You can find Part 1 here and Part 2over here. Now in Part 3, I continue to grapple with the pretty much impossible task of looking at the spells available to the Spell Sage. Last time, we looked at 0 and 1st level spells. Onwards now to 2nd and 3rd level spells!
(These are obviously partial and incomplete lists. Feel free to add more in the comments.)
Second level spells:
At this level casting bard, cleric and druid spells takes two full rounds, which means on one hand you probably won't be casting any of these in combat. On the other hand you could totally cast them in a situation where you see combat coming. Anyway, this level is full of fun utility and situational spells, plus a bunch of neat information collectors.
Air Step (Drd 2). Super situational, but sometimes the DM just throws a corridor full of spikes or a huge patch of yellow mold or something.
Animal Messenger (Dr 2). The poor man’s Sending, much slower but with greater bandwidth. Good end-of-day spell to report back your findings.
Anonymous Interaction (Brd 2). Have your party face distract the guards for two rounds and you're good. "By the way, we weren't the droids you were looking for." "Okay."
Ant Haul, Communal. Everyone escapes carrying everything.
Augury (Clr 2). Roll them bones. Not an amazing spell but once in a great while it's just what you need. "All right then, what happens if I take the red pill -- Weal or Woe?"
Barkskin (Dr 2): 10 min/level buff that you can grab as a cleric or druid spell. If you use your overclock you’ll increase the duration and also add another +1 or +2 of AC. This is a spell you throw on your melee tank when you’re pretty sure this will be the last combat of the day and you can see it coming at least a couple of rounds off. Don't be surprised if the tank comes back asking for another go and trying to make it a regular thing. "Sorry, emergencies only. My precious spell slots are more important than your Armor Class." You have to be firm with these people.
Boneshatter. Another so-so spell that is greatly improved by your overclock. Doesn't have quite the raw damage of Burning Arc or Scorching Ray, but the 5' move and the special use against undead probably compensate. And if you went the dhampir + racial FCB route, this really shines: at 4th level you can zap one enemy for 9d6 of damage. Note that there's no dice cap on the total damage this spell can do, so it will stay fresh far into high levels and is an excellent candidate for Empower Spell and Maximize Spell. Empowered Boneshatter is only a 4th level spell, but at 10th level with your overclock it will do 15d6 to one target, or 18d6 if you're doing the dhampir thing.
Burning Arc. One of the few 2nd level wizard spells that really shines with your overclock, because increasing your ECL gives you more damage and also more targets. A normal 3rd level wizard will do 3d6 of damage to a primary target and 1d6 to someone standing nearby. At 3rd level you can do 7d6, then 3d6, then 1d6 -- nearly three times as much damage. Along with Burning Hands and Fireball, a strong candidate for the Spell Specialization and/or Intensified Spell treatment.
Curse Terrain, Lesser. Sometimes a wizard just wants her privacy.
Blood Biography (Wiz 3, Brd 2). "The orc's name was Gruzz't and he was killed by Aspis Consortium mercenaries, not ten minutes ahead of us." Boom, instant Sherlock Holmes.
Create Treasure Map (Wiz 2, Brd 2). 'You can take a piece from a dead creature’s body and use it to create a map that reveals the locations of any valuables that creature knew about while still alive.' A good end-of-day spell, if slightly yucky. Costs 100 gp per shot, but OTOH under RAW you can cut the piece off and take it home to cast, as long as you follow the "within 24 hours of death" limit.
Defensive Shock. A rather meh spell that becomes pretty good with your overclock. Good for swarms.
Delay Poison (Brd 2). See, this is another one of those spells that nobody ever prepares, but that it's absolutely awesome to whip out when you really need it. Party member just got poisoned by something horrible? Zap, the effect is paused for one hour/level. Note that at higher levels, or with Extend Spell, this becomes a night-before spell. Descending into a cavern full of drow with their wretched sleep-inducing crossbow bolts? At 8th level, Extended Delay Poison works for 16 hours, so cast it before bedtime Sunday and it will be good until Monday afternoon.
