At low level wizards dont do a lot of damage so I wonder what schools make wizard more useful at low levels in particular levels 1-5.
I'm a big fan of the Conjuration (teleportation) school at low levels. You get a way to escape from an enemy's reach AND summoner's charm increases the effectiveness of your summon spells dramatically at low levels.
Worst is universalist. What were they thinking?
I like conjuration too, but if you and your GM can agree on how they work, illusion can be a good school too.
Don't overlook transmutation.
Transmutation is amazing. Necro can be very solid. Enchantment and Universalist are probably the weakest.
I would be careful with necro. Yes it's powerful, but in many campaigns it can be similar to playing the chaotic neutral rogue and you might find yourself in constant conflict with others in your party.
Depends on how you're using your spell selection. You don't necessarily need to Animate just because you take the necro specialization.
I'm rather happy with my Diviner.
For a boom wizard, few things are as powerfull as the ability to go FIRST, and always being able to act in the surprise rond is pretty darn good, especially coupled with a +9 or higher on Initiative (Dex 14, Improved Initiative, +2 init trait, +1 per 2 levels from Diviner).
Add in a starting Int of 20, and there will be a lot of monsters going down before they know what hit them, never mind being able to act.
If the monsters are still too far off, you can Haste or otherwise buff the party before they spread out too much, which is also a good thing.
Could you elaborate on pros and cons of the illusion and enchantments schools at levels 1-3 please? I am particularly considering those two schools given they "control" spells like sleep and color spray.
My intention so far is to control and let others do the heavy damage! Is that wrong? what is the best way for a wizard to do damage at such low levels?
PD: I think the universal school should have extra cantrips slots and bonuses instead of hand of the apprentice!
Could you elaborate on pros and cons of the illusion and enchantments schools at levels 1-3 please? I am particularly considering those two schools given they "control" spells like sleep and color spray.
My intention so far is to control and let others do the heavy damage! Is that wrong? what is the best way for a wizard to do damage at such low levels?
PD: I think the universal school should have extra cantrips slots and bonuses instead of hand of the apprentice!
I am sure a detailed and exhaustive response to your question could be (and probably will be) given, but at a high level here is how I see it:
Illusion School:
Pro: Very solid options to control individuals or groups. Extremely useful even outside of combat. Very good for self-defense. Offers perhaps the best outlet for individual player creativity.
Con: Very dependent on defeating will saves. Does not provide much actual damage or protection. Most importantly, determining the outcome of many spells is totally GM fiat, and if the GM and player don't agree how illusions work, the character can be neutralized with little player recourse.
Enchantment School:
Pro: Very solid options to control individuals or groups. Extremely useful even outside of combat. Provides potential for avoiding combat or greatly reducing combat. Powerful interrogation or manipulation options.
Con: Very dependent on defeating will saves. Does not provide much actual damage or protection. Using many spells outside of combat may be viewed as socially inappropriate behavior in some GM worlds. Certain spell outcomes are highly dependent on GM fiat.
So, to summarize, both can be powerful, but they are perhaps the two schools that can be most easily neutralized by GM fiat with very little recourse by the player. So I would want to talk to my GM and clear up some things before I'd play either in that GM's campaign.
I'm rather happy with my Diviner.
For a boom wizard, few things are as powerfull as the ability to go FIRST, and always being able to act in the surprise rond is pretty darn good, especially coupled with a +9 or higher on Initiative (Dex 14, Improved Initiative, +2 init trait, +1 per 2 levels from Diviner).
Add in a starting Int of 20, and there will be a lot of monsters going down before they know what hit them, never mind being able to act.
If the monsters are still too far off, you can Haste or otherwise buff the party before they spread out too much, which is also a good thing.
Ugh. Yeah, you optimize that much and of course you're going to always go first. I don't think this has much bearing on the conversation here. It could just be me, but I don't envision a well RP'd Diviner as being a "boom wizard."
