Personally I would go arcanist, as a first time full caster it allows you to prepare spells but cast them spontaneously.
I am not sure what you are looking for. But if we are looking at what a wizard could do that would work for a military: it should deal with wide, AoE effects that do battlefield control, and it should be highly skilled at escaping.
it is just the nature of the system- even a high level fire dragon can be wiped out in a round if it faces 100 level 1 wizard apprentices with rays of frost. action economy is king. even if the opponent is insignificant, if it can chip you even a tiny bit, then things swing in the favor of the side with way more actions. (as order of the stick points out- even 1 hd enemies can get a natural 20 and hit past your AC; when facing thousands of enemies the odds stack up)
there are counters for this- protection from arrows is a fairly obvious one when facing off against a bunch of minor archers, for example. but the spells in this system were made for 5 minute work days- they are designed for a small task force to do things like a sudden and short raid on a thieve's guild or a cult. they usually do not have the lasting power to protect you completely over an hours long battle. and you would simply run out of most spelle if you tried to keep up defense and also fight constantly over the course of ten hours.
there is also another problem- wizards are priority target #1 once hou start slinging spells that swing the tides of a battle.
so the best answer is to do it guerilla style- come in, sling one big battlefield control spell to turn things in your soldiers' favor, then get out and let your soldiers handle things. get out before the enemies can find out where you are and get through your soldiers.
example spells are things like clouds that protecg hour infantry as they charge at archers by blocking line of sight, or something that makes difficult terrain that prevents an enemy cavalry charge. you will also want things that create paths and break down gates to allow your men to get in.
as a note- there is oddly a class that can actually do a direct onslaught with little fear. the kineticist. an earth/aether user could provide defenses that allow it to ignore the common soldiers (dr/adamantine and a temp hp buffer). they can shoot out infinite AoE blasts with both battlefield control and sheer blasting. also, ride the blast allows them go move far faster than any horse, which can allow hit and fun tactics.
Kineticists are definitely a great class for getting all-day boom, though they're very much one-trick ponies compared to the sheer utility that comes out of a 9th level caster spell list.
It really comes down to how you want to support your team. Got a fighter, barbarian or other front-line melee character or two in the group? These classes often already cover the 'make hit points go down' section of the party composition, especially against big single targets that they can stand in front of and trade full attacks.
So unless your group is entirely support classes, you're better off as a 9th level arcane spellcaster with focusing your efforts on force multipliers and utility support instead of damage per round. Leave the part about making hit points go down to the classes whose entire class mechanic is built around doing that, and pretty much only that.
In a previous game, I played a highly optimized elf conjuration (teleportation) wizard who mostly just cast a Haste spell at the start of each combat followed by a Glitterdust and left the rest to the other characters. I kept a lesser rod of maximize handy and filled a slot or two each morning with a Fireball to deal with groups of trash enemies, but my goal was always focused on enabling other players to perform their own roles better with my help, and stood ready to save their entire collective asses if they ended up with more than they could handle. I could have taken out pretty much every encounter solo by abusing summoned creatures and prepping self-buffs instead, which I did do one time by solo killing an adult red dragon at 10th level through abuse of Calcific Touch. However, the group was far more appreciative of my character bringing class unique utilities like Teleport, See Invisibility and Fabricate, not just raw killing power.
It's boring to sit at a table and watch other players enjoy the game without being able to contribute. You'll find yourself respected far more by your other party members when you build a character who's a team player instead.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'military like mage'. You looking to make a mage that was/is part of the military?
Now I've always played magic users (currently a witch) and the most useful thing I find is to make yourself a cheat sheet for the various spell casting rules and rolls e.g. overcoming a creature's spell resistance requires a caster level check (d20+caster level), the concentration check DC for defensive casting is 15+double the spell level you are trying to cast (a concentration check is your level+your casting modifier+d20+any other modifiers you might have). It also helps to have as much of the maths worked out before hand e.g. I write my touch attack and ranged touch attack in the weapon section of my character sheet. Doing this helps to make things run that little bit swifter and smoother.
