Help with build

[rupierto97]

Hello, I'm looking for help regarding my focused specialist (abjuration) wizard3/m. specialist7 on 3.5e.
What are some essentials feats (I have four to assign), useful magic items (16'000 gc budget) and good spells to pick?
All manuals and magazines are available so don't hold back!

[rupierto97]

I forgot to tell: forbidden schools are Enchantment, Illusion and Necromancy

[Eldariel]

Hello, I'm looking for help regarding my focused specialist (abjuration) wizard3/m. specialist7 on 3.5e.
What are some essentials feats (I have four to assign), useful magic items (16'000 gc budget) and good spells to pick?
All manuals and magazines are available so don't hold back!

What do you want to do? I'm guessing Dispel Magic is going to be at least a relatively big part of your gameplan. If you had Turn Undead (e.g. God-Touched and Divine Channeler [DR305] or a single level of Sacred Exorcist [Complete Divine] or whatever) and a 3rd level divine caster level (a bit trickier to achieve without dipping than a 3rd level arcane caster level), you could get Divine Defiance [Fiendish Codex II] for counterspelling as an immediate action. That's a real gamechanger against other casters and goes great with your caster level buffs. Planar Touchstone [Planar Handbook] into Catalogues of Enlightenment would grant you further +4 on Dispel-checks. Arcane Mastery [Complete Arcane] allows taking 10 on caster level checks, which is pretty huge for reliability if you intend on using Dispel with any kind of frequency (not to mention, it speeds the game up a ton). Elven Spell Lore [PHBII] is an untyped bonus on top of it, so might as well.

You definitely want some way to Chain Spell your Dispel Magic (and eventually, Greater Dispel Magic). Rods are great for this but picking the feat up for starters is not bad, and perhaps taking some feats to reduce its metamagic cost (Easy Metamagic [DR325] and Metamagic School Focus [Complete Mage] are the big ones) would allow you to chain targeted dispel magic to hit multiple enemies and all their magic items. Of course, if you just fight bogstandard monsters, that's not very useful, but then again those aren't very scary to start with so perhaps that's not such a big deal. Dispel Magic compendium (https://web.archive.org/web/20080503031310/forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1017175) is a good place to go.

Extraordinary Spell Aim [Complete Adventurer] is really nice for an abjurer (Antimagic Fields, Dispels and such are much better when you can exclude yourself and allies as necessary) but requires level 12 to pick up so it's not quite there yet. Archmage replicates the same ability, of course, so if you're going that way, don't bother.


If you want to lean more towards the buffer-angle, there are some other PRCs you need/want: especially Spellguard of Silverymoon [PGtF] and War Weaver [Heroes of Battle]. Spellguard allows casting personal buffs on others and War Weaver allows unloading a metric ton of buffs basically without an action at the start of each fight. Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is another great way to go about that.

If you want offense, you only really have Explosive Runes (which you want to precast and then have some auxiliary, such as a summon or your familiar with Imbued casting abilities, to fail to dispel to detonate them after throwing/shooting/propelling them at people) and down the line, Maw of Chaos. Well, you can use Prismatic Wall and Prismatic Sphere in this sense too but they are very far down as well.

Of course, you have all those other spell schools doing that for you; Abjuration is indeed pretty good at keeping yourself and allies alive, though an annoying number of the better Abjurations (Friendly Fire [Exemplars of Evil], Karmic X [Complete Mage], Antimagic Field, etc.) are Personal so as stated, Spellguard of Silverymoon is big game


As for spells, Treantmonk's guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569912-Treantmonk-s-Guide-to-Wizard-Spells-(as-seen-on-BGO-restored-by-Uvexar)) is a good way to get started though there's more in slightly more obscure sources (such as the mentioned Friendly Fire [Exemplars of Evil]).


EDIT: Oh yeah, I definitely recommend banning Evocation over Illusion. Illusion does a ton of awesome stuff even if you don't bother to make the most of the actual illusion-spells; Shadow Evocation replicates the most important Evocations somewhat, you get stuff like Simulacrum/Ice Assassin [Frostburn] (best underlings in the game), (Greater) Invisibility/Mislead, Greater Mirror Image [PHBII], Friend to Foe [PHBII] (basically Confusion, one of the best Enchantments, as an Illusion), Project Image (one of the few ways to create an indirect proxy through which to cast spells; without Necromancy, it's a very short list), Dream Image (basically Astral Projection Lite), Shadow Walk (just toss enemies to the Plane of Shadow and leave them to rot), Phantasmal Strangler [CM], etc.