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Illusion still has Color Spray, and since we're talking low level, that's a pretty good spell. But in the end you depend on the GM's readiness to let enemies believe in illusions so you can use them to lay ambushes, circumvent guards etcetera, because you just can't do enough damage with them.
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I think Evocation has problems at low levels; you can easily run out of damaging spells before killing everyone that's trying to kill you. Definitely hard until level 3 (Scorching Ray); by then your dice-per-level spells from level 1 have gotten better too, and your overall number of spell slots is good enough for more than one fight in a day. Picking a build can help a lot though:
* RAYS: Point Blank Shot at level 1, Precise Shot at level 3; you start out with Ray of Frost for 1d3+2 at level 1, but all day, and at level 3 you add Scorching Ray with good to-hit. This build should also look at expanding towards Eldritch Knight for the BAB at some point.
* AoE: trickier until level 5, by which time everything should be falling into place (Spell Focus, Spell Specialization, Preferred Spell, Magical Lineage, Rime Spell, Fireball...)
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Charm-style enchantment can be difficult, depending on how the GM handles charmed creatures (how cooperative are they?).
Working with the more unambiguous spells (Hideous Laughter, Hold Person, Dominate Person) is less GM-dependent, but kicks in a little later in levels.
Biggest weakness is fighting mindless creatures, and there's actually quite a lot of those.
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Conjuration rocks at any level; Mage Armor is something you want to cast every day, and Glitterdust is one of the best attack spells at level 2 (blinded is a very severe condition). It does require training your party not to stand in the AoE though, which can be problematic if they're over-eager to set up flanking.
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Universalism is just the saddest puppy of all. They should've gotten something to compensate for the lack of spell slots.
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Do you think that's really equal though? I don't think it measures up; there's generally two schools you can do without because they're either not that good anyway (enchantment), or you can duplicate most of the important effects with a different school (necromancy/evocation) so you really don't both of them.
They did. Absolute freedom to use any spell they damm well please without any slot doubliing. (which really takes away any advantage of an extra slot)
Universalism is just the saddest puppy of all. They should've gotten something to compensate for the lack of spell slots.
Yeah, if you are terrible at spell selection.
In Pathfinder, specialization in all things is better than generalization. A wizard can quite easily cope with getting rid of two of the schools (let alone just having to use 2 slots for the occasional opposition school) and still do everything they need. And that's one slot a level. That is damn good. With a bonded item? You're swimming.
And the universalist abilities? What a sad, sad, display.
I want to see some universalist subschools that make the school useful.
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They did. Absolute freedom to use any spell they damm well please without any slot doubliing. (which really takes away any advantage of an extra slot)
Universalism is just the saddest puppy of all. They should've gotten something to compensate for the lack of spell slots.
An elementalist gets that for the cost of 1 feat at level 9 or 10 (depending on usage of a regular feat or bonus feat).
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Two coppers here, but illusionists also can suffer big depending on enemy composition.
If your low levels are fought fighting zombies and giant cockroaches, your illusions aren't going to matter for much.
Personally I've always found low level abjurers tend to work well. The protection magic, and you can make up for lost low level attack spells by buying a crossbow.
Ugh. Yeah, you optimize that much and of course you're going to always go first. I don't think this has much bearing on the conversation here. It could just be me, but I don't envision a well RP'd Diviner as being a "boom wizard."I'm rather happy with my Diviner.
For a boom wizard, few things are as powerfull as the ability to go FIRST, and always being able to act in the surprise rond is pretty darn good, especially coupled with a +9 or higher on Initiative (Dex 14, Improved Initiative, +2 init trait, +1 per 2 levels from Diviner).
Add in a starting Int of 20, and there will be a lot of monsters going down before they know what hit them, never mind being able to act.
If the monsters are still too far off, you can Haste or otherwise buff the party before they spread out too much, which is also a good thing.
