xyianth]

You can always do the standard OP tier 1 elf wizard:

race: any elf
build: beguiler 1/elven generalist wizard 3/ultimate magus 5/incantatrix 3/initiate of the sevenfold veil 3/archmage 1/initiate of the sevenfold veil +4
flaws: any two
feats: extend spell[1], spell focus(abjuration)[flaw1], skill focus(spellcraft)[flaw2], practiced spellcaster(beguiler)[3], versatile spellcaster[6], iron will[9], quicken spell[9b], persist spell[10b], greater spell focus(abjuration)[12], spell focus(<any other school>)[15], <any>[18]

That build can extend/persist the seven warding veils along with their favorite wizard buff spells and is never weak at any level. You only have to ban one school and only from your wizard half. You cast as a 4th level beguiler (+ versatile spellcaster) and a 19th level wizard.

If your DM manages to kill you while you are playing that, you either messed up or didn't stand a chance in the first place.

[Seward]

I wouldn't bother with direct damage -- at least, not direct direct damage. If you need direct damage, you're best off using an effect that dubuffs while it damages, such as a Fell Drain Magic Missile, or using a utility spell that can deal damage in a pinch, like Summon Monster. That way if direct damage isn't crucial to the situation at hand, you still have ways to deal with situations that don't require damage using the same spells.

Fell drain magic missiles take a higher level slot, but having lesser metamagic rods to get more oomph out of direct damage spells is perfectly reasonable.

Summon monster, unless you can do it as a standard action, is NOT a substitute for direct damage. You are failing to kill the monster before it can act again, with an action that is close to 100% reliable. (the critter will act before your 1 round summon will go off). If you have something like the rapid summon feat, this can work but you're blowing a high level spell slot if you want to actually hurt a CR+3 enemy. This approach is similar to using disintegrate to deal 5d6 damage when a magic missile would accomplish the same thing with less chance of outright failure (you can't fail to hit with a magic missile, and it lacks all the issues of a summon spell - slow, easily interrupted casting, short range and the critter you summon needs to be able to hit the enemy, defeat DR, etc)

I don't understand the irrational resistance to devoting a couple low level spell slots to direct damage. The spells are better slotted than via consumables (as they are far more likely to cope with spell resistance and get your full caster level for damage), they can take advantage of cheap pearls of power and lesser metamagic rods and they otherwise just plain work (there are SR=no versions in both Pathfinder and noncore D&D, and if SR isn't an issue, 3 attack rolls on scorching ray or the no-miss magic missiles take all randomness out of the equation - you WILL get your damage in). Taking a couple slots of damage is not going to kill your batman-wizard cred - even Batman punches enemies from time to time, or has a batarang bonk a mook on the head to take it out instead of wrapping it up in a line or something.

[xyianth]

I don't think anyone is saying you can't do direct damage as a wizard, but it really isn't your job in the party. To make things worse, if you focus on it too much you can easily become ineffective at the things that are your responsibility. Even the best direct damage spells are only considered good because of whatever rider effects they may have. No amount of d4s, d6s, or whatever will ever come close to being equal to a daze or paralyze effect, and all too often they come with the same opportunity cost: spell slot + standard action.

Basically, direct damage is the least efficient use of spell slots on a wizard. You can do so, but it is like asking the barbarian to be the know-it-all academic: they can do it, but why? If you come across a situation that calls for it though, feel free to blast away.

Edit: As to summon vs direct damage, you are seriously stacking the deck in that comparison. No CR+3 monster that is close enough to be a threat is going to die from magic missile, I don't care what items/benefits you use. At CL 9, magic missile is 5d4+5 damage, or about 17.5 on average. Go find a CR 12 monster that will die from that. Even if you do find one, those monsters are best dealt with by your party. (or your crossbow or reserve feat or something) Summons are for use before the monsters close the gap between you or to deal with many monsters at once. This greatly reduces the impact of the full round casting time and greatly benefits the utility and damage of a single summon spell. At CL 9, summons last 9 rounds. I'm fairly sure even summon monster I creatures can eke out 17.5 damage in 9 rounds, if they live. If they don't, they will at least have prevented some damage from reaching you and your allies. As for scorching ray, I seriously don't understand why that spell is so well regarded. It is a handful of d6s in fire damage. Prior to level 8, seeking ray is simply better. Even after level 8, I'd much rather drop a web or glitterdust or ray of stupidity or cloud of bewilderment or shadow spray or etc...

[Endarire]

Snuggle up with Treantmonk (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=394.0)!

[Florian]

If you can end an encounter right now, anything you do is using a spell slot right, especially if its a lower level one. Everything else would simply force the other players to waste their ressources.