Desecrate (Clr 2). Oh hey look at this: a cleric spell that normally you have no access to, AND it lasts 2 hours/level AND it synergizes with Animate Dead. See discussion of Animate Dead, below.
Detect Magic, Greater: Backdoor spell that nobody ever prepares, but handy in whodunit / mystery type situations. Remember what we said back in Part 2 about the Spell Sage being a better diviner than the specialist diviner? This level is full of these sorts of Scooby Gang mystery-busting spells.
Detect Thoughts (Wiz 2/Brd 2). Back door spell. Brought a captive back from the dungeon? Skip that messy torture scene with this simple spell.
Enter Image (Wiz 3/Brd 2): A pleasantly creepy spell that allows you to see and speak through pictures or sculptures of yourself. Great spell for an NPC Spell Sage. "Wait, why are there pictures of him hanging on every wall?" "I guess he's really vain or something."
Flotsam Vessel (Dr 2). If you have a single large stick, you can create a magical raft that will get you across the river or to that island just a few miles offshore, or just keep you from drowning. Situational, but particularly great if you’re facing one of those OSR-y DMs who tries to make every river crossing memorable.
Gentle Repose (Wiz 3/Clr 2). You get it two levels early. An out of combat spell pretty much by definition, right?
Heroic Fortune (Brd 2). Costs 100 gp and gives one (1) temporary Hero Point. (Obviously, only relevant if your DM allows Hero Points; discuss this in advance.) Normally not that useful because of the two full round casting time... but! however! One of the little-known uses of Hero Points? "Recall: You can spend a hero point to recall a spell you have already cast or to gain another use of a special ability that is otherwise limited. This should only be used on spells and abilities possessed by your character that recharge on a daily basis." Okay, so under RAW you could cast this spell to get another use of your overclock and/or recall a spell *of any level* that you've already cast.
Heroism (Wiz 3/Brd 2). Situational, but maybe you need to buff the party barbarian before his single combat with the orc tribe's champion. See Barkskin, above. "I said /no/."
Ice Spears. Like Scorching Ray, an okay spell that gets much better with your overclock, especially against large creatures that you can hit with multiple spears. At 4th level, 8d6 of damage + a trip attempt is not bad.
Insect Scouts (Dr 2). Absolutely terrific low level information / scouting spell. Watch the expression on your DM’s face when he realizes that in return for two second level spell slots, he pretty much has to hand you the map of the dungeon. At higher levels (or combined with your overclock) it will also give you two or three potentially useful rerolls when you start exploring the place.
Investigative Mind (Brd 2/Wiz 2). You did throw a couple of ranks at Appraise and Linguistics, right? Okay, so at the end of the day you blow a couple of spell slots for better rolls on appraising the loot, figuring out the weird inscriptions, or determining just what the heck that thing you just killed was.
Lay of the Land (Dr 2). A great end-of-day spell. Cast this regularly if you’re playing through Kingmaker or some other wander-around-getting lost-and-exploring adventure.
Matchmaker (Wiz 3/Brd 2). Have fun at the Duke's Dress Ball. More generally, a great spell for the DM to put into the hands of an NPC Spell Sage. Especially an impulsive one who dumped Wis.
Path of Glory: for two slots, you can heal the whole party hp x your level. Throw an Extend on it to double the effect. Basically turns you into a healbomb cleric.
Resist Energy: Entering the Glacial Rift of the Cold-Themed Monsters? Overclock this to get another 40 minutes duration plus 10 more points of protection.
Restoration, Lesser: As we noted back in Part 1, you're the emergency-room medtech when the party doesn't have a proper healbot.
Scorching Ray. Okay blast that gets much better with your overclock. For a couple of levels, 3rd and 4th, this may be your go-to blast; 8d6 of damage at these levels is not bad at all.
Silent Table (Clr 2/Wiz 2). Because sometimes a wizard wants her privacy.
Soften Earth and Stone (Dr 2). Hey, remember back in First Edition when this was called Transmute Rock to Mud? Good times, good times. Anyway, this is a nice little battlefield prep spell.
