Please help me prepare Wizard spells! (3.5 Wizard CL:30)

[Starmage21]

Full Spell Progression (0-13th) 4/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6/6/3/2/2/2; CL 29; Save DC (24 + SL)
Metamagic feats available: Extend Spell, Searing Spell, Energy Substitution: Fire, Energy Admixture: Fire, Twin Spell, Split Ray, Quicken Spell, Enlarge Spell, Persist Spell, Maximize Spell
Also: Radiant Fire (think Lord of the Uttercold, but with Fire and Positive Energy instead of Cold and Negative; Every fire spell is a mini-Flame Strike)
Also: 3x applications of Improved Metamagic


For blastyness? Orb of Fire (4th), Radiant (+0), Searing (+1), Maximize (+1), Admixture: Fire (+1), Twin (+1), Split (+1) = 9th = 8x Touch attacks for 90 Positive & 90 Fire per hit that ignores Fire Immunity/Resistance (or 1/2 vs Fire subtypes)
Celerity in every 4th level slot?


*edit*
Yes, I've read these:
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Wizards%27_Handbook_by_Dictum_Mortuum_(DnD_Optimiz ed_Character_Build)/Spells
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2716.0
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=394.0

*Edit3*
Wizard 5/War Weaver 5/Incantatrix 20 -- My class progression. Technically it was more Wiz 5 -> War Weaver 5 -> Incantatrix 10 -> Epic Incantatrix 10
Struckthrough spells below are part of Quiescent Weaving function of War Weaver

*edit4*
Added Bold type for "daily-cast" spell slots used up

*edit2*
My existing spells memorized
Wizard Spells
Full Spell Progression (0-13th): 4/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6/6/3/2/2/2
Caster Level: 29
Spells Known: All Sor/Wiz spells in the following sources: 3.5 SRD, PHB II, Spell Compendium, Complete Adventurer, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, Champions of Ruin, Complete Mage, Complete Scoundrel, Complete Warrior, Champions of Valor, Races of the Dragon, Races of Stone, Races of the Wild
Spells Prepared*:
0- Detect Magic x2, Read Magic, Prestidigitation
1- Feather Fall, Grease, Nerveskitter x3, Magic Missile x2, Ebon Eyes
2- Ray of Stupidity, Glitterdust, Web, Ghoul Touch, Quickened Grease, Maximized Magic Missile, Quickened True Casting
3- Shadow Binding, Anticipate Teleport, Shivering Touch, Haste x2, Maximized Ray of Stupidity
4- Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Celerity x2, Ray Deflection, Extended Shadow Phase
5- Magic Jar, Cloudkill, Extended Greater Invisibility, Dragonsight, Telekinesis, Freezing Fog, Greater Mirror Image
6- Acid Fog, Greater Dispel Magic, Quickened Twinned Charm Monster, Searing Admixture Quickened Fireball, Searing Admixture Maximized Fireball, Quickened Split Dimensional Anchor
7- Forcecage x2, Prismatic Spray, Greater Teleport, Quickened Tactical Teleportation
8- Mystic Shield, Moment of Prescience, Mind Blank, Extended Elemental Immunity x3
9- Foresight, Shapechange, Time Stop, Quickened Chain Dispel, Maximized Twinned Admixture Split Searing Orb of Fire
10- Maximized Twinned Admixture Split Searing Quickened Orb of Fire, Quickened Mage's Disjunction
11- Maximized Twinned Maw of Chaos
12- Maximized Admixture Searing Meteor Swarm, Quickened Admixture Searing Meteor Swarm
13- Searing Split Maximized Twinned Admixture Polar Ray, Searing Split Admixture Twinned Quickened Polar Ray
*- All spells that deal energy damage assume prepared with Energy Substitution: Fire and Radiant Fire

[Randomguy]

What banned / specialized schools do you have?

Don't put Celerity in every 4th level slot. Prepare one, buy a bunch of pearls of power 4th level, refresh the slot in time stop. There are other good 4th level spells. Solid Fog and Black Tentacles come to mind, provided you dispel any freedom of movement first.

[Gildedragon]

Race? Prcs? Concept?

[Starmage21]

General butt kicking and utility. This is for an existing character where I am poorly utilizing their huge spell list. Something of a combination of a Bright Wizard and a preserver from Athas, but ancient and a lich.

I have access to every spell from the core, PHB2, 'Races of' and 'complete' splats.

