Mage 101
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Personally, id always loved mages who had a concept and had the spells to match, same with clerics really… My clerics, unless focused on conjuration, hardly ever have more than one, maximum two of the same spell prepared.
While useful to have a wizard who only prepares endure elements, bulls, endurance, stoneskin and fire weapon become more buff bots and less wizardry imo.
A wizard is a tool box. The spells listed above can usually be found in potion form. But remove fear, hold person, find traps, knock, odd damage spells etc can often mean the difference between success and failure of a group. Find out wwhat spells fits your mage, and use those. No one asked you to be a buff bot.
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Going with your suggested list, let's say I get one casting of Fear, one of Knock, and one of Remove Fear, and let's go with one Blindness/Deafness.
I've never even seen a situation where Remove Fear or Knock would be useful on this character, so the character's full contribution on the quest is to take out two enemies, one of whom has less than 5HD.Either way, that's 3 level 1 spells and 1 level 2 spell.
I'd be hard-pressed to find a combination of these that will meaningfully affect the course of a quest. Especially a combination that would change the course of almost -any- quest which is what you need when you don't metagame what will be in said quest. -
Shield, mage armor, cat's grace and endurance. 4 spells that'll make your survivability skyrocket. Might keep you from dying which in turn, will get you more spells. It's not you -job- to keep the party supplied with spells, your #1 priority should be to not die. You're of no use when you're dead.
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Shield, mage armor, cat's grace and endurance. 4 spells that'll make your survivability skyrocket. Might keep you from dying which in turn, will get you more spells. It's not you -job- to keep the party supplied with spells, your #1 priority should be to not die. You're of no use when you're dead.
Shield goes per turn, though, which means I have to recast it for almost every fight.
Which returns me to the question: how do I keep from being alive, but still of no use because all my resources went to being alive?Or alternatively, if all my spells -have- gone into keeping myself alive, how do I still stay useful?
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Hour per level spells tend to last most of a quest, with a few quest breaking the trend. Turn based ones tend to be a matter of timing, ideally you want to be casting them just before you hit trouble and keep several casting.. but one of the best ones (shield) is a level 1 spell, so that's hardly a biggy.
To cover yourself when you run out of spells or want to conserve them, it best to have potions and wands of the spell your most likely to need. With a good shield wand being a early and cheep panic button, and potions of mage armour rarely being something parties fight over. Extend spells can also go very very far.
Also there the none magical alternatives that most people seem to forget. However squishy your gnomish mage might be. As long as he keeps his head low and invest in the stealth skills, he should be able to avoid most danger and use his spells tactfully. Similarly as long as your base ac isn't too bad, improved expertise mode should keep you alive long enough for your buddy with the greataxe to take out that pesky goblin elite, through it unlikely to save you from the elite frost giant lord.
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Invisibility(ies)
Expeditous RetreatDay/Use alternative items.
A decent background plan in case things go bad.
Strategy
Trying your spells and spell combinations beforehand (seriously, those dummies aren't there just for fighters to bash)
All these increase your suvivability a lot.
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It is just odd to me to see someone say a mage type must "Use THESE spells or DIE!!!11!". If that is true, why are there even other spells out there?
The best suggestion I have seen so far is to take spells that make sense for your specific mage.
So what if you don't have that spell to make people stronger, or that spell to run really fast. Someone giving you IC grief over your spell selection? Start lecturing them on how hard it is to bend the fabric of reality and the weave to your will for a while, do try to get as specific as you can… hell drone on and on for a while. Ask them where they spent their years in study to have such a firm grasp of magic that they can just look at someone and tell you what spells they "should" have. Mages do not quest alone to survive normally, nor do they ask the common layman what they should study to scribe in the spellbook, they find a group of trusted people to help them gather things for they want study or experiment on because crap gets heavy and things fight hard to keep body parts and such.
Rather play a sorcerer than a stuffy wizard? You have even less spells to carry about so you really need to make sure they make sense for your characters personality and such. Someone giving you grief over what you cast? Ha, when is the last time they could even make a flash of light, or even cast a cantrip. It's not like you studied to learn what you have, things just started happening around you and you were quick on the uptake to keep them happening.
It is just strange to me to see someone trying to build a caster from the spells out... seems so backasswards to me.
/soapbox
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It doesn't matter what spells you pick as long as you aren't useless. What kind of INT 16+ character would want to be dead weight?
That said it is a lot harder to be useful with some spells than with others.
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I would challenge any of you to make a more mechanically inept character than I do. I've taken the concept of "rp build" to the illogical extreme. There are those rare occasions when I long for my character to be useful…
Maybe I'll role a wizard.
I'll take that challenge, Look at Harry Lillis !
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Playing a wizard is all about adapting to your environment, there is no (mage 101) the only real rule is "pay attention" and "read what your shit does"
The end.