Professor Q's page

I'm really disturbed by the amount of trolling that occurred in this guide.I actually can't access the guide at all, so the best I can do is what Radic did - copy it and repost it.

Here is a New Link..

Sorry about that everyone (And sorry for not checking on this sooner.)

Has it been 2 years?

Sheesh, the time flies.

And actually I did some updates for the guide, including the Race guide, since the one linked in this guide. The most recent guide is here:

The Complete Professor Q's Wizard Guide Single Document

I actually posted it in a different thread (Called it the guide "2.0") but that's apparently lost to the archive now.

Even with the updates though it's still been about 2 years hasn't it? As a matter of fact though I haven't really played Pathfinder for at least a year and a half, so I'm not sure what's new for the Wizard, if anything.

And actually the main reason I'm coming back here is that someone has been spamming my guide with comments to make edits - I was thinking if I had time in the next month, I'd actually try to make them.

For my free time, I've been pretty busy reviewing PC games for another site, but if I do get around to making updates, it'll probably be mostly grammatical errors and commenting on some of the discrepancies that people have kindly pointed out to me on an almost weekly basis through the comments.

If there is any new content you'd like me to look at though I'd be happy to give it a review as well.

Not a fan of Qualm and Compassionate Ally is redundant with Hideous Laughter.

Oppressive Boredom is basically the same concept as well, but it does have slightly more coverage than Hideous Laughter.

Heroism is worth it, especially due to the duration.

Remember that as an enchanter you only HAVE to memorize one enchantment spell a day. The rest of your slots can be anything you want (Though I would avoid your opposition schools.)

Put it out of your mind that just because you are an enchanter you need to cast lots and lots of enchantment spells. This goes for any specialization you choose to go with (Including and especially if you decide to go with Divination.)

The "Party Face" Wizard is a tough one depending on how heavily your DM relies on the social skills to determine the outcomes of social situations.

The biggest problem I have with Enchantment is that if you run into any undead or constructs or anything that is mind-affecting immune, you're not going to be able to use your specialization spells unless you're only memorizing buffs. 20% of the Bestiary is mind immune. At lower levels however the Will saving throw is the easiest saving throw to beat, making Enchantment really effective if you can actually affect them.

"Optimization" is really only about not feeling useless in the end though. The reason Conjuration is so loved is because it contains the most spells that have an effect regardless of what the dice say outside of buffing. In the right campaign a "Charm everything" Wizard could be fun. I just worry that you'll start up and run into a lot of situations where you're just not very effective.

If you want to be a "Face" character, I'm almost positive that there are Sorcerer builds that would just work better - mostly because the Sorcerer uses Charisma as their primary stat - and they do get more lower level spells per day in general meaning they'll have more Charm Persons to throw out.

As far as Optimal specializations go, my favorites are Evocation (Admixture), Conjuration (Teleportation), Divination (Foresight), Void Elementalist, Earth Elementalist, and Air Elementalist. One of the advantages of going with an Elemental Specialist is that at level 9 you can pick up Opposition Research and enjoy no opposition school from that point forward (Though the school powers are weaker than the traditional specialist schools in general.)

Conjuration does have the best battlefield control, and a few "Befuddling spells" (Thinking of Glitterdust), just no mind-affecting spells (except summoning a Succubus.) You can cast Conjuration spells with any specialization and if you pick up Greater Spell Specialization or Preferred Spell you can "Sacrifice" your specialization slot for your specialization spell if need be, so you could even do this with enchantment if you decide the school powers are what you want.

I wrote a guide btw. I recommend downloading the PDF since Adobe Reader has a lot more options over Google Drive (Like being able to click URLs and take advantage of bookmarks.)
It needs a lot of editing (Which I may get around to eventually) and I still haven't gotten around to doing a builds section. Studying for the CPA exam has basically taken up all my time recently.

Wizard.

Here's a fun example of why it could be the case:
A level 20 divination specialist gets a +14 to initiative minimum with improved initiative.

