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Greetings All, I need some help choosing schools and spells for my first PFS wizard. The thing is.... it's a Wayang Chronomancer/Feysworn (devouted to Shyka).
<Backstory>
The build isn't important, i'm more looking at school and spell selection. This character is LVL 3 thanks to some boons and GM Credit, so i haven't played them yet.
Trying to choose schools and spells have left me flabbergasted. Out of all my 20 PFS characters, i have one dedicated caster [Gnome Sorcerer, fey-bloodline; enchantment focused] with my other characters with casting abilities use magic more for support and/or utility.
I don't want to be Illusion/Shadow focused [but am interested in dabbling in Shadow Conjuration], i've never played a blaster mage so that's an option. Other than that, i'm debating what other schools to use or exclude.
Thanks in advance.
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Great! I love to see more Wayang PCs! I've trained for 30+ years in an Indonesian martial art so I'm delighted to see Indonesian Wayang puppetry show up in Pathfinder.
Regarding your wizard, school and spell selection can at first seem overwhelming. Key is to choose spells to cover common situations then fill in the rest according to your whimsy.
One particularly helpful guide to playing a Pathfinder Wizard is Treantmonk's Guide to Being a Wizard: Being a God. Note that the 'God' reference isn't about power, it's about style.
The extreme other end of the Wizard spectrum is Brewers' Guide to the Blockbuster Wizard.
Both those guides have value. See which play style appeals to you and set your course that way. Both guides list your most important spells, with only marginal disagreement about what those are.
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Blasters are something of an all-or-nothing option; you either put your entire build behind it, or you don't bother. Use spell specialization to boost your damage at low levels, then transition into using the Magical Lineage trait with metamagic to boost your chosen spell at higher levels. The preferred spell feat is great so you don't even need to prep your blast spells, and can just spontaneously convert on the fly. Admixture is your subschool of choice.
Conjuration is always a solid choice, simply due to the large selection of very powerful and influential spells it has access to. Transmutation is also great, but it has a bit of a rocky start and only really starts to get great options once you reach 5th level.
Beyond that, though, the greatest strength of Wizards is their flexibility. No matter how specialized you are, you really want to keep a wide variety of spells prepared as a wizard with relatively few duplicates.
Backstory-wise, either Divination or Transmutation seems fitting. Both lend themselves to supporting roles. Do either appeal to you?
As for opposition schools, neither necromancy nor enchantment seem particularly important.
What do you feel about your character's preferred tactics?
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Backstory-wise, either Divination or Transmutation seems fitting. Both lend themselves to supporting roles. Do either appeal to you?
As for opposition schools, neither necromancy nor enchantment seem particularly important.
What do you feel about your character's preferred tactics?
I haven't really played this character, so no real set of tactics. i was thinking about trying out the Beast/Elemental Shape spells, but don't know if they'd be worthwhile this early.
Take some early Evocation spells for low levels, then try out some Transmutation stuff at higher.
i was thinking about trying out the Beast/Elemental Shape spells, but don't know if they'd be worthwhile this early.
You'll need to heavily invest in strength if you want this to be any good. Most wizards won't have sufficient strength to make it work.
There is no added bonus for going from small to medium. It is in the polymorph magic section, there is a chart.
Size bonuses don't stack anyways, so you'd only get the +2 from the spell.
Beast Shape gives a +2, and the size bonus gives me another +2... so, 14 Str- i may not be a power house, but add Bull's Strength, nothin to scoff at.
You're spending two spell slots just to get to a mediocre strength score, which is going to be completely useless coming off of your 1/2 BAB.
I don't know what level you are, but if you're a talking about the elemental body spells then you should have at least 16 strength before applying bonuses from items or spells if you want to do this. It's really not something you can just slap on your wizard build and expect it to work, you really have to be built from the ground up to utilize polymorph spells effectively.
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First, it does not matter if they stack there is no bonus to stack that is why I erected them to the table to help them understand how polymorph spells work. Second, if you are changing size from something other than small or medium the chart actually supersedes the bonus in the spell most of the time. This is to clarify Dasrak's statement that you get the +2 from the spell. It's not as simple as you take the spell bonus so I wanted to provided a more complete answer should you comacross it.
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okay, Beast Shape- out of the question; Elemental Body could still be interesting but more for survivability/utility.
The character is only lvl 3, so doesn't have access to many spells right now.
Let's get back to trying to figure out what schools would best suit this character.
Furthermore, i could go with the First World Caller archetype, and go with a more conjuration focus build.
Furthermore, i could go with the First World Caller archetype, and go with a more conjuration focus build.
The archetype is sadly very bad despite being quite cool.
The fey familiar and the expanded list of summoned monsters available are very cool, but losing your arcane school is a massive blow. In addition to the lost class features, that's 1 fewer spell slot per level, and the benefits don't come close to compensating for that. Warp Reality isn't particularly powerful and its large chance to fail means it's too unreliable to really use.
If you want a conjuration-focused archetype, might I suggest the Worldseeker
Do i have to be a universalist Wizard to take Universalist school?
Yes; in order to take the Universalist school you forgo the chance to specialize and are thus a Universalist Wizard.
I was thinking about going Conjuration school, and getting the Balance Summon discovery.
While summoning is a solid pick, the Balanced Summoning feat is heavily outclassed by the Superior Summoning feat. Superior Summoning lets you summon 1d3+1 monsters that are 1 level below the normal level of the spell you're casting, while Balanced Summoning is locked at 2. While you do get a bit more flexibility to bring different kinds of monsters out with Balanced Summoning, the potential roll high and gets lots more monsters will almost always be preferable.
If you're going conjuration, I recommend picking up the Teleportation subschool, which replaces the weak acid dart with a much more useful short-range teleportation ability. It keeps the normal summoning bonuses of the conjuration school.
The 8th lvl School discipline is moot as i plan on going Feysworn after 5th for atleast 4 levels.
Make sure to grab prestigious spellcaster. It's a great feat for reclaiming lost caster levels.
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i was considering the Teleportation school. a swift-action dimension door would somewhat mimick a "time blink."
Going a Summoning route make eat up my feats- Spell Focus (Conjuration) + Augment Summons + Superior Summons.
I need Fey Obedience to go FeySworn. Though, those feat would help the Fey i'd summon as a FeySworn.
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Dredging this build back for more opinions of build directions. Should I invest in dedicating a build to a certain school, or try to be more of a utilitarian wizard?
I would like to keep to a "time-wimey wibbly-wobbly" feel like Ally form Across Time or Time Shudder esque spells... they may not be very useful, but very thematic.
Dredging this build back for more opinions of build directions. Should I invest in dedicating a build to a certain school, or try to be more of a utilitarian wizard?
Nothing stopping you from doing both. A wizard is free to tweak their daily loadout however they choose, so there's nothing stopping them from having feats invested in a narrow specialty while having a broad selection of spells known.