I'm running a game this Saturday for some friends where I'm trying to help some of our newer players get more responsible for making and managing their characters. Currently, they tend to just have other players do much of that work (since they've been in larger nine and ten person groups ~ grown from originally five players).
I'd like to be able to hand over a simplified list of spells from the Divine and Arcane list that will cover most of their gaming choices/needs.
I was hoping some people might know of where there is a list of the core Pathfinder spells where the best 10 for a first level Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, or Wizard have been identified? Maybe you have a list of 10 choices that you feel should be on the list.
The storyline will be a Mage Academy where I'm using Cleric and Druid classes as 're-skinned' mages (giving them titles like Light Wizard and Natural Wizard).
Thanks for any help and suggestions.
Sleep is an amazing spell at level 1, but eventually becomes useless.
Thank you all!
Those are all great suggestions and lists.
Thanks again for the help.
none of those lists include identify, shame shame.
identify is a completely unneeded spell in pathfinder. It's just a bonus on spellcraft checks for one purpose (identifying magical items).
However I'm surprised that no one else has posted the following:
Wizard/Sorcerer
Unseen Servant
Mount
Chill Touch
Vanish
Reduce Person
Touch of Gracelessness
Burning Disarm
Cleric
Magic Stone
Bless Water
Detect Undead
Druid
Goodberry
Longstrider
Touch of the Sea
Pass without a trace
completely unneeded at high levels
completely unneeded at high levels
At level one with an 18 Int (completely reasonable with a stat boost) I can roll a 28 on spellcraft. That means I can identify any item with a 13 CL or less. Only Counting Minor Wonderous Items, and Items less than 10,000gp the only thing I can't Identify is a Pearl of Power.
If I were a Wizard, I'd probably put it in my spellbook before 2nd or 3rd level, after all, why be a Wizard if you don't plan on learning every spell, but I'd never memorize it unless I knew that I needed it and I wasn't going adventuring.I would never take it as a spontaneous caster. Your spells known are too valuable for that crap.
It does make a handy scroll, though, just in case.
And, yes you can take a 20 on spellcraft to Identify with Detect Magic. There is no penalty for failure you can just keep casting Detect Magic.
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I tend to do it by a combination of spell mission as well as spell usefulness. That way it is easy to ensure you have a reasonable coverage of eventualities.
So I would want: self buff, team buff, area control, area debuff, bbeg debuff, anti-undead, anti-swarm contingency, and then versatile and utility spells. Which for a wizard for example gives:
Mage armor (self and possible team buff)
Shield (self buff)
Protection from evil (self and team buff)
Color Spray or Sleep or Hypnotism (area debuff)
Grease (area control or bbeg debuff or self/team buff[escape grapple], versatile)
Magic Missile or Magic Weapon (anti-undead)
Flaming Hands (anti-swarm contingency)
Charm or Cause fear or Touch of Gracelessness or Ray of Enfeeblement (bbeg debuff)
Summon Monster I or Silent Image or Vanish (versatile)
Mount or Unseen Servant (utility)
or put your favorite spell in whatever category.
Of course Treantmonk's guide to Wizards is a good guide of the wizard/sorcerer individual spell ratings (core spells only as yet) rather than as a cohesive small set as required here.
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completely unneeded at high levelsAt level one with an 18 Int (completely reasonable with a stat boost) I can roll a 28 on spellcraft. That means I can identify any item with a 13 CL or less. Only Counting Minor Wonderous Items, and Items less than 10,000gp the only thing I can't Identify is a Pearl of Power.
If I were a Wizard, I'd probably put it in my spellbook before 2nd or 3rd level, after all, why be a Wizard if you don't plan on learning every spell, but I'd never memorize it unless I knew that I needed it and I wasn't going adventuring.
I would never take it as a spontaneous caster. Your spells known are too valuable for that crap.
It does make a handy scroll, though, just in case.And, yes you can take a 20 on spellcraft to Identify with Detect Magic. There is no penalty for failure you can just keep casting Detect Magic.
Firstly, an 18 intelligence is not a "perfectly reasonable starting value". It's a perfectly reasonable starting value for 25+ point buy; the default point buy is 15-20 for adventure paths. While one can get a 16 int (+2 race to 18) with 15 point buy, doing so requires extreme min-maxing (2-3 stats to 7-8), which many GMs and Players frown on.
