What are spells every wizard should have by some of the mid-level milestones, like level ten and fifteen? I've seen people ask similar questions before, but people usually answer with a list of low-level spells. To be clear, I am asking about spells of ALL levels.
Anybody there?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"must have" is subjective.
Quick-n-dirty, above 3rd level spells:
10th Level Wiz (no specialization assumed)
(4th) Animate Dead [unless no evil spells], Arcane Eye, Boneshatter, Dimension Door, Dimensional Anchor, Emergency Force Sphere, Invisibility - Greater, Make Whole - Greater, Named Bullet, Protection from Energy - Communal, Remove Curse, Secure Shelter, Stone Shape, Stoneskin
(5th) Break Enchantment, Dismissal, Echolocation, Interposing Hand, Life Bubble, Mirage Arcana, Overland Flight, Passwall, Prying Eyes, Telekinesis, Telepathic Bond, Teleport, Wall of Force, Wall of Stone, Wreath of Blades
15th Level Wiz
(6th) Analyze Dweomer, Antimagic Field, Cosmic Ray, Disintegrate, Dispel Magic - Greater, Forceful Hand, Hardening, Heroism - Greater, Named Bullet - Greater, Shadow Walk, Stone to Flesh, True Seeing, Veil
(7th) Arcane Sight - Greater, Banishment, Grasping Hand, Hungry Darkness, Limited Wish, Phase Door, Plane Shift, Power Word Blind, Spell Turning, Teleport - Greater, Temporary Resurrection
(8th) Clenched Fist, Clone, Discern Location, Horrid Wilting, Maze, Mind Blank, Moment of Prescience, Polymorph any Object, Power Word Stun, Prying Eyes - Greater, Screen, Telekinetic Sphere
ADD: Cone of Cold (5th), Gust of Wind (2nd), Daylight (3rd) to the above. No 15th+ level Wizard should be incapable of beating down a prismatic wall or prismatic sphere under reasonable circumstances.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Prestidigitation. It's awesome.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So between 5th and 8th level spells which ones stand out the most? To get the most out of your spells its best to do research on where they will be most effective, like in certain campaign settings or with certain characters. I'll list two spells for each level 5th through 8th that are good in almost every situation.
5th:
Teleport: Incredibly versatile for its level. Good at all stages of the game and in many campaign settings. It allows instant travel from point A to point B provided you've already been to those locations. You can also use it in combat to re-position if you run out of dimension doors.
Overland Flight: 24 hour flight for yourself that turns you into superman. It also works as fast travel for yourself (and allies if you brought a portable hole)
6th:
Legend Lore: Saves your party a knowledge check which has the potential to fail or give false information. Never wonder anymore about the mysterious artifact. You now know not only which god got his lunch money stolen, but also the person who stole it.
Contingency: Takes practice to use effectively but you will love this spell forever once you create a contingent event that auto-casts your win condition.
7th:
Limited Wish: Son of the almighty wish spell. Take it, even if you don't have the gold on hand to cast it. Even late game the power of the wish should never be underestimated.
Mage's Magnificent Mansion: Gives your party a place to hide, to gear up, and protects them from the elements of whatever plane you create the mansion. Plus the materials components only cost 5gp which is a huge value.
8th:
Moment of Presience: Protects you from three things: Save or die/suck spells, attacks that have the possiblity of killing your wizard in one hit, or rolling a 1 on a skill check that could save your life. Use it at the start of every day and never forget to cast it.
Polymorph Any Object: Turns anything into anything, even capable of making permanent changes. It also doubles as a transmutation swiss-army knife that you can use on friends and foes alike.
Solid Note, Air Bubble, Flare Burst, Peacebond, Negative Rection, Stumble Gap, Vocal Alteration, Badger's Ferocity, Certain Grip, Compassionate Ally, Ghostly Disguise, Skinsend, Sifting Sand, Healing Thief, Eruptive Pustules, Echolocation, Fire Snake, Phantom Chariot, Wreath of Blades, Smug Narcissism, Sirocco, Tar Pool, Utter Contempt
Very interesting insights, thank you. There were quite a few that I would not have thought of, but can see the need for.
