Atticus Rex's page

PFSRD Wizard wrote:

Spells Gained at a New Level: Wizards perform a certain amount of spell research between adventures. Each time a character attains a new wizard level, he gains two spells of his choice to add to his spellbook. The two free spells must be of spell levels he can cast. If he has chosen to specialize in a school of magic, one of the two free spells must be from his specialty school.

Edge case that will probably never come up, but what would happen when a wizard with an 11 INT hit 3rd level? Could he add 2nd level spells to his book, or only more 1st level ones because that's what he is limited to casting (due to his crummy INT)?

Because it says free spells must be of spell levels he can cast, I would rule the latter: the wiz can only add more 1st-level spells. But you're right, this is a very unlikely scenario unless you're in a game where the object is to cripple your characters with abysmal stats.

Looking to build a Necromancer for an upcoming game, but I can't decide on what I want my Opposition Schools to be. I'm leaning towards Divination, but I'm having a really hard time narrowing down what the second one should be. Any suggestions?

I just went through this agonizing decision last week, and I think my advice would be to think about Abjuration and/or Enchantment.

Abjuration is supposed to be the school of protective magic, right? Take a look at just the first-level spell list: the best protective spells (IMO) aren't abjuration spells at all. Mage Armor? Conjuration. Feather Fall? Transmutation. It doesn't change much at higher levels, either, so you still have plenty of magical protection without spending two slots per spell.

I don't think you're missing much if you dump Enchantment. It seems like there weren't nearly as many enchantment spells, until Ultimate Magic came out anyway, and even now so many of them just seem duplicative. And at a glance, most enchantment spells seem to have that "Saving Throw: Will negates" line in the spell block that strikes fear into every low-level wizard's heart. Lots of races have some measure of natural resistance to enchantments and charms and such. And a whole mess of monsters just laugh at your attempts to target them with mind-affecting spells anyway -- or they would laugh if they weren't mindless.

Divination is pretty repetitive stuff, for the most part, and it really relies either on rerolls or GM fiat. I shudder at the thought of making it an opp school, though, mostly because it's got two of the most useful cantrips in the game: Detect Magic and Read Magic. Sure, you can wand those, or earn a bunch of loot and have someone perma-cast arcane sight on your John Lennon glasses, but at low levels you won't have those options.

O purveyors of wisdom, I'm playing a Rgr3 with an eye toward Arcane Archer. (Had I seen this board a couple of months ago, I probably would have built my character somewhat differently from the ground up, but them's the breaks.) I'm about to take my wizard level dip, and I could really use some advice on choosing an arcane school.

Universalist is like burning one spell slot per level, but I would consider it if people think it's a decent option.

I think I can torch abjuration and enchantment as my opposition schools.

It seems the remaining schools either have good spells and not-so-good abilities or vice versa (or neither). I'm leaning toward conjuration or transmutation for the spells, but divination has some cool 1st-level school abilities.

Oh, and my party already has a bard and a multi-sorc who is pretty much a tank in practice. I am going with wizard because we really don't have an effective controller. I still have the feeling that I could pitch the whole AA plan and just shoot for Rgr20, except that still leaves us with two strikers, two tanks, and no controllers.

Any advice you can give me would be welcome.