Splinter Spell Resistance. Your overclock only extends the duration, but once you start encountering creatures with SR regularly you'll want to add this spell to your repertoire. At high levels you'll have 2nd level spell slots to burn, and anything that reduces enemy SR is good. As a Spell Sage, you hate SR a lot. There's nothing more annoying than throwing an overclocked blast and failing to overcome SR.
Suggestion (Wiz 3/Brd 2). Ahh, you get access to this excellent spell two levels early. Abuse it relentlessly.
Tongues (Wiz 3/Brd 2): Once you hit 3rd level, anything you meet that will stand still for a couple of rounds, you can talk to.
Tree Shape (Dr 2). Turn yourself into a tree (undetectable as anything but a tree) for one hour/level. Hey, someone has to survive the TPK.
Zone of Truth (Clr 2). Another great interrogation spell. Fun in social situations too!
Third level spells:
Akashic Communion (Wiz 4/Brd 3). Multiple Knowledge checks at +10.
Animate Dead (Wiz 4/Clr 3): Oh boy. This spell. This spell right here.
Okay, so this spell alone may launch your character on a career of accursed necromancy, because it's just so darn great. First, you get it two levels early, so you can start building your undead army the moment you hit Level 5. Second, your overclock counts towards the total HD of undead that you can control. So, boom, right away you can animate 18 HD of undead with a single casting. This means that once you turn 5th level, the next big fight you have generates a zombie. In a perfect world you'll fight an orc tribe or something and end up with a whole tribe of zombies following you around. Just animate the hell out of everything you meet and kill. The only drawback is that you're going to burn through a lot of onyx gems, but at 25 gp/HD it's pretty cheap and you'll almost certainly come out ahead in terms of consumables saved by using your undead army as cannon fodder. If you come across something better that you want to animate -- like, you have fifteen orcs and then you kill a hill giant -- use Control Undead (the spell) to keep your horde in line.
Oh and third, we mention that this synergizes with Desecrate, which you also have access to? Because it totally does. Double the number of HD you can animate, and also get +1 hp/hd. Did I say 18 HD of undead at 5th level? Given just a bit of time to prepare, you can make that *36 HD of undead, all with a little hp boost*. In addition to that, there are a bunch of other tricks for boosting ECL yet further with this. The Deathwine spell is probably the simplest and easiest. If you really want to go nuts, ask around on the forums. And the dhampir FCB too, of course. As a practical matter, the limiting factor is usually finding enough HD worth of dead things all at once in one place. But honestly, if you’re going this route, you just have a deep pocket full of onyx gems and every time you meet a particularly promising corpse, you animate it. If this puts you over your limit, whatever, you order your excess zombies to march off a cliff.
-- GMs take note: an NPC Spell Sage can have a ridiculous number of zombies on hand, if that's your thing. NPC Spell Sages can be troublesome in all sorts of ways.
Assume Appearance (Brd 3/Wiz 3). Situational back door spell. Nice for NPC Spell Sages ("I murdered the Baron last Tuesday, and I've been pretending to be your friend since then! Ah ha ha haaaah!"
Aura of the Unremarkable (Wiz 4/Brd 3). Abuse this spell regularly if you and your party are OSR-ish, and your DM insists on being all simulationist: "Oh the Watch would show up and stop you from summoning a demon in the middle of the town square!" Fine, whatever: cast this spell. Now everyone is all "Yup, summoning a demon. But hey, fresh beets for lunch!"
Battering Blast: This is an okay spell that becomes great with overclocking. Increasing ECL gives you more spheres plus more damage per sphere plus +4 on the bull rush from each sphere. So, at 6th level you'd normally get one sphere doing 3d6 of damage and a bull rush at +11 or so. Not that great.. but with overclocking, you'd get two spheres doing 5d6 each, and two bull rushes at +15 each or +25 each if you hit the same target. For a 3rd level spell slot, that’s pretty amazing. Going forward, this is on the short list of spells to get the Spell Specialization / Intensify Spell treatment. Go that route, and at 10th level you can throw three spheres for 8d6 each and three bull rushes at +37 *each*. This will bull rush your enemy back into the middle of next week and almost certainly knock them prone too. And of course it's wonderful, wonderful force damage, which pretty much nothing is immune to.