As much as they're hated, at least one blast spell should be around, just in case. Besides, it gives those wizards the excuse to make CL9 wands of Magic Missile for a quick burst of pain every so often. Especially when handed to a UMD-trained wandista.
I think the protection and/or magic circle spells come highly reccommended, too. And sooner or later you'll find some magic you just want to dispel.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wish people would explain some of their choices. Just saying "Oh, take this spell" doesn't tell me the whole story. Especially as sometimes it seems like there are spells that are far more powerful than their initial appearances let on. A good deal of magic isn't just having the spell, but knowing how to use it.
One thing to look for is spells that have multiple uses or applications. Some of my favourites include:
Wall of Stone
There is a distinct limitation of needing to be anchored to stone, but once you have that, the spell has a ton of uses. Aside from the obvious blocking movement through a wall or filling an entire corridor, you can use it to make a bridge, build instant fortifications, or any other case in which you just need some heavy stone.
One other time, our group had to hide out in a Demon Lord's fortress for a few days, and the only safe place to hide was the charnel pit where all the corpses, blood, and less pleasant offal was disposed of. Rather than sit around for a few days waist-deep in blood and organs, we cast a few Walls of Stone to form a platform to stand on, then a roof to redirect any new waste pouring into the pit. And from there, we used Wall of Stone to from a house, and I'm pretty sure we even formed a bath so we could wash the blood off of ourselves.
Great laughs were had imagining some poor demon being told to clean or check out the pit a few days later, and wondering who the hell built a house with a jacuzzi down there.
Disintegrate
Not so much its use as a combat spell, but there are probably plenty of times when you just need to get rid of a 10 ft. cube of matter. If you do use it in combat, remember that it targets Fortitude, so don't aim it at big ugly monsters.
Also remember it can hit the otherwise annoyingly difficult to get rid of Wall of Force and similar force effects.
Summon Monster
The most immediate use of Summon Monster is adding more things into the fray to fight on your side. Set up flanking, block potential avenues of attack, and of course absorb damage that might otherwise hit your party and require healing spells or Pixie Sticks (That's my term for CLW wands) to fix.
But the better application, once you get up in levels, is to look for summons that can cast spells. If you can communicate with them (So invest a few points in Linguistics) you can have them cast those spells on your behalf. You've just used one spell to cast a whole lot of other useful spells.
Be aware, however, that Summon spells have a 1 round casting time. Not a Full action, 1 round. Meaning that all your enemies have a full round to try and interrupt you while you try to cast it. Be sure to get cover from your allies.
Confusion
Not so much a spell with multiple uses, but a good illustration of why damage dealing invocations aren't always the best choice. For this example, let's say you're casting the spell at a bunch of mooks charging your group, relatively bunched up together. Now, Fireball does have some advantages over Confusion. Slightly wider area (20 ft radius compared to 15), one level lower, and Confusion is a mind-affecting effect.
But consider what the results are. With Fireball, unless they're really weak compared to your character level, it's unlikely to kill them all, leaving you with a bunch of enemies that, while injured, are not hampered in any way. They are still free to charge and attack your party.
A successful Confusion effect, however, will take that group out of the fight, as they pretty much all stand their and smack each other around. Now, the rules state that there's a 1/4 chance of acting normally, but the rule also states that a confused character will attack a person who attacked it. And one of the results is attacking the nearest creature. So in a round or two, you're going to have a group of mooks smacking each other around while babbling incoherently, meaning they can be ignored while you work on bigger threats.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
"must have" is subjective. Per Trigger Loaded's comment:
Quick-n-dirty, above 3rd level spells:
10th Level Wiz (no specialization assumed)
- (4th Level spells)
- Animate Dead (unless no evil spells are allowed for whatever reason) lets you animate the corpses of the nastiest monsters you fight to fight for you until they fall apart or you get rid of them. Especially gp-effective with Bloody Skeletons since few foes are packing the requisite materials to permanently dispatch them. Make sure you carry such when the upgrade minions present themselves - note that by 7th level holy water is pretty cheap.
