| Douglas Muir 406 |
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Don't know if I'll ever finish this, but here are some notes towards a draft Guide.
Not going to lie: there may not be any archetype that starts off as weak as the Spell Sage. At first level, you are just amazingly feeble. Your classmate, the specialist wizard with a bound object, can cast four spells before he has to rest. You can cast two. He also has some nifty specialist power, like spamming an Acid Dart or whatever. You don't. You don't have a familiar to spy on things, fight in a pinch, and grant you Alertness and some other bonus. And you've probably put all your points into Int (see below), so there's a good chance you're a weak, clumsy nerd.
However.
1) You are Old School. For some people, this is a feature, not a bug. Playing a low-level wizard with limited spells, no specialist powers and no familiar? That is Old School, my friends. That is about as close to a First Edition experience as you can get in this game. And while it's a challenge, it's not a pointless challenge, because
2) In the long run, you are amazing. The Spell Sage will eventually catch up and even surpass the other wizards. Roughly speaking, the Sage is painfully underpowered at levels 1-2 and still weak, but no longer grotesquely so, from levels 3-6. Then starting at level 7 or 8, he's roughly equal to other wizards... and then around level 13 or so, he starts to pull ahead. As we all know, the game gets somewhat Rocket Tag at high levels, so the ability to hit first and hit hard becomes steadily more important. Furthermore, the Sage gets access to ever more spells -- more spells than a Mystic Theurge, more spells any other class, archetype, or PrC. By the highest levels (17-20), the Spell Sage is firmly in the top tier: she's powerful, she's flexible, and she can do pretty much anything.
Putting (1) and (2) together means that:
(3) You are climbing the steepest possible power curve. If you play through a complete AP, you'll gradually progress from "pathetically feeble nerd" to "almost certainly the most powerful character in the party, wielding AWESOME ARCANE POWER with ALL THE SPELLS".
Okay, "low level challenge", "high level awesome", and "zero to hero, Xtreme version." Are there any other reasons to play this archetype? Yes, a couple, depending on what sort of player you are.
-- Play a Spell Sage if you love spells. This archetype gives you access to all those weird, super-specific edge-case spells that nobody ever uses. You want to give someone scurvy? There's a spell for that. Send a bunch of insects to crawl around inside the haunted house and see what's inside? There's a spell for that. Make a construct less likely to go berserk? Spell for that. Shipwrecked, need to build a sturdy raft from driftwood and detritus? Yup, spell for that. Want everyone to ignore you and your friends while you set up for a massive arcane ritual in the middle of the village square? "Aura of the Unremarkable", 3rd level bard. Want to create an oasis, with a freshwater spring in the middle? "Oasis", 5th level druid.
Of course, this only works if you, the player, are aware of these spells. So to get maximum benefit, you should be someone who grooves on spells, flips through splatbooks, and surfs the PFSRD. If that sounds like fun to you, play a Spell Sage. Contrariwise, if right now you're rolling your eyes, play something else entirely.
-- Play a Spell Sage if you enjoy the tension of strategically managing very limited assets. You know how, when you play a paladin, you spend a lot of time worrying about whether you should smite now, or later? This is like that only more so. You only get to overclock once/day until 8th level, and even then it's still just twice/day. You only get your spell replacement once/day until 7th level, and it eats two of your precious, precious slots. So you have to think really carefully about whether to push the button. Some people don't like that. Others think it's awesome. If you're in the second group, play a Spell Sage.
In metagame terms, consider playing a Spell Sage if:
-- You are playing an adventure with a lot of 15-minute adventuring days. The canonical example of this would be Kingmaker. I love the Kingmaker AP, but let's face it: in the first three modules more than half of the XP comes from one-shot encounters against a single creature or a small group. Again and again, once you're done with an encounter you can pitch camp, rest, heal, and study. The Spell Sage has a lot more breathing room, especially at lower levels, when the encounters are delivered in discrete chunks like this. Contrariwise, the Sage is weaker when facing long marathon resource-draining crawls without opportunities to study and rest.
-- You are playing an adventure where unusual and situational spells are useful. The Skull and Shackles AP, for example: there are lots and lots of spells dealing with sailing ships, adventuring on and under the sea, and so forth. Many of them could be pretty useful here. But are you really likely to take Unseen Crew or Track Ship or Conversing Wind as known spells when you level up? Hey presto, now it's not an issue.
-- Your party has no cleric, nor any good substitute. There's a huge difference between having limited access to clerical spells and having none. If your group consists of a fighter, a magus, a sorceror, and you, then they'll be looking to you for cures, the removal of blindness and curses, raising the dead, and all those other post-encounter back-office support services that a cleric normally provides.