Since he's likely to go first, he spends that action casting Time Stop.

After that it's over depending on what he decides to do.

Take that Sorcerer Lich!

Wand of Silent Image is good, too. A familiar can spend his actions concentrating and there's no save to disbelieve until an enemy interacts with it. Depends a lot on the player and the GM, though.

Clear Ear is a drug that gives +2 to Perception/Knowledge and -2 to Cha skills. Lasts 6 hours, 15gp, apparently illegal. From the Adventurer's Armory.

Mentioned wand of Silent Image. That is a great option.

Clear Ear isn't a bad idea. I think I might hold off until I feel like making an entire rating list for Alchemy, which I don't feel like doing at this very moment.

I would of thought a wand of Mage armor was an excellent idea.

Hmm.... that seems like a good idea...

By level 7 when your Familiar is casting it instead of you though, I think that most of your party members will have found something else to replace mage armor, except maybe your Monk.

I think it's at least an orange option.

You missed the guardian property for weapons

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons#TOC-Guardian

Also, for my new favorite wizard/witch race, ratfolk, tailblades are quite nice... No hands filled, and yet always providing a threatened area...

The tailblade is nice. I don't think that I am going to mention it in the equipment guide though since it's a bestiary race that many people are going to be restricted from using. I may go over to the Races section of the guide and mention it there though.

Wizards are only proficient in club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff, not all simple weapons.

Best I'd say is a gauntlet, even if you aren't proficient, so you can keep wearing it and get that yummy initiative bonus from the Dueling property.

Energy resist does NOT stack. Fire resist 6+ is cool for mundane fire immunity, but not worth 18,000

Shadow is worth a mentioning, as an invisibility toting moderate dex guy with no ACP, you can sneak around even untrained.

Hmm... Since it seems like it shouldn't stack, I'll go ahead and remove my remarks about not knowing exactly where it says it doesn't.

Shadow doesn't seem like it'd be worth it considering that for 4,000 gold more than the +10 version you could be sporting a Ring of Invisibility.

I'll mention it though.

Your Megamagic Gems are really Metamagic Gems.

Which is a pity, really.

It really is a Pity.

Who's idea was it to put the G next to the T on the keyboard anyway?

Kydeem de'Morcaine wrote:

Sounds reasonable to me.

Most of what I read on these boards, people seem to assume a buffer will be able to do most of the buffing before the fight not trying to get it in in the first couple of rounds.

Or is a bard so it doesn't really matter.

I was actually coming into this thread to say something along the lines of "the best buffer bloodline is a bard."

I had it worked out, if you do haste and inspire courage on the first round and good how on the second, you nearly double your BSF's damage.

If you wade into melee and provide flanks after casting tactical acumen, it was something like 150% assuming the BSF has multiple attacks.

Dang you guys, I was going to take a break from metagaming pathfinder, but now I want to play with putting Eldrich Heritage on a Bard to see if I can make him even more buff-tastic.

Anyway if you are buffing your party properly, your actions are well spent, even in combat.

Theconiel wrote:

I have not yet played a wizard, but I have heard that Universalist is BAD, and a wizard should always have a preferred school, even though it entails 2 opposition schools.

Has anyone had any experience with this?

It's not all bad -- yes you give up a spell a day, and yes you end up with a crappy first level ability, however the free spontaneous metamagic is really strong late game, and universalist has a bonded item that is probably the best in the game.

It could use a bit more juice though.

It's certainly not optimal.

Even if you memorize one opposition school spell, you end up with the same number of spells per day for that level.

Spontaneous metamagic can be obtained through feats and rods as well, and other specialization schools get some unique and very useful powers instead.

I don't recommend it.

PDF Version

Have fun with that. I'll be adding updates to this version from now on. I've linked the PDF version to the top of the Google Docs version since I can't edit the original post of this thread.

