RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Seems it's a good idea for a spellcaster to keep an assortment of scrolls handy to cover certain types of situations. But what's good to keep handy?
Painlord's previous guide(s) suggest starting a bit of a "library" by about 3rd level, but what should be in it?
Note that I ask this in the context of PFS (hence it being in this section of the boards), to avoid the always-unhelpful-but-stated-anyway "depends on your campaign".
I'm interested in general answers, but also specifically for my character, currently a fighter1/wizard4 who has purchased no scrolls up to this point due to wanting to wait until getting rid of ASF (now achieved).
So what scrolls would a responsible Pathfinder caster carry?
Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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For PFS, there's all sorts of categories. You'll find that your need for these will depend greatly on your characters needs and places of excursion.
- Something to deal with language barriers (Comprehend Languages, Tongues, etc.)
- Something to deal with Invisible things (Glitterdust, See invisibilty, and so many other options)
- Something to deal with Darkness (Daylight, Darkvision, or something along those lines)
- A scroll or two to deal with manuevering in different environments, like air/water (Air Bubble, Touch of the Sea, Fly [for your melee, if not for yourself], Spider climb [to avoid possibly unstable flooring] )
- Transportation? This category is less than important as most travel is provided in PFS, but nice to have. (Mount?)
- A spell or two against mind control/domination to stop those "Oh crap, our fighter has turned on us" moments (Protection against Evil, Break Enchantment, etc.)
- Flexible spells that will allow buffs based on gathered information (Resist Energy [You'd be surprised how handy this becomes when you learn about a possible foe partway during a mission. It's very flexible as you don't have to choose the energy type until it's cast])
- Possibly a few "repair" spells (Make Whole? For the inevitable "Unfortunately, this awesome game changing item was broken by the BBEG" moments.)
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I would always carry things to help with inevitable water missions. Touch of the sea and air bubble are both on my "always have" list. Comprehend languages is another excellent one, eventually springing for a scroll of tongues (or spending 2 PP on two of them).
Other useful ones include darkvision and see invisibility. Those are situations that won't come up every time, but it's great to have them available without having to prepare them.
EDIT: Oh my god so much ninja in the post above me.
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Anything you might want to cast under certain circumstances, but don't want to prepare. Things that deal with very specific circumstances are good, such as endure elements, comprehend languages, obscuring mist, expeditious retreat, and air bubble. Also, buffs make good scrolls, so you don't prepare them only to discover that you don't have appropriate teammates to use them on.
At 25 gp each, level 1 scrolls are cheap. Even at level 1, my sorcerer had a few, to compensate for the limited number of spells per day he could cast without them.
The only spells you don't want to have as scrolls are the direct attack spells against enemies. Since damage, duration, and save DCs are determined by your stats for those, you don't want to cast them with the minimums of the wizards-for-hire who make the scroll. You want your own higher level and casting stat for those.
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Some of them, in my experience, might be worth more as wands than scrolls:
Endure Elements (come on, having a wand of this means never having to worry about that blizzard)
Protection Evil (wand is definitely the better way to go, multiple uses, no provoke, so no need to burn read, move, touch, just tap&touch) [sorry, just spent the last encounter getting woken up by the BBEG while my party kept putting my PC down. Why would the Fighter know more about the caster's prepared spells than the caster does? We HAD Prot/Evil available!)
Comprehend Languages (Reading is fundamental, tongues, while less often needed, is still good)
Gravity Bow/Lead Blades
Shield
Mage Armor (wand, definitely, 50 castings can go by quick, especially if you have lots of unarmored/lightly armored types)
Abundant Ammunition (if you know many archer types, a wand would be better, once per combat possible, per archer)
With UMD:
Bless Weapon (how many BBEG are E, so auto-confirm, bypass DR/good, etc.)
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What type of caster are you? Blaster, buffer, board control?
I would cover the 'other types' of casters with scrolls.
Something (as DM said above) to defeat mind control, invis, specific energy's.
Also you could cover PFS party gaps with scrolls more than filling in your personal gaps. If no party has an 'X' for example.
Rogue: invis, silence, spider climb, summon trap-springer I, etc.
Archer: acid arrow, fireball, ray of exhaustion, etc.
Melee: align weapon, magic weapon, fire shield, etc.
Healer: (do you have UMD?) cure spells, fog cloud, slow, etc.
Face: charm person, Eagle's splendour, tongues, etc.
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Wheeee. Lists are fun.
Devin - 12th Gnomish Cleric of Sarenrae
1:
Wand of Bless
Wand of Comprehend Languages
Wand of Endure Elements
Wand of Ant Haul
Scroll of Remove Fear
2:
Scroll of Delay Poison
Scroll of Remove Paralysis
Scroll of Lesser Restoration
Scroll of Resist Energy
Scroll of Speak with Dead
3:
Scroll of Daylight
Scroll of Invisibility Purge
Scroll of Stone Shape
Scroll of Water Walking
Scroll of Water Breathing
Scroll of Locate Object
4:
Scroll of Airwalk
Scroll of Freedom of Movement
5:
Scroll of Breath of Life
Scroll of Word of Recall
6:
Scroll of Heal
Scroll of Find the Path
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- Something to deal with Darkness (Daylight, Darkvision, or something along those lines).I can't help but take perverse pleasure in having players work out for themselves why I won't allow them to use their scroll of daylight to dispel the deeper darkness they are in.
Ran into that at kublacon.
Player: "I pull my scroll of daylight. I'll handle this!"
GM: "Cool. How do you read it?"
Player: ".....S***."