Charm Monster (Wiz 4/Brd 3). You get early access to this excellent spell. The 3-round casting time will be an issue. Have your party face keep the creature distracted.
Confusion (Wiz 4/Brd 3). You get access to this two levels early. The casting time may be an issue, since this is usually a combat spell. Have your party face distract etc. etc.
Conjure Carriage (Brd 3/Wiz 3). Have fun at the Duke's Dress Ball. An interesting sub-question is whether you can sleep in the carriage. (I'd say yes.) If so, then use this for overland travel and recover the spell slots at the same time.
Cure Serious Wounds (Clr 3). No healbot, no problem.
Curse of Disgust (Wiz 5/Brd 3). Dude this is permanent. And you get access to it four levels early. It's great for evil and good aligned parties alike -- it's kinda like a mark of justice, yeah? Also fun for NPC Spell Sages. This spell pretty much defines "abusable in a fun way".
Demanding Message (Wiz 4/Brd 3). Long-range Suggestion spell with excellent deniability. The extra casting time hardly matters, and you get access to it two levels early.
Dispel Magic: Always a good spell, but your overclock will give you +4 on checks to dispel, including counterspell checks. Note that if you haven’t prepared it, you can backdoor it via the cleric spell list.
Dreadscape. Have fun at the Duke's Dress Ball. For certain definitions of "fun".
Fireball: As noted in Part 1, with a couple of feats this can become your go-to blast from level 5 to 15. Yes, lots of things are immune to fire but you can't argue with the range or the blast radius.
Glibness (Brd 3). +20 on Bluffs to convince others of the truth? Yeah, there's a reason this spell is normally restricted to bards. With a high enough Bluff, you can more or less alter reality.
Glyph of Warding (Clr 3). Hey, you get access to this spell. (Normally it's cleric-only.) You can also mix it up with weird combinations that are normally impossible like confusion, charm monster, fear, poison or fireball.
Nap Stack. This 3rd level spell lets you regain all your spells "and special abilities" in 2 hours instead of 8. Sadly, it's only usable once per week (it'd be pretty OP otherwise). "Special abilities" pretty clearly includes Focused Spells and Spell Study, though. We all know about the 15-minute adventuring day, right? This spell encourages the one-day adventuring week. "Any reason we can't just, you know, hang out for a few days? The Tomb of Relentless Doom will wait, right?"
Protection from Energy. See Resist Energy. Resist more, resist longer.
Remove Curse (Wiz 4/Clr 3). Early access. (And when your party needs this, they'll really need it.)
Scrying (Wiz4/Brd 3). Early access: start your scrying career at 5th level! Particularly nice since this is usually a downtime spell anyway.
Speak With Plants (Drd 3). This is an informational spell that will vary between okay and super useful depending entirely on how tight or generous your DM is. Can you get useful information from the mold on the dungeon walls? The flowers in the Duke's private garden? I'd err on the side of "yes", but YMMV.
Tiny Hut (Wiz3/Brd3): Pretty much the ultimate end-of-day spell. If you're hiking through the wilderness and have a couple of slots left, boom, there you go -- shelter for the night.
Vampiric Touch. You don't see a lot of touch monkey Spell Sages. On the other hand, this spell is kind of an exception to the general rule. You stroll up to the monster, use overclocked Vampiric Touch, and take a bunch of its hp -- 4d6 at 4th level, 5d6 at 6th. The monster roars and hits you? Hey, it's just going to claw away those temporary hp you just stole from it. (Don't try this with a basilisk or a wight, or anything grapple-y.) A necromancy spell, so the dhampir FCB stacks.
Water Breathing. And this is a night-before spell, especially if you use Extend Spell. "Okay, so remember that when you explore the sunken wreck, you'll be down one third-level spell slot because you had to cast Water Breathing on the party." "Yeah no. I cast Extended Water Breathing the night before. I'm 8th level, so with my overclock that's 48 hours of water breathing. Divide that among four party members, we sleep for eight hours and we all still have four hours left in the morning." "Wait, what?"