Wand are ridiculously expensive. It is better to give the familiar scrolls. There is also a feat in ultimate magic which gives your familiar 1 evolution point as if it was an Eidolon. I would use that to give it the Eidolon "skilled" ability. IIRC that gives a +8 to any one skill. UMD gets better for the familiar a lot faster.

edit:I think a 4th level wand is about 20000 gp.

Wands are actually cheaper than scrolls in the long run. Yes a 4th level wand is 21,000gp. But divide that by 50 charges and you've got 420 gold a cast. Compare that to giving the Familiar a Level 4 scroll, which costs 700 gold. It's a 40% savings, which savings is reflected in all spell levels.

It really depends on how often you want your familiar casting spells like that.

Something like Telekinetic Charge is something powerful that the Familiar can do, but it's something that you'd want him to do over and over (If you have the money, that is.)

Now granted this comparison to scrolls is assuming full price on both items, but since the Wizard starts with Scribe Scroll, out of the box his level 4 scroll costs him 350. If he picks up Craft Wand though he's still saving 40% over scribing a scroll.

Professor Q wrote:

Alright, Google Docs will make it into a PDF, but I'm not sure if I have the program I need to insert bookmarks into the PDF.

I think I'll set the PDF up GameFAQs style and have CTRL-F search items to jump around the document with for now.

Once I'm done converting it into a PDF I'll link the upload into the main document.

IIRC I think you need adobe acrobat, not adobe reader to do that. I would ask the guys at D20pfsrd if one of them can do the bookmarking for you.

I may be wrong about the needer adobe acrobat, but that is what I was told once. I could not find any 3rd party pdf programs that could do it. If you find one let me know though.

I'll talk to Shoelessinsight too. I'm sure he knows of a good open source program for it.

Alright, Google Docs will make it into a PDF, but I'm not sure if I have the program I need to insert bookmarks into the PDF.

I think I'll set the PDF up GameFAQs style and have CTRL-F search items to jump around the document with for now.

Once I'm done converting it into a PDF I'll link the upload into the main document.

The page breaks are not a problem. You link to over a dozen different google documents without easy navigation between them.

Ah.

Well, the reason for that is because it would otherwise take five minutes to load any time someone opened it, mostly because every spell is linked to the OGC on the spells page.

The PDF thing will fix that.

My first comments to you are ones of formatting.

This is quite difficult to parse through. You've got the guide broken up into way too many pages, and the font sizes are unnecessarily huge. Even just scanning through it, jumping around from link to link is jarring, especially since you have to jump back to the main document to move on to the next section. You could save lots of space by reducing the font sizes and then consolidating things into fewer pages. I also strongly recommend setting links to all of the pages as a footer on each page.

It looks as though you have a wonderfully thorough guide... That a lot of people won't use because it's very clunky to read through.

Just my two cents... For now.

I'm glad you brought this up, but I have to ask, what are you using to read the guide? (iPad, PC, Mac, and if a Computer, then what browser?)

If I could, I would remove the page breaks entirely, because I know they are a bit jarring, but the new version of google documents seems to dislike the idea of that since that's how it used to be, but we can't seem to figure out how to get rid of the page breaks now.

I currently have the document set to landscape to try and fit as many spells on the same screen as possible in the spell section of the guide. The general font size is 10 in Verdana right now, I think if I made it any smaller it'd blur together for most folks.

I may do as Wraithstrike Suggested and move the guide into a PDF file so it's read only (Making it load faster) and I can just upload it online.

The COMPLETE Professor Q's Guide to Wizards

Finished my evaluation of Core.

Added a section regarding the different defenses you can target. I was actually surprised to find out that Will was a great thing to target at lower levels, and makes me think that an Enchanter might have some enjoyment during that first 10 level streak assuming the DM isn't using a lot of mind-affecting immune creatures.