- Arcane Eye, while slow to cast and slow to move, is a pretty sweet way to reconnoiter on the sly without needlessly endangering your fellow adventurers.
- Boneshatter deals damage almost everything you fight in almost every AP ever published with the added bonus of a 'debuff' whether they make their save or not. There aren't many foes that don't have either an endoskeleton or an exoskeleton.
- Dimension Door is the earliest teleportation spell available able to take yourself and two Medium buddies right out of the gate at 7th level. Lets you set up all kinds of mobility advantages for your fellow adventurers ... such as popping into play with your fighter and your rogue already in flanking position. At 9th you should be able to take yourself and your group's Large companion/eidolon/mount and their handler into prime charging position.
- Dimensional Anchor provides denial of teleportation to one's foes without a saving throw and at later levels it prevents the bad guys from sending your meat shields off into places they can't return from.
- Emergency Force Sphere is an immediate action hardness 20 force bubble? YES PLEASE! Sure, you need to burn a standard action later to get rid of it, but until then you have some time to consider the situation. Added bonus if you have your flank-buddies adjacent when the bubble comes up - now you can dimension door them out of that bubble into face-wrecking posture.
- Invisibility - Greater, especially if you can Extend this spell, is your sneak attacker's favorite spell. Most as-written foes at CR 7-10+ can't easily deal with this spell and quite a few up to the high-CR range can't either.
- Make Whole - Greater lets your sunder-monkey do his thing with nary a concern, ending the fight that much easier and faster. Less slurping on pixie sticks is always a good thing.
- Named Bullet adds a nasty boost to your pew-pew buddies, especially if they're invisible. Synergizes extremely well with having reconnoitered what foes await your group.
- Protection from Energy - Communal is one casting to slather everyone with 90-120 points / character of protection from whatever unpleasant source of energy damage lurks ahead instead of one casting per character.
- Remove Curse shouldn't require elaboration. Lycanthropy and Mummy Rot your group may have already encountered by 7th level. If they haven't, there's a decent chance that they will in the campaign to come. Better to be able to deal with such afflictions and not need to than to suffer needlessly. Added bonus in being the most efficient method of 8th level or less in ridding the party of otherwise permanent nuisances from hostile divine casters and witches.
- Secure Shelter is a sturdy go-to "shelter on the go" for the price of the spell component pouch you've been wearing since before attaining 1st level. Comes with built-in cooking space, alarms and lasts long enough for everyone to rest peacefully. Supplement with additional magical traps at your and your group's divine caster's discretion.
- Stone Shape comes in awful handy in dealing with those pesky stupid-high-DC-to-force-open stone doors that seem to perpetually crop up in mid-level+ dungeons and certain kinds of loot containers.
- Stoneskin while fairly costly provides ablative adamantine DR that more than a few foes, especially CRB-built NPCs, can't easily afford the means to bypass, not to mention a whole gaggle of hostile outsiders. Worth slathering on your meat shield and sneak attacker when your arcane eye and substantial Knowledge checks reveal that your cleric not having to absorb another 35-50 hp is a Good Thing.
- (5th Level spells)
- Break Enchantment is the earliest method I'm aware of to depetrify your buddies.
- Dismissal deals with those annoying trap-spawned erinyes and other outsiders. Divine casters get this a spell level earlier, so coordinate with them before preparing.
- Echolocation lets you deal with those nasty super-stealthy invisible enemies ... and there's nothing they can do about it unless they grease you.
- Interposing Hand creates a Large blocker that provides you cover against a foe regardless of what the foe is that can't be sent away by dismissal. The enemy has to burn their attacks, a disintegrate or successfully dispel the hand barring reach of 15 ft or greater that doesn't bypass your cover bonus. Unless your Wizard is of below-average hp, the hand spells at a minimum should buy you a fair bit of time. Mostly, the hand is useful as a blocker that ignores most magic.
- Life Bubble provides the group with temporary necklaces of adaptation at acquisition that they may not be able to afford or create for quite a few levels beyond 9th. No more gagging on stinking clouds and choking in your own vomit thanks to enemy cloudkills, yeah!