There's nothing inherently wrong with doing the above, so please don't take this as an attack on that kind of behavior, but it is not a "perfectly reasonable" choice/assumption for all wizard players, which is what you are suggesting.
Secondly, you cannot take 20 on a spellcraft check to indentify the properties of magic item. Here's the link to Taking 20, so you can review it; Taking 20 means spending 20 times the normal skill check length and getting many failures before succeeding.
To quote from the Spellcraft skill:
Determine Properties of Magic Item: When using detect magic or identify to learn the properties of magic items, you can only attempt to ascertain the properties of an individual item once per day. Additional attempts reveal the same results.
Another way to think about Taking 20 (as suggested by Skip Williams the Sage during Dragon Magazine's run, so technically 3.0/3.5), think of taking 20 as rolling, in sequence, a 1,2,3, etc until reaching a 20. So attempting to take 20 on a spellcraft check locks your result at a roll of "1" (or at lest a failure of some kind) for 24 hours, at which point you start over, getting a 1 again if you continue to try to take 20.
Personally, if you were dead-set on taking 20 on the check, I'd let you do it - but it would take 20 days, and it would be a house rule.
TL;DR - identify is a very handy spell for a wizard to know, even if he never casts it during an actual "adventuring" day.
Bobchuck:
I completely disagree with your suggestion that having an 18 in a casting stat is only reasonable if you are using the 25 point buy.
I suggest that an 18 with the 15 point buy is perfectly acceptable, and leaves enough for a 14 in another stat with racial modifiers. Meaning that instead of being "min maxed" you have 10, 10, 10, 10, 14, 18. Almost average with one good and one great stat. If you want you could instead be below average in one a little above in another good at a third and great in one thing with the following array: 8,10,10,12,14,18.
These stat arrays are not is not "extreme" and doesn't even require an odd character concept. 20 point buy is what is recommended for the AP's and is indeed the standard for PFS which suggests its a nice middle of the road average. In fact it is the most common point buy seen. With that 20 point buy you can have the 18, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8 or 18, 14, 14, 12, 12, 7 or 18, 16, 12, 12, 10, 7 or 18, 14, 14, 10, 10, 10. All of which are perfectably reasonable, and capable characters.
So before suggesting that a single stat at an 18 is "extreme" maybe do a bit of math first? Especially since it doesn't "require 2~3 stats at 7~8" Indeed requiring nothing other than 10 points out of 15.
Secondly it doesn't matter how you think of taking 20. The question is "can you do it by RAW" in this case the answer is "yes". As such anything beyond that is moot. It is not a houserule, and wouldn't take 20 days -- it would take the same amount of time as doing the check would normally take x 20.
Identify is a great spell -- on a scroll or in a wand. As a spell to cast? Pointless, useless and potentially deadly to your team due to a lack of better resources.
I would sooner take Detect secret doors or alarm.
Not all days feature combat. I'm not recommending Identify as a daily taken spell, but as a known spell it can prove invaluable.
As for deadly if taken, that seems overboard. I was just playing a game on the weekend where a rogue couldn't make a roll on a Section of a hall coated in dust, the wizard flubbed his spellcraft on detect, and we resorted to identify. Turned out the entire hallway was coated with dust of disenchantment (2nd edition module), which we carefully collected and used to great effect later on.
Anidotes are all well and good, but the problem is I can provide examples of times where if I had identify memorized it would have cost the party a TPK (or known as a sorcerer).
That being said, as a spell to have around? Sure.
As a "Top 10 wizard/sorcerer Spell" not so much.
If I have a scroll of it? Yes please thank you. It might get used, or it might sit on the character sheet until the character dies, or I'm done playing it.
If it's not a spell I plan to use a daily slot on, then it doesn't belong on a "top 10 spells" list, unless that list is "Top 10 spells to be put on a scroll" in which case I can still think of other spells I would rather have scrolls of.
I suggest that an 18 with the 15 point buy is perfectly acceptable, and leaves enough for a 14 in another stat with racial modifiers. Meaning that instead of being "min maxed" you have 10, 10, 10, 10, 14, 18.
Err... you might want to review Paizo's point buy system. An 18 costs 17 points. So with 15-point buy, at minimum you're dropping one score to 8, yielding: 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 18.
If I have a scroll of it? Yes please thank you. It might get used, or it might sit on the character sheet until the character dies, or I'm done playing it.