Of all the schools, I'd say Illusion is third behind Conjuration and Transmutation. It's not as immediately awesome as Transmutation but it's pretty darn strong once you get into it. It doesn't have that many spells but the ones it does have do a [b]ton of awesome stuff. The only problem is, it can't really target Fort or Ref without first going through Will effectively...but there are lots of great options that don't give saves in the first place.

[rupierto97]

What do you want to do? I'm guessing Dispel Magic is going to be at least a relatively big part of your gameplan. If you had Turn Undead (e.g. God-Touched and Divine Channeler [DR305] or a single level of Sacred Exorcist [Complete Divine] or whatever) and a 3rd level divine caster level (a bit trickier to achieve without dipping than a 3rd level arcane caster level), you could get Divine Defiance [Fiendish Codex II] for counterspelling as an immediate action. That's a real gamechanger against other casters and goes great with your caster level buffs. Planar Touchstone [Planar Handbook] into Catalogues of Enlightenment would grant you further +4 on Dispel-checks. Arcane Mastery [Complete Arcane] allows taking 10 on caster level checks, which is pretty huge for reliability if you intend on using Dispel with any kind of frequency (not to mention, it speeds the game up a ton). Elven Spell Lore [PHBII] is an untyped bonus on top of it, so might as well.

You definitely want some way to Chain Spell your Dispel Magic (and eventually, Greater Dispel Magic). Rods are great for this but picking the feat up for starters is not bad, and perhaps taking some feats to reduce its metamagic cost (Easy Metamagic [DR325] and Metamagic School Focus [Complete Mage] are the big ones) would allow you to chain targeted dispel magic to hit multiple enemies and all their magic items. Of course, if you just fight bogstandard monsters, that's not very useful, but then again those aren't very scary to start with so perhaps that's not such a big deal. Dispel Magic compendium (https://web.archive.org/web/20080503031310/forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1017175) is a good place to go.

Extraordinary Spell Aim [Complete Adventurer] is really nice for an abjurer (Antimagic Fields, Dispels and such are much better when you can exclude yourself and allies as necessary) but requires level 12 to pick up so it's not quite there yet. Archmage replicates the same ability, of course, so if you're going that way, don't bother.


If you want to lean more towards the buffer-angle, there are some other PRCs you need/want: especially Spellguard of Silverymoon [PGtF] and War Weaver [Heroes of Battle]. Spellguard allows casting personal buffs on others and War Weaver allows unloading a metric ton of buffs basically without an action at the start of each fight. Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is another great way to go about that.

If you want offense, you only really have Explosive Runes (which you want to precast and then have some auxiliary, such as a summon or your familiar with Imbued casting abilities, to fail to dispel to detonate them after throwing/shooting/propelling them at people) and down the line, Maw of Chaos. Well, you can use Prismatic Wall and Prismatic Sphere in this sense too but they are very far down as well.

Of course, you have all those other spell schools doing that for you; Abjuration is indeed pretty good at keeping yourself and allies alive, though an annoying number of the better Abjurations (Friendly Fire [Exemplars of Evil], Karmic X [Complete Mage], Antimagic Field, etc.) are Personal so as stated, Spellguard of Silverymoon is big game


As for spells, Treantmonk's guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569912-Treantmonk-s-Guide-to-Wizard-Spells-(as-seen-on-BGO-restored-by-Uvexar)) is a good way to get started though there's more in slightly more obscure sources (such as the mentioned Friendly Fire [Exemplars of Evil]).


EDIT: Oh yeah, I definitely recommend banning Evocation over Illusion. Illusion does a ton of awesome stuff even if you don't bother to make the most of the actual illusion-spells; Shadow Evocation replicates the most important Evocations somewhat, you get stuff like Simulacrum/Ice Assassin [Frostburn] (best underlings in the game), (Greater) Invisibility/Mislead, Greater Mirror Image [PHBII], Friend to Foe [PHBII] (basically Confusion, one of the best Enchantments, as an Illusion), Project Image (one of the few ways to create an indirect proxy through which to cast spells; without Necromancy, it's a very short list), Dream Image (basically Astral Projection Lite), Shadow Walk (just toss enemies to the Plane of Shadow and leave them to rot), Phantasmal Strangler [CM], etc.

Of all the schools, I'd say Illusion is third behind Conjuration and Transmutation. It's not as immediately awesome as Transmutation but it's pretty darn strong once you get into it. It doesn't have that many spells but the ones it does have do a [b]ton of awesome stuff. The only problem is, it can't really target Fort or Ref without first going through Will effectively...but there are lots of great options that don't give saves in the first place.

Mmmh, interesting.
What about investing in my familiar instead of giving it up?
Also, any good idea for magical items?

[Eldariel]

Mmmh, interesting.
What about investing in my familiar instead of giving it up?
Also, any good idea for magical items?

