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A lot of folks talk about how wizards are gods. I've even heard that a fighter-wizard team could be better served by a wizard-wizard team.
I've also heard people claim that wizards are weak at low levels and have a difficult time surviving low levels, and this is often used as justification for why they're so powerful at high levels.
Regardless if any bof this is true, how would you build a four person wizard group capable of surviving and/or thriving through various adventure paths? This includes survivablity at low levels and the team should be capable of covering all the bases of group dynamics.
Let's assume a 15 point buy, and any Paizo material is allowed. No multiclassing.
I'm going to stick mostly to core to make this as universally true as possible.
The Intellectual Challenge - AKA - Wizards 4 Ever
So you want to tackle the world and its dangers as a party of gentlemen and scholars? The adventuring life is hard for anyone involved and one would think it triply so for a pack of posh bookworms with relationship problems. One would be wrong, however. If anything these lords and ladies are first in their class and have done all their homework. If anyone will make the grade it will be them and they'll do it with prismatic colors.
Roles
Wizards can fill a variety of roles and no individual wizard has to fully devote themselves to any given task. When building your party you have a lot of options overall due to prestige classes like Eldritch Knight allowing you martial specialization if desired. However, for the purposes of this guide, I'm going to stick to more traditional wizards prancing around in robes and using magic and strategy to solve problems.
However, even with no dedicated "martial" character, we will still benefit from roles. Each wizard should typically have a different specialization (such as abjurer, conjurer, etc) and purpose (such as removing protections or harmful effects, conjuring minions, buffing, etc). Everyone have have a general idea as to what they want to do during an encounter but remember still that flexibility and adaptability is key. You're not sorcerers stuck with one spell known an you shouldn't act like it.
Because wizards can master a variety of spells it should be common for your wizard buddies to also prepare some spells that are you specialization, and you theirs, so that you can share the burdens and react as needed to the shifting environment that is adventuring. The reason is simple. If your party's necromancer happens to get disabled by a mummy's fear aura, having your party's abjurer ready to cast command undead may be the difference between success and failure.
Skills
Wizards are Intelligence focused characters. As a result they are essentially guaranteed to have 5+ skill points per level and eventually 12+ skill points per level. As with encounter roles, having each wizard invest into particular specializations with a bit of overlap between each (and dropping a point or two into trained only skills so you can always attempt things) can be a big help.
Dealing with Traps: Wizards can be perfectly capable of investing maximum ranks in both Perception and Disable Device as needed. However, only those with Trapfinding can use Disable Device to disarm magical traps. Fortunately, wizards usually won't need it. Detect magic penetrates typical barriers and unless there's something thick protecting you from the trap (thus nullifying the trap) you are almost certain to find it with four wizards. After that, you can identify the trap (which is a wondrous item and a successful Spellcraft check gives you all the details about the trap), and then determine if you want to try to trigger it, bypass it, or take a different option.
Magical traps can be dispelled, disjoined, or suppressed like magic items can. This means that a dispel magic spell can suppress the trap's functionality for 1d4 rounds which can allow you to pass it unharmed without alerting anyone of your presence. By mid levels, you can have minions that have dispel magic at will following you around (such as demons, angels, or azata) which means you won't even need to devote your prepared dispels to dealing with such traps you can just have your fiend spam dispel magic until it suppresses the trap (which is functionally similar to a rogue taking 20).
In some cases you may opt to simply destroy the traps as well, since there are a number of methods that can be used to destroy them permanently. Off the top of my head a very strait forward method would be to dispel them (rendering them mundane for 1d4 rounds) and then casting shatter on them (or have a bruiser-minion break them).
Mechanical traps can be dealt with in the usual fashion as there is no requirement of Trapfinding to disable mechanical traps. That said, there are still plenty of ways to deal with mechanical traps if your skill isn't high enough. In fact, you can usually ruin them with a casting of fabricate or stone shape.
The Arcane Research Team
One of the biggest advantages of an all-wizard party is spells. You can cut down on the costs to fill out spellbooks by having each wizard learn two unique spells at each level and then sharing them between your books at only the scribing expenses. This means that all of you effectively get +8 spells known per level before traditional methods such as scrolls, research, or NPC fees.