Sword born, I disagree on its bearing. the other schools maximize a theme of spells, but Divination huge advantage is the initiative. They are supposed to always go first. So spending a feat and a trait isn't OMHO going overboard. You could also sub out the feat and use the familiar for the bonus initiative. Either way, this allows their battle field control, enchantments, buffs/de-buffs or blasting spells to be maximized in their effectiveness.
In terms of RP'ing, yes you can play it like a "Big Brother is Watching You", Or you can see it as a paranoid blaster (or summoner, or ...) whose afraid that something will jump out of the shadows at him. It all depends how you look at it.
Human: Evoker/Admixture- take magical liniage "ray of frost" trait. Take Rime spell. You can now spam 1D3 damage with an entangle debuff that uses ranged touch attacks with no save. 3rd level spell focus evokation, 5th level feats varissian tatoo and reach spell
AS an admixture wiz you can change elemental damage types so your fireballs become coldballs for free. This will be devestating at 7th level when you can rime your fireball!
spell focus makes the dc on the saves vs your spells a little higher and varissian tatoo makes the caster level of your evokation spells higher.
I'd tweak this for longewr term build power but for levels 1-5 this is pretty good because you never run dry of damage + effect and any spell mod feat you take that is elemental dependent is more useful as you can adjust the damage type. Plus you can straight up bipass allot of immunities and resistances by freely switching elemental types on your spells.
You could be a better battlefield control caster, oh wait there's nothing stopping you from taking the good battlefield control spell too.
Two coppers here, but illusionists also can suffer big depending on enemy composition.
If your low levels are fought fighting zombies and giant cockroaches, your illusions aren't going to matter for much.
Color Spray is mind affecting, but figments like Silent Image should work against them just fine.
Human: Evoker/Admixture- take magical liniage "ray of frost" trait. Take Rime spell. You can now spam 1D3 damage with an entangle debuff that uses ranged touch attacks with no save.
Rime Spell's entangle lasts for a number of rounds equal to the original spell level. Ray of Frost is level 0, so they'd be Entangled for 0 rounds. Doesn't work, sorry. The rest of the advice is sound, though.
Human: Evoker/Admixture- take magical liniage "ray of frost" trait. Take Rime spell. You can now spam 1D3 damage with an entangle debuff that uses ranged touch attacks with no save.Rime Spell's entangle lasts for a number of rounds equal to the original spell level. Ray of Frost is level 0, so they'd be Entangled for 0 rounds. Doesn't work, sorry. The rest of the advice is sound, though.
well crap... revised:
Take burning hands as you ML trait gives a cone, just be careful when and how you approach try to hit more than one opponent. They get a reflex save which is fine for any non rougish opponent... Not as good as original plan but I missed that hole...
Though I'd argue if you hold your action and use the ray for frost to interupt say an attack the -2 penalty would apply... check with your DM
Solspiral: if the spell doesn't give a saving throw, Rime forces a separate Fort save to check for entanglement. In practice, most enemies have worse Reflex than Fort saves, so RimeFireBall is generally more reliable than Rime Ice Storm for example.
2 new things I learned today, sweet. Though slight bummer as well since I've used that build to level 7 and will likely have to retrain, my DM will be happy to know my unlimited debuff is a bit nerfed.
Sword born, I disagree on its bearing. the other schools maximize a theme of spells, but Divination huge advantage is the initiative. They are supposed to always go first. So spending a feat and a trait isn't OMHO going overboard. You could also sub out the feat and use the familiar for the bonus initiative. Either way, this allows their battle field control, enchantments, buffs/de-buffs or blasting spells to be maximized in their effectiveness.
In terms of RP'ing, yes you can play it like a "Big Brother is Watching You", Or you can see it as a paranoid blaster (or summoner, or ...) whose afraid that something will jump out of the shadows at him. It all depends how you look at it.
Exactly. THe question was what are good schools at low level; I hold that Diviner is a good school at ALL levels. The wizard I built has strong reasons to be jumpy and suspicious, and uses her magic to protect herself and her younger sister, but that is outside the scope of this discussion.
so ilusion and enchanment should be secondary at low levels?
so ilusion and enchanment should be secondary at low levels?