[Starmage21]

Added my current spells prepared list to help with tweak suggestions

[Randomguy]

Some critique:


Don't prepare Shapechange twice. Prepare extended Shapechange once: At your level it will last 10 hours anyway. You also need Extended Foresight, and at least one Moment of Prescience.
Ditch all the greater teleports. It's not the kind of spell you want to have prepared on a daily basis. Prepare it on days when you actually need it. It's also a good spell to put have in a staff.
You need tactical teleportation. If you don't have several anklets of translocation or some other teleportation item, then prepare dimension hop and quickened dimension hop.
Swap Color Spray for feather fall.
You have anticipate teleport prepared twice, once as a 3rd level spell and once as a 4th level spell.
You should get persistent Ray Deflection. Persist some other spells as well, otherwise you're wasting that metamagic feat. Dragonsight would be a good one to persist, and so would Greater Invisibility.
Disintegrate is a good spell to prepare: Not for combat purposes, but for when you want to tunnel through a wall.
Consider getting rid of Disjunction and using Chain Dispel instead, to dispel all of someone's magic items. That way you can still get some loot from the battle.
Grab Charm monster, that way if you ever go up against something with a low will save you can get yourself a new pet. Then prepare dominate monster the next day.
Quicken more spells


Do you have party members? Because if so, you'll want to add a lot more buff spells / mass buff spells, like mass protection from energy, or haste.

Consider if casting a spell is worth spending your action on. For example: Scorching ray is only 12d6 damage. At epic levels, barely worth casting. But a quickened grease, or quickened benign transposition, could still be a worthwhile use of a 2nd level slot even at epic levels.
Along that line of thinking, whenever you prepare a blasting spell, consider if you could metamagic a lower level spell to the same slot to do more damage instead. Fireball itself is less damage than shapechanging into a 25HD dragon and using a breath weapon, so it's not really worth preparing. But twinned Searing Admixtured fireball does 40d6 damage, and is a 6th level spell. Much better than the Searing Cone of Cold you have prepared in the same slot. Similarly, a quickened heavily metamagicked Orb of Fire is much better than a searing meteor swarm.

[Starmage21]

So my thinking on multuple copies of spells is that I am planning on getting hit with dispels, same as I might do to another caster. If that happens, my shape change goes away and I'd have to recast.

Thank you for the advice, btw.

[Gildedragon]

At level 30 you have mad $$$ get poison rings with Spellblade (dispel magic)(reaving dispel) etc. They target you, you bounce it back

[Starmage21]

Some critique:


Don't prepare Shapechange twice. Prepare extended Shapechange once: At your level it will last 10 hours anyway. You also need Extended Foresight, and at least one Moment of Prescience.
Ditch all the greater teleports. It's not the kind of spell you want to have prepared on a daily basis. Prepare it on days when you actually need it. It's also a good spell to put have in a staff.
You need tactical teleportation. If you don't have several anklets of translocation or some other teleportation item, then prepare dimension hop and quickened dimension hop.
Swap Color Spray for feather fall.
You have anticipate teleport prepared twice, once as a 3rd level spell and once as a 4th level spell.
You should get persistent Ray Deflection. Persist some other spells as well, otherwise you're wasting that metamagic feat. Dragonsight would be a good one to persist, and so would Greater Invisibility.
Disintegrate is a good spell to prepare: Not for combat purposes, but for when you want to tunnel through a wall.
Consider getting rid of Disjunction and using Chain Dispel instead, to dispel all of someone's magic items. That way you can still get some loot from the battle.
Grab Charm monster, that way if you ever go up against something with a low will save you can get yourself a new pet. Then prepare dominate monster the next day.
Quicken more spells


Do you have party members? Because if so, you'll want to add a lot more buff spells / mass buff spells, like mass protection from energy, or haste.

Consider if casting a spell is worth spending your action on. For example: Scorching ray is only 12d6 damage. At epic levels, barely worth casting. But a quickened grease, or quickened benign transposition, could still be a worthwhile use of a 2nd level slot even at epic levels.
Along that line of thinking, whenever you prepare a blasting spell, consider if you could metamagic a lower level spell to the same slot to do more damage instead. Fireball itself is less damage than shapechanging into a 25HD dragon and using a breath weapon, so it's not really worth preparing. But twinned Searing Admixtured fireball does 40d6 damage, and is a 6th level spell. Much better than the Searing Cone of Cold you have prepared in the same slot. Similarly, a quickened heavily metamagicked Orb of Fire is much better than a searing meteor swarm.

