So I'm playing a Conjuration spec wizard and I was looking for some advice about some feats. I've read over Treatmonk's guide for wizards but he only covered the core book. I'm going to post a list here and then ask the wonderful Paizo community to tell me why I should or should not take any of these feats as well as suggesting any feats I may have overlooked.
Core:
Arcane Strike
Spell Focus (Conjuration)
Augment Summoning
Craft Wonderous Item
Extend Spell
Quicken Spell
Weapon Focus (Ray)
APG:
Arcane Blast
Disruptive Spell
Elemental Spell
Spell Perfection
Ultimate Magic:
Skeleton Summoner
Spell Specialization
Greater Spell Specialization
Superior Summoning
Ultimate Combat:
Dimensional Agility
Improved Initiative is still really great, especially for a character with the ability to control the battlefield.
*bump*
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So I'm playing a Conjuration spec wizard and I was looking for some advice about some feats. I've read over Treatmonk's guide for wizards but he only covered the core book. I'm going to post a list here and then ask the wonderful Paizo community to tell me why I should or should not take any of these feats as well as suggesting any feats I may have overlooked.
Core:
Arcane Strike - Decent damage boost, but are you really planning on hitting things with weapons?Spell Focus (Conjuration)- Crucial for Aug Summoning. #1 feat for summoners.
Augment Summoning #2 feat for any summoning caster.
Craft Wondrous Item - Excellent, especially if your campaign has significant downtime. Pick it up @ Wizard 5 "for free"
Extend Spell - good, but not as fantastic as for Sorcerers. Spend the 3k for lesser rods, and you'll be set for almost all games.
Quicken Spell - high level play all but demands more actions. This is one way to get it. Very good, especially around Wizard 10 or 15.
Weapon Focus (Ray)- are you also taking Point Blank Shot & Precise Shot? If not, don't bother. If you do, take LOTS of ray spells.
APG:
Arcane Blast - Meh. Just prepare rays or blast spells.
Disruptive Spell - not worth it, IMO
Elemental Spell - not worth it, IMO
Spell Perfection - decent, especially if you really want to specialize in Scorching Ray
Ultimate Magic:
Skeleton Summoner - negates half the bonus from Aug Summoning, and allows you to summon skeletons or skeletal champion...pass
Spell Specialization - Caster Level bumps are always nice, even if for one spell only.
Greater Spell Specialization - hey, spontaneously cast a particular spell you really really like? Sure, so long as you want to cast that one spell a WHOLE lot.
Superior Summoning - how haven't I seen this feat before? Its like the Abyssal Bloodline capstone. Awesome, especially for a "swarm summoner" (hint: Lantern Archons are fantastic little gun batteries).
Ultimate Combat:
Dimensional Agility - very nice. D-Door + Act? Super nice!
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I'm 100% on taking Fast Study as my 5th-level feat. It lets you prepare spell slots in as little as 1 minute - as long as you're not in the middle of combat, that's practically nothing. You can basically be a spontaneous caster with a huge array of spells known - seems pretty incredible to me.
I'm also taking Craft Wondrous Items. Treantmonk thinks of it as selling your feat slot, but I like to think of it as doubling the number of wondrous items I can get. Two pearls of power for the price of 1? Yes please! (Try to get your DM agree to letting you take 10 on craft skill checks.)
Other than that, my human conjuration wizard will probably look like this:
Human - Spell Focus: Conjuration
1 - Toughness
3 - Augment Summoning
5 - Craft Wondrous Item
Wizard (5) - Fast Study
7 - Combat Casting
9 - Superior Summoning (or if I had a familiar, Improved Familiar)
11 - Toppling Spell (with Magic Missile, aww yeah)
13 - Quicken Spell
I like Improved Initiative, but I feel like even with a Human caster, you need to pick between it and Toughness, and picking Toughness lets you put more points into Dex instead of Con which gets you a better initiative, anyway.
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Spell Penetration - Spell Resistance becomes too common at higher levels
Greater Spell Penetration - And it keeps increasing!