About familiars: I probably have a skewed perception about how good UMD is for a familiar, since in our games this usage is frowned upon (and will quickly lead to a dead familiar)

About spells:
magic missile is one of the few things that you can use effectively against non corporeal enemies at low levels. Probably better for a sorcerer though, since a single instance will not have much effect.
enlarge persone: you said "Give your BSF +1 damage and to-hit", that's not true, you give a +1 to damage (possibly two with a 2-h weapon and odd starting STR) but no bonus to hit (since you suffer the penalty from size). You also increase the damage of your weapon.

burning hands: not impressive, I agree, but it still saved us a couple of times at really low level against swarms.

Allright, I move on to level 2. Great work by the way, I'm recommending this guide to all of my fellow players, this is my favorite guide ever.

Heh, well after writing this guide, all my DMs who have read it have banned both Dazing Spell (or at least nerfed it into uselessness) and Wands entirely. I don't necessarily agree with the Wands thing, but they banned it specifically because they don't think that the Familiar should be like an extra character when it comes to actions, which with the right wands the Familiar essentially becomes. It's expensive, but could you imagine if you gave your Familiar a wand of Enervation? Or how about Telekinetic Charge? Your BSF wouldn't ever have to worry about positioning for a full round of attacks because your Familiar would have him taken care of every round he's not already in position. Expensive, but circumventing the action economy is so powerful it might even be worth it.

Magic Missile is my favorite level 1 damage spell, and indecently I think it'd make a fine wand for a Familiar (Might be worth the extra 6,000 to make it a five missile wand too.)

Fixed Enlarge Person.

Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to know people are getting something good out of this.

On PRCs:

the mystic theurge works a bit better mixxing wizard and cloistered cleric: you give up a few spells from the cleric but you cast all using INT. Still red for me, orange at best.

Are you talking about the UM Cloistered Cleric? I looked it up on the OGC and I'm only seeing wording that suggests you still use Wisdom.

On familiars: I was under the impression that silvanshee (and others, possibly) could take advantage of the fact that they count as having hit dice equal to your wizard level for their lay on hands ability. There was a thread about it somewhere. That would make them much better.

EDIT: you also don't mention the telepathy ability of the pseudodragon, which is one of its most attractive features. I'd rate it green.

I actually knew about the whole lay on hands thing, not sure why it's not mentioned. Lay on hands is nice, especially for your familiar to come with it, but the Sylvanshee lacks the raw potential any of the UMD familiars have. I really like the Nosoi Psychopomp too, but he lacks probably the best thing about getting an Improved Familiar. Because of the lack of UMD I can't really say that Sylvanshee deserves a higher rating. I think it's definitely a good pick, but is it the most optimized pick? Base rules considered, probably not.

As far as telepathy on the Pseudodragon, I don't think that's a factor worth bumping him up to green. I'll mention it, but most of the antics you can pull off with telepathy would require the Pseudodragon to be a middle man, which makes me think it would take too much time. It's a neat feature, I just don't think it's enough to categorize an otherwise very vanilla UMD option as a green option.

Rather than me re-rating all the CMD based spells, I'm going to have to go with some colored Asterisks on such spells.

I'll be adding a section about targeting different defenses as well.

Not doing it tonight, but I'll get around to it before this next monday.

I am going to have to agree with wraithstrike on this one. I was actually surprised to go check to see I rated it green.

I think I was thinking about how at low levels the +4 AC is a potent effect, so then it must be judged whether it is worth the action and the slot. The duration makes it lose to mage armor for sure, and to take both would be spending two slots on buffing the same stat. I think orange is a fair grade.

I'll change it when I get a keyboard as with some of the other things discussed.

Ah, good - we do tend to face more humans than monsters. Also, while I do like Force Punch, it requires not only a Fort save but also that you connect with a melee touch attack, which brings us a bit too close to the enemy for my tastes.

Huh... I am not sure how I missed the range, but I should probably talk to that too. You can also remedy that with reach spell.

That makes your familiar really awesome if you use him to deliver the attack though. Mighty mouse!