In virtually every Wizard build, my drop schools are Enchantment and either Necro or Evoc. Illusion is good to have available (Color Spray and Silent Image are both very good spells), but it's hard to justify specializing in.
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Solspiral: if the spell doesn't give a saving throw, Rime forces a separate Fort save to check for entanglement. In practice, most enemies have worse Reflex than Fort saves, so RimeFireBall is generally more reliable than Rime Ice Storm for example.
Umm where does it say that?!? The feat doesn't mention saves AT ALL. The entangle effect happen on damage...not failed saves. Only way to negate rimed spell entangle effect is to negate the damage unless there is an errata I am haven't seen.
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Solspiral: if the spell doesn't give a saving throw, Rime forces a separate Fort save to check for entanglement. In practice, most enemies have worse Reflex than Fort saves, so RimeFireBall is generally more reliable than Rime Ice Storm for example.Umm where does it say that?!? The feat doesn't mention saves AT ALL. The entangle effect happen on damage...not failed saves. Only way to negate rimed spell entangle effect is to negate the damage unless there is an errata I am haven't seen.
Gosh, you're right. I must have had it mixed up with Dazing spell then.
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Best 1st level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Color Spray (Illusion)
b) Sleep (Enchantment)
c) Mage Armor (Conjuration)
d) Enlarge person (Transmutation)
e) Summon Monster I (Conjuration)
Best 2nd level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Invisibility (Illusion)
b) Mirror Image (Illusion)
c) Spider Climb (Transmutation)
d) Glitterdust (Conjuration)
e) Summon Monster II (Conjuration)
f) Web (Conjuration)
g) Scorching Ray (Evocation)
So I would say Abjuration, Divination and Necromancy are the worst schools, spellwise, and Illusion and Conjuration are the best (even though sleep is a killer).
I'm a big fan of the Conjuration (teleportation) school at low levels. You get a way to escape from an enemy's reach AND summoner's charm increases the effectiveness of your summon spells dramatically at low levels.
Worst is universalist. What were they thinking?
This is my vote.
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Best 1st level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Color Spray (Illusion)
b) Sleep (Enchantment)
c) Mage Armor (Conjuration)
d) Enlarge person (Transmutation)
e) Summon Monster I (Conjuration)Best 2nd level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Invisibility (Illusion)
b) Mirror Image (Illusion)
c) Spider Climb (Transmutation)
d) Glitterdust (Conjuration)
e) Summon Monster II (Conjuration)
f) Web (Conjuration)
g) Scorching Ray (Evocation)So I would say Abjuration, Divination and Necromancy are the worst schools, spellwise, and Illusion and Conjuration are the best (even though sleep is a killer).
I would add:
Level 1
- Grease (Conjuration/Earth)
Level 2
- Create Pit (Conjuration/Earth)
- Glitterdust (Conjuration/Earth)
- Stone Call (Conjuration/Earth)
- Summon Monster II (Conjuration/Earth)
I like the classic trick of taking the magical lineage trait on magic missle, then picking up the toppling spell feat. Each and every magic missile you cast now has a chance to cause your opponents to fall prone with CMB equal to your int mod+caster level. At low levels, you should be able to reliably trip most opponents while at higher levels you gain multiple missiles, giving yourself a chance to trip multiple foes with a single casting. Magic missile is great in conjunction with a number of the other powerful higher level metamagics too such as dazing spell because it's always going to deal damage and it can affect multiple targets at medium range.
Because of the various different debuff metamagics, I would argue that Evocation has recieved a significant boost in power within pathfinder, and I would never choose it as one of my banned schools unless I'm motivated by Roleplaying reasons. While a blast alone is not that powerful, a blast that also has the power to gimp a significant number of enemies at once is backbreaking.
So I would say Abjuration, Divination and Necromancy are the worst schools, spellwise, and Illusion and Conjuration are the best (even though sleep is a killer).