Spell Mastery - Situational, but crucial when the situation arises
Improved Familiar - Many threads have gone over the benefits of various improved familiars. Basically, you gain an extra set of actions and this is most beneficial which your familiar has hands(can use wands).
Still Spell - no armor check penalty, can cast while bound, stealthy casting
Silent Spell - stealthy casting, can cast if bound, can cast in zone of silence
Dazing Spell - damage + control effect
Selective Spell(better as a rod than a feat)
Reach Spell(better as a rod than a feat)
Heighten Spell - good for times when you just want a higher level fireball and allows access to preferred spell
---Preferred Spell - spontaneously cast your favorite spell(competes with greater spell specialization)
Point Blank Shot - need this one to get precise shot
---Precise Shot - almost mandatory for ray-focus casters
Dodge - +1 AC which stacks with everything, you could do worse
Great Fortitude - +2 to a save you are probably not good at
Lightning Reflexes - +2 at a save you are probably not great at(but probably better than your FORT at least)
Here are a few more feats to consider. I tried not to duplicate feats from earlier in the thread, but I am not perfect.
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unless your school ability is so amazing you feel staying pure wizard is a neccessity i might suggest looking into the loremaster. there are some prerequisite feats but once you are in there you can get +2 to all saves, toughness, bonus feat, new languages, and other things. all very nice and i personally love metamagic feats so it just worked for me. the skill focus knoweldge just went towards arcane for me i always put tons of ranks into it just my style. you end up getting a secret every other level and they are a very nice selection. just throwing out an alternative.
you can also choose to regain one of your lost schools.
Thanks for the advice. I don't plan on taking any PrCs as I took the teleportation subschool (it's really nice especially as you level because it essentially gives you an extra movement as a swift action). I would take Improved Initiative but I took the trait Reactionary and the feats Acadamae Graduate (allows you to turn a summon spell into a standard action as long as you pass a fort save to avoid fatigue) and Cypher Script (reduce the time it takes to input spells into your spellbook/make scrolls). I also didn't take a familar...but only because I wanted the ability to cast a spell from my spellbook in an emergency.
Thanks Psionichamster I had a feeling that's how some of those feats were going to go but I wanted to make sure. I appreciate the insight. Unfortunately, I'm LE...so no lantern archons for me.
Reynard, thanks for the suggestions. What book is Fast Study in? I didn't see it in the books I mentioned...and if it is in one of those, I must have over looked it. I overlooked toppling spell because I wasn't planning on taking too many spells with the "force descriptor" besides Magic Missile. But I'll keep it in mind because I'm pretty certain most of the "hand" spells are force related.
Nipin thanks for the suggestions. I considered some of those feats but decided against them because they were either too situational or they would not work with the battlefield control concept I have going on. Still and silent spell are probably good choices...but probably as rods.
Corlindale, thanks for the suggestions. I agree with the idea of PrCs being a bad choice because you end up giving up more than you get, unless you are a martial class. Persistant spell is a good feat and I'm not sure why I didn't add it. And yes, I feel Spell Perfection is one of the best feats for any spell caster however, it's usefulness in our game may be limited as we're playing an AP.
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Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Alignment matters when it comes to summoning. It specifically states somewhere that if you are good or evil you can only summon monsters of that alignment.
I forgot about the discoveries...now I have to check those out.
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Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Alignment matters when it comes to summoning. It specifically states somewhere that if you are good or evil you can only summon monsters of that alignment.
I forgot about the discoveries...now I have to check those out.
I have never seen a restriction based on alignment in either spell descriptions, the summoning magic section, or class descriptions. I would ask for a reference on this restriction.
Combat Casting: increase your concentration
Defensive Combat Training: Up your CMD
If you're LE, look at sacred summons. It allows you to pull in devils as a standard action with monster summoning. No fatigue save either.
I'd only take topple spell at 1st level and use the magic lineage trait with magic missle to make them tripping missiles from level 1. You get more out of it at low levels where you don't have to deal with giant flying centipedes of doom that can't be tripped. But I'd definitely consider it. I think wizards get a lot more out of metamagic rods than sorcerers, and sorcerers get more out of the feats.
Sacred Summons looks good, what is that in?
