High level God wizard help

[PSusac]

I've seen post like this before, but I'm wondering what people think of the high-level God wizard these days.

He lacks the firepower of a blast mage and Rime/Dazing spell offer the blast mage competitive battlefield control.

I do think a God wizard is still the king of utility magic (which is more powerful than many give credit to). So how to you give a God wizard extra pizazz at high levels? Any good feat chains to take?

If you don't go for blast power, how does one maximize other abilities (Battlefield control, utility, save or suck/die etc.)?

Thanks for your help.

[synjon]

I would think the Augment Summoning line would be a great place to start. Summoning is one of the best battlefield control options available...

[PSusac]

Yes, but it's standard equipment for the build. So where do you go from there?

[meatrace]

Spell Perfection + Dazing Spell + Acid Fog?

[XMorsX]

With Acadamae Graduate and Superior Summoning you can quickly pack a serious punch. Aventually you can take Spell Perfection (SM IX) and double the benefits of Superior Summoning. With greater spell specialization you can also cast them spontaneously, almost emulating a summoner.

If you are serious about summoning, you can dip or take the whole 10 lvls of Blackfire Adept. You lose caster lvls, but with one lvl dip you take sacred summons as if you were evil, and the Breaching feature solves your hands anytime there is a warding effect.

[PSusac]

Ok, so let's assume that our hypothetical wizard has taken

Spell Focus: Conjuration
Augment Summoning
Superior Summoning
Acadamae Graduate

(my wizard can't do this - I'm limited to CRB and APG)

But that's only 4 Feats

Between 1's & 15th level (we won't worry about endgame for now), he still has 7 more feats.

What weird, cool abilities can we pull out of 7 feats

Yes, I know

Spell Specialization &
Greater Spell Specialization (for the summon monster line)

But that's really more of the same.

What other mojo is out there?

I like the acid fog idea btw. That's fairly brutal.

[XMorsX]

Improved Initiative and Craft Wondrous Items: Not weird neither cool, but efficient.

5 more to go.

Improved familiar + Craft Wand for a UMD-b##ch

3 feats to go

Opposition research

2 feats to go

Quicken Spell

1 feat to go, nothing as good as the above options though. Reach Spell, Craft Rod (probably the best at high lvls) and Inscribe Magical Tattoo are great choices.

You can argue that nothing of the above adds a game-breaking trick, but they greatly increase your efficiency by increasing your choices or your action economy.

And lets not forget that as a Wizard, your highest lvl offensive spells are always potent, no matter if you have specialise on them or not.

EDIT:

Acid Fog works, but it needs spell perfection as it does not worth a 9th lvl spell. Given that as a summoner-focused wizard you will want to keep spell perfection for your SM spells, I would prefer for abusing Dazing Spell Acid Arrow, Stone Call and my favorite Conj spell for this, Pellet Blast. All of the above ignore spell resistance, so no need for spell penetration, and the last one also targets Reflex save.

[LazarX]

The God Wizard controls the battlefield with a ton of options.

Summons, Ice Storm, Transmutation of the Ground spells, Wind Wall, Maze, Anti-Gravity...

[LazarX]

XMorsX wrote:

With Acadamae Graduate and Superior Summoning you can quickly pack a serious punch. Aventually you can take Spell Perfection (SM IX) and double the benefits of Superior Summoning. With greater spell specialization you can also cast them spontaneously, almost emulating a summoner.

If you are serious about summoning, you can dip or take the whole 10 lvls of Blackfire Adept. You lose caster lvls, but with one lvl dip you take sacred summons as if you were evil, and the Breaching feature solves your hands anytime there is a warding effect.

And you become a perfect foil for my RiftWarden Archmage. :)

[XMorsX]

LazarX wrote:

XMorsX wrote:

With Acadamae Graduate and Superior Summoning you can quickly pack a serious punch. Aventually you can take Spell Perfection (SM IX) and double the benefits of Superior Summoning. With greater spell specialization you can also cast them spontaneously, almost emulating a summoner.

If you are serious about summoning, you can dip or take the whole 10 lvls of Blackfire Adept. You lose caster lvls, but with one lvl dip you take sacred summons as if you were evil, and the Breaching feature solves your hands anytime there is a warding effect.

And you become a perfect foil for my RiftWarden Archmage. :)

Admitedly, I do...

I did gave you the joy to use for once your class abilites, because lets face it, you will probably use them in your campaign just a handful of times...

Riftwarden makes for a great NPC against a summoner-type PC, but who would build his PC specilizing in countering summoners? :(

[andreww]

PSusac wrote:

Ok, so let's assume that our hypothetical wizard has taken

Spell Focus: Conjuration
Augment Summoning
Superior Summoning
Acadamae Graduate

(my wizard can't do this - I'm limited to CRB and APG)

But that's only 4 Feats

Between 1's & 15th level (we won't worry about endgame for now), he still has 7 more feats.