If it's not a spell I plan to use a daily slot on, then it doesn't belong on a "top 10 spells" list, unless that list is "Top 10 spells to be put on a scroll" in which case I can still think of other spells I would rather have scrolls of.
That's why the wizard should be using a wand of indentify instead. ;)
I suggest that an 18 with the 15 point buy is perfectly acceptable, and leaves enough for a 14 in another stat with racial modifiers. Meaning that instead of being "min maxed" you have 10, 10, 10, 10, 14, 18.Err... you might want to review Paizo's point buy system. An 18 costs 17 points. So with 15-point buy, at minimum you're dropping one score to 8, yielding: 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 18.
No you aren't. Please note we both (Bobchuck and I) said buy a 16 (10 points) and put a racial adjustment to it (+2) and get your 18 that way.
16 = 10 points
+2 = free
18
So it doesn't require dropping a single stat to have an 18 with the fifteen point buy.
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No you aren't. Please note we both (Bobchuck and I) said buy a 16 (10 points) and put a racial adjustment to it (+2) and get your 18 that way.
16 = 10 points
+2 = free
18So it doesn't require dropping a single stat to have an 18 with the fifteen point buy.
This is correct. I've noticed in a group I game with some confusion surrounding bonuses, as in they apply their bonus first and then start adding in points. Abraham is correct though, you pay for the 16 and then add two to bring it to 18.
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And, yes you can take a 20 on spellcraft to Identify with Detect Magic. There is no penalty for failure you can just keep casting Detect Magic.
SRD:"Determine Properties of Magic Item: When using detect magic or identify to learn the properties of magic items, you can only attempt to ascertain the properties of an individual item once per day. Additional attempts reveal the same results."
Take 20 means making lots of attempts until you get 20. But in this case the first attempt determines the result for the whole day. So I don't see how you can take 20.
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The idea of take 20 is to avoid a player having to roll all day until they get a 20 on a skill that they can just do again and again.
In this case, if the PCs were willing to spend weeks in one place, then I would let the player have his PC 'take 20' to identify an item. Mind you with that kind of downtime I'm sure that they could do better.
Yup. Take 20 days instead of 20 rounds in this case seems a reasonable ruling. The identify spell would of course allow them to do the equivalent in one day.
A first level elven wizard with spellcraft skill has 4 or 5 int bonus, +2 elven bonus, +3 class skill, + 1 skill point giving a 10 or 11 base in identifying properties of magic items. If he takes 10 then he has a 20 or 21 to identify. This allows him to reliably identify level 5 or 6 caster level items (except opposition school items). That is almost all items he is likely to come across at level 1.
Of course that still leaves the problems of cursed items which have a 10 higher DC. So identify is particularly useful to avoid cursed items.
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Identify is useful, but I wouldn't put it on the top 10 list.
Agreed (see my spell list above). The thread has wandered off-topic into Identify rules.
Thinking about the OP I can see a starting first level wizard having effectively 4 or 5 first level spells available to cast daily (base 1 + 1 specialist school + 1 or 2 from intelligence bonus + 1 bonded item spell). And 11 to 13 spells in spell book (3 base + 4 or 5 from intelligence + 4 or 5 scrolls bought).
At second level a wizard learns another 2 spells plus would likely buy at least another 4 scrolls. So he is likely up to 18 spells known by second level.
So the top ten doesn't last long for a normal wizard.
The more important decision is what are the top three or four spells to have in your usual spells memorised slots at level 1.
I would say top 3 memorized are something like: Mage Armor, Grease, Color Spray.
Thanks again to everyone for the help.
Saturday's game session was a blast.
The players ended up choosing a setting of Magical Academy which resulted in a game that was more of a cross of Harry Potter with Teenagers From Outer Space.
I had created a list of 50 movie, TV, novel, and video game characters from a list of top 100 fictional characters. The players all selected one personality to be the concept for their character.
I then used other recognizable characters to be all the other roles at the High School.
It really worked like a charm to get the players that regularly were passive and sat on the side lines involved in the game. They were coming up with all sorts of crazy plans and bluffs and having a blast.
They learned a bit on magic casting and running different characters from the stock Drizz't Rangers that a couple were attached to.
Mostly, they learned how to have fun role-playing.
Which was the intent all along.
Thanks again for helping me with the list culling.