Do you want to blast? Do you want to control? Do you want to summon?
If you want to summon then the whole summoning shtick.
Are you good/neutral/evil?
Str 7 -2 (-4 points)
Dex 14 +2 (5 points)
Con 12 +1 (5 points, -2 race)
Int 26 +8 (17 points, +2 race, +2 levels, +4 headband)
Wis 15 +2 (3 points, +2 race)
Cha 7 -2 (-4 points)
Opposition Schools: Enchantment & Necromancy
Traits: Reactionary, Bruising Intellect
Feats: Scribe Scroll, Improved Initiative, Spell Focus(Conjuration), Augment Summoning, Craft Wondrous Item, Superior Summoning, Improved Familiar, Quicken Spell
Skills: perception, fly, spellcraft, intimidate, linguistics, knowledges(various)
Spells added to list: Cure Light Wounds, Silence, Sculpt Sound, Mass Feather Step, Animate Objects
Equipment: Headband of Intelligence +4 (16,000gp), Cloak of Resistance + 4 (16,000gp), Ring of Sustenance (2,500gp), Handy Haversack (2,000gp), whatever you want (25,500gp)
This is a basic framework, the idea is to focus on summon monster, clouds, pits, walls and the like. Conjuration is nice because you have many spells that ignore spell resistance. I hope this helps.
Hello lovely community,
I am one of the very old ones having discovered D&D with... D&D. I am supposed to join a Pathfinder campaign very soon and I have been told to play a wizard level 10. Fine. Except, last time I played, this game was called AD&D 2...
Allright, the good news: Spell preparation only takes an hour, no matter how many spells you can cast. If you've gotten yourself caught in melee, safe casting is just a 5' step away. The contents of your spellbook are pretty much your call, not your GM's. There are things called "Metamagic Rods" that straight up make you better at casting.
Bad news: Everything has a lot more hit points. If you want to be an effective blaster, you have to specialize in it. With that in mind, I suggest Evocation as your other opposition school.If this is your first time around, I suggest making your wizard focused on Battlefield Control, rather than summoning creatures.
Yeah, a lot has changed since TSR went under back in 1996. Enchantment is the other debuff school and necromancy has the most evil descriptor spells which CG characters tend to want nothing to do with in the first place and Magic Jar doesn't let you live forever anymore anyway. You will want to blind people with Glitterdust, not Blindness/Deafness.
d20pfsrd and archives of nethys are both good resources if you don't own the books yet, you can search either one for anything game related easily. I find them easier to use than the PRD.
I can come up with spell suggestions, but I suggest you read the chapter on magic and the one on combat entirely to get an idea of how much things have changed and how technical it is.
1st level: Grease, Mage Armor, Obscuring Mist, Unseen Servant, Magic Missile, Floating Disk, Enlarge Person, Ant Haul, Shield, Protection From Evil
2nd level: Glitterdust, Create Pit, Rope Trick, Invisibility
3rd level: Stinking Cloud, Fly, Haste, Dispel Magic
4th level: Summon Monster IV, Black Tentacles, Wall of Ice, Dimensional Anchor
5th Level: Cloudkill, Teleport, Telekinesis, Summon Monster V
The costs for more spells is as follows:
1st level: 10/15/35 this varies depending on how you acquire it, copy for free or in trade/ copy for money/ buy a scroll and copy from it
2nd level: 40/60/190
3rd level: 90/135/465
4th level: 160/240/860
5th level: 250/375/1,375
1st level possible extras: Crafter's Fortune, Expeditious Retreat, Summon Monster I, Mount, Alarm, Feather Fall, basically anything that looks even remotely useful, these are dirt cheap.
