Ideas for a wizard i started..

[EndocrineBandit]

Im mostly looking for a bit of direction, maybe spell choices. Currently he's a gray elf wizard, generalist. I took the imbued staff in place of a familiar, and we play with a home brew skill called acquire feat. It is permanently a cross class skill and for every three ranks you gain in it you get a feat, the dm feels it helps more feat starved builds and i don't argue. Anyways, originally i was thinking of taking him wizard 5 mindbender 1 swiftblade 10, using the acquire feat skill and the third level feat to meet the requirements for swiftblade, at level 6 take mindsight, and rock an elvencraft bow with hasty goodness, but i recently rediscovered carmendine monk, and am thinking the bonus feats and int to stuff looks tasty. His regional feat was otherworldly, 1st level feat collegiate wizard. I dont have access to my current spell book right now.

[ATHATH]

If you're a generalist, consider taking the Elven Generalist Racial substitution levels (pro-tip: take a hummingbird familiar for a massive boost to initiative) and/or the Domain Wizard variant. Since you're a Wizard 5, you might also want to take the Spontaneous Divination ACF.

[EndocrineBandit]

Elven generalist is already a thing for him, so it's covered. Should i try to squeeze in monk somewhere or just let the wizardry reign?

[Eldariel]

Eh, the Monk isn't optimal but it's doable. Certainly losing a level of casting would really suck and you don't need Int to AC to pump your AC skyhigh anyways (Polymorph is a thing) but you can nerf yourself if you feel so inclined. Same with Swiftblade - solid but worse than full casting (of course). Depends on the powerlevel you're aiming at. Monk's Belt [DMG] also combines with Carmendine Monk if item-based qualification is allowed. So...yeah, not much to say: do as you please, any of the options is fine but plain Wizard is of course the most powerful (particularly with Spelldancer, Incantatrix or similar).

[EndocrineBandit]

I'm trying to avoid game breaking, i don't want to steal the spot light from the group by any means. I'm the most experienced person at my table.. icantrix isn't something i want, the dm will beat me with books.. and although I do enjoy the abuse i think energies are better spent elsewhere.

As far as using the monks belt to qualify for carmendine monk.. that will start making gear more of a priority target, which although being potentially useful to have gear targeted instead of squishy bits, i think i would be better off using gear to enhance abilities i have instead of using it to build new abilities, if that makes sense?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Swiftblade beats Carmendine Monk hands down, though usually people only take 9 levels. The 10th level isn't really worth losing another level of casting in most cases.

As for using a bow you'll likely have problems doing appreciable damage. Archery kind of demands a source of reliable bonus damage if you want to accomplish anything with it.
Not to mention that proper archery takes a ton of feats and doesn't really synergize well with arcane gishes in general (takes lots of feats compared to melee, lack of good archery spells compared to lots of great melee spells) or Swiftblade specifically. If you're set on archery a cleric tends to work a lot better.

[Eldariel]

Swiftblade beats Carmendine Monk hands down, though usually people only take 9 levels. The 10th level isn't really worth losing another level of casting in most cases.

As for using a bow you'll likely have problems doing appreciable damage. Archery kind of demands a source of reliable bonus damage if you want to accomplish anything with it.
Not to mention that proper archery takes a ton of feats and doesn't really synergize well with arcane gishes in general (takes lots of feats compared to melee, lack of good archery spells compared to lots of great melee spells) or Swiftblade specifically. If you're set on archery a cleric tends to work a lot better.

Well, Arcane archery isn't bad. Feats are nice but all you really need is Rapid Shot (so two feats). All the others are more or less either negatable through sufficient bonuses, or appropriate spells (the Sniper's Shot/Arrowmind/Guided Shot/etc. and Seeking/Blood-Seeking/etc. properties go a long way). You can persist the first level buffs with 1 round duration the hard way on ECL13 even if not abusing anything, and most of them work just fine all day (exceptions include True Strike and Critical Strike of which only former is worth bothering with at all, and even that's only in conjunction with autocrits from Hunter's Mercy and Power Shot from Hank's Bow). Abjurant Champion's Arcane Boost works with archery and 2xSpell Level on damage in conjunction with all the extra arrows you can fire can be brutal. You can easily toss in Knowledge Devotion, you have spells like Flame Arrow (a nice shell for metamagic), Minor Creation (for poisons), Greater Magic Weapon, etc. and can pick up some of the spells from the other list (Recaster or Wyrm Wizard for Arrowsplit combined with metamagic is nasty). Then you have Arrow of Bone (give it range through metamagic and use Rod to Chain it to make it rather effective), Polymorph into Arrow Demon (with Otherworldly, intermediate Transformation spell to gain the type or by latest with Shapechange), various minor buffs á la Greater Blink/Greater Invisibility, Heroisms, Keen Edge, etc.

You can also make superb use of Brilliant Blade/Aura, having Brilliant Energy on command to fire at any targets you can detect through all non-organic obstacles. You can teach your Familiar Mindsight with Psychic Reformation or whatever and Polymorph/Shapechange it into e.g. Thoon Elder Brain, Spell-Weaver, Formian Queen or something else with a ridiculous Telepathy range to get a radar to shoot with - though in close quarters e.g. Arcane Sight or Chain of Eyes often works. It's really quite easy to get sufficient numbers and immense strategic versatility this way.

[EndocrineBandit]

I'm not looking to specialize in archery, but an elvencraft longbow gives you the capacity to have 3 wand chambers, 3 seperate sets of weapon enchantments, 3 augment crystals, and it's the wizard's imbued item so he can channel touch spells through it, potentially other shenanigans. The bow portion of it is just extra, but as a wizard spells known will be pretty liberal so I'll keep some of them in mind. I was thinking bfc and buffs with a dash of conjuration. Using alter self to adopt physically superior forms depending on what's needed. Otherworldly opens up a variety of options on that front.. i figure being a college wizard with a high enough knowledge of the planes should have an decent database of outsiders to pick from.

[Rerednaw]

Since your GM is allowing custom stuff I would consider Spell Geometry (from Pathfinder) it will help your 'feat starved' build.

In any case pretty much go Wizard20 and actually you will be pretty solid.

Good luck!