Quick note about the Animate Dead section. I'm a big fan of this spell, and I can't help but think your write up is a little... lacking?
First, bloody skeletons are always better. You talk about protecting investment in consumables, why not protect investment in onyx by having undying minions?
Second, desecrate does not increase the number of HD you can CONTROL, just how much you can ANIMATE at one time. So while the hp boost is nice and it lets you have bigger minions, it doesn't let you have more minions. I assume overclock would be similar, but honestly it varies from gm to gm.
Third, having lots of little minions is not only bad from a mechanics perspective, but also bogs the game down a lot. No one wants to see you roll 30 attacks, none of which hit.
Other than that, great guide. I appreciate what you've done and all the work you've put into it.
Most of these are fairly situational or a direct prefight buff. But hey the're good at what they do
Align weapon/communal
Protection from alignment communal
Plant Growth
Hag's Seasoning
Warp Wood
Stoneshape
Harvest Season
Daylight
Hide Campsite
Aquatic Trail
Lily Pad Stride
Stormsight
Riversight(your own suggestion)
Meld into Stone
Hidden Knowledge
Mage's Crawl Space
Full Pouch
Good Hope
Silence
Mindlocked Messenger
Heightened Reflexes
Voluminous Vocabulary
Greensight
With the Wind
Soothing Mud
Signs of the Land
Helping Hand
Speak with Dead
Status
Quick note about the Animate Dead section. I'm a big fan of this spell, and I can't help but think your write up is a little... lacking?
First, bloody skeletons are always better. You talk about protecting investment in consumables, why not protect investment in onyx by having undying minions?
Totally reasonable; I just didn't care to get into that level of detail.
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Second, desecrate does not increase the number of HD you can CONTROL, just how much you can ANIMATE at one time. So while the hp boost is nice and it lets you have bigger minions, it doesn't let you have more minions. I assume overclock would be similar, but honestly it varies from gm to gm.
I believe there's been a lot of discussion of this over the years. Any player who's considering going this route should do a quick search in the Rules forum, or just post there.
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Third, having lots of little minions is not only bad from a mechanics perspective, but also bogs the game down a lot. No one wants to see you roll 30 attacks, none of which hit.
Oh sure. At higher levels, having a dozen 2 HD zombies following you around is pretty pointless. But at levels 5-6, they're still pretty useful; and after that, hey, surely you'll find *something* useful to animate.
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Other than that, great guide. I appreciate what you've done and all the work you've put into it.
Aw shucks [kicks dirt]. -- I'm just hoping someone will use it and get some fun out of it, and then come back and report.
I really hate to be the guy starting a war about something as petty as one clause in a spell, but I think that it's pretty set in stone that desecrate doesn't let you control more HD.
"Furthermore, anyone who casts animate dead within this area may create as many as double the normal amount of undead (that is, 4 HD per caster level rather than 2 HD per caster level)."
The only thing about animate dead that was 2 HD per caster level was how much you could make at once, otherwise it would have said "and control 8 HD per caster level rather than 4 HD per caster level".
Totally possible I've missed something, and I've never heard anyone else discussing this (though I am relatively new so I wouldn't put such ignorance past me).
Thanks again Doug, I love all the guides you have written!
Most of these are fairly situational or a direct prefight buff. But hey the're good at what they do...
Well, some of them are. Some of them are pretty junky. For instance, Soothing Mud is a weak mass cure spell that's clearly intended to allow a druid to partially substitute when the party doesn't have a healbomb cleric. But from the Spell Sage POV, it's not nearly as good as Path of Glory. Similarly, Daylight is a weak situational mass debuff that I can't imagine ever being worth spending two spell slots and one of your dailies. Harvest Season is a poor man's Create Food and Drink; you already have access to the better spell, so there's no reason you'd ever use this one. Hag's Seasoning is a fun concept but it has two uses and one of them is dramatically underpowered ("mass one temporary hp/half level for one hour" come on) and the other... yeah I can imagine situations where that could be the way to go (poison a pig and throw it into the hydra's lair) but super rare and almost never worth the resources. There are a number of spells like that. Others are spells that are so situational I couldn't justify making a long document longer. I mean, if I think hard I can imagine a situation where Greensight might be a useful spell, but... yeah I have to work at it. And Stormsight pretty much defines "so situational as to not be worth mentioning" unless you're playing in a weird campaign that includes a crazy lot of weird weather. Presumably some people do, but the overlap between those people and people who want to play a Spell Sage is probably pretty tiny.
