Actually, the intention was for him to cast a bunch of ray touch attacks (no save) and a few summons while we were dealing with the mooks in the way (narrow hall), then use expeditious retreat to run away and hit us later. It also had pretty good saves. It wasn't the BBEG, it was a mid level to wear us down a bit and use up some resources.
Our wiz used ToI with spectral hand and he was suddenly about a 3rd level fighter with little armor. He was weaker than the mooks except for his good saves.
If he had been built as a Sorcerer 9 rather than Fighter 2/Sorcerer 7, he'd have lost only a single point of BAB and a feat and gained 4th level spells.
Summon Monster IV has no save and Enervation is a nasty (no save) ray spell, and who needs Expeditious Retreat when there's Dimension Door? Even if you wanted to keep the 15 Charisma for some crazy reason, he'd still be more dangerous without the Fighter levels.
But with a decent Charisma, Black Tentacles would have done more to slow the party down than mooks and some rays ever could.
Again, though, different paradigm.
@ mplindustries
the problem with having every NPC the players encounter optimised (not even minmaxed, just optimised) means that the entire party needs to optimise/minmax to keep up. which means that the NPCs need to be optimised to chalenge them... i think you can see where this is going. ignoring realism and suspention of disbelief for a moment (Why are all these Cha 24 sorcerers working for the Cha 7 fighter?), i feel the real cost is that in such a game sub-optimal but fun builds will be crushed under the wheels of the arms race.
that's my 2 cp, anyway.
PS: this is a thread about using suboptimal spells inventively. minmaxing isn't high on the priority list around here.
It is one of the very core tenets of D&D from the very earliest days that PCs are "special" and as such tend to have far higher attribute scores than the vast majority of NPCs, even NPC opponents. Building a campaign where your wizard's brute minions all have 18 str and 16 dex is not merely unrealistic, it is quite literally unbalancing.
An 18 int NPC would almost by definition be an extremely powerful NPC, either an extremely powerful benefactor or a boss.
All of that aside, I have many times in the past deliberately played a "gimped" character for role playing purposes. Why would my sorcerer have a 14 cha and a 16 dex? Because he grew up in the circus as an acrobat but developed these wonderful magical powers unexpectedly and is now out adventuring with his new-found awesome powers.
I have played wizards with int scores as low as 13, and fighters with str that low. Somehow they've all managed to get by. Of course my GMs have not been in the habit of throwing super-powered minions at our party either. So the game balance is maintained.
And again, I don't play this game to "win D&D". I do it for the fun of role playing and the escape of immersion in a magical fantasy world. There is no compelling driving need for ALL of my characters to be supermen for me to enjoy the game.
It is the GMs job to balance the game encounters so that the party has enough of a challenge to force them to think and perform, but not so much that they can't defeat the bad guys. In the end your actual stats should not matter if the GM is doing their job right. If your party is made up of munchkins, the GM is just going to throw more powerful monsters at you. That's the GM's job.
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I almost automatically reject any spell that has both an attack roll and a save against it's main or most powerful effect. Two chances for the spell to fail is one too many.
Fair enough, but really it's one chance to fail, and one chance to be less effective. What my players see is that if they hit with a touch attack their target will lose strength. No matter what. And strength is such an important stat in combat. To my players perception, that is a minus to hit, a minus to damage, and the possibility of a medium encumbered oponent.
Grease is definitely not undervalued. It's amazing.
I don't understand why a caster would keep their casting stat so low. Feeblemind is good, Touch I would avoid.
Also, people can have a bunch of spell component pouches. I keep 3, usually. Shatter is a cool spell (or a cool at-will for Warlocks back in 3.5, kekekeke) but niche.