I have a swift action that gets me out of most grapple/movement related things and I have several other PCs/summons if I need damage sponges.
I decided against topple spell only because I don't plan on using a lot of offensive spells and instead more Save or Suck spells.
I have never seen a restriction based on alignment in either spell descriptions, the summoning magic section, or class descriptions. I would ask for a reference on this restriction.Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Alignment matters when it comes to summoning. It specifically states somewhere that if you are good or evil you can only summon monsters of that alignment.
I forgot about the discoveries...now I have to check those out.
From the PRD:
When you use a summoning spell to summon a creature with an alignment or elemental subtype, it is a spell of that type. Creatures on Table 10–1 marked with an “*” are summoned with the celestial template, if you are good, and the fiendish template, if you are evil. If you are neutral, you may choose which template to apply to the creature. Creatures marked with an “*” always have an alignment that matches yours, regardless of their usual alignment. Summoning these creatures makes the summoning spell's type match your alignment.
It could be that my DM is taking it a bit too literally because as I'm reading that now it doesn't say what he thinks it says.
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Ah, you're thinking of the templates. When you summon relatively neutral creatures - most animals for instance - you can apply a Celestial template if you're good, a Fiendish template if you're evil, or either template if you're neutral. These give the animals a few resistances and a halfway decent Smite ability for extra damage. It's not a huge deal, but it's a good thing to remember if you're going to be summoning.
On Toughness and Improved Initiative: Toughness lets you skimp a little on Con because it gives you more hit points, and Improved Initiative lets you skimp a little on Dex because it gives you better initiative. However, while Con only gives you a higher Fort save besides the hit points, Dex gives you AC and improved accuracy on ranged attacks (like rays) besides the Dex bonus, plus a lot of useful skills.
So IMO, it's better to take Toughness and put some of the points you were going to put into Con into Dex instead, instead of taking Improved Initiative and putting those points from Dex into Con.
EDIT: Oof, double ninjad. Maybe I should have taken Improved Initiative after all.
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If you're leaning on Conjuration spells, I'd recommend Arcane Blast if only because you're probably not learning many of the Evocation blast spells and you might enjoy being able to decide at the last minute that you need a ray instead.
Dodge, Toughness, Imp. Initiative and even Weapon Focus(ray) are all the kinds of feats that, while not particularly flashy or cool, you never feel bad taking them because they're pretty much always useful.
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Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Alignment matters when it comes to summoning. It specifically states somewhere that if you are good or evil you can only summon monsters of that alignment.
I forgot about the discoveries...now I have to check those out.
Source?
Here's what I got, re: Conjuration School Magic:
Conjuration
Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling); create objects or effects on the spot (creation); heal (healing); bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or forms of energy to you (summoning); or transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation). Creatures you conjure usually- but not always- obey your commands.
A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.
The creature or object must appear within the spell's range, but it does not have to remain within the range.
Subschools
Calling: a calling spell transports a creature from another plane to the plane you are on. The spell grants the creature the one-time ability to return to its plane of origin, although the spell may limit the circumstances under which this is possible. Creatures who are called actually die when they are killed; they do not disappear and reform, as do those brought by a summoning spell (see below). The duration of a calling spell is instantaneous, which means that the called creature can't be dispelled.
Creation: a creation spell manipulates matter to create an object or creature in the place the spellcaster designates. If the spell has a duration other than instantaneous, magic holds the creation together, and when the spell ends, the conjured creature or object vanishes without a trace. If the spell has an instantaneous duration, the created object or creature is merely assembled through magic. It lasts indefinitely and does not depend on magic for its existence.
Healing: Certain divine conjurations heal creatures or even bring them back to life.
Summoning: a summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have.
Teleportation: a teleportation spell transports one or more creatures or objects a great distance. The most powerful of these spells can cross planar boundaries. Unlike summoning spells, the transportation is (unless otherwise noted) one-way and not dispellable.
Teleportation is instantaneous travel through the Astral Plane. Anything that blocks astral travel also blocks teleportation.
The only restriction on summoning outsiders comes from the prohibition on using opposed alignment spells for Clerics.