Further, the DC to prepare a spell from a borrowed spellbook is only 15 + spell level and you should always be able to take 10 and succeed at the check (the DC rises by 1 every 2 levels and you should be improving your Spellcraft much faster than that) which means that you can keep a few spare spellbooks around that you can all prepare from while keeping your personal spellbooks safe and sound.
Similarly, if you research a new spell, share it with the rest of your party.
Ability Scores
No single spread will be true for all wizards but most non-knight mages will probably do well with low Strength and Charisma. Something like 7 Str, 14 Dex, 14 Con, 16 Int, 13 Wis, and 7 Cha before racial mods. You can tweak these to taste but in general these will serve you well as they pad your survivability. Encumbrance is less of an issue for your mages because they will not be wearing armor and in most cases you should be using pack animals, extradimensional space, and muleback cords to enhance your carrying capacities. Your biggest concern is a shadow (strength damaging attack) but by middle levels death ward effects will protect you and shadows are afraid of you too (because [Force] effect spells wreck them). You could optionally raise Strength a little higher and lower Wisdom slightly if it's a huge concern.
Resources and Consuming Them
One of the major things you need to learn while playing a wizard is to keep your eyes on the horizon but always remember that to get there you have to succeed right now. Consumables are your friends. You will buy, create, and use consumables frequently throughout your career. Don't worry about this because there are three truths that you must remember:
1) WBL is lower than treasure values to the point that about 15% of a typical PC's wealth can go towards consumables or general expenses without them dropping below WBL if the treasures vs encounters rules are being followed.
2) Every member of your party should be able to create a variety of magical items. Every single member should have Craft Wondrous item and if available a valet familiar, so the vast majority of your treasure will be converted into magic items that you want and need, so you shouldn't have issues funding your habits.
3) Cheap consumables are available almost anywhere. According to the rules for magic items and their availability, you can find magic items (including consumables) in communities based on their value vs the community GP limits. This means most scrolls, wands (with varying amounts of charges), elixirs, oils, potions, and so forth are available in the game. Even if you cannot find a caster personally willing to cast or teach you a spell, even a 9th level spell, you can assuredly find a scroll of it unless a bad house rule is in play.
In many cases we will use consumables to our advantage and frequently. Do not view consumables as wastes of money. Consumables are very competitively priced compared to continuous or at-will items (the base value of a charged item is 1/2 the price of an infinite item divided by the number of charges in the item). This means that consumables are not only fairly efficient but they are also available to parties (all parties, not just wizards) much earlier and more frequently than their more expensive cousins.
For example, a hamlet has community price limit of 200 GP. This means that you can find any magic item worth up to 200 gp there 75% of the time (average of about 3 items). Things that fall within that limit include 1st level scrolls up to 8th caster level, 2nd level scrolls up to 4th caster level, 1st level potions up to 8th caster level, most feather tokens, and wands of less than 200 gp value (too extensive to list but as a sample: a 2nd level wand with 2 charges, a 1st level wand with 13 charges, a 1st level wand at CL 12 with 1 charge, etc).
This can be a major tactical consideration for a party of wizards as your goal is to be prepared. Carrying some consumables at a higher caster level than your usual spells can be a good idea. Especially with spells that scale with level and/or don't have much in the way of save DCs (such as dispel magic or remove disease).
Low Level (1st - 4th) Strategy Guide
At 1st level your biggest disadvantage is that there's not a lot of difference between the classes yet aside from ability scores so you don't have a lot of cool spells yet. On the flip side, the fact there is not a lot of difference between the classes is an advantage because you haven't fallen into the pits of despair compared to the challenges that you will face.
