
Douglas Muir 406 |
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You can find Part 1 here.
Okay! So this is the part where I begin to grapple with the pretty much impossible task of looking at the spells available to the Spell Sage. As you'll recall from Part 1, the Spell Sage is a wizard who gives up specialization and Arcane Bond. In return, he gets (1) the ability to "overclock" for ECL +4 once or twice a day, and (2) the ability to spontaneously cast ANY spell from the Bard, Cleric or Druid lists -- we'll call these BCD spells -- at the cost of double spell slots plus one round/level casting time. So, lets look at some general considerations for the Spell Sage, and then at 0 and 1st level spells.
WIZARD SPELLS
You get wizard spells like a normal wizard. The only issue here is when and how to use your overclock. That +4 ECL does some obvious things (adds dice to blasts, durations to summons) but also has some less obvious effects (Animate Dead, Contingency) that can be exploited to your advantage.
BACK DOOR SPELLS
A "back door" spell is a spell that's on both the wizard list and one of the BCD lists. This means that you can always cast it, even if it's not in your spell book. For instance, Air Bubble is a 1st level spell on the wizard and druid lists. It's super situational (it provides a bubble of air so you can breathe underwater), so you're not likely to have it in your spell book. But if you need to send a couple of party members down to retrieve something from the sunken wreck in the lagoon, you can blow some first level slots and cast it as a druid spell.
The list of back door spells is far too long to discuss here. I'm just mentioning this so you're aware of it: you have access to practically the entire wizard spell list at all times. The longer casting time means you can't use any of them in combat, but you still have access to literally hundreds of handy utility spells. The back door spells are what make you the most powerful and flexible utility caster in the game, especially at higher levels.
Paradoxically, the only wizard spells you can't spontaneously cast are the ones that aren't shared with a BCD list. Those, you have to get on a scroll or something, the old-fashioned way.
END OF DAY SPELLS
AKA bedtime spells. These are spells you cast at the end of the day, when you're not expecting any more encounters and you might as well burn your daily overclocks and BCDs. So, for instance, if the party is camping in a wilderness area, you might burn an overclock to cast Alarm or Mage Armor before you bed down for the night. At 1st level those will last 10 and 5 hours, respectively, meaning you have a lot less concern about something sneaking up on you. At a higher level you might throw a BCD to cast Campfire Wall to protect your campsite, or Commune With Birds to collect information for tomorrow's cross-country hike. The general principle here is, if you haven't used your dailies, there are plenty of long-lasting protection and information spells that you can throw.
This is another reason Extend Spell is attractive: by midlevels you can cast an Extended version of an hours/level spell before bedtime, and it’ll still be good for part of the next day. At 6th level, for instance, Extended Mage Armor lasts 12 hours; cast it before bedtime Monday and not only is it good all night but you’ll have it for that dungeon excursion first thing Tuesday morning. And because you rested for eight hours, you’ll still have all your precious, precious slots.
INFORMATIONAL SPELLS
Augury, Commune, Legend Lore, Scrying, Speak With Animals, Speak With Plants... the BCD spell lists are packed with handy spells. You’re actually better at collecting information than the specialist Diviner. (GMs take note: Spell Sages make great NPC information brokers.) I'll list some of these spells below, but just take notice as a general thing: if you really need information, you have the tools.
BUFFS, CURES AND FIXES
All the Cure spells, obviously. Remove Curse, Cure Blindness/Deafness, and Cure Disease. Lesser Restoration and its descendants. Heal. Later on, Reincarnation, Raise Dead, and eventually True Resurrection. Endure Elements and all the other spells that give you resistance to conditions. Buffs like Heroism (which you can use as a 2nd level spell). Basically you're a spontaneous caster of the entire cleric spell list, so with a bit of study there's almost no condition you can't fix.
As a practical matter, if you have a cleric in the party -- or even a bard who can throw the occasional CLW -- you shouldn't be called upon to cure too often. But even when there is a party cleric, you can still step up when the party gets zapped with a condition (curse, blindness, confusion) that the cleric hasn't prepared for in advance. No need to retreat back out of the dungeon when the Spell Sage is on the job.
The are hundreds of spells, and there's no possible way I can hit every one. So this is just a few dozen spells that might be particularly interesting. Sometimes you'll see a notation like "Wiz3/Brd2". This means the spell is a third level wizard spell, but a second level bard spell, so you can cast it using two second level spell slots. There are a lot of these. Usually the BCD level is only one lower, but very occasionally it's two, meaning you can cast that spell a whopping four levels earlier than normal... we'll get to those in a bit.
Your Starting Spellbook