I really liked the way you classified the best spells on level 1-2. Really solid answer! Thank you.
I could be really nice to if somebody create some kind of chart with all the wizard spells by level so people could actually vote for the best spells. Wait a minute I can do that! I will post the form later to see what happens!
Here it is the POLL: CLICK ME!
Best 1st level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Color Spray (Illusion)
b) Sleep (Enchantment)
c) Mage Armor (Conjuration)
d) Enlarge person (Transmutation)
e) Summon Monster I (Conjuration)Best 2nd level core spells for a low level Wizard:
a) Invisibility (Illusion)
b) Mirror Image (Illusion)
c) Spider Climb (Transmutation)
d) Glitterdust (Conjuration)
e) Summon Monster II (Conjuration)
f) Web (Conjuration)
g) Scorching Ray (Evocation)So I would say Abjuration, Divination and Necromancy are the worst schools, spellwise, and Illusion and Conjuration are the best (even though sleep is a killer).
One quibble: Mount and Mount, Communal are superior spells in many cases. Mount is superior by far to Summon Monster I. While the horse or pony is not combat trained, it is still a horse or pony. Communal allows a scaling increase in total summons, which means that the spell will continue to get better from 3-6 vs Summon Monster II, which only gets a duration increase. The duration is 2 hours per horse instead of 3-6 rounds.
A lot of really good suggestions here already, so I'll just add my 2 cents to the pot. Currently playing in Kingmaker with a Wood Wizard and I am enjoying it.
The added bonus to an attribute (only 3 select ones though) is very useful.
Splinter Spear, while most likely fading out later on in levels has been a huge benefit to me at this first level. It's my go to range attack (when others aren't in melee) and makes it so that I don't have to waste the spells I've prepared for that day.
The third ability is really lacking and circumstantial, but as the attribute ability increases over time I can live with that. Not to mention you get a few druid spells added to the list of spells you COULD take and only having 1 (metal) opposing elemental school and it's not bad at all.
Anyways, I'm sure that other school are more likely to be better or more optimized, but I've been enjoying my wood wizard thus far.
Illusion is my favorite with a GM who is willing to put in the time to understand how the mechanics work (e.g. you do not get to save v. Illusion UNTIL you interact with it).
Teleportation is wonderful
Divination Forewarned is probably the single most powerful school bonus available.
Enchantment is bad in most AP's just because there are so many things that Enchantment will not work on.
Necromancy is a decent opposition school as well.
Divination is the worst choice to take as an opposition school simply because of Read Magic.
Universalist is the worst school to pick.
I'm trying to make a utility wizard, not really based around combat but having an array for spells for getting around stuff and being useful. I was gonna take raven familiar but I'm torn on which schools to take. Universalist seemed kind of weak so I'm thinking transmuter, question is what schools do I oppose. Necromancy seems like a 1 but what do you guys think?
I'm trying to make a utility wizard, not really based around combat but having an array for spells for getting around stuff and being useful. I was gonna take raven familiar but I'm torn on which schools to take. Universalist seemed kind of weak so I'm thinking transmuter, question is what schools do I oppose. Necromancy seems like a 1 but what do you guys think?
If you're not into combat, Evocation is probably a safe opposition. Conjuration can attack just fine anyway, and the only utility spell I remember from Evocation is Floating Disk.
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I'm trying to make a utility wizard, not really based around combat but having an array for spells for getting around stuff and being useful. I was gonna take raven familiar but I'm torn on which schools to take. Universalist seemed kind of weak so I'm thinking transmuter, question is what schools do I oppose. Necromancy seems like a 1 but what do you guys think?If you're not into combat, Evocation is probably a safe opposition. Conjuration can attack just fine anyway, and the only utility spell I remember from Evocation is Floating Disk.
For spell level 1-3 in core...
Darkness, continual light, daylight, tiny hut.
Higher...
Sending, contingency, wall of force, resilient sphere, hand spells.