General: Each of your wizards should have at least 8 HP (6 base, +2 Con). You have some options to get your starting HP higher (if you went with a toad familiar, favored class bonus, and the toughness feat you'd start with 15 HP). All wizards in the party will want to max out Perception and Stealth at every level when possible because these simple skills can allow you to leverage yourselves very well to avoid ambushes or to make your own (or to sneak past enemies). Your familiars are also good at Stealth and have Scent which means that you can create a mobile parameter around yourselves to prevent enemies from ambushing you (because your animals will sense when something is within a certain distance from them and with enough familiars you can create a very large area of observance). Don't forget that your familiars grant you the Alertness feat when nearby as well. Since you aren't wearing armor anyway, you don't have to worry about skill penalties from armor. Also remember that enemies take a -1 penalty to their Stealth checks per 10 ft. between you and them. This is true for you as well but if you have familiar scouts their scent quality will often foil stealth before you ever encounter your foes, which is exceptionally great for very mobile familiars that can make strafing scans. Remember that you cannot ready actions outside of combat so if an encounter starts this way the would be ambusher rolls initiative.).
Spread out your skills, designating certain wizards particular tasks such as the party's face, determine who will be an expert at which knowledge skills, pick different languages with Linguistics, etc, so that you can cover your bases for dealing with issues. Always ensure your Spellcraft skill is high enough to take 10 and learn all your spells and prepare from borrowed spellbooks.
Know Your Rights: Your armor class will frequently be poor, however you should be aware of defensive options available to you. According to the combat chapter, crouching provides a +2 vs ranged attacks but a -2 vs melee attacks. Likewise, being prone provides a +4 vs ranged attacks and a -4 vs melee attacks. Partial cover provides a +2 to your AC and +1 to reflex saves, cover +4 and +2, and soft cover (creatures) +4 and +0. Generally speaking you will need to fear ranged attackers the most as they are less troubled by summons and such. Usin these tactics can improve your survivability massively. There's also no penalties for casting spells while prone so if you need to drop prone and start spell-slinging go for it.
Using spells like obscuring mist, silent image, and even tiny hut to acquire concealment to get a miss % vs enemy attacks can be really good for survival at low and high levels.
A Bone to Light Pick With You: All your wizards should carry a light pick or similar x4 crit weapon. If you drop enemies with spells like sleep or colorspray, deliver your coup de graces with these weapons for maximum efficiency.
1st Level
First level will be the hardest because you start with meager gold for starting equipment but after your first encounter or two you should be able to afford getting some equipment.
When combat occurs, you will want to evaluate your targets and deal with their weaknesses. You'll probably make heavy use of your arcane school abilities and cantrips at 1st level, mixed with spells like sleep, colorspray, and interestingly magic missile. Generally speaking you will want to pick an enemy, evaluate their threat, and then focus on the one your group feels needs to go down fastest by spamming certain powers (school powers or cantrips like acid splash that deal damage at them, or if they are too strong to reliably bring them down with 1d3-1d6 cantrips, have your whole party cast magic missile at the foe for 4d4+4 points of un-avoidable damage.
Everyone: Prep some good cantrips like detect poison, detect magic, and acid splash. Make sure that at least two people on your team have some sort of light-producing spells (light or dancing lights) if your party doesn't all have darkvision. Acid splash is the go-to offensive cantrip because few things are resistant to it at low levels and it ignores SR (which can occasionally crop up when fighting things like drow).
Abjurers: Your school power granting a deflection bonus in an AoE for your Int modifier in rounds will be your go-to action in most fights. Choosing fire resistance 5 will also immunize you to things like alchemist fire at this level and may allow you to play with your environment to your advantage (such as crossing or standing in fire to dissuade enemies from entering melee with you as 1d6-5 is a lot less frightening than 1d6). Prep some other spells to support your allies.
Conjurers: The summoner's school ability lets you call a monster for 2 rounds at 1st level. If you're a human with Spellfocus + Augment Summoning, consider summoning an eagle in melee range of your enemies. It gets its full turn as soon as it arrives and at 1st level, three attacks at +5 for 1d4+2 each is vicious. They're celestial or fiendish as well so let it smite for an extra +1 damage vs evil or good creatures as appropriate.