Some responses to your list

Dropped Shapechange x2. Not sure I even need it once, but if I do I can cast, then persist. Being surprised or flat-footed doesnt hurt me, thanks to Celerity being an immediate action, Foresight isnt worth a 9th level spell to me. I've added a Moment of Prescience.
Ditched all the Greater Teleports
I have Boots of Swift Passage for tactical teleportation
Swapped Color Spray for Feather Fall.
Fixed Anticipate Teleportation. According to Spell Compendium, it takes a 3rd level spell slot.
Ray Deflection and Dragonsight will be persisted
Dont need to memorize Disintegrate. I have other means of using it.
Currently dont have any houserules in effect for dispelling or counterspelling. Capped at +25 from Chain Dispel means I wont succeed against casters that are an actual threat. Still, taking one of these for use against non-casters that have buffs from magic items on them.
Memorized a Quickened Twinned Charm Monster
I can quicken any spell using Instant Metamagic if I need it. I dont have Multispell (or multiple multispells) yet. If I need to burn a swift action on spellcasting, it will be worth using Instant Metamagic most of the time I think. Would you agree?


Thanks for the heads-up about Cone of Cold and such. I agree with your point and I shouldve been thinking about that, especially since metamagic is cheaper for me than a nonepic caster.

[Randomguy]

I can quicken any spell using Instant Metamagic if I need it. I dont have Multispell (or multiple multispells) yet. If I need to burn a swift action on spellcasting, it will be worth using Instant Metamagic most of the time I think. Would you agree?


I would disagree here, actually. You only have, what, 4 uses of instant metamagic? (I'm not sure if you get more uses from the epic levels). So if you choose to use instant metamagic to quicken a 7th level spell rather than preparing it quickened as an 8th level spell, then you're essentially swapping one use of this ability to let you spend a 7th level slot to cast an 8th level spell. But you already have just as many 7th level spells as 8th level spells, so it's not a huge benefit.
Meanwhile, if you use the same ability to quicken a 9th level spell, then you're effectively swapping a 9th level spell + 1 use of instant metamagic to get a 10th level spell, which is a much better deal, since you have twice as many 9th level spell slots as 10th level spell slots.

So it's better to quicken the lower level spells normally, and save the instant metamagic for 9th level slots and up.

Also, when you're in combat you'll want to use your swift action every single round. I don't know how many other uses you have for your swift action, asides from a quickened spell, so I'm not sure how many you should prepare exactly, but probably more than you've already got. Maybe one quickened spell for every 4 blasty spells? Eh, if you find you don't have enough or have too many in game then you can change up your spells prepared the next session.

[Starmage21]

I am definitely seeing your logic there.

BTW as far as blasting stuff is concerned. I have 2-4 rounds worth of combat spells memorized. 2 rounds of single-target blasts (Orb of Fire, and Polar Ray), and 2 rounds of multi-target blasts (Fireball and Meteor Swarm). All of it is nasty, but I'm expecting that my party-mates can pick up the slack and I only need to cast those spells as a last resort or to assist on a BBEG level fight. I HOPE thats enough. I WISH there was an AoE version of the orb spells that were SR: No, and thats definitely why I went with Meteor Swarm.

Also, the Incantatrix has an epic progression in Player's Guide to Faerûn. I have 7 Instant Metamagic per day

[rweird]

Dimension Step/Shuffle and Tactical Teleportation (Complete Mage I think) are useful teleportation spells to prepared as they allow you to teleport your allies (and shuffle, enemies if they fail a save) as well. With the Celerity line or the like, it allows you to teleport your party out of trouble. Wall of Stone/Force are similarly useful for blocking line of effect to save your party (or yourself).

Maw of Chaos is a good spell to attack with at epic levels at is is uncapped CLd6 (the save doesn't reduce damage, just negates the daze). If you prepare a twinned maximized one, thats an 11th level spell slot that does 360 force damage in a 15 ft radius, and requires two saves or be dazed (and probably take the damage again next round). While it doesn't necessarily match elemental damage potential, its hard to be immune to (besides SR), and doesn't require any rolls to hit or failing saves.

Quickened True Casting is good ways to deal with spell resistance, and its good to have a few handy just in case.

[Starmage21]

I got schooled a bit on Flat-Footed status. You cannot use immediate actions while Flat-Footed. Celerity will not save me. Becoming immune to Flat-Footed is HARD. Uncanny Dodge (and Improved) does not keep you from being Flat-Footed, it keeps you from losing the dex bonus.

This new information makes having a Foresight in-effect necessary. Unless there is some other means to be not Flat-Footed that I am not aware of.

[Randomguy]

Why on earth did you extend Moment of Prescience? It lasts more than 24 hours for you, and you'll probably expend it before that duration runs out anyway.

[Starmage21]

Lack of 8th level spellslots, and if im gonna use a higher level spellslot, might as well put a metamagic on it?

[Starmage21]

Made a change. Realized that Randomguy had a point and I had to work some effort in there to fix it.

Also, my banned school from Incantatrix is Illusion. I've never been very good with them as a player (my creativity is in innovation, not creation).

[Starmage21]

Any additional feedback, or is my spell list looking pretty good?