Your starting spellbook will be pretty much the same as most wizards'. Burning Hands, Color Spray, Charm Person, Grease, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Sleep... the usual suspects. You always want to memorize at least one blast so you can use your overclock. Otherwise, don't overthink it. Stuff may get weird later, but your start is pretty standard.
0 level spells
The double slot cost doesn't matter, but these do still use a precious daily use of Focused Spell. That said, you have access to a bunch of cantrips that wizards can't normally use. Sometimes you really need a Mending spell, and Detect Fiendish Influence is a rather OP cantrip that's super handy if there are evil outsiders in play. Purify Food and Drink is situational but when you want it, you’ll want it.
First level spells
At this level it is still possible to cast BCD spells in combat if you're willing to burn a FRA (and burn two slots, of course). There aren't a lot of cases where you'd do this, but if you're facing a powerful brute with a low Will save, Hideous Laughter is a thing. Or if your cleric has been knocked down to -8 hp, you can save the day with CLW before he bleeds out.
Alarm: An end-of-day spell. If you're below 4th level, use your overclock for all-night protection.
Blood money: Will become very useful at higher levels. Watch for BCD spells with costly material components. (You’re not using your Str anyway.)
Burning Hands: Your go-to low level blast. At levels 1-2, 5d4 of damage will drop most nonboss opponents. I recommend combining it with Spell Specialization but YMMV. The main drawback is the short range; if that bothers you, take magic missile instead.
Carrion Compass (Clr 1/Wiz 2): Find out who controlled a particular undead, or where it came from. This is the sort of weird, situational spell that nobody ever studies or prepares, but that is invaluable when you actually need it. Just fought a vampire spawn, have a couple of slots left? Boom, throw this to locate the boss vampire.
Charm Animal (Drd 1): Party suddenly encounters a saber-tooth tiger or something? One FRA later, it's your friendly little pussycat.
Commune With Birds (Drd 1/Wiz 2): A rather neglected informational spell that gives you one question about a region -- geographical features, monster activity, what have you. A fine "end of day" spell.
Cure Light Wounds: If the party lacks a healbot they'll be crying to you regularly for this.
Fools Gold (Brd 1/Wiz 2): If someone takes your gold, they get -2 on saves against your spells. Situational, clever players can probably think of all sorts of uses.
Hairline Fractures (Clr 1): Because sometimes you just want to smash through a stone wall.
Hidden Diplomacy (Clr 1): Great social spell if you have an Intimidate monkey in your party.
Hideous Laughter (Brd 1/Wiz 2): There's a reason the bards always take this. For a first level spell, it's quite powerful. Remember that it targets Will.
Infernal Healing: If you can access the material component, it's better than CLW.
Jitterbugs (Brd 1/Wiz 2): Strips -2 AC plus some other minor effects. Not great as a second level spell but reasonable at first level. If your party includes a melee type with Power Attack, they'll appreciate this.
Longstrider (Drd 1): Self only, alas, and will eventually be obsoleted by Fly. But if you're low level and you ever need to cross a lot of ground in a hurry, you can.
Mage Armor: At low levels, walk around armored for 5-6 hours instead of 1-2. Does cost you your daily overclock, so that's a thing.
Magic Missile: 3d4+3 insta-damage, no save. That's not amazing but the long range is a major plus. Consider Spell Specialization here too.
Magic Mouth (Brd 1/Wiz 2): Hey, you can surround your living space with these starting right away at level 1.
Nature's Paths (Drd 1): Is the DM trying to get your party lost in the swamp? Nobody took Survival, so you're just crawling around at 1/2 movement, making wandering monster checks? This should help.
Remove Sickness (Drd 1): Suppress disease, nausea and the sickened effect. Party all failed their saves against a Stinking Cloud or something? Boom, you're back in action.
Restful Sleep (Brd 1): More hit points from rest. Usually less good than a Cure Light Wounds, but can help multiple targets, so it's like half a Mass CLW. A good end-of-day spell if you don't have a party cleric.
Snapdragon Fireworks (Wiz 2/Brd 1): d4 damage + dazzle every round for five rounds. Useful when you're facing a bunch of rats or goblins, but also not bad against a single opponent -- it's long range, 400+ feet, and does not require line of sight. So, you can hide behind a tree (you did put that one rank in Stealth?) and zap the orc for up to 5d4 damage while he runs around looking for you.
Speak With Animals (Drd 1): A fine druidic utility spell.
Summon Monster: At low levels, using your overclock on this gives you a dramatic boost in terms of duration. Once you get past level 5 or so it's no longer an issue, but the Summon Monster spells are perfectly good in their own right. Note that this is also a cleric spell, so if you really need to summon a monkey to climb a rope up that cliff (or whatever), you can always cast it spontaneously with Spell Study.
Unnatural Lust (Brd 1/Wiz 2): Super situational, but if you throw it when the moment is right...
Obviously this is a short and partial list. Still, I think it'll do to get you started. As always, comments welcome!
Doug M.