- Mirage Arcana lets you hide the secure shelter for at least as many hours as the shelter will be in place during typical usage.
- Overland Flight lets you do the whole Duke Harkonnin floating around, laughing hysterically while mocking your enemies bit. Oh, and the "float six inches above everything in the dungeon" bit. Pit trap? You don't care. Lave? Still don't care. Piranha-infested water trap? Yep, still don't care. Lasts for-frickin'-ever, especially when Extended. Pick up an exercise bike as part of your camp kit or you'll soon qualify for Bloatmage Initiate.
- Passwall is waaaaay faster than the fighter chipping away with an adamantine pickaxe. Added bonus: dismissable.
- Prying Eyes means you're reconnoitering with some gas in multiple directions. Wherever your eyes don't return from probably has something nasty.
- Telekinesis is one of those super-flexible spells that can do a whole bunch of stuff effectively. Meat shield fell over holding his entrails? Float him to the cleric. Wall of copious levers with little else to go on? Flip one at a time. Annoying NPCs peppering you with arrows? Yank that bow out of their hands. Annoying villains taunting you? You still toting around a case or two of crossbow bolts - good, you can fling an entire volley of poisoned projectiles at the bugger. "Injury poisons suck!" Not with telekinesis they don't, especially if you collected looted poisons a little while back.
- Telepathic Bond provides an in-game reason as to how the characters are conveying metric tons of information without the bad guys being the wiser. Works a long, long ways off too. Bonus applications for infiltration.
- Teleport is your "we're going to Magnimar to sell this swag and get a bath!" spell. Pick up a decent ability with Artistry or Craft (paintings) and carry a modest kit of supplies. Practice the same small mural in an out-of-the-way spot in the dungeon lets you have a pretty nice spot to bamf back to once you've sold the loot, gotten your ashes hauled, eaten a couple of hot meals and slept in a real bed.
- Wall of Force is darned hard to get rid of and especially at this level there aren't many foes that can dish out the brute physical damage this spell can withstand. Divide and conquer.
- Wall of Stone has ridiculous flexibility in the dungeons commonplace to published adventures. Bridge? Check. Fighting wall? Check. Seal that @#!! Room of Dubious Doom by Noxious Fumes? NOW, dammit, NOW!!
- Wreath of Blades protects your delicate self from being eaten by way of a quartet of pricey mithral bowie knives. Make that tyrannosaurus pay for swallowing you whole!
15th Level Wiz
- (6th Level spells)
- Analyze Dweomer one-time focus and this spell means near-instant magic item identification.
- Antimagic Field comes in handy for all kinds of things: magic traps, magic-heavy bad guys (so you time your action to JUST before the meat shield's, resulting in a de-magicked foe that gets hacked into giblets by said meat shield), ignoring dragons' breath weapons and so much more!
- Cosmic Ray is especially nasty since at 12th your Wizard should be able to select Vital Strike. Even without that feat, a ray that can confirm critical hits *and* packs a "debuff" is hard to pass up. Major bonus for this spell is that the saving throw does diddly squat to reduce the damage.
- Disintegrate does a lot more than make a 10'x10'x10' hole in almost everything. It's a pretty surefire method of obliterating most magical traps from a safe distance and those pesky graveknights' armor suits.
- Dispel Magic - Greater is the go-to method before disjunction for stripping several of your magically-inclined foes' "buff" spells off in one go. Its other uses are gravy.
- Forceful Hand is a Large blocker that can shove foes into hungry pits, the local lava/hostile terrain feature and otherwise make an enemy's life a small piece of Hell.
- Hardening once cast is good to go for a long while and worth "updating" when the CL attains even intervals. Sunder-monkey foes gnash their teeth. Your precious spell book, component pouch and enchanted wardrobe (especially ones made from darkleaf cloth) will profusely thank you for the extra hardness when some nasty enemy lights up not only you but all of your stuff with a chain lightning.
- Heroism - Greater is a +4 bonus to everything that matters, a smidge of temporary hp and immunity to fear, oh so common at 11th+ level from a bewildering array of sources. No more meat shields and sneak attackers wetting their pants in fear, balking at the hint of something icky-scary. Unleash your dogs of war!
