Another fix that might perhaps work for single-classed wizards would be to make archery feats apply more broadly to ray spells (mostly looking at Deadly Aim). Magical Lineage (ray of frost) would allow you to apply metamagic to change the element so you aren't shackled to frost damage forever, and your feats would allow you to pile damage onto your infinite cantrip. So, when spells run out, you can provide something relevant. As for spells, your best bets are going to be anything and everything that offers no save whatsoever. Largely, you'd be in buff territory, playing cheerleader to the martial characters. Battlefield controls, like Create Pit or Wall of Stone would need to be used, as well. You'd have to avoid all of the fun spells: confusion, bestow curse, baleful polymorph, etc. would all be off-limits. Their DCs would be so low that it would largely be a waste of a turn to cast them. Fireball's page in your spell book should have a Post-It reading "For Recreational Use Only" in bright red ink. Invest in item creation to provide better buffs to your martials. If they start to invest in UMD, just hang out at the local wizard college and churn out stuff for your relevant party members to dismember people. No sense risking life and limb when they can just give you gold to buff them with items from afar. End-game? Create your own demiplane and become a magic item dispenser for the people who actually matter in terms of gameplay.
Well, Limited Magic is indeed a limitation -- it does what it says on the can. If your friend is/was not prepared to work within this limitation, then he shouldn't have taken a magic-reliant class.
That said, "wizard" is such a powerful and flexible class that it's still useful and playable even with the strong limitations of Limited Magic. Limited Magic does not "nerf" all wizards equally. Blasters and save-or-suck casters tend to get hit very hard, while buffers, crowd-control specialists, and utility casters are pretty much the same as before. You can easily make an effective summoner under Limited Magic, or a diviner. It's much harder, though, to make a Swiss-army-chainsaw universal problem solver.
Normally a wizard's spells scale.
examples
Magic missle does 2d4+2 at lv3 for about 7 damage, scorching ray does 4d6 for about 14. So Magic missile does half as much, but it's still useful, while only doing 3.5 damage at lv3 isn't as much.
a 2nd level spell, scorching ray does 2 rays when you get higher level, thus making it still a decent choice to do for a round when you get higher leveled.
Without that scaling, your lower level spells are vastly lower and thus your pool of useful spells never gets bigger. Buff spells don't last longer so would need to be cast more often to have up, thus using more spells. limited magic REALLY limits magic.
Without that scaling, your lower level spells are vastly lower and thus your pool of useful spells never gets bigger.
I disagree - most of the good Wizard spells (summons, many buffs, most BFC like walls or difficult terrain, and a lot of specific spells like Teleport or Maze) are mostly unaffected by Limited Magic. You might want rods of Extend and a Wand of Mage Armor, though.
So yeah, it does indeed limit magic, but not necessary in the intended way. Forcing every caster to pick up only the best spells can actually be worse for inter-party balance and inter-party C/MD.
At least it doesn't nerf pure martials the hardest, like almost all other "limited X" systems do.
If he's concerned about armor, the mage armor spell provides the armor bonus of a 15th level monk and costs only a spell slot.um no mage armor doesnt even give the armor bonus of a 1st level monk which is 5 at level 15 the monks ac bonus should be arround +11
When unarmored and unencumbered, the monk adds his Wisdom bonus (if any) to his AC and his CMD. In addition, a monk gains a +1 bonus to AC and CMD at 4th level. This bonus increases by 1 for every four monk levels thereafter, up to a maximum of +5 at 20th level.
Where do you get +5 at first level? If you mean wisdom bonus it is not relevant in this case as the wizard in question probably does not have 20 wisdom.
OK, it's sounding like this Limited Magic thing is more of a factor than I thought. Sorry for not mentioning it in the OP.
So, I should tell my friend to drop wizard entirely and switch to a different class? Is Limited Magic really THAT bad?
Limited Magic (DC and CL are preset) means that consumable items have exactly as much "oomph" as a person using those spells. However, a character who uses spells sacrifices proficiencies, BAB, etc. to be able to cast those spells, and they are limited in how often they can do that in a day. To get more bang-for-your-buck, you'd have to further invest in feats. Then, you cap out. Your intelligence won't play a role in DCs; so you can't buy more effective spells with a Headband of Vast Intelligence, nor can you spend your attributes on level-up to improve your casting.
So, while you can have your friend take the advice others have given to use DC-less spells and spells that don't rely on CL, I have to ask the question: Why not, then, just buy wands/scrolls/potions? They're equally as effective if those are the only spells you are using, anyway.
So a wizard in my home group is multiclassing into Monk for a few levels ("Hey, no armor = no armor"), with the goal of delivering a few karate chops to the bad guys when he's out of spells (which is often).
Any suggestions on feats, gear, skills, etc.?
Cast truestrike often.
Hello good Sir Apapalypse, have you considered a membership in the Thread Necromancer Guild yet? :)
We're always looking for aspiring Necromancers!