Yeah, Familiars begin to get really good on this level. Imbue Familiar with Spell Ability kicks in on ECL11, Celestial/Improved Familiar gets good on ECL7 (Lantern Archon, Pseudodragon, Imp, Quasit are all superb), you have access to Polymorph with all the awesome Share Spell uses (especially for Outsider Familiars) it offers, you can hit sufficient Use Magic Device bonus for your familiar to Wand/Scrollbot on this level (particularly if you have a feat like Apprentice: Spellcaster to treat it as a class skill), it can hold a charge indefinitely and unload a buff on you/ally/allies at the start of each fight (Greater Invisibility is not a bad one for example, nor is Protection from Evil), etc.

For items, the mentioned Wands and Scrolls of useful, non-CL dependent spells are nice as are e.g. Metamagic Rods (Lesser Rod of Extend is dirt cheap for example and makes your 10 min/level spells last over 3 hours by now). Basic adventuring utility and Int (and perhaps Con/Dex) boosters are a given. Rest you can do with spells. Circlet of Rapid Casting would be almost your whole wealth but probably still worth it. Also, consider Craft-feats (Craft Wondrous Items mostly) to increase the mileage you get out of your WBL. Level 9 Wizard with double WBL is much better than level 10 Wizard with standard WBL (not to mention the improved control over what you get). Spell foci, components and such are also obvious. Do peruse Complete Mage and Complete Champion for potentially interesting optional spell components.

[rupierto97]

Yeah, Familiars begin to get really good on this level. Imbue Familiar with Spell Ability kicks in on ECL11, Celestial/Improved Familiar gets good on ECL7 (Lantern Archon, Pseudodragon, Imp, Quasit are all superb), you have access to Polymorph with all the awesome Share Spell uses (especially for Outsider Familiars) it offers, you can hit sufficient Use Magic Device bonus for your familiar to Wand/Scrollbot on this level (particularly if you have a feat like Apprentice: Spellcaster to treat it as a class skill), it can hold a charge indefinitely and unload a buff on you/ally/allies at the start of each fight (Greater Invisibility is not a bad one for example, nor is Protection from Evil), etc.

For items, the mentioned Wands and Scrolls of useful, non-CL dependent spells are nice as are e.g. Metamagic Rods (Lesser Rod of Extend is dirt cheap for example and makes your 10 min/level spells last over 3 hours by now). Basic adventuring utility and Int (and perhaps Con/Dex) boosters are a given. Rest you can do with spells. Circlet of Rapid Casting would be almost your whole wealth but probably still worth it. Also, consider Craft-feats (Craft Wondrous Items mostly) to increase the mileage you get out of your WBL. Level 9 Wizard with double WBL is much better than level 10 Wizard with standard WBL (not to mention the improved control over what you get). Spell foci, components and such are also obvious. Do peruse Complete Mage and Complete Champion for potentially interesting optional spell components.

Too bad I don't have access to Imbue Familiar since my ECL is 10 and this is just a oneshot campain, is it still worth to get Improv. Familiar with something like a Pseudodragon or Imp?

[Eldariel]

Too bad I don't have access to Imbue Familiar since my ECL is 10 and this is just a oneshot campain, is it still worth to get Improv. Familiar with something like a Pseudodragon or Imp?

Sure. Imp/Quasit get a free Commune 1/week in addition to some nice spell-likes (Suggestion as the big one for Imp that also has 14 Cha making it the better of the two) and you can afford Use Magic Device for them to prpvide you with extra actions via Scrolls/Wands.

Pseudodragon has Telepathy and qualifies for Mindsight, which you could Psychic Reform for it.

Lantern Archon is probably the best of the bunch: a floating Aid battery with nice SLAs, an autohittish DR-penetrating attack and such. Coure Eladrin and Musteval Guardinal are really good too.

EDIT: One strong option is also Stitched Flesh Familiar [Libris Mortis] or Betrayal of the Spirit-Linked [DR336] both of which grant you an undead familiar. The big thing is, this opens them up for Spellstitching [Complete Arcane], which is pretty darn strong. Of course, since Necromancy is a forbidden school for you, going for either of these is a bit tricky. Vargouille is added as an Improved Familiar option in Complete Scoundrel, as are various Mephits. Technically you could get Mirror Mephit [Expedition to the Demonweb Pits] as a familiar through this route but that would be ridiculously broken; it has Simulacrum (yes, the 7th level superspell) as an SLA.

This thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187251-3-5-Complete-list-of-possible-Familiar) actually has the complete list of all possible familiars in 3.5. But the Celestial ones are more or less the top of the line (aside from certain Mephits).