- Named Bullet - Greater just made your sneak attacker's day even better provided adequate reconnaissance. It also lets you eat some popcorn while the sorry "not high enough Perception bonus" Chapter Boss NPC is riddled with Clustered Shots Rapid Shot hasted Manyshot arrows of sharp cruel fangs.
- Shadow Walk is a long-distance travel spell without that pesky teleportation descriptor. While thwarted by dimensional anchor, it has a much larger transport capacity and the added possibility to cross planar boundaries other than back into the Material Plane. plane shift on a budget, if your Knowledge (planes) is up to snuff.
- Stone to Flesh always depetrifies the petrified, no check required other than not botching the Fortitude save to survive the process. A must-have-just-in-case in any Wizard's spell book.
- True Seeing costs money, but it takes care of soooo many annoying spells, such as displacement and mirror image. Applied by touch and lasting minutes, daub the eye drops on your meat shield and sneak attacker before unleashing them for 10+ minutes of popcorn munching entertainment.
- Veil is possibly the best infiltration spell in the game with a duration of many hours that goes hand-in-hand with mirage arcana on your secure shelter for unlimited foolishness, mayhem and a healthy dose of the old ultraviolence.
- (7th Level spells)
- Arcane Sight - Greater is a minutes-long decoder ring keyed to the bad guys. You just know what they've got going, permitting one to communicate this to your divine caster via telepathic bond so that the two of you can dismember the bad guys' magical defenses in advance of the meat shield and sneak attacker's systematic dismemberment of their corporeal forms.
- Banishment is dismissal's shotgun-toting poppa. Carry antipathetic items based on the campaign to further enhance this spell's efficacy in ridding your august presence of unworthy outsiders. And we all know about those nasty extraplanar nasties that infest the later chapters of adventure paths.
- Grasping Hand is a multi-tool hand, only now you can return the grab-happy favor to the monsters that deserve it. Your hand throttles them while your sneak attacker carves out their livers. Yums.
- Hungry Darkness is just all kinds of nasty, especially against some of the high-end monsters that can't get away from it to save their miserable hides. Force damage, Constitution damage and 7th spell level darkness takes a wrecking ball to a HUGE area of the map, one of the premier battlefield control spells.
- Limited Wish is your Swiss Army Knife. Cleric died? No problem, you got it covered if your group allocated a modest sum accordingly. Need a foe to have a much worse chance of making their save against your buddys' save-dependant nasty? Suck a -7 penalty, monkey-boy!
- Phase Door is the high-end version of passwall that doesn't leave a gaping hole on your six.
- Plane Shift became Godawful with 3e, since the RAW of the spell results in everyone's spell component pouch holding All of the Forks to All of the Places. Thanks to this awesomely exploitable oversight, you and your fellow murderhobos can swiftly return after being slurped to the Astral Plane after an unfortunate incident involving Harvey Wallbangers, "ladies of the night" and a poorly-thought-out bet combining a bag of holding and a portable hole.
- Power Word Blind doesn't allow a saving throw and with a mere 'flesh wound' dealt by one means or another against non-immune-to-mind-affecting foes of CR 13-14, you're guaranteed to blind them, handing them to your sneak attacker on a gold platter.
- Spell Turning gives the bad guys their most favorite single-target spells/spell-likes right back at 'em. Fighting 'the Vacuum'? Let him eat suffocate!
- Teleport - Greater needs no explanation. "We're going to the tiki bar on Maui. Now." *Bamf!* *sluuurrp*
- Temporary Resurrection is a stop-gap .... but if you're short the funds for a limited wish, maybe your cleric's not so strapped for cash after having the temerity to up and die on you. Not to worry, 500 gp and 10 minutes, the cleric can resurrect himself!
- (8th Level spells)
- Clenched Fist in my opinion is the best of the hand spells. Cast this on a foe and watch them get pulverized into jam.