Diviners: You can get in on the action with true strike. Use a really high base damage weapon like greatsword or something. Even if you're not proficient with the weapon the +20 to hit and auto-win vs concealment means you're probably going to hit anything you want at low levels anyway. It takes a round to charge up but it can be a solid way to deliver some burst damage when needed (especially if you have a friend who pops a scroll of enlarge person beforehand).
Necromancers: You're not super useful right now. Keep a cause fear around for crowd control and prep an extra magic missile or something. Your time is coming.
Evokers: Magic missile is your go to school spell here because it's your safest spell in terms of range, accuracy, what it can affect and damage (burning hands has a save and requires you to be very close, and shocking grasp requires you to fondle your enemy and only both deal trivial damage at 1st level). If your friends also have magic missiles you can lead the charge.
Transmutors: At 1st level with no martials in the party you are going to have few good targets for things like enlarge person but you can combine with your familiar to make a super scout. Casting reduce person on your familiar can give them insane stealth modifiers for a quick go at scouting. Otherwise prepare some CC spells like sleep or colorspray.
Enchanters: Sleep is your bread and butter at this level. Charm person can also be very strong but unless you opted to raise your Charisma really hard you won't have good odds of ordering enemies to turn on their allies, meaning that at best they'll defend you or stop attacking. Combined with the +5 save bonus in combat charm can be riskier. It also only affects humanoids while sleep can knock out animals as well.
Illusionists: Silent image is your friend. Use it to create things like illusory walls and obstacles to provide concealment to your and your party. You can use it to create ambush points by devising a signal to let your party know that you're casting a figment illusion to grant them a +4 save to see through it. It can also be a great way to cover a retreat or approach against ranged fire since the archers aren't going to be interacting with the illusion to get a save which means total concealment for the folks on the other side.
On the Way to 3rd Level
Before you ever reach 2nd level you should amass some treasures. It's time to look into some of the things that you can do with treasures. Look into consumables like alchemist fire, antitoxins, holy water and caltrops which can be used to deal with issues. Buy potions of delay poison and lesser restoration (50 gp each thanks to it being a 1st level CL 1 spell on the ranger and paladin spell lists) for emergencies. Buy masterwork tools (such as cloaks, boots, etc) for things like Stealth and other skills (50 gp each, 1 lb.).
According to the magic chapter, you can pay NPC casters in towns 1/2 the cost of scribing a spell into your spellbook to learn their spells from them. This should be your #1 method for acquiring new spells for your party and then sharing them between one-another. Found scrolls should only be consumed to learn the spell if it's too high a level for your local hub or otherwise restricted somehow. This is especially true for scrolls of spells with costly material components.
Make use of your Scribe Scroll feats. Grab lots of utility spells and scribe them on the cheap. Keep a few extra scrolls around for emergencies for when you're low on spells. Focus on spells that have no save DCs like magic missile. At low levels, having a party of 4 mages slam you with magic missiles every round means you are going to fold and at a mere 12.5 gp per scroll, a party of wizards can carry a few around.
Also consider crafting scrolls (and later wands) at higher caster levels. You have to supply the required spell for such items but the caster level of the item is determined by you and your Spellcraft check. If you don't mind risking a caster level check, having a 9th level scroll of magic missile for emergencies can be really useful for low-level parties.
3rd Level
You have 2nd level spells and your 1st level spells are bigger, badder, and combat ready! The world is now your oyster! You also get to pick up Craft Wondrous Item on all of your wizards and the fun begins.
Everyone: Craft Wondrous item. Have your valet familiars (if available) start crafting as well. Any gear you need, make sure you craft it. With a party of 4 wizards and 4 valet familiars you can be pushing 16 people's worth of crafting per day (counting cooperative crafting via valets). Direct certain characters to work on certain projects, such as assigning characters to craft elixirs of hiding and seeing (+10 stealth or perception for 1 hour), have other wizards start crafting other things you need.
Most importantly, everyone should craft pearls of power. Lots of them. At a mere 500 gp / 1st level pearl, having an abundance of pearls will allow you to keep up your adventuring day without rest. At higher levels you will have tons of pearls of 1st-4th level spells.
