Wizard / Sorcerer Suggestions

[Sarrion]

Heya folks,

I'm working on building a back up character for my party and am looking to build an arcane caster that would compliment the party dynamic.

Right now we have a Magus, Melee Ranger, Melee Fighter, Melee Druid w/animal companion and an oracle who is also somewhat melee focused. So I figured i would take a battlefield controller/debuffer approach to building a wizard or sorcerer which would help to compliment the party.

Any suggestions on a build? Right now the characters are level 4. My biggest fear with playing an arcane caster is not having high enough DC's for spells and not having enough spells to withstand 4 to 6 encounters per day.

I'd also like to figure out some good combinations of spells for the character to cast in succession in order to separate groups of enemies or take significant threats out of the picture.

There are a lot of suggestions in Treantmonks guide but there have been two expansion books since then and i figure there are a lot more options now.

We are using a 20 point buy and use Pathfinder Core, APG and UM.

[SunsetPsychosis]

In my experience, the best sort of wizard for battlefield control is a Conjurer. A lot of Conjuration spells don't have saves or allow SR, so landing them becomes less of an issue.

Conjuration is also the school for teleportation, and there are some spells that let you rearrange your allies around the battlefield. Being able to teleport your fighter and ranger into flanking with the BBEG, allowing them to avoid AoO's from moving there and to get their full attacks can be a much bigger DPS increase than tossing a Scorching Ray or whatever.

There's also plenty of spells that allow you to rearrange the battlefield. I'm a personal fan of the various Pit spells, especially if you have a method of forcing movement, whether it be another spell or a Bull Rush from the fighter. You may not be able to kill the ogre in a single round, but dropping him into a 100 foot pit where he takes crushing damage every round and can't make the Climb DC to get out renders him as good as dead, letting the party focus their actions on other threats.

Summons also allow you to greatly tip the action economy scale in your favor. Summoned creatures can give you disposable 'tanks' or flanking buddies. Did the summoned dire tiger just let the rogue get flanking? Massive dps increase. Did the earth elemental just soak the 80 damage hit? Massive survivability increase for the party.

[Atarlost]

I know you said wizard/sorceror, but you have six things going into melee. This just screams Bard to me.

[Sarrion]

Atarlost wrote:

I know you said wizard/sorceror, but you have six things going into melee. This just screams Bard to me.

Oh i'm playing a bard right now, this is just in case he dies in battle.

[james maissen]

Sarrion wrote:

Heya folks,

Any suggestions on a build?

Focusing on casting conjurations is great, but I would be a (fortune) diviner specialist.

You want the high Init roll as you will want to go first to help shape the battlefield before others have gone.

I'd go with the following:

Human
STR 07 -4pts
INT 21 17pts
WIS 07 -4pts
DEX 14 5pts
CON 14 5pts
CHA 07 -4pts

And have 5pts left over to modify things to fit you're desire. Depending where the party is expecting it's diplomacy-type things from (I'm assuming your current Bard), you might want to raise the CHA, but salt to taste.

Are you using traits? Assuming not, you still might consider the additional traits feat to get some into play.

There are a great number of wizard feats out there and you'll want to figure out which ones suit you. If you are in doubt for a feat have Improved Init as your default.

The UM's list of spell specialization & greater specialization is very nice.

Assuming that your group is going to high levels, you will likely want to give great thought to spell perfection at 15th and what spell you want for it.

Item crafting is an option, and something you can look to share with your party.

The UM gives a good number of additional things to spend feats on for wizards and many are awesome. Lowering preping blank slots down to a 1minute is VERY awesome. Moreso as it seems that you can expect 4+ encounters in a day.

Last and not least are metamagic feats.

You might also consider PrCs if any jump out at you. I typically suggest that you consider selling your soul (what else are you going to do with it?) by taking a level or so in Diabolist, but you can figure out if that's worth it or not.

-James

[Sarrion]

What would you suggest for opposition schools James?

[Tom S 820]

necomacy evocation

[james maissen]

Sarrion wrote:

What would you suggest for opposition schools James?

Well you have a few factors there.

Unlike 3.5 in PF they are opposition schools as opposed to banned schools. So if, for example, the only spell from necromancy that you would ever use a memorized slot for (as opposed to a scroll, wand, or staff) is false life and you don't mind spending two slots on it then necromancy would work for you.

So this involves you looking at the spell lists and seeing what spells therein that you would like and ones you 'must have'. Do this making lists so that you can see the trade-offs up front.

When you do so there are two or three things that you can factor in here:

Party composition. It might seem horrible to give up dispel magic for example.. but if two of the other PCs in the group carry it then it's far less so than if you were the only one.

DM's world. If the DM severely nerfs charms or illusions then curtailing them might be less painful than in other campaigns.

UM has an option for wizards to spend a bonus feat to remove one of their opposition schools at around 10th level. If this is starting to become too painful to remove two schools consider, for the cost of this bonus feat, that you are merely delaying easy access for one school and thus plan accordingly.

All that said: your wizard would be replacing the party's current bard. Assuming that the bard is a good fit for the party then you will want to overlap his roles a fair amount. Perhaps not as strongly in places (and perhaps stronger in others) but a rough coverage is desired.

So if the party is used to have enchantments and illusions from your current bard then severely curtailing them with your wizard might be a mistake.

I would consider abjuration as an opposition school. Scribe a few scrolls of dispel magic or other protective spells. For long duration ones that can extend into the next day having two slots open in a spell level can let you put that in for the following day if the current day's expenses didn't dip into those spare slots.

I would also consider evocation, though I would have devices available to give ranged attack options here. The party sounds like it is weak on ranged damage and I would stress this to everyone (out of the DM's ears so as not to skew their perspective) so that they could get a delayed option along these lines. The melee fighter-types should have bows available to them, the magus should always load a ranged attack spell, etc.

I'm a bit too fond of the necromancy school to curtail it, but if you feel you need to then I would at the very least have ways to command undead, false life, enfeeble, and later magic jar and enervate.

-James