Hot answers tagged wizard
25
Specialization and Related Options
The extra spell slots are the intrinsic benefit of specializing, but they are not the only benefits: a number of Wizard alternate class features only work for those specializing in a particular school.
Focused Specialization
Complete Mage gives an option to ban another spell school and give up a regular spell slot per ...
21
The best answer is to come to an agreement with the DM. While there are avenues you might pursue to mitigate what he’s doing, getting into an arms race is a losing proposition and isn’t any fun. Explain that you are aware that the Wizard class is phenomenally powerful, but that you have no interest or intent on breaking his game. Point out how ...
17
From the SRD:
Spells Gained at a New Level
Wizards perform a certain amount of spell research between adventures. Each time a character attains a new wizard level, she gains two spells of her choice to add to her spellbook. The two free spells must be of spell levels she can cast. If she has chosen to specialize in a school of magic, one of the two ...
16
Yes, you can. Specialization is a Wizard class feature that affects Wizard spellcasting only. It has no effect on spells from other classes. Complete Arcane, for example, explicitly suggests multiclassing with Sorcerer to get your missing spells.
Complete Arcane pg. 185
One way around at least part of this restriction is for a specialist wizard to ...
15
Five minutes
Until the End of the Encounter: The effect ends at the end of the current encounter or after five minutes, whichever comes first. [Rules Compendium 226]
Keep in mind that "current encounter" doesn't specify a combat encounter, so you could probably treat it as a duration of "for this scene" in many cases. But yes, there is a hard ...
12
Actually, yes, there are a large number of wizard archetypes that replace the Arcane Bond ability with something else. See the table for Wizard archetypes on the d20PFSRD. All but one of the Paizo core archetypes (Arcane Bomber, Primalist, Scrollmaster, Shadowcaster, Siege Mage, and Spellslinger) replace Arcane Bond, not to mention all three current racial ...
11
I believe part of the answer lies in the original folklore views on magic.
Before and during the medieval era, according to the Christian Church, magic was a foul, demon-granted perversion of the natural order. The people who practised magic were seen as foul, diseased old hags and wicked sorcerers who used the blood of Christian babies and dealt with Satan ...
11
Pulsehead's answer is good: every "town" day has hidden downtime by nature. Just because the action/story is non-stop doesn't mean that you're busy every hour of the day.
I'll just add that the same goes for "out-of-town" days. Frankly, most parties tend to plan adventure time around the casters. Once the wizard and cleric start getting low on spells, it's ...
10
The hypnotism power's hit line reads as follows:
Choose one of the following effects:
The target uses a free action to make a melee basic attack against a creature with a +4 bonus to the attack roll.
You slide the target up to 3 squares.
(HOTFL 205)
This means that you can only cause the target to attack or to move, not both. The attack ...
9
Android
Spellbook - D&D 3.5 is a free app that allows you to lookup spell descriptions and create custom lists of your spells. It includes all spells from 3.5 SRD. Very useful.
PC
d20 SRD 3.5 Spell List is a free app (in Beta however) it lists your spells per day and allows you to organise them into ones known.
Spellforge is an excel based system for ...
7
Per the errata from 20120112, you only take damage from zones once per turn, regardless of how frequently you move in or out of the zone. Explicitly introduced to stop players from trivialising encounters with damaging zones and forced movements.
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"Pay a price based on spell level"
Note: I use the term "Pay" repeatedly. In this post this simply means to deduct from their starting cash according the published Wealth By Level (WBL) chart.
The chart at the bottom of this answer is the base amount of spells a wizard gets for free. The only answers for "how many additional spells a wizard has ...
3
The other answers here are good, but they miss the fact that a wizard's spells known can decrease, as well as increase. Many GMs delight in stealing, burning, temporarily confiscating or damaging player character spellbooks, and I've known more than one wizard who sold off a few spellbook pages in order to make rent. All of those things can happen to NPC ...
3
By the rules, the following are all valid ways to acquire the spells:
The Wizard gains 2 spells per level, as per normal, and the initial spells for character creation of course.
The wizard must spend money for any additional spells. This might come in various forms, such as:
Scrolls to be scribed (Buy a Blessed Book of Boccob first to reduce costs!)
...
3
Staff of Defense is for Arcanists, not Mages.
Wizard is a general class, with a set of powers, but several possible "builds", including Mage and Arcanist. The original build of the wizard (Arcanist) gets the Implement Mastery option, which is what you use to get Staff of Defense. Mage is the Essentials build, and gets to pick from a variety of different ...
3
The powers you're picking are what is available in your spellbook. You can cast any at-will and non-utility encounter powers as if you were a normal class. However, after each extended rest, you must pick which one daily or utility power of each level you will have accessible until the next extended rest.
All the spellbook lets you do is swap out which ...
3
There is! SRD Spellbook for iOS is a spell reference that lets you search or browse spells, as well as manage multiple characters' spell lists:
A complete spell reference guide for two of the most popular pen-and-paper roleplaying games, SRD Spellbook comes preloaded with all the spells from the 3.5 System Reference Document and the PF core and ...
2
SpellForge is an excel spreadsheet that has most of the D&D 3.5 spells listed in it. The output spreadsheet has a short spell description, a reference to where the spell has come from and all of the important details (range, duration etc). It also lists your spells per day, calculates how many magic missiles you get due to your caster level etc. There ...
2
Hero Lab is the most awesome solution. Sure, it's also a full character builder, but it lets you create a spellbook - the spell choosing is sorted by level and supports searching on keywords (e.g. Necromancy), and once you have your list you can quickly and directly access the spell descriptions from the spellbook list.
Since it's also a character builder ...
2
From a purely time management based perspective: time spent learning sword craft, archery, or the general bodybuilding needed to wear heavy armor without the weight slowing you down would cut into the time spent studying magic.
This argument is stronger for weapons skills or defensive items that need skill to use effectively (eg smaller shields) than for ...
1
If he really doesn't want either option, he can choose not to make use of them. But, by the rules as written in the Core rulebook, no, there is no standard option for substituting a power to replace them.
Nothing stops you from doing whatever you like in your own game, so you could simply provide a bonus feat of the PCs' choice to replace the arcane bond ...
1
I've had this problem before; wanting to follow the rules when the DM is undermining your mage character.
I don't want to say the solution is neglecting the rules just the same as the DM but I will say something more about playing mages (sorcerers, wizards, etc) that should help 'Be assertive!' Like the others suggested, take the obvious down time amongst ...
1
As Pat mentioned above, you are unable to use both at the same turn due to the action economy.
EDITED: I withdrew my argument regarding the utilization of action points. You cannot substitute a regular action for an immediate one, as I recalled falsely.
However, it should be noted that technically the stacking of such effects would be valid should their ...
1
d20Spellbook is a nice one. There is a Yahoo group that is adding more and more spells to it for both 3.5E and Pathfinder. You could take a look at Perram's Spellbook for Pathfinder to see if you can swap out the Pathfinder versions for 3.5E. It is nice as it makes spell cards so when you use a spell you just discard it from your hand.
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