- Clone means you probably won't die permanently. Don't half-ass the use of this spell. Clone everyone in the group. Set up gear caches in case you get TPK'd. Brew up elixirs of limited wish with the clones to deal with the "just died and woke up hangover". Until astral projection comes online - as if any high-level adventuring location is going to let an adventuring group repeatedly hammer them from the Astral Plane - this is an acceptable albeit somewhat costly and time-intensive alternative.
- Discern Location finds, well, almost everything.
- Horrid Wilting remains perhaps the nastiest multiple-target offensive spell in the game. If it's alive, within 60 feet of other living things you don't like and that clump of treasure sacks is within Long range, you can command their vital fluids evaporate from their pores. Add insult to injury by way of Use Magic Device and blocks of incense of meditation and a prayer bead of karma from the secure comfort of your illusion-disguised secure shelter. At 15th level, with the two previous items and an orange prism ioun stone, each casting siphons 120 hit points if they fail their saves, 60 if they make it. Then your dogs of war tear into them. Yeah, it's not pretty.
- Maze shifts the BBEGs attack minions into "you're not smart enough to escape in less than several minutes, SUCKER!!"-land. Send the mook away, hack the boss into chunky salsa, eat a snack and let the flankers bushwhack the sorry mook when it finally returns.
- Mind Blank is the icing on the sneak attacker's cake when combined with your other fun spells. If the sneak attacker sees it, and it isn't one of a small range of critters, it pretty much just frickin' dies.
- Moment of Prescience is what you cast before eating breakfast. Most of the day you have a "rabbit out of your butt" +CL insight bonus on everything important, including a cheap shot when you're flat-footed bump to AC/Touch AC/CMD. "NO HIT FOR YOU!!"
- Polymorph any Object has all kinds of abuse built in, mostly in sheer flexibility of application. Wanna be an elf? *Pouf* Wanna have your own wings? Cast it twice, it's yours. In the same vein as illusions, the limits are few.
- Power Word Stun delivers the hideously nasty stun status. Best reserved for Round 2 uses once the rest of the group has softened up the more typical NPC-built foes to shut them down so you can get back to eating popcorn.
- Prying Eyes - Greater is Reconnaissance 201. 'nuff said.
- Screen is the co-co-COMBO of mirage arcana, veil and a smidge of nondetection. You set what unwanted eyes perceive, including via scrying, for 24 hours. Get nasty by setting up your usual camp, then leave a screen behind depicting the group doing things like examining valuable loot, taking a bath naked, folding origami, whatever strikes your fancy that might lure some suckers into a trap.
- Telekinetic Sphere lets you roll on/over/through/under all kinds of 'terrain features' with nary a concern. Even immersion in lava won't easily eat through it at this level. The primary concern is the weight limit for groups that are disposed to drag along Huge or larger companions.
ADD: Cone of Cold (5th), Gust of Wind (2nd), Daylight (3rd) to the above. No 15th+ level Wizard should be incapable of beating down a prismatic wall or prismatic sphere under reasonable circumstances.
1st: Magic Missile, sometimes you just want to hurt something
2nd: Glitterdust, the list of problems it fixes is too large not to include. False Life, living is fun.
3rd: Haste, Heroism
4th: Dimension Door
5th:
6th: Greater Make Hole
You're a gentleman and a scholar, Turin. I tip my hat to you for the work you've done in detailing the list.
- Passwall is waaaaay faster than the fighter chipping away with an adamantine pickaxe. Added bonus: dismissable.
Or adamantine dagger...
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. They are great.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. They are great.
They are if your primary foes are susceptible to mind-affecting magic, or the caster has a way to make 'em susceptible. ;)
I like 'em too, especially for sorcerers/spontaneous arcane casters/arcanists, but not all wizards are "built" to make them the most effective.
The Shadow * spells are not mind affecting.I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. They are great.They are if your primary foes are susceptible to mind-affecting magic, or the caster has a way to make 'em susceptible. ;)
I like 'em too, especially for sorcerers/spontaneous arcane casters/arcanists, but not all wizards are "built" to make them the most effective.
It's been so long, so long.
Will save for disbelief though, makes it interesting to be sure.
Good call!