2nd level possible extras: Communal Protection From Evil, Acid Arrow, Stone Call, Web, Summon Monster II, Summon Swarm, Detect Thoughts, Locate Object, See Invisibility, Blur, Mirror Image, Knock, Make Whole, Spider Climb
3rd level possible extras: Communal Resist Energy, Summon Monster III, Magic Circle against Evil, Aqueous Orb, Fireball, Sleet Storm, Mad Monkeys, Rain of Frogs, Tongues, Tiny Hut, Displacement, Greater Magic Weapon, Slow, Water Breathing, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
4th level possible extras: Communal Protection From Energy, Dimension Door, Locate Creature, Detect Scrying, Scrying, Ice Storm, Greater Invisibility, Lesser Simulacrum
5th level possible extras: Lesser Planar Binding, Wall of Stone, Wall of Force, Permanency, Transmute Rock to Mud, Echolocation, Fabricate, Overland Flight, Sending, Telepathic Bond
Everyone has different tastes, I find Stinking Cloud + Black Tentacles to be lights out, sure it stops working soon but as a wizard you can adapt. But in general I was trying to make a character for the OP rather than a really optimized character. We have someone in our group who came back from AD&D 2nd ed and she constantly thinks good things are bad and bad things are good. I was trying to make it feel as much like a 2nd ed wizard as I could. Cloudkill is probably not as good as Overland Flight but it makes you feel like a mighty mage to have the power to kill hordes of mooks.
The spell selection is quite good.
Nevertheless you are a wizard. I would check for your party members, sometimes some spell wich look bad on paper can become very effective if you use them right.
Look at your party members. How many people are in your group.
Do you have one big melee or some more? I would always have one or two dim door to let your melees start the mayhem with a full attack. Are they into Combat maneuvers? Level the playing field with enlarge person.
I recommended taking Craft Wondrous Item at 5th level, crafting is something that varies from GM to GM, so talk about it and how it works, you might be able to start with items you crafted yourself. If you are allowed to craft I suggest maxing out spellcraft (you really want to do this anyway) so you can craft many things earlier/faster than you otherwise could.
Some spells are bad at low level but can be awesome later like Floating Disk. A melee character can stand on the disk and have you use your move action to get them to the fight then full attack from higher ground. Rope Trick becomes much better at 8th level etc...
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Spell choice can depend on how good the party is on tag teaming on what you cast. I have seen 2 casters go 1 right after the other in a combat where the first cast black tentacles and the 2nd cast cloud kill. They effectively took care of 5 bad guys in round 1, allowing us to move on and look for loot on our way out.
Black tentacles is a great spell to have because it can at least separate the party of bad guys and let's you focus on a select bad guy(s). I would say Cloud kill is a great secondary spell, just like acid cloud. They are great against a group stuck in a certain area or a group hit by black tentacles. But it is not that effective out in the open.
In my humble opinion, I would take black tentacles and at least one area effecting spell like cloud kill or acid cloud. Tag teaming these spells can be great battlefield control.
If you build a character anything like the examples andreww and I gave you should be fine. His is more exact in build, mine is more unfinished. Fireball is so so but Dazing Fireball is great. You might want to consider grabbing more metamagic feats like Dazing Spell, Persistent Spell and Heighten Spell and grabbing things like Spell Perfection and Preferred Spell to finish it off if you get to high level. Some other things you might need are a metamagic rod of Selective if you find people beating your initiative and messing up your spell areas, Pearls of Power to get spells back between encounters if you have long adventuring days, and gear for your improved familiar.
May the force be with you.
And also with you.
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I like to keep a bears endurance in my spell book, to cast from my bonded item, as an emergency cure light wounds, to get the healer up (+20 HP at level 10).
Icy Prison is a good 5th level spell, not already mentioned.
I suggest a +6 headband if you can, to get saving throw DCs as high as possible - and extra spells per day - and 3 free maxed skills.
A lesser metamagic rod of either persistent or dazing spell is very useful.
Persistent keeps your low level spells viable for longer. A persistent slow is particularly good against big hitting creatures with multiple attacks. Persistent slow followed by icy prison is a nice killer combo too.
I prefer the bonded item for the extra pick any spell per day, rather than the familiar.