That said, there are several spells in here that are absolutely worth considering! I can't believe I missed Riversight, Speak With Dead is essential, Warp Wood is classic, Good Hope is the mass buff you throw when you don't have a bard and it's late in the day, and Meld Into Stone is one of those "situational but you know clever players will make it dance" spells. So, thanks for this, and they will definitely go in any final version of the Guide.
I really hate to be the guy starting a war about something as petty as one clause in a spell, but I think that it's pretty set in stone that desecrate doesn't let you control more HD.
Okay, duly noted. Any other thoughts or comments?
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Thanks again Doug, I love all the guides you have written!
Healing mud is a fairly edge case for when you need hp and ability score healing like against poison rouges. Its a slot level higher than path of glory but also does a lesser restoration on the party
Harvest season is a level lower than create food and water
Daylight was for dealing with magical darkness
Hags seasoning was purely for fun :D
(These are obviously partial and incomplete lists. Feel free to add more in the comments.)
Second level spells:
{. . .}
Some of these are listed as if they were BCD-only, but are available as Wizard spells -- for instance (not an exhaustive list), Boneshatter and Ice Spears, which doesn't belong in the 2nd level list anyway, as nobody gets it before the Wizard, at 4th spell level and 3rd level, respectively; as well as Insect Scouts, which the Druid does get before the Wizard.
Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Anonymous Interaction (Brd 2). Have your party face distract the guards for two rounds and you're good. "By the way, we weren't the droids you were looking for." "Okay."
{. . .}
Shouldn't that be "By the way, we aren't the druids you're looking for."?
Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Conjure Carriage (Brd 3/Wiz 3). Have fun at the Duke's Dress Ball. An interesting sub-question is whether you can sleep in the carriage. (I'd say yes.) If so, then use this for overland travel and recover the spell slots at the same time.
{. . .}
I would say that whether your sleep is worth anything would depend upon how good the road is. Some REALLY well-maintained road -- might work. Your average Golarion road -- no way.
Some of these are listed as if they were BCD-only, but are available as Wizard spells -- for instance (not an exhaustive list), Boneshatter and Ice Spears, which doesn't belong in the 2nd level list anyway, as nobody gets it before the Wizard, at 4th spell level and 3rd level, respectively; as well as Insect Scouts, which the Druid does get before the Wizard.
That's why it says DRAFT in big capital letters!
Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Shouldn't that be "By the way, we aren't the druids you're looking for."?
On the Part 1 thread, someone just pointed out Arcane Concordance (Brd 3). Holy smokes yes. This is a spell that was obviously never intended to fall into the hands of a wizard -- it's bard-only. But Spell Sages can cast it, and yeah it's free metamagic (among other things). Sell that Rod of Extend Spell, you won't be needing it.
Also pointed out: Blood Money + Lesser Restoration + Masterwork Transformation = free masterwork everything pretty quickly. This gets into the Great Blood Money Debate, which this is not the thread for. I'll just note that if you can talk your DM into letting you have Blood Money (hey, it's RAW) then this should be on the short list of a/b/u/s/e/s/ h/a/c/k/s interesting and useful things you can do with it.
Over on the Part 1 thread, someone just pointed out Arcane Concordance (Brd 3). Holy smokes yes. This is a spell that was obviously never intended to fall into the hands of a wizard -- it's bard-only. But Spell Sages can cast it, and yeah it's free metamagic (among other things). Sell that Rod of Extend Spell; you won't be needing it.
Also pointed out: Blood Money + Lesser Restoration + Masterwork Transformation = free masterwork everything pretty quickly. This gets into the Great Blood Money Debate, which this is not the thread for. I'll just note that if you can talk your DM into letting you have Blood Money (hey, it's RAW) then this should be on the short list of a/b/u/s/e/s/ h/a/c/k/s interesting and useful things you can do with it.