Don't even bother trading items sometimes, just consume them as part of the materials to create magic items as the need arises. It's more fun to say you made your magic cloak clasps with the melted down ruby tiara you found anyway.
Spell Tactics: At this level you have enough versatility in spells and enough caster levels to start comboing spells together and making spell-spam practical. Good spells for most any wizard include things like invisibility + summon swarm which can end most low-level encounters with virtually no risk to the casters (invis lasts 30 rounds, summon swarm lasts for concentration, most melee foes like monsters have 0% offense or defense vs swarms). Similarly multiple wizards throwing out flaming sphere spells can scare the pants off of most enemies (even at reflex-negates, making 2-4 saves vs 3d6 fire damage every round is no joke for low-CR foes). Spectral hand combined with shocking grasp or chill touch are also good options at this level.
Abjurers: Resist energy and protection from arrows are your friends here. Otherwise keep up your pace.
Conjurers: Summon monster II, summon swarm, and web and glitterdust are the breadwinning spells at this level. Amusingly, I'm going to declare glitterdust more of a versatile utility spell as the temporary blindness it provides is likely to be less useful for a party of mages as anything but a stall tactic that could go wrong without a beatstick to mop them up quickly. Web is for ruining enemy casters most of all. Summon swarm combines with invisibility to ruin lots of encounters wonderfully.
Necromancers: Blindness/deafness is one of the most brutally punk-ass debuffs in the game and it's yours. If an enemy fails their save vs this and becomes blind the fight is effectively lost to them (50% miss vs everything, half speed, flat-footed vs everything, cannot run or charge, cannot effectively target anything, has to make Perception checks to find anyone, cannot use acrobatics effectively, pretty much just 105% screwed). Have someone make an Intimidate check prior to casting it to give them a -2 to their save. Against solo-enemies you basically just win.
Evokers: You have two great spells for dealing damage at this level. Flaming sphere and scorching ray. At this level, I prefer flaming sphere as it lasts multiple rounds and thus isn't wasted if you miss your target and you can even keep moving it around while casting more spells for added pressure (opening with flaming sphere and directing it as a move action while you cast more spells over subsequent turns can pressure fiercely).
Enchanters: This level sucks for you. None of your spells are good. Prep another charm person spell in your 2nd level bonus slot and use spells from other schools in your 2nd level slots.
Diviners: Make sure to always prep see invisibility to counter enemy mages and some monsters. Otherwise use your slots to focus on battlefield alterations or supporting another caster.
Illusionists: Good spells at this level. Invisibility is a very strong spell and you should make lots of scrolls of it when the money is good. Mirror image is a staple defensive spell now and later so picking it up is a good plan.
On the Way to 5th Level
Pearls of power. Say it with me. Pearls of power. A few magical goodies and lots of utility scrolls as well, but pearls of power for 1st level spells will give you a lot of casting potential between fights where you need to bring out your big guns. Also make sure to have plenty of scrolls of things like invisibility and knock.
5th Level
Congratulations. You win.
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That is amazing, Ashiel.
One slight nitpick - only magic device traps actually count as wondrous items.
Otherwise, it's just an active spell that happens to make a magic trap.
Also, magic device traps that you can fondle for three rounds (gotta touch it to learn its properties!) without setting off are pretty rare =P
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Ashiel, as always, an awesome read.
I loved your bit about cover etc. We used that in a game I played in where my dwarven fighter would be the cover. As we moved forward under heavy fire from drow, I would go defensive and keep moving up while the wizard crouched in the square behind me. Add to that the shield feat I had providing him bonus to AC and it was a really good tactic. He softened them up and when I got close enough to charge they just crumpled. Good times.
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Thanks. Here's a few other tricks to keep in mind that I use on my wizards and would do well in a full party of wizards.
- When you can afford it, buy a scroll of animate dead with a decent enough material component associated with it to make a fairly tough bloody skeleton. Just pick a creature your party has killed that was strong or default to a beefy animal that you can purchase such as an ox or a tiger. Bloody skeletons keep recovering from their destruction unless slain with holy water or positive energy (both of which are pretty rare to see used, particularly by villains and monsters). This can give you some decent expendable meat shields and buff-targets.