To wit:
A cleric can’t cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity’s (if she has one). Spells associated with particular alignments are indicated by the chaotic, evil, good, and lawful descriptors in their spell descriptions.
And, of course, a Summon spell which brings forth an alignment-typed creature is of that creatures alignment.
Wizards, Sorcerers, and other arcane casters have no similar restriction on their summoning/casting choices.
So which would you rate better: Greater Spell Specialization or Preferred Spell?
The inclusion of the clause on Spell Specialization to change your chosen spell seems to give it the bump as far as I'm concerned.
I'm thinking of making a witch soon, probably at least 14th level.
1. Spell Penetration
3. Scribe Scroll
5. Toppling Spell? (maybe metamagic rod?) Greater Spell Penetration?
7. Empower Spell
9. Defensive Combat Training
11. Quicken Spell
13. Heighten Spell
15. ???
My main tactic will probably be black tentacles plus quickened stinking cloud. Mostly battlefield control, some back up healing, and maybe some charm monster goodness.
The rest of the party is a dragon shaman, battle sorcerer, and an unknown tanky/skilly type.
On a similar topic;
Which metamagics would you rate most valuable to a Conjurer?
Quicken is a given for basically any caster late enough in the game, but which others would you rank highly? If you were working up toward Spell Perfection, which 3 metas would you favor?
On a similar topic;
Heighten is a given for basically any caster late enough in the game,
I just can't agree. Higher level spells are always better than lower level spells heightened. What I just do is have all my save spells in my high level slots and use all my low level slots for buffs, utility and battle control.
I just can't agree. Higher level spells are always better than lower level spells heightened. What I just do is have all my save spells in my high level slots and use all my low level slots for buffs, utility and battle control.On a similar topic;
Heighten is a given for basically any caster late enough in the game,
That was a brain-fart. I meant to say Quicken, not Heighten.
I don't necessarily agree that a higher level spell is better than a lower level Heightened one, but that wasn't my intended stance in any case.
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For spontaneous casters: Extend, Reach, Persistent, Empower (if you really want to blow stuff up), and Quicken are your biggies. Since you'll want to do most of them a LOT, you may as well take them as feats rather than rods.
For prepared casters, Persistent, Reach, Extend, and Quicken are my choices. Odds are if you have 3 blast spells prepared, you can afford an appropriate empower rod. If you don't, you don't need the feat.
I have never seen a restriction based on alignment in either spell descriptions, the summoning magic section, or class descriptions. I would ask for a reference on this restriction.Re: lantern archons. You're a wizard. What do you care about alignment? Are there outsiders or clerics who have ethical dilemmas with forcing good outsiders to fight.
Metamagic rods are your friend. If you can stomach the investment, staff like wand (discovery from APG or UM) means very useful, cheap wands for mid to high level play.
Alignment matters when it comes to summoning. It specifically states somewhere that if you are good or evil you can only summon monsters of that alignment.
I forgot about the discoveries...now I have to check those out.
From the PRD:
When you use a summoning spell to summon a creature with an alignment or elemental subtype, it is a spell of that type. Creatures on Table 10–1 marked with an “*” are summoned with the celestial template, if you are good, and the fiendish template, if you are evil. If you are neutral, you may choose which template to apply to the creature. Creatures marked with an “*” always have an alignment that matches yours, regardless of their usual alignment. Summoning these creatures makes the summoning spell's type match your alignment.It could be that my DM is taking it a bit too literally because as I'm reading that now it doesn't say what he thinks it says.
b4 pathfinder there were alignment restrictions to summoning. in pathfinder u can summon anything as any alignment but i think u cant make them do anything thats against their nature.
I suggest Craft: Wondrous Item. No, really.
b4 pathfinder there were alignment restrictions to summoning. in pathfinder u can summon anything as any alignment but i think u cant make them do anything thats against their nature.
This is not true. The wording in the specific cases was the same -- clerics are the only ones that every had issues with summoning creatures of a different alignment and even then it's only because doing so give the spell an alignment descriptor that they are prohibited from casting.
Heck in 3.5 there was even a prestige class based around the concept of summoning creatures off of a different alignment.