[xyianth]

If you can end an encounter right now, anything you do is using a spell slot right, especially if its a lower level one. Everything else would simply force the other players to waste their ressources.

That is debatable. You are not accounting for the opportunity cost of that spell slot. If an encounter can be ended by a 1st level spell slot on magic missile, it can also be ended by a charge from your party's melee specialist. (and a lot of other things, quite frankly) The difference is that charges from a melee specialist have no use limit. If you use that slot now, you don't have it later where it might become a silent image that evades an entire encounter by itself. If your party's melee specialist charges, (s)he can always charge again later. Now, high level wizards are not at all hurting for low level spell slots so that opportunity cost can become quite small, but it never vanishes. If your DM also doesn't stick to the 5-minute workday model of encounter design, that opportunity cost increases significantly as well.

D&D is a team game. You should not try and do everything, even if you can. Good wizards control the outcome of battle, they don't need to resort to brute force; leave that to your teammates. And if you lack teammates, summoning/charming/animating up a few is a perfectly valid strategy too.

[Kraken]

My suggestions are going to emphasize survivability. Consider a one level dip in the mindbender prestige class (Complete Arcane), granting you telepathy, and thus allowing you to grab the mindsight feat (Lords of Madness page 126, it is NOT listed in the normal feats section of the book). This will make it virtually impossible for any creature with an intelligence score to get within 100' of you undetected, unless they're coming in via a teleport or something. Speaking of teleportation, anticipate teleport (Spell Comp.) is a great thing to cast every day, it delays anyone teleporting close to you by 1 round, and makes you aware of their arrival.

Pick up the destiny domain (Races of Destiny) by the arcane disciple feat. You'll want either a lesser quicken rod or celerity strategy of some sort to get off the delay death spell on demand, allowing you to soak up unlimited hit point damage - just make sure to combine it with some sort of potent fast healing or other revival strategy you still need to deal with all the hit point damage that you accumulate. At level 11 you'll get the warp destiny spell from the destiny domain, which will greatly shore up your ability to pass crucial saving throws. I'll also suggest planar touchstone for the luck or pride domains. The luck domain ability is only 1/day, but it more versatile, and you'll eventually be able to cast miracle. The pride domain power is nice to take the worry out of natural 1s on saves, and it also gets you divine power, which might be of interest if you'll be using a build that wants good spells to persist.

Permeable form is a good 'panic button' spell, it makes you incorporeal as an immediate action. Celerity+teleport, or celerity+anything, really, can also work.

Here's a list of famous optimized builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?258580-Famous-optimized-character-builds), in particular check out Cindy, Killer Gnome, and Mailman. Killer Gnome and shadowcraftmage builds in general are good fun, here's (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=714.0) a list of relevant spells for them. Edit: Killer Gnome post didn't have as much info as I thought it would, have a look here (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5638).

Here's a list of no save, no SR, no attack roll effects (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=q9u5u1vr96eji4hdscqsh9fju6&topic=8913.0)

Don't underestimate your familiar. Next level when you can cast contingency, you can abuse your familiar to functionally get a second contingency, because you can cast personal spells on your familiar instead. You can, for instance, set a contingency on your familiar to activate a spell whenever you say a trigger phrase, then cast contingency again on yourself without it interfering with the one you set on your familiar. DOn't underestimate the power of share spells with polymorph and copious amount of buffing, either. In a core only game, polymorphing yourself and a familiar into hydras is just ridiculous, out of core needless to say things get crazierHere's some other stuff about familiars (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=q9u5u1vr96eji4hdscqsh9fju6&topic=9955.0). It might be worth grabbing a speaking familiar, such as a raven, so that they can try to UMD wands and other magic items, if you can get their check up high enough. There are ways, but I'm drawing blanks at the moment, others can probably help.

You might also check out the handbook index (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=q9u5u1vr96eji4hdscqsh9fju6&topic=399.0) at min max, just for anything that catches you eye.

[sleepyphoenixx]

At level 11 you'll get the warp destiny spell from the destiny domain, which will greatly shore up your ability to pass crucial saving throws. I'll also suggest planar touchstone for the luck or pride domains. The luck domain ability is only 1/day, but it more versatile, and you'll eventually be able to cast miracle. The pride domain power is nice to take the worry out of natural 1s on saves, and it also gets you divine power, which might be of interest if you'll be using a build that wants good spells to persist.