It can be an expensive investment but if your party pools their resources it can be super helpful, especially at early levels. Since it'll have fast healing, you can also let it heal up between fights.
- Tiny hut is a good spell that you should consider keeping a scroll of around or even preparing. It takes 1 standard action, lasts 10 hours at the lowest level you can cast it, provides nice shelter vs the elements, and it provides total concealment to everyone within it without blocking their line of sight. It's a surprisingly versatile spell and I've found it very useful in combat for the non-illusory total concealment that you can fire through.
- A Book of Harms is a relatively cheap spellbook but when you prepare some evocation spells from it you can get its boon. Once per day when casting an evocation spell you can take 1d4 x spell level damage when the spell goes off to maximize the spell on the fly. I've found this is a really potent trick to use with low level spells such as Magic Missile, Flaming Sphere/Scorching Ray, and Fireball/Lightningbolt. It's exceptionally potent if you all decide you really don't like some guy at the same time (virtually nothing level-appropriate is going to appreciate four mages dropping maximized spells on them in the same round).
- If you've ever played Baldur's Gate for the PC, you'll know that using consumables like potions can be a big help. This is true in Pathfinder as well. What most people frequently forget is that you can buy and craft magic items at CLs higher than the minimum. I've had players in my games buy one or two potions of low level scaling spells at very high caster levels for emergencies. One great example was a PC that Aratrok was playing, who guzzled a caster level 20th potion of shield of faith when a battle with a vampire lord broke out. That sudden +5 to AC made a huge difference. Such buffs are also really hard to dispel.
- There are a lot of spells that when chained by characters make them much scarier than usual. I used flaming sphere and magic missile as examples for the low-level game but the options broaden at higher levels. For example, when you reach 4th level spells, enervation is good but not crazy good. However, nobody wants to get plowed with 4d4 negative levels in one turn. Ever. Other ideal examples are stacking spells like waves of fatigue/exhaustion that when paired can auto-exhaust people even if they make their saves. Or comboing certain spells like cloudkill + wall of stone. This is also very strong when you chain debuffs followed by a nail spell (as in nail in the coffin). For example, having three mages who can chain the shaken condition into limited wish and finish with a flesh to stone is a stellar way of collecting tons of exotic lawn ornaments.
- Pearls of power are useful for transforming yourself into a pseudo-spontaneous caster. Pre-pearls your wizard needs to guess how many spells of each kind that he will need. After pearls you can prepare all the spells you want and rely on the fact you have a floating spell-slot waiting for you to need it. For example if you have a 3rd level pearl of power, you can prepare Fireball, Stinking Cloud, Tiny Hut, and Wind Wall and know that you can re-cast any of those as the day goes on, which means that you don't need to worry so much if Tiny Hut won't see any need in the adventure or if you might run into undead immune to Stinking Cloud.
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One slight nitpick - only magic device traps actually count as wondrous items.
Otherwise, it's just an active spell that happens to make a magic trap.
Also, magic device traps that you can fondle for three rounds (gotta touch it to learn its properties!) without setting off are pretty rare =P
Keep in mind that you don't actually have to touch it to examine it, and if your examining it would set it off, it's a pretty good bet that the rogue can't disarm it either since it would require them to spend 2d4 rounds trying to disable it.
I'm going to stick mostly to core to make this as universally true as possible.Congratulations! Your post is my 1,000th favorited post!
That's awesome. (^_^)
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I'm going to stick mostly to core to make this as universally true as possible.
The Intellectual Challenge - AKA - Wizards 4 Ever
......
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This was awesome, guide-worthy.
Maybe the Fire Mountain Games guys would link to it --there's a set of suggestions in their "Way of the Wicked" AP for running an all wizard party as an alternative setup for the entire AP, but as of now it's really only GM tips not really any player coaching.
Thank you for posting this!! I will be forwarding link to non-forum-lurking friends.