Arcane Concordance has as a Material Component (not Focus) a spent Wand. Every once in a while you will end up generating one from normal Wand use, but if you start trying to pick these up to be able to cast this spell every day it's going to get expensive.
I suspect spent wands are difficult to acquire rather than necessarily expensive.
Anyway, spell suggestions. Ironskin is usually limited by being implicitly a duergar-only spell. Since it's not explicit spell sages can probably get it.
Plant growth can be a trap you can cast to prepare the battlefield well in advance, or a way of making friends with a farmer, or security for your campsite.
If you're using Ultimate Wildernesses' discovery point system then signs of the land is the spell for you.
Over on the Part 1 thread, someone just pointed out Arcane Concordance (Brd 3). Holy smokes yes. This is a spell that was obviously never intended to fall into the hands of a wizard -- it's bard-only. But Spell Sages can cast it, and yeah it's free metamagic (among other things). Sell that Rod of Extend Spell; you won't be needing it.
Burning 3rd level spell slots to extend other spells isn't necessarily better than spending some gold.
Burning 3rd level spell slots to extend other spells isn't necessarily better than spending some gold.
"Tomorrow we're going to investigate the flooded caverns. Legend has it that a giant demon jellyfish and its swarms of half-jellyfish offspring guard the legendary treasure of -- "
"Arcane Concordance! Extended overclocked Mage Armor, Extended Breathe Water, Extended Delay Poison. All of those are good through midday tomorrow, so if we get an early start we should be fine. I'll have all my spells restudied by then, of course. Who wants some nachos?"
You'd have to ask them, but a spent wand with no price given sounds like the kind of thing someone included because they thought it sounded cool or neat rather than something that was intended as a serious balance or gatekeeping method.
I think I know the answer, but I just want to clarify... You can't store your backdoor spells with Spell Storing, can you? Because they are now Full Round Actions, right?
^I think the extended casting time gets taken care of when you are putting the spell into the Spell Storing weapon or armor -- otherwise it wouldn't work for most normal spells, which are Standard Action cast, whereas the release by the weapon or armor is Immediate Action.
A few more spells I've found to be useful (actually and theoretically):
Deathknell-Cleric spell- prob already mentioned but i'll throw it out there again. gives an easily obtained ECL boost- just sacrifice a small animal or something for a quick out of battle CL boost if needed- like animate dead
Deathwine- not a BCD spell but can give a rather large boost to necro spells- ie animate dead
Sharesister- cleric/witch spell- not really helpful for you unfortunately but you can sort of pass around your CL bonus to other casters if needed- give them just a taste of your power and watch them turn green with envy
Blood Sentinel- again not BCD but gives you that familiar you missed out on for a short time- gets even better if you apply your CL boost
I'm beginning to think, spell sage may be one of the best necromancers out there due to the shear CL bonuses he can achieve as well being able to drop desecrate almost on a whim
^I think the extended casting time gets taken care of when you are putting the spell into the Spell Storing weapon or armor -- otherwise it wouldn't work for most normal spells, which are Standard Action cast, whereas the release by the weapon or armor is Immediate Action.
So are you saying you CAN or CAN'T spell-store the backdoor spells?
I'm not sure if this is worth noting in regards to Animate Dead or on Reincarnate itself, or in some kind of general shenanigans or weird tricks entry, but since Reincarnate actually creates an entirely new body and only destroys the old body if you choose to cast the spell in its vicinity, you can use it, especially in combination with Blood Money where that spell is on the table, to build up a supply of bodies with a good number of HD on them, or at least provide an opportunity to stretch them out a bit.
An Elephant, for instance, has 11 HD. If one of them would happen to die in such a way that it did not dislike the caster, one could Reincarnate them into some other kind of animal that would then have 11 HD. That is quite possibly more HD than a base animal of that variety would have and possibly even with enough HD that they could potentially be an advanced enough specimen to have advanced size category.
Of course, this does involve either A. doing a fair amount of legwork that the GM then has to look over and sign off on or B. the GM doing that legwork themselves.