UnArcaneElection |

Back Door Spells: If you have any downtime, you can use Scribe Scroll with these to eventually get them into your spellbook so that they are Front Door Spells. Cheaper than buying the Scrolls for this purpose.
Blood Money: Don't expect this to be widely allowed unless you are in the AP where it appears. Although strangely, according to Archives of Nethys, it is PFS-legal.
Remove Sickness: "Party all failed their saves against a Stinking Cloud or something?" That means you're Nauseated too, and can't cast. Even if everybody except you failed, you can only cast it on 1 other party member, so choose wisely.

Douglas Muir 406 |
Back Door Spells: If you have any downtime, you can use Scribe Scroll with these to eventually get them into your spellbook so that they are Front Door Spells.
Alas, probably not. Scribe Scroll lets you scroll "any spell that you know". That's different from "any spell that you can cast". This has been much discussed over on the Rules forum.
Blood Money: Don't expect this to be widely allowed unless you are in the AP where it appears. Although strangely, according to Archives of Nethys, it is PFS-legal.
The one-round duration makes Blood Money a bit less OP. I note that there's a clear division of opinion on the boards with one group saying "never never never", another group saying "OP but not game-breaking" and a minority who don't mind it much. Anyway, if allowed (and I'd allow it -- I guess I'm in the second group), it's exactly the sort of thing a Spell Sage would want to be aware of.
Remove Sickness: "Party all failed their saves against a Stinking Cloud or something?" That means you're Nauseated too, and can't cast. Even if everybody except you failed, you can only cast it on 1 other party member, so choose wisely.
Fair point. In the eventual final version, I'll adjust that to "Party tank failed his save against Sickening Ray or something". On one hand, it'll be pretty rare that something zaps a key party member with a bad condition and ignores you and your feeble Fort save. But it /can/ happen, and when and if it does you'll be pretty happy to get Am Barbarian back on his feet in return for two first level spell slots and a FRA.
Doug M.

UnArcaneElection |

UnArcaneElection wrote:Back Door Spells: If you have any downtime, you can use Scribe Scroll with these to eventually get them into your spellbook so that they are Front Door Spells.Alas, probably not. Scribe Scroll lets you scroll "any spell that you know". That's different from "any spell that you can cast". This has been much discussed over on the Rules forum.
That's what I used to think, but I remember asking about this in some other thread that I can't remember and the consensus there seemed to be that you could do this. But I would be glad to see evidence that it isn't so, since it is rather overpowered (but then again, so is Magus Knowledge Pool, for the same reasons, unless THAT has some implicit restriction that I haven't figured out to keep you from scribing the spells you access that way).
UnArcaneElection wrote:Blood Money: Don't expect this to be widely allowed unless you are in the AP where it appears. Although strangely, according to Archives of Nethys, it is PFS-legal.The one-round duration makes Blood Money a bit less OP. I note that there's a clear division of opinion on the boards with one group saying "never never never", another group saying "OP but not game-breaking" and a minority who don't mind it much. Anyway, if allowed (and I'd allow it -- I guess I'm in the second group), it's exactly the sort of thing a Spell Sage would want to be aware of.
Certainly, but I would say that a FIRST LEVEL spell that does this is way overpowered. Just using the example given in the spell text, of using it to cast Stoneskin in return for d6 damage + 1 point of Strength Damage, this would be really overpowered on a Magus or Eldritch Knight(*) who wants a way to really ham it up on the front line.
(*)And a Spell Sage Wizard could become an Eldritch Knight, although in most cases this probably isn't a good use of the archetype, since you need the scaling of uses per day on Spell Study, and it's too slow to use in combat; on the other hand, if for some reason you don't have any friends capable of bad status removal, this might be what you need to survive as an Eldritch Knight(*).
(*)In some cases, Hellknight Signifer instead, especially for a Spell Sage of the proper mind set who followed your advice and got Arcane Armor Training. Not as good BAB, but on the other hand you don't need to take a level off or VMC Oracle (Battle (Skill At Arms)) to get martial weapon proficiency for it, and it doesn't have any lost spellcasting progression levels of its own, and becoming tanky would be really handy if you want to use Focused Spells to be a Bad Touch Wizard who has to go after really tough and/or high-value targets occasionally: Spell Sage Wizard 5/Hellknight Signifer 3 (get Hellknight Weapon Proficiency, Arcane Armor Mastery, and Signifer Armor Training)/Spell Sage Wizard 3 more (get 1 more use each of Focused Spells and Spell Study)/Hellknight Signifer 7 more.
UnArcaneElection wrote:Remove Sickness: "Party all failed their saves against a Stinking Cloud or something?" That means you're Nauseated too, and can't cast. Even if everybody except you failed, you can only cast it on 1 other party member, so choose wisely.Fair point. In the eventual final version, I'll adjust that to "Party tank failed his save against Sickening Ray or something". On one hand, it'll be pretty rare that something zaps a key party member with a bad condition and ignores you and your feeble Fort save. But it /can/ happen, and when and if it does you'll be pretty happy to get Am Barbarian back on his feet in return for two first level spell slots and a FRA.
On the other hand, the easiest way to avoid falling victim to something like this is to be sufficiently far behind your party tank that they can't get both you and your party tank in the area of effect. If you can spare the feat, getting Great Fortitude and maybe even Improved Great Fortitude might not be a bad idea. Normally I wouldn't recommend the latter due to the 1/day use limit, but if you are the only bad status remover in the party, you might need to bite the bullet and get it anyway. For the latter reason, being a Dwarf might not be a bad idea even though normally not recommended for a Wizard (no Intelligence bonus), given that being a Dwarf doesn't have a limit on uses per day, and if you're REALLY having to do everything yourself, Dwarven Weapon Familiarity is nice to have at the lower levels, or you can trade it out for Shadowhunter (if you expect to need to do Bad Touch against Incorporeal creatures, and this stays good at higher levels).