I think it is also possible to umd greater spell immunity, so that amf can't beat your spell resistance. All of my high level wizards have one or two.Uh I don't know if you know this or not, but Antimagic Field turns off most of the person it's centered on best defenses and makes them super susceptible to conjuration spells that originate outside the Antimagic Field. It also denies the person it's on any magical means to Flight to engage a caster. It also requires a high level enemy caster to sacrifice most of their power by centering it on themselves. And of course at 17th Level Wizards are just flat-out immune to it. This is pretty commonly known stuff so I'm wasn't sure if you were just joking or not so I included the reasons for completeness.All wizard party are gods, nullified by one hyphenated word, and another word: Anti-Magic Shell.
AMF only requires an SR check when casting it on top of summons to stop the summons popping out. Your wizards having infinite SR doesn't do diddly against an AMF.
In fact, the only real options before level 9 spells that I can think of are planar binding/ally, indirect conjurations and maybe cute tricks with alchemical weapons and similar (bag of holding full of gunpowder barrels plus an alchemist's fire?). And Snowball. ****ing Snowball (why did they think printing lesser orb of snow was a good idea).
emergency force sphere will protect the wizard during that time. Ine shot by an arcane archer can capture/protect someone who its centered on
I never understood... Why exactly is it impossible to ready an action out of combat? AFAIK, reading an action is just an standard action set to trigger when something specific happens...
So... Why wouldn't you be able to use an standard action outside of combat?
I never understood... Why exactly is it impossible to ready an action out of combat? AFAIK, reading an action is just an standard action set to trigger when something specific happens...
So... Why wouldn't you be able to use an standard action outside of combat?
I think it was to avoid adding readied actions on top of a surprise round + things like if there's interaction before initiative, so every single character both sides readies an action for once combat starts.
Is there any rule actually preventing characters from readying actions out of combat, though?
Is it impossible for a group of friends to shout "SURPRISE!" when the lights turn on unless everyone wins Initiative against the birthday guy?
The way I see it, out-of-combat time is also divided in rounds... We just don't bother keeping track of them because there is no point. But it should still be possible for my character to, say, ready an action to drop a water balloon on whoever goes through the door bellow me.
For the same reason you can't swing your sword 24 hours a day non-stop. In combat mode, you're running your body at high pitch, which includes readied actions. It's a period of intense energy expenditure and stress which simply can not be maintained. Readying an action is like keeping a bow taut, ready to fire. That simply can't be done over an extended period of time.
When you're not in combat mode, you simply can't ready combat scale actions.
Rules citation needed.
And who said anything about reading combat actions? You can ready a non-violent action just as easily.
Don't forget Traits...
Rich parents gives you 900gp at level one. That will help with consumables a lot.
Possibly better place to debate taking actions outside of combat.
Yes, we only want to talk about wizards here. Iut of combat actions, no stupid oracles who are awesome, no ca... SQUIRREL! ! !
I think it was to avoid adding readied actions on top of a surprise round + things like if there's interaction before initiative, so every single character both sides readies an action for once combat starts.I never understood... Why exactly is it impossible to ready an action out of combat? AFAIK, reading an action is just an standard action set to trigger when something specific happens...
So... Why wouldn't you be able to use an standard action outside of combat?
the only way you can reliably get a surprise round is by readying actions anyway.
It seriously irks me that i can't brace for a charge until "initiative is rolled", if i expect combat i damn well am bracing the weapon anytime we're about to open a door.
Actions - the heading under which Ready action appears:
Combat - Special Initiative Actions wrote:
Here are ways to change when you act during combat by altering your place in the initiative order.
Go back to the start of the section, and you'll see that combat is defined as the cyclical series of rounds and turns that occur in order of initiative.
Dumb, yes... but clearly written.
Actions - the heading under which Ready action appears:
Combat - Special Initiative Actions wrote:
Here are ways to change when you act during combat by altering your place in the initiative order.
Go back to the start of the section, and you'll see that combat is defined as the cyclical series of rounds and turns that occur in order of initiative.Dumb, yes... but clearly written.
just because all cats are cats doesn't mean a cat isn't an animal. You can take any action outside of combat regardless of it's functionality in combat.