spells that you would never want.

[Telok]

1) That would be +4 (33), not +5, at 17 (34). Small nitpick.
2) A +5 from tomes, assuming your DM lets you have it, is ~1/2 your 17th WBL *assuming* you never bought an earlier one.

While it is doable by 20 even then it is a bitch of a stretch.

If I recall correctly the tome+headband are more than 75% of wbl in the 17-20 range. I may be misremembering the wbl though.

As I said most of what saw actual play in my groups was mid-high 20s casting stats and moving towards more no-save spells and stuff with decent effects even with saves. A decent chunk of wealth would go towards defenses and accessories like a belt of battle. Not that there wasn't the occasional hilarious "grease the giant's huge magic sword" moment or two even at level 16, but those were rare.

Perhaps surprisingly to some people most of the casters I saw other people play weren't int casters. So they generally didn't have the knowledge skills in class or the skill points to fully support identifying everything for a weakness. To them losing a turn trying to ID something wasn't better than skipping casting a buff or blasting. I generally played most of the int casters in my groups and didn't have too much of an issue targeting low saves, but even then I wouldn't say there was ever better than maybe a 60% success rate on landing the "save or -" sorts of spells. Certainly not reliable enough to be the character's first choice in most fights.

More on topic, polar ray. Has anyone ever bothered with that thing? I don't think I've ever even considered it as viable. Especially not since those stupid orb spells appeared.

[Xervous]

1) That would be +4 (33), not +5, at 17 (34). Small nitpick.
2) A +5 from tomes, assuming your DM lets you have it, is ~1/2 your 17th WBL *assuming* you never bought an earlier one.

While it is doable by 20 even then it is a bitch of a stretch.

17th level WBL is 340k. Perhaps you were looking at 16ths 260k?

[Zanos]

You don't really need to push your casting stat all that high anyway. You could easily have Greater Spell Focus in your save or die of choice, and a +6 stat item at level 16. 18 base(either bought, or 16+2 from race adjustment), 4 levels, +6 item gets you to 28 for a +9 modifier. +2 from GSF. Your 8th level save or die will have a DC of 29 at 16th level. CR 16 threats have a maximum save statline of 23/16/23, which isn't great, but you're still throwing out a 65% chance to die if you target reflex. If we use the average saveline instead it drops to 17/13/17, and even if you're targeting the strong saves you have a 60% chance of an instant kill. Targeting reflex(and yes, there are reflex save or lose spells at this level) gets you to a 75% shot of an instant kill.

Now if you often are 'punching up' Save or X tends to not work out in your favor. But you can also get some nasty area of effect stuff, so if you're fighting multiple threats there's a chance to kill/cripple at least one of them. I will agree that I have noticed a suspiciously high success rate against, say, finger of death, when it would end an encounter. I've always felt that hiding dice rolls is bad form even on the DMs part, but maybe that's just me.

Not really high optimization.

To them losing a turn trying to ID something wasn't better than skipping casting a buff or blasting.

I'm confused here, identifying monsters shouldn't take an action.

[Unavenger]

I think the main thing is that without even using anything but a +6 item I was still looking at around 50% success rates using first-level spells, and if you're running out of second- and higher-level spells at level 17 you're probably doing something wrong, so even with literally no optimisation - no tomes, no relevant feats, nothing like that - you're probably going to be fine. If you haven't spent 36k of your 340k on the headband of winning at being a wizard then I don't know how to help you, but it's not the spells fault.

[Vaern]

I wouldn't bother with Locate City. I'd just use Lay of the Land instead. The spell basically forces the DM to doodle a map for you with all notable terrain, major landmarks, and settlements of hamlet size or larger within 50 miles of you, rather than only pointing you in the direction of the nearest one. Locate City has a much wider area, but Lay of the Land supplies much more information with a single casting.
Lay of the Land also lacks certain attributes that RAW snobs might pick out to claim that the spell doesn't function the way its description indicates it should: It has a range of personal, affects you, and spells out in the description that casting the spell grants you an overview of the surrounding area. It's also available as a ranger 1 spell, which makes it a valid spell for brewing potions so you don't even need to have access to the spell yourself to benefit from it. Being available as a ranger 1 spell also makes crafting a custom magic item from it relatively inexpensive.

[Troacctid]

You can't brew potions of personal spells, though, so that's a no-go for lay of the land. A skull talisman works, though. 200 gp market price.

[ZamielVanWeber]

17th level WBL is 340k. Perhaps you were looking at 16ths 260k?

I misread the 3 in it's price as a 7. So it's a bit over 1/3 17th's WBL. Not as bad as ~1/2 but still an incredible investment, especially since, unless this character was built at 17, most of that WBL will already be allocated. By 19th the cost will be easy, but that is a far cry from 17 for most games.

