Portal focused wizard

[Vetril]

Hi guys, I'm looking for ways to build a wizard focused on portals.
So point out anything you know that might be appropriate, such as Transdimensional Spell, any official prc focused on portals, or any spell involving a portal (doesn't matter to where) which might be weaponized.

[Sheogoroth]

Weaponizing portals is like weaponizing artillery pieces.
Yes, you can do it rather easily, but using it for anything other than destroying a city is way more expensive and time consuming than it needs to be.
A portal is just a hole between time and space, so if you want to move a bomb or an army or even a lot of water (portal at the bottom of the ocean = drain at the bottom of a bath tub) Portals are a good way to go.
But portals are best for a sustained or massive movements because you can just teleport a bomb.

Transdimensional Spell just lets you target ethereal creatures.

There is a lot you can do with Dimensional Door, see feat chain: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/dimensional-savant

I'm not a fan of the Dimensional Savant, but it does go pretty interestingly with this bad boy: http://dnd.arkalseif.info/classes/jaunter/

BuuUUUuuut, there's also my personal favorite(an idea I've actually been toying with recently,) the Yathocol Webrider.
http://alcyius.com/dndtools/classes/yathchol-webrider/index.html
The normal problem with it is that you need to travel through existing webs. But there's a drow magic item from Advanced Races Compendium called "Spiderbolts" that create webs as per the spell "Web Bolt". They are pretty expensive. I'm still looking for a way to get Web as a SLA, but nothing doin so far.

[Inevitability]

Play a sharn? They've got a pretty cool portal-based ability.

Maybe ask your DM to cut down on the LA, or use LA buyoff. Failing that, at high enough level sharns make decent gishes.

[Jowgen]

You might be better off with a Bard. No, seriously. Planar Handbook comes with 3 planar substitution levels, which include the ability to re-direct portals to different destinations and open planar breaches with bardic music uses.

Also, a rule that no one ever seems to remember but you should keep in mind for this sort of thing:


Magic portals generally require sentience to use; the natural hazards of a plane do not pass through portals. Temperature, air (whether toxic or not), dangerous substances, and energy emissions stay on their side of an open portal. A portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, for example, poses no danger to those on the near side of the portal because the heat doesn't pass through the portal. Likewise, one may open a portal to the Elemental plane of Water without a flood suddenly rushing through into the other plane.

[Vetril]

Thanks for the suggestions, everything is helpful! I hadn't considered the Sharn, though I did know about the planar bard cause I played one :D
In the mean time, I've been doing some research too. Incidentally that led me to finding a weird interaction between two PrCs, but I'll put that in another thread.
They don't have to be big portals: there are spells which thematically fit, such as Shadow Well. Plane shift would be a no brainer too. Transdimensional Spell does work on extradimensional spaces such as that created by a Rope Trick spell - an effect that vaguely resembles a portal, imho.
There are some other cool examples of weaponized portals that come to mind from fantasy literature, such as the Wheel of Time books: some spellcasters there use moving portals that rapidly open and close to teleport and "cut" everything in their path.
One could probably use the Domain Wizard variant and ask the DM to pick the Portal domain. There is even an ACF that lets you trade a wizard bonus feat for a Domain power (again, the Portal domain).
So you could stay wizard, get a bunch of thematic spells for free and sack a feat to get the domain power too. Not too bad.
I'm actually surprised by the lack of PrC support. I thought I'd find at least a prc from FR, considering the Imaskari were big on portals, but the most relevant thing I could dig up was the Planeshifter. The class does get to cast Plane Shift at will at level 8, to be fair.
Oh, and there's the Imaskari Portal Lord (http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/leof_ipl.htm), which apparently should have been in Lost Empires, but was scrapped before the book came out. Too bad, it looks like an interesting PrC with some unique effects.

[Inevitability]

Yeah, I suggest removing all those links. That's copyrighted material on an illegal site they lead to.

[Vetril]

Right, true.