What Intelligence should a 1st level Wizard have?

[Greylurker]

The answer is "Smarter than the rest of the group"

You are the Wizard so you should be carrying the role of "the smart guy" As long as you are even 1 point above the next smartest character in the group you should be fine.

I always like taking the Brusing Intellect trait for my A-hole Wizards. Just gives you the right feel for looking down your nose at all the tiny brains around you.

[Rub-Eta]

I find your stereotyping offencive!

[Greylurker]

Rub-Eta wrote:

I find your stereotyping offencive!

I look down my nose at you and adjust my glasses with one finger as any A-hole wizard should

[Create Mr. Pitt]

This is no longer good advice. An INT 12 gives you 2-3 spells a day, depending on whether you're a specialist, at first level. You are also ridiculously vulnerable at first level. INT 18 really helps prevent early death, but I would not go below 16 and there is no reason to either. Throwing your point buy into stats other than DEX > CON is not terribly helpful. People who advocate INT 12 are just crippling the class.

Also you get a single extra starting spell known in your spellbook. Otherwise you are in mercy of the AP/GM. Grab a number of free spells when you can.

[thejeff]

Create Mr. Pitt wrote:

This is no longer good advice. An INT 12 gives you 2-3 spells a day, depending on whether you're a specialist, at first level. You are also ridiculously vulnerable at first level. INT 18 really helps prevent early death, but I would not go below 16 and there is no reason to either. Throwing your point buy into stats other than DEX > CON is not terribly helpful. People who advocate INT 12 are just crippling the class.

Also you get a single extra starting spell known in your spellbook. Otherwise you are in mercy of the AP/GM. Grab a number of free spells when you can.

I don't think anyone's really advocating 12, other than as a minimum.

Int 12 or Int 18, makes no difference to your spells/day at 1st level. CON & DEX are likely to do more to prevent early death than INT. The save DC is something of a help, if you're relying on those sorts of spells.

Getting to 20 does get you another bonus spell, but that's pretty expensive for any but the highest point buy. If you roll an 18 of course...

[strayshift]

I would advocate as high as possible, not just for the optimisation but for the flexibility of knowing that if you have to cast spells where the save DC is important, you can be confident doing so.

The wizard is advocated as a paragon of arcane flexibility, and it sorta is when you can plan and have the spells in the book. But you also need the bad guys to fail their saves for a lot of spells.

Encounters have an element of tactical variation too and there WILL come a time when you have to cast a save or suck/blast spell. One tactic/school of magic will not serve you all of the time. To illustrate, say a 14 Int wizard needs to cast Burning Arc (2nd level spell), thats probably a DC 14 reflex save, a 20 Int Wizard it's probably a DC 17 save, without feats that's a big difference.

By not having a high save DC you essentially gimp your ability to be effective with some of the schools of magic, and there will come a time when you need to use them. So for that reason, at least 18 to start with.

[Takhisis]

Are you playing a Necromancy Specialist or Diabolist? If not them you have 0 reason to pump cha on a wizard. If you want to play a face there are multibleways to get int to social skills; both he Orater feat and student of philosophy trait spring to mind, here. However, if you want to make a charismatic wizard that's "optimal" than your best bet will be to specalize in necromancy or make a character based around planar binding spells that's working towards the Diabolist PrC. Out of the two if you really want to milk your cha, I'd actually go with a necromancer. Diabolists can easily make do with 12 cha while necromancers want as much as they can feesibly get; the reason for this is that Diabolists get a massive boost to planar binding checks while necromancers have 0 ways to boost their command undead DC save for one feat and raw cha. Thus, minion-focused necromancers usually will try to start with at least 14 cha if possible unless they don't care about ever being able to fully utilize the Create Undead line of spells. Even further, the necromancy school offers several good no-save debuffs that help to weaken enemy saves and in turn help your save-or-sucks land easier, compensating for the slightly lower starting int(though 18 is not "unoptimal" starting int by any means.)

Conversely, if you want a bigger use for cha, have you considered an Arcanist instead of a wizard? Arcanists use a cha-based ability to restore their main resource pool which makes having 14 cha more useful on then than on a wizard. Even further, while Arcanists are still int casters, they get an in-class method of boosting their spell DCs as quickly as first level, meaning that, when it matters, a level 1 Arcanist with 18 int will have the same generalist DCs as a level 1 wizard with 20. Granted, the Arcanist needs to spends resource to get that without 20 int while the 20 into wizard just had it, but the Arcanist likely had more well-rounded stars than that 20 int wizard, so it balances out in my mind. Even further, the Arcanist has even more flexibility than the wizard, with their "5e" style casting. So if you want a charismatic wizard you may be better served by an Arcanist.