[Xervous]

I misread the 3 in it's price as a 7. So it's a bit over 1/3 17th's WBL. Not as bad as ~1/2 but still an incredible investment, especially since, unless this character was built at 17, most of that WBL will already be allocated. By 19th the cost will be easy, but that is a far cry from 17 for most games.

An argument could be made for only purchasing the +4 version as the final +1 is only relevant upon reaching 20. It is a rather excessive cost when you consider how rarely it is for high level wizards to be running out of spells. That 10% DC shift might be helpful, but as detailed there are numerous other methods the player should aim for first

[Vaern]

You can't brew potions of personal spells, though, so that's a no-go for lay of the land. A skull talisman works, though. 200 gp market price.

Ah, my bad. I was just looking at the feat description, which only says that the spell must target one or more creatures, and didn't follow up with the DMG section on item creation that notes the exclusion of personal range spells.

[Kalkra]

Technically, at 17th level you could be using Wish to increase your INT, but that's more XP than most people would be willing to spend, even if it saves you from buying a tome.

Also, you could boost your INT with a Candle of Invocation, but the head trauma you'll suffer from thrown books will cancel it out.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Technically, at 17th level you could be using Wish to increase your INT, but that's more XP than most people would be willing to spend, even if it saves you from buying a tome.

Also, you could boost your INT with a Candle of Invocation, but the head trauma you'll suffer from thrown books will cancel it out.

This is what planar binding is for. Call up a few djinn and promise them you'll grant one wish each on their behalves if they grant two for you without trying to screw you over (or doing something horrible with the final wish).

Even an Evil™ djinn would likely consider it a good trade to honor such a contract in this situation, even without the spell forcing the issue via Cha checks.

If all else fails, have the party bard on hand (or hire one) to Diplomacize them into submission in exchange for a wish or two made on his behalf.

[Zanos]

Technically, at 17th level you could be using Wish to increase your INT, but that's more XP than most people would be willing to spend, even if it saves you from buying a tome.

Unfortunately you have to cast the spells in immediate succession, so you'd need 5 9th level spell slots and 25,000xp to get the full benefit. You can't spend XP on spells that would reduce your level, so the most you could get at 17th is a +3 if you burned 15,000.

This is what planar binding is for. Call up a few djinn and promise them you'll grant one wish each on their behalves if they grant two for you without trying to screw you over (or doing something horrible with the final wish).

Even an Evil™ djinn would likely consider it a good trade to honor such a contract in this situation, even without the spell forcing the issue via Cha checks.

If all else fails, have the party bard on hand (or hire one) to Diplomacize them into submission in exchange for a wish or two made on his behalf.

That's what the candle of invocation is for. Genie wishes probably aren't applicable outside of TO situations, since I don't think I've leveraged them even on very optimized characters. Free wishes are one of the few truly gamebreaking tricks.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Unfortunately you have to cast the spells in immediate succession, so you'd need 5 9th level spell slots and 25,000xp to get the full benefit. You can't spend XP on spells that would reduce your level, so the most you could get at 17th is a +3 if you burned 15,000.

If we're on int and wish, we're talking wizard. Scribe scrolls of wish and store them until you've made 5.

If you actually care about the extra 153 xp per scroll, you can get there with two scrolls and a level 9 pearl of power; assuming you started at int 18, put all 4 increases into int, and have your headband of int +6.

[NigelWalmsley]

This is what planar binding is for. Call up a few djinn and promise them you'll grant one wish each on their behalves if they grant two for you without trying to screw you over (or doing something horrible with the final wish).

Even an Evil™ djinn would likely consider it a good trade to honor such a contract in this situation, even without the spell forcing the issue via Cha checks.

If all else fails, have the party bard on hand (or hire one) to Diplomacize them into submission in exchange for a wish or two made on his behalf.

Yeah, you don't need to jump through hoops scribing scrolls to get a bunch of stat boosts. Genies will happily grant you Wishes in exchange for Wishes on their behalf, because they can't use their Wish ability themselves. At a sufficiently high level of optimization, every party member should get +5 to all relevant stats by ~10th level. Since this helps MAD classes that are traditionally underpowered, there's a reasonable case to be made this is actually a good thing and should be encouraged.

[Elkad]

I misread the 3 in it's price as a 7. So it's a bit over 1/3 17th's WBL. Not as bad as ~1/2 but still an incredible investment, especially since, unless this character was built at 17, most of that WBL will already be allocated. By 19th the cost will be easy, but that is a far cry from 17 for most games.

No, your prior spending doesn't really matter for most of your career. Level to 15 normally, spending all your money. Realize your Tome is coming up and save your cash from 16 and 17 (140k). Or just save from 16 to 17.5.
You can even double-benefit by buying entirely consumables after L15 and then just using them all as fast as possible (before you hit 17) because you should theoretically get them replaced with new treasure.