GM: *grins*
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Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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- Something to deal with Darkness (Daylight, Darkvision, or something along those lines).I can't help but take perverse pleasure in having players work out for themselves why I won't allow them to use their scroll of daylight to dispel the deeper darkness they are in.Ran into that at kublacon.
Player: "I pull my scroll of daylight. I'll handle this!"
GM: "Cool. How do you read it?"
Player: ".....S***."
GM: *grins*
Yeah, as a caster, I am usually in the back. So it usually amounts to:
Me: "Oh crap, Darkness." *backs out past the edge, if possible, and casts at next available moment (probably on next turn)* "Great now I've got Daylight up!"
Others: "Now you're too far back to light anything up..."
Me: "Dangit."
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At least they don't waste the scroll.- Something to deal with Darkness (Daylight, Darkvision, or something along those lines).I can't help but take perverse pleasure in having players work out for themselves why I won't allow them to use their scroll of daylight to dispel the deeper darkness they are in.Ran into that at kublacon.
Player: "I pull my scroll of daylight. I'll handle this!"
GM: "Cool. How do you read it?"
Player: ".....S***."
GM: *grins*
It got better. We had just discussed why the scroll was of limited use earlier in the game. My cleric cast daylight in the encounter in question, the baddie dropped another darkness effect that didn't include the scroll owner, who then used the scroll to nerf the darkness yet again.
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So Pirate Rob has my ideas and sentiments, but since my cleric is a huge pyrotechnic, my scroll list is a little different. Also I may not be carrying all of these at the same time. Got a house for my scroll storage.
Lady Ophelia--10th level Cleric of Sarenrae/Pryo in training
1:
Wand of Bless
Wand of CLW
Wand of Endure Elements
Wand of Burning Hands
Scrolls of Remove Fear (at least 2)
2:
Scroll of Delay Poison
Scroll of Remove Paralysis
Wand of Lesser Restoration (the partial charge one)
Scroll of Resist Energy
Scroll of Protection from everything! (one per alignment)
3:
Scroll of Daylight
Scrolls of Remove Blindness/Deafness, Curse and Disease (at least one each)
Scroll of Water Walking
Scroll of Water Breathing
Scrolls of Invisibility Purge and Fireball (I usually have one or two. They get used pretty quick though.)
4:
Scroll of CLW-Mass
Scroll of Freedom of Movement
Scroll of Restoration
Scroll of Raise Dead (Just in case XD)
5:
Scroll of Breath of Life
Scroll of Blade Barrier
Scroll of Dispel Magic, Greater
6:
Scroll of Heal
Scroll of Haste (I recommend one, but I paid the price for two!)
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On the Daylight scroll issue, since my highest level PC isn't much of a caster (Fighter 10, Cleric of Desna 1, Ranger 1), he gave up his neck slot for an item that gives him an extra ring slot, and the ability to cast both Daylight and See Invisibility once per day.
Both darkness and invisibility are incredibly annoying to someone playing an archery based character....
Oh, and the item which does all that is the Hand of Glory, for a mere 8,000 gp.
Hmmm. Can you Arcane Bond a hand?
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Some of them, in my experience, might be worth more as wands than scrolls:
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Shield
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Please note that shield is a personal spell, so you cannot cast it on other people with a wand. Or have other people cast it on you for that matter.
Seen a lot of paladins try to pass a wand of shield to the party wizard to use on them before a fight.
Other scrolls I keep around:
Unseen Servant
Expeditious Retreat
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Some of them, in my experience, might be worth more as wands than scrolls:
...
Shield
...
Please note that shield is a personal spell, so you cannot cast it on other people with a wand. Or have other people cast it on you for that matter.
Seen a lot of paladins try to pass a wand of shield to the party wizard to use on them before a fight.
You can use a cracked vibrant purple ioun stone though. It is the cheapest spell storing item. Have the wizard cast the spell into the stone from a wand and then you can use shield as well. For bonus points, bring a pearl of power and get the spell at the caster level of the wizard.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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My barbarian just bought some potions of Shield. He only uses them against really tough opponents where he feels he needs the extra armor, so the 50 gp cost isn't that bad.
Potions can't be made for spells with a range of Personal (Magic Items chapter, "Magic Item Creation").
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You can use a cracked vibrant purple ioun stone though. It is the cheapest spell storing item. Have the wizard cast the spell into the stone from a wand and then you can use shield as well. For bonus points, bring a pearl of power and get the spell at the caster level of the wizard.
Unfortunately rings of spell storing (and vibrant purple stones) always cast the spell at minimum caster level.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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Unfortunately rings of spell storing (and vibrant purple stones) always cast the spell at minimum caster level.
Got any rules evidence to back that up? I'm not seeing it anywhere in either item description. Now for randomly generated rings with spells in them, sure.
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Farak, the most Powerful Mage in All Absalom's personal consumable collection:
Wands:
Cure Light Wounds
Gravity Bow
Shield
Unseen Servant
Comprehend Language
Mage Armor
Inflict Light Wounds
Lesser Restoration
Long Strider
Protection from Evil
Scroll:
Fireball
Daylight
Stone Shape (2x)
Dimension Door
Breath of Life
Heal
Black Tentacles
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Unfortunately rings of spell storing (and vibrant purple stones) always cast the spell at minimum caster level.Got any rules evidence to back that up? I'm not seeing it anywhere in either item description. Now for randomly generated rings with spells in them, sure.
I was curious about the same thing with regards to weapons with the Spell Storing Ability.
But there is a quote from Jason Buhlman/JJ on the boards about this a few years ago.
I'll see if i can find it and will edit this.
From Ring of Spell Storing, Minor:
Each spell has a caster level equal to the minimum level needed to cast that spell.