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There are definitely two flavors of BCD spells, really nice utility call outs exclusive to other lists, and those that overlap with the Wizard spell list such that there is little need to spend time and energy scribing Wizard versions into your spell book.
You can safely avoid some relatively common spell picks during Wizard spell selection either because they are low enough the increased casting times are not prohibitive or because they make great scroll scribing targets. Though do note that you will need a strong Use Magic Device skill to reliably activate them in a pinch as they are not technically Wizard spells.
Note: * = special call out for being lower level than the equivalent Wizard version.
Curtesy Bard:
Charm Person
Comprehend Languages
Disguise Self
Expeditious Retreat
Grease
Heightened Awareness
Unseen Servant
Curtesy Cleric:
Air Bubble
Ant Haul
Endure Elements
Infernal Healing
Obscuring Mist
Protection from [Insert Here]
Curtesy Druid:
Hydraulic Push
Snowball
Curtesy Bard:
Alter Self
Detect Thoughts
Invisibility
Tongues*
Curtesy Cleric:
Bear's/Bull's/Eagle's/Fox's/Owl's
Darkness
Find Traps
Resist Energy
Shatter
Curtesy Druid:
Flaming Sphere
Fog Cloud
Frost Fall
Gust of Wind
Spider Climb
Curtesy Bard:
Adjustable Disguise
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
Gaseous Form
Haste
Invisibility Sphere
Phantom Steed
Scrying*
See Invisibility
Seek Thoughts
Tiny Hut
Curtesy Cleric:
Deeper Darkness
Dispel Magic
Locate Object
Magic Circle against [Insert Here]
Curtesy Druid:
Animal Aspect, Greater
Create Treasure Map
Daylight
Protection from Energy
Sleet Storm
Water Breathing
Starting from level 4 onward your mileage will really begin to vary, and scroll costs and casting time increases (now four full rounds) begin to grow prohibitive. That said, it is worth noting some common spell progressions you can cheat your way into without taking Wizard spells:
Planar Ambassador - ie., binding, conversing, trapping, extra dimensional beings. You can BCD for Magic Circle X, Planar Ally, Planar Binding, Dimensional Anchor, Plane Shift, Astral Projection, as well as get access to excellent Cleric divinations for free.
Divination/Teleportation specialist - ie., scry-and-die, ask the DM, recon. The Cleric and Druid spell lists in particular tend to be equal, if not stronger, in these areas. Bards get Scrying at level 3, and Druid Scrying is much cheaper. Tree Stride and Transport via Plants are great utility transport spells. Ancestral Memory, Augury, Divination and the like are just better than Wizard equivalents. The only thing you can't really take advantage of are emergency retreats spells - Dimension Door, Getaway, etc. due to casting time limitations.
Base builder - Create Demiplane, Fairy Ring Retreat, Plane Shift, Wish, Miracle are all free picks for you from BCD, and at lower levels you have Web Shelter, Tiny Hut and the outstanding Hide Campsite spell from Druid level 3.

Coidzor |
On the minionmancy front, Call Animal can work out quite well if you can work out how to legitimately win the animals over and get them to have a Helpful attitude such that you can cast Carry Companion on them. Your X/day CL boost is also handy for getting access to animals that have a CR greater than your own from further afield.
Anthropomorphic Animal + Diplomacy and Charisma buffs seems like the best way to me to accomplish that, at least offhand, and that opens up at 5th level.
Animate Dead also would benefit from both the X/day CL boost and the fact that Call Animal can get you some of the tougher animals in the area. Speaking of Animate Dead, you can handle Desecrate yourself if you have to cast it instead of having crafted a Voidstick to handle it.
Commune with Birds could even be employed to help find out about what big nasty animals are in the area.