Adding to that, if ToB is allowed the lesser maneuver granting items are quite cheap, and they're sufficient to get you the maneuvers that replace a save with a concentration check (which you'll max anyway). A Diamond Mind ring of Mind over Body at least is almost always worth it, to shore up your fort save.
If your DM allows combination items (as per MIC) you can add Action before Thought for reflex saves as well. That also means you can get an Iron Heart Vest of any first level maneuver and Iron Heart Surge, which is just awesome no matter your build.
There's also the Shadow Hand teleport maneuvers, which have no prerequisites and are (Ex), so you can use them to escape from an Antimagic Field.

At higher levels you can also get a mithral buckler with the Resilient enhancement (FoW, +1 enhancement). Cast Magic Vestment on it and you can get up to +5 (untyped) on a save as an immediate action, for a little over 5,000gp.
Combine that with a Spellstrike weapon (MIC, +1 bonus) and Greater Magic Weapon for another +5 (untyped) on your saves in exchange for ~8,000gp and a spell slot that stacks with everything.
If that's not enough you can get another +5 (sacred) out of Bracers of Armor or dastana with the Empyreal enhancement (BoED) for 9,000gp and another slot for Magic Vestment.
For reference, a Cloak of Resistance +5 costs 25,000gp and doesn't stack with Superior Resistance (SpC), so you're generally better of buying these than the cloak.

[Florian]

@Xyianth:

It's simply a statement that unwillingness to nuke can have the same averse effect that in-combat-healing can have, and that is simply prolonging combat, running the risk of losing more ressources that way than necessary.

As Treeantmonks guide has been linked, that has had an update for Pathfinder, as much of the content has become a bit dated.

[Seward]

Edit: As to summon vs direct damage, you are seriously stacking the deck in that comparison. No CR+3 monster that is close enough to be a threat is going to die from magic missile

Sure it will, if the rest of the party has reduced it to a handful of hitpoints. You can kill a Balor with a magic missile if it is in single digit hitpoints and you're the next person to go. You'll often be the LAST person to go before the monster if you use battlefield control tactically with readied actions, so this is quite relevant. Indeed you can ready your action to zap the critter next to the barbarian with the condition "if Grond doesn't drop the Balor, I'll shoot the magic missile" if you really want to be stingy with spell slots.

I'm not saying a wizard should do direct damage as a primary function. (unless you enjoy optimizing one for that purpose and the party lacks direct damage). I'm saying you better have a way to remove the last handful of hitpoints from a monster in a standard action, because it will save somebody from enemy action more reliably than any other option.

Furthermore doing this with low level spell slots and perhaps cheap lesser metamagic rods is worthwhile. What else are you going to do with those slots? Generally buff spells, decent duration sensory spells such as see invisibility (if you can't just make the spell permanent) and usually one slot for glitterdust. By level 12 you should have a minimum of 10 first+second level slots (int 22), 12 if you have domain slots. If you can't fit in a couple damage spells there, you may want to think about your priorities.

(to use the silent image example, a 25gp scroll covers that option, 12.5gp for you since all wizards have scribe scroll. A L1 scroll will NOT finish off the Balor, he needs your caster level and spell penetration. All options like silent image, obscuring mist etc should be offloaded to scrolls, or perhaps 750gp wands if you use them all the time but are having spell slot issues. Hell, I have played many arcanists who never slot glitterdust, but just carry a scroll of it around. 3 rounds of lit-up invisible enemy has always been enough to get it dead, so why tie up a spell slot with it when the save DC is too low to blind most enemies past L8 or so. Finally if you are a typical L12 wizard you have a bagfull of pearl of power Is, so any L1 spell slot is easily recovered once used, where allowing the monster to get one final full attack or spell sequence off could result in a dead ally, or a monster escaping to fight another day)

[Seward]

Don't underestimate your familiar.

Agreed. A familiar is at minimum two feats (Alertness, plus one of skill focus or a +2 saving throw booster), so choose wisely.

But a familiar has its own standard, move and swift actions, which for familiars that have a little strength (like an eagle) can do things like pick up dropped items, drop splash weapons on enemies or even pour potions down throats in a pinch. If you have UMD, it might be able to use a wand, if it can speak (like a raven) it can activate most wondrous items. Most familiars are exceptionally good scouts with a little bit of spell assistance (and sometimes without - bats are pretty awesome on their own), and being able to scry on your familiar means you can be there for the whole ride without the risk of an enemy shaking off the scry spell or otherwise messing it up.

None of that even considers feats, spells and magic items that give familiars limited spellcasting ability, or a fair simulation of that (like Contingency)

I've also made good use of the "speak to other animals of its kind" ability - birds, bats and rats can often find out quite a bit about cities or dungeons just by talking to other residents. Granted it is an animal-perspective of the place, but knowing that the corridor to the left is avoided by the local rats because there's no food, and the corridor to the right because something hunts the rats and nearly always succeeds can be pretty useful.