I'll get with shoelessinsight sometime and we will figure out the median CMD for NPCs to get an estimation about how good those CMD targeting spells really are if your campaign is NPC heavy. I will reevaluate those spells once we do that.

Found a typo in your prestige classes page. You have Dragon Disciple twice, I think the second is supposed to be Eldrich Knight. Thanks for the link. More comments to follow...

Fixed.

Thanks for catching it.

Nice guide! I added my piece to the Builds section before I read through all of your spell reviews, and I am dismayed to find that apparently a lot of the techniques that try to Bull Rush the opponent (using your level + Int vs their CMD) have low chances to work. My build relies a lot on pushing foes around the battlefield into environmental hazards and Aqueous Orbs that I've laid out, so this is a problem.

Other than summoning an Earth Elemental to push people for me, what do you think is the best way to get opponents where I want them to be? Right now my other main methods are "get them in an Aqueous Orb" and "fling them with Telekinesis"

Well, the best way is to have your BSF push people around. Not only does it save you actions, but if he's optimized for it, he'll be good at pushing people - 5' at a time at least.

Force punch is also a decent choice, since it targets fortitude instead of CMD. At level 5 your DC is going to be at least 18 and the enemy's Fortitude is at an average of 7.5 at that point, putting the odds at a little more than 50% instead of Hydrolic Push's odds of just under 50%. More importantly, if Force Push is successful it always pushes them back 5 feet per two caster levels, which if you bullrush something you only get 5 feet on a normal success.

Aqueous Orb is the best positional control since it targets reflex, being 5-10% better than Force punch on average.

The important thing is to keep both in your arsenal for the different types of monsters you'll face. Even targeting CMD isn't horrid if your target is a wussy caster. Remember that these statistics are also based on the bestiary, not necessarily NPCs, which tend to be a little easier for CMD. Battering Blast from Dungeons of Golorion is probably the best CMD targeting spell since if you fire multiple blasts at the same target you get a significant CMB increase.

Writing this makes me think I may have been a little too harsh on the hand spells though. It is true that NPCs are a little more susceptible to them, making it possible that they are a good orange choice for campaigns that use a lot of NPC enemies. Though I think I'd rather recommend a summon in most of those cases.

Thanks for posting a build btw. I'm going to go in and organize that page with bookmarks eventually.

I came into this topic thinking it would be about the lack of magical undergarments in any of the books.

I was disappointed.

I only happened to notice this now because one of my players brought it up, even though this was in your other guide too, but Named Bullet has another power not mentioned in your analysis that makes it particularly potent as a prebuff--all normal hits with a Named Bullet become critical threats. While the single touch attack with a damage bonus is not worth your 4th level spell, given that guns are x4 weapons and bows are x3, this spell essentially gives your gunslinger three extra attacks or your archer two extra attacks (now if they are lucky enough to crit on their own, admittedly the spell adds less). If you can prebuff it because you know what you re fighting, it could clearly be worth it, particularly at higher levels when you could spend lots of 4th level slots on several of these (just imagine the havoc of a full attack of auto x4 crits). I'd put it at least at orange with that fact in mind.

Obviously it isn't worth your standard action in battle, but as an offensive prebuff for an expected hard battle (entering a known dragon's cave, lich's lair, runelord's domain, etc) it's hard to beat it if you have a dedicated gun person, or an archer to a lesser extent. It's even more devastating if the archer/gunslinger is aware that you are saving her a named bullet and thus starts packing Staggering Critical or something, since that basically gives you the ability to prebuff the archer and give the enemy at least a 1 round stagger regardless of save (assuming the dedicated archer can hit touch AC, which is probably a 95%ish chance, barring SR of course), without spending any of your combat actions. Prep a few of them at higher levels with Staggering Critical and you have a virtually guaranteed stagger lock for a number of rounds equal to the number of Named Bullet prebuffs (if the archer fires only one Named Bullet per round to achieve this effect).

Good catch. That does improve it. Wouldn't bother with the greater version, but it does make it a spell worth considering under the right circumstance.

