20th level wizard with a 33 Int has the spell mastery feat, meaning she can select 11 spells she can prepare without her spell book. What spells should she take? Keep the following assumptions in mind:
-Since the whole point to taking spell mastery is to be able to memorize a handful of spells without access to your spell book, we can assume that the wizard is in a very bad situation when she needs to utilize the benefits of the feat.
-Wizard in question has the Still Spell, Silent Spell, and Eschew Materials feats.
So far I've got the following spells: Greater Teleport, Time Stop, Invisibility, Moment of Prescience, Mind Blank, Plane Shift, Mage's Disjunction. What other spells should I consider?
You should try to have a spell of every level available. Even at 20th level, there are times when a 1st level spell can save your life.
@KenderKin - Wizard is an NPC Diviner. I haven't figured out exactly which spells are in her spell book, but rest assured she knows the useful ones.
Why is it so important to have a spell of every level just to fill slots? I would think it would be dumb to leave out a useful emergency spell just to ensure you have a spell of every level. Besides, metamagic spells can just fill the missing levels anyway.
I would suggest Emergency Force Sphere and Contingency to add to your list. If you can't think of any better ones Heighten Awareness would be useful for spotting trouble and the initiative bonus.
It really depends on the situation. I would think the first thing a high level wizard would do if he doesn't have access to his spellbook, is to teleport/planeshift to a place where he has stored a backup spellbook. If that is not possible, preparing spells that allow him to survive till he gets it would be important.
If I were to draw up a level 20 wizard, and if that wizard were to leave his demiplane with his actual physical body (not sure why he would) I would ensure to always keep planeshift as a prepared spell. If he gets low on prepared spells, or in a situation where he believes he needs it, he could planeshift to his erratic time (1day=1round) demiplane, and rest up/prepare new spells before teleporting back.
I assume given you can stop time, plane shift, and or teleport that likely getting caught without a spellbook and the ability to retrieve your back-up copy seems to be only a very remote possibility.
What situation can you forsee that you might not be able to get yourself out of, or might be "stuck" long term without access to written spells?
Hell, to be honest I can't even really come up with any. It just seemed like a smart feat to take "just in case".
My "quick list"
Dispel magic
Greater Dispel magic
Teleport
Knock
Summon monster 6
Summon monster 9
fly
Polymorph any Object
Greater Teleport
Shades
Echolocation
Emergency Force Shelter
Arcane Sight
Detect Scrying
Break Enchantment
Remove Curse
Generally I look for spells that I would want if I was in a situation where I would not have my book. Typically those cases are when stuff has gone really wrong. So I look to regrouping spells, stuff that can help me get out or stuff that can cover multiple situations.
Basically:
Dispels and Breaks
Summons
Shadows and Shades
Teleportation and movement
Extra senses
Expensive spells are generally out because of the fact you probably won't have what you need to cast them at the time.
When I am running a wizard where this is a concern I also consider eschew materials and still and silent spell. These mean that even if you are say encased in full plate with a tower shield you can still cast with a gag in place.
Rods are nice but lets face it in these situations you likely won't have your items on you.
Also Familiar spell can be a nice contingency as you can preload your familiar with a set of "come and save me" spells and have him go out and get some help to save your butt. The nice thing is you can continue to reprepare those spells without your familiar near by as nothing about the metamagic feat says your familiar needs to be there for him to receive the spells.
Spell mastery is a get out of jail feat. I suggest you put in good run away spells. And if you have a stemple attack spell like Fireball or mass suffocation put it in as well.
Given that it's likely you could be bound and gagged if you're in a situation where your spellbook has been taken, making liberal use of get out of jail spells modified by the appropriate metamagics would be helpful I should think.
Silent Knock
Silent Dimension Door
Silent/Still Dispel Magic
Also use of charms and dominates would be helpful (also metamagically enhanced).
Silent/Still Charm Monster
Silent/Still Dominate Person
And some quickened offensive magics as allowed.
Yeah honestly it's not odd for me to grab it twice at high level.
The Spell binder archetype is a good one to look at as well, as it get spontaneous casting of a small selection of spells.
Grabbing the quick study discovery can be really useful too as your head full of spells suddenly becomes a little faster to access.