Of the three classes you're interested in I find the consensus tends to be that the sorcerer is the most user friendly for players new to spell casters due to their spontaneous casting and limited variety of spells being easier to manage. That said, I've never had trouble managing prepared casters and feel that in some respects the wizard is more forgiving to new players as it allows you to more easily experiment with different spells; if you're not liking a spell you've chosen to can simply change it the next day. Also wizard specialisation school powers gives you some interesting and powerful options (divination is one of my favourites). The arcanist combines both and adds the arcane reservoir which is an additional resource to track but adds flexibility and staying power.
Personally I would go for the school savant arcanist as I found it gave me the bits of each class that I liked; you get the flexibilty and school specialisation of the wizard, the spontaneous casting of the sorcerer and the exploits of the arcanist.
A final tip: As a caster you'll usually want to go first in the initiative order and the divination school power is great for this as it lets you add half you class level to your initiative. An ifrit divination school savant arcanist could, by level 5 have an initiative of 19 with Wildfire Heart, Improved Initiative, Reactionary Trait, Compsognathus familiar (level 5 exploit), Forewarned, Cracked Dusty Rose Prism and a +2 dex modifier.
Is the military aspect of your character just background, or are you going to be in a war-based campaign where many or the majority of encounters will be on the battlefield?
The arcanist seems like a great combination of preparing different wizard spells each day, but casting the prepared spells spontaneously like a sorcerer (for example, if you prepared fireball and lightning bolt, but come across a red dragon, you can just keep throwing lightning bolts at it until it or you are dead. :-)
(I play 5th Edition, and the way arcanists prepare spells is how the cleric, druid, paladin, and wizard prepare spells, and it's really fun. You never feel like you wasted a spell slot by preparing the wrong spell, and if you DID prepare the RIGHT spell, you can cast it a bunch of times if you need to!)
I think divination, battlefield control, and AoE blasting are the key aspects to being a military mage. You want to know your enemy, trap them, and destroy them! :-D
An exploiter wizard is on average about 1/2 level stronger than an Arcanist. But it is far harder to construct and play.
I second the advice about init. At higher levels, take the exploit that gives you the divination school power.
You'll need to be a little more specific than, military mage. Any half decent military would specialize their mages for different roles.
The two most obvious roles are that of artillery, focused on aoe eliminating masses of weak troops, and what might be best called assassins, focused on the elimination of dangerous single targets like high level combatants and other mages.
The needs of both are very different and there are many other roles as well. Siege Mages, and buffers come to mind.
Well, to be honest, I like the idea of a Necromancer. After both sides have some losses you raise your next battalion and march your undead back into battle.
You can even speed up some enemy troop deaths with some blasting.
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Maybe this blog post will help a bit?
Well, to be honest, I like the idea of a Necromancer. After both sides have some losses you raise your next battalion and march your undead back into battle.
You can even speed up some enemy troop deaths with some blasting.
Outside of Words of Power or cheesing in Blood Money, this gets expensive really fast.
Maybe this blog post will help a bit?
Outside of Words of Power or cheesing in Blood Money, this gets expensive really fast.Well, to be honest, I like the idea of a Necromancer. After both sides have some losses you raise your next battalion and march your undead back into battle.
You can even speed up some enemy troop deaths with some blasting.
easy with the words cheesing in. Blood Money is a Viable spell. ANy campaign that takes place after RotRL I would think it is much easier to get your hands on the spell. Because the TImeline assumes someone succeeded in defeating Karzoug. THus I would believe the opening up of Xin Shalast and the spoils of victory released into the market and then Wizards being the traders they are made so scrolls.
Another method is researching the spell off rumors circulating from the defeat of a Runelord trying to come back and all the juicy magical knowledge being brought back to the world.
I would not call either of those methods as cheezy. Also If I was a military or even a mercenary army I would definitely work the cost of this into my budget just so my entire army is not defeated in a battle. An emergency button to be used to swing the tides of battle to ensure victory.
I like the idea of an Eldritch Knight. You still get all the wizard tricks but can still fight up close and lead the charge.
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If I can find the dev posts the timeline assumes none of the APs have happened yet(except for a few) and even then you assume there was, at least, one person in that group that decided "hey, I know this guy was an evil warmonger enslaving sentient creatures, but let's sell/share his spells anyway" happened.
So, no, you shouldn't assume a unique spell that might not even have made it into the world is available.