I'm in the middle of reading now, and generally agreeing and liking it, hoping to find some gems that I've missed for my wizard in Carrion Crown.

However, in response to your statement that you can't use Spellcraft for Inscribe Magical Tattoo, I wanted to point out that the ISM description says "Magical tattoos follow the rules for magic item creation as though they were wondrous items, except that they can use the Craft (calligraphy, paintings, tattoos) skill." Emphasis mine.

Fixed this very odd mistake, but I'm glad you pointed it out.

I very much enjoyed your guide, and while I agree with you on the blasting spells. Nothing beats throwing a fireball in a bad guys face.

Hence the reason I referred to them as a moment of ecstacy... Followed by uselessness.

I love blowing things up too ;)

I actually wouldn't like enlarge person all that much were it not for the reach.

The buff as a standard action has to be compared to other standard actions you could be doing instead, not to mention the limited spell slot resource.

There are just better actions available, in my opinion of course.

Both microsoft office, and open office allow you to save your files in pdf form. What I would do is save the file as File 1.1 as a word and pdf file.

When people notice errors change the version and upload the new version.

Another idea is to use google docs. You should be able to change it online.

editL:I just noticed that it is in google docs. Did you upload it as a word(text) file or pdf?

I created the whole thing in Google Docs.

Making it into a PDF may make it a little easier to read, you're right. I might consider that.

For now, I'm taking a bit of a break :P.

The Guide

I went over the core aspects of the Wizard and compiled everything into the same guide here. I made it a point NOT to look at Treantmonk's Guide as I did this so that you could have my undefiled opinion to set against his.

Things I have not done but will do when I get around to it:

1. Edit the guide. I have read my guide a couple of times on mediums that would not let me edit it, and I am aware that there are some very bad grammatical errors existing throughout. Feel free to point them out to me, as it will make it easier for me to find them.

2. Builds. I know people like this, and I may a post a few later. For now there is an open document for people to post their own builds if they so desire. Please be respectful of other people's postings and edits. I will close the document to open editing if it is abused.

And of course, I will have missed things or misinterpreted things, and I always appreciate feedback that will help improve the guide for everyone.

BuzzardB wrote:

Lame, made me go look and notice the PRD has not been updated to show that Riding Dog is now just Dog in SMI.

I thought the same thing. It looks like it still riding dog

See here.

ps you need to get your guide here Guide to the Guides.

Once the final Wizard Guide is done, I'll submit it.

Two things though - the abilities and combat maneuver sections at the beginning of each summons have a kinda false sense about them because you add Alternate Summons in there.

I think you should add either an asterisk to any Alternate Summons, or leave them out entirely from the beginning summations.

Also, for the Best Damage and Best Tank, it'd be nice to have a couple numerical stats there (damage and HP/AC respectively) to put them in context. It would also allow a quick basic evaluation on whether to move up a level of summoning or just go with a lower level/multiple summons.

Great guide, though, and thanks for creating it!

I'll go ahead and change the color of alternate summons to purple and put them on the back end of the summaries.

I'll also include some stats on the "bests" as requested.

Great guide! Two things, though: first, you should probably talk about Superior Summoning a bit. I crunched the numbers a while back, and it seems that for dishing out damage, it's almost always better to have 1d3+1 creatures of a lower level than 1 of the current level (sans DR).

Also, I think you've underrated the big cats. With pounce and rake they get a whopping 5 attacks on a charge when you first summon them, with Smite also if you like, plus they can potentially grapple. Summon a few leopards or lions and have them pounce on something, and there's a very good chance it will not continue that fight.

To make the guide complete in itself, I should include info on Superior Summoning. This is eventually going to be part of a bigger guide though that also includes a feat section which discusses Superior Summoning. If this was a standalone guide meant for all classes I should probably have a feat section specifically about feats that improve summoning.

And yes, I did completely underestimate those cats. That damage is amazing.