Stats -- A spell sage is even SADdy-er than an ordinary wizard. You need Int, Int, and more Int. Why? Because (1) you're starved for spell slots, so you need all the bonus spell slots you can get, and (2) nothing is more depressing than throwing your best overclocked blast and then watching the DM smirk as his creature makes it's save. Your precious overclocking power is half wasted if the target saves! So you want to crank those spell DCs as high as possible.
This means that point builds are going to be super lopsided.
15 point build: Str 8 Con 12 Dex 12 Int 17 Wis 10 Cha 10 <-- racial bonus on Int
20 point build: Str 8 Con 10 Dex 13 Int 18 Wis 10 Cha 10 <-- yeah, we went there. racial bonus on Int, so you start with Int 20.
About the only exception here is if you're going the Diabolist route (see below). In that case, you want at least a 12 Cha. That gives you some painful choices. Don't know what to tell you there except that the path of evil is not always an easy one.
Races -- With one exception, only races with Int bumps need apply. That's elves, humans, half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings, peri-blooded aasimars, ratfolk, sylphs, samsarans, androids and lashunta. Of those, the best are elf (dex bump, free spell penetration), human (free feat), ratfolk (dex bump, small size, stealth) and tieflings or aasimars with useful SLAs (because at low levels, you'll be starved for spells, so having a good SLA is nice).
And then there's the dhampir. The dhampir shouldn't be on this list, because they don't get an Int bump, their Cha bump isn't very useful to you, and the loss of Con hurts. But they're worth a second look because of their favored class bonus for wizards: +1/4 ECL for necromancy spells only. That stacks with your overclock, which means that by midlevels you can cast necromancy spells at +6 or +7 ECL. That's not game-breaking, but it opens up some interesting options -- raising a 20 HD giant zombie at 5th level, for instance, or throwing a 14d6 Boneshatter at 8th level, or possessing a Gargantuan object at 10th.
Skills -- Pick the usual mix of skills, but if you're starting at 1st level consider throwing a rank or two at skills that are useful to the party -- things like Heal and Appraise -- even if they're not class skills. (Everybody always ignores Heal, but it's actually pretty useful, especially at low levels with a healing kit.) Also, and I know this will sound weird, consider throwing an occasional rank at Stealth. Your Spell Study power takes time, so it happens between encounters. That means avoiding or evading encounters, yes? Against low-perception monsters, even a rank or two can help here. Otherwise, focus on the traditionals like UMD, Spellcraft and Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge.
A note on equipment -- You run out of spells fast, and you don't have school powers. So at low levels, your default is "cast two or three spells, then plink away with darts or a crossbow". That's not much fun, and also probably not all that helpful. So at low levels, invest in items that do stuff -- acid flasks, holy water, tanglefoot bags, thunderstones, etc. etc. Hey, it's an excuse to familiarize yourself with the ever-growing equipment list, and some of that stuff is actually pretty handy.
Speaking of which: go and read the PFSRD on alchemical reagents. There are a bunch of these, and several of them are a bit abusable. In particular, note the ones that increase damage from blasts (blackpowder and saltpeter) and the ones that increase ECL for one purpose or another (many, but not in particular urea, which can give you another die of damage on cold spells).
[discussion of feats and traits may eventually go here]
If well played, this archetype has an almost unparalleled ability to ruin a DM's well-laid plans. That's because by midlevels, the Spell Sage can pull a spell out of the air for damn near every situation.
DM: You know the bandits are camping somewhere down along Trouble Creek, but you don't know exactly where. [The DM has a scenario set up where the PCs will move down the creek, running into some river-themed encounters, before coming up against a possible ambush by the bandits.]
SS: Okay, well then... I go down to the creek and cast Riversight.
DM: What?
SS: You know, Riversight? The druid spell? It lets me see up to ten miles down a river. I can see anything on, within, or up to 15 feet from the river as if I was right there.
DM: Oh right, Riversight. Um, well...
Many GMs will enjoy the challenge, but some may become cranky if their carefully crafted plans are repeatedly disrupted by an obscure (but RAW-legal) spell from some long-forgotten splatbook. So -- discuss this with your DM in advance, and make sure he's cool with it.
(Also, if you're playing from first level, you may want to briefly explain to the other players that you're playing a slow-burn character that's really weak at low levels. You don't really want frustrated fellow players asking you why your wizard is so darn useless. Note that a few levels down the line, it will pay off for everyone, and thank them for their support and understanding until then.)
Comments very welcome!
Doug M.
| VRMH |
I'm interested, but with the enormous amount of different spells a Spell Sage could use... is a guide even doable?
| Douglas Muir 406 |
I'm interested, but with the enormous amount of different spells a Spell Sage could use... is a guide even doable?
A *complete* Guide? No. As you say, that would involve hundreds of spells and be insanely long. But a collection of useful guidelines and tips that would make the class more interesting and playable? That seems doable.
Doug M.