What weird, cool abilities can we pull out of 7 feats

Yes, I know

Spell Specialization &
Greater Spell Specialization (for the summon monster line)

But that's really more of the same.

What other mojo is out there?

I like the acid fog idea btw. That's fairly brutal.

Basically it boils down to an initiaitve boost, a crafting feat and a bunch of metamagic feats. Quicken, Dazing and Persistent are the go to ones. Persistent your battlefield control spells. Add Dazing to some blasts and away you go. Make sure to pick up a Staff of the Master Necromancer so you can add a metamagic on the fly.

Acid Fog is OK as a target for Dazing but not great as any decent amount of resistance will entirely negate the effect. Wall of Fire is better as it is less likely to have its damage blocked. An acid substituted Wall of Fire is better still as acid resistance is less common. Ball Lightning with Daze works even better especially against single targets as it forces many saves.

[PSusac]

Hmm...

Let's break this down (basically right now I'm thinking in public here)

A God wizard's Shtick is basically battlefield control. You don't need a nuke to do battlefield control. What you need is the right spell for the job.

I think and "off the shelf" GOD wizard does this just fine, between his conjuration magic and his summoning spells, you can pretty much sew this role up by level 10.

This leaves a lot of room for other stuff. A second area of specialization as it were.

So here are some ideas:

1) The Army of One – the idea here is that you take the summon monster theme and run with it: Take a familiar AND the leadership feat, (a bard cohort would be good for this). Your two minions help cast spells and buff. Throw down monster after monster after monster. Overwhelm your foes with sheer numbers. Other players and the DM will probably not appreciate this

2) Battlefield Control on Steroids – This is done using the Dazing + Spell Perfection + Acid Fog trick. Dazing spell can be added to fireballs and whatnot as well, although your save DC’s will be sub-par. This has the advantage of being relatively cheap feat-wise

3) Save or Die/Suck – means taking Spell Perfection + some sort of save or die spell. Flesh to Stone is a favorite here. The problem of course is that it’s the wrong school, so between Spell Focus + Greater Spell Focus + Spell Penetration + Greater Spell Penetration + Persistent Spell + Heighten Spell + Quicken Spell+ Spell Perfection this is HIGHLY feat intensive. Of course you can add Preferred Spell to make it a spontaneous cast too if you want. If you go this route you are giving up some battlefield control though. This is 8-9 feats, so we’ve blown past 15th level. Or just do a 2 level dip with Heighten + Preferred Spell

Is there a decent Save or Suck Conjuration spell?

4) Blaster Wizard – probably not a great option since you are a conjurer, but hey, you can get a metamagic rod and change your type of element, and throw down Dazing evocations I guess. Just don’t tell Treantmonk about it

5) Ray Specialist – Here you are now a battlefield controller who can fry one guy from time to time – Take Heighten Spell & Preferred Spell (ray of your choice), and go to town. You will also need Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration, Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. Spell of Choice: Enervation. If you want to do this with a touch spell add Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus and Reach Spell (depending on the save). Cost: 2, 6 or 9 feats depending on how committed you are to this shtick.

6) Hyper-Generalist – The idea behind this build is that you want to always have the right tool for the job. The build is simple: take heighten spell and then load up on various preferred spell options including Major Creation, Polymorph Any Object, Greater Dispel Magic, and/or Chain Lightning. This load-out lets you drop the right spell for all occasions, and lets you load out other spells that are more specialized. This is actually a pretty cool, but it lacks “pizazz.”

OK, by this analysis, it does look like XMorsX has the right of it: If you are going to play a God wizard the best you can do take the feats XMorsX listed, and then either go with:

The Acid Fog Trick
The Hyper-Generalist
Or
A 2 feat dip into a save or die spell.

That answered my question.

Thanks folks.

[XMorsX]

Great analysis. I just want to mention again that Pellet blast is a 3rd lvl (check) conjuration (double check) blast that targets reflex save (triple check) and ignores SR (checkmate), making it an ideal Dazing spell candidate for the conjuration / teleportation specialist. Perfect it and go to town.

[andreww]

Acid Arrow is a great low level Conjuration blast option. Given it continues to damage over multiple rounds it also offers the option to force multiple saves. Similarly Ice Spears is great for targetting multiple opponents or to hit one large opponent with all of them and compel multiple saves.

[PSusac]

Yeah, Pellet blast looks awesome. Unfortunately, my DM is a CRB & APG only guy, so that spell is out (so is snapdragon fireworks).

The acid arrow option looks pretty good.

What's nice about all these options is that they only take the dazing spell feat to make work, so that's really a great feature. Although you might want to change up the energy type as well, depending on the situation.