Another mage thread

[Darksol]

After spending a couple of days reading threads on mage building, reading the wiki, spell descriptions and whatnot, I have learned precious little about what makes a mage tick. I am trying to set up a build for my first mage on the server and i feel dazed and confused

So once again I turn to you, oh wise nolif.. errr elders. My thoughts thus far.

1) From what I gather there are 3 main types of casters. Blasters (pewpew), DC (saveordie, buff/debuff), and summoners. I do not think I care for a blaster, I d like a summoner/DC caster mage, which from what I have read is feasible. Problem is 97.8% of the builds I have seen include Palemaster, and the whole skeleton arm - rotting flesh thing is not to my liking. I don't have a problem with necromancy, blood magic etc, my character will probably be neutral, I just don't like PM aesthetically. I also don't think I want gondsman since he feels more like a tinkerer, while I want something purely arcane. My main concern is that I need my builds to be relatively strong mechanically, else I get frustrated. So first question, can I make a strong summoner/DC build that does not include PM/gondsman? And by strong I mean at least solo PVE play all the way through (not the first lvls ofc, but all the rest). I also want epic gate, named summons etc.

2) Prohibited school: Most posts point to divination, but at least for my first caster I want Teleport/mark rune. Blinking around the map end exploring is something I want to do. I ve read that shadow walk can replace teleport but the spell descriptions don't help much. Teleport is important to me. Apart from that I also want to be a party buffer + my summons buffer, I don't think I want to loose Gr.Hero. SO it seems I need Divination, Transmutation, Enchantment, Conj(obviously). Can I choose necromancy? Or a summoner must have necro?

3) Skills: I gather I need max diplomacy and obv concentration,spellcraft. Tumble 10. UMD? some lore would be nice for RP purposes too.

4) Classes: I don't mind dipping in any class for mechanical benefits, but I want to retain the pure arcane caster feel overall. So no to gishes, warlocks and whatnot.

Thoughts? Builds? If you post a build please explain the basics (how it works, pros/cons etc.)
Thanks!

[Hawke]

I can tell you not ALL of the builds need or want Palemaster in them.

I have a DrIzard, my Techsmith, Dragonslayer. All very viable with what the do without needing to summon the undead.

Heck I have Necromancy as my prohibited school for a few of my mages and haven't been feeling wanting.

[chad878262]

So once again I turn to you, oh wise nolif

Hey! yeah...ok, fine...

1) From what I gather there are 3 main types of casters. Blasters (pewpew), DC (saveordie, buff/debuff), and summoners. I do not think I care for a blaster, I d like a summoner/DC caster mage, which from what I have read is feasible. Problem is 97.8% of the builds I have seen include Palemaster, and the whole skeleton arm - rotting flesh thing is not to my liking. I don't have a problem with necromancy, blood magic etc, my character will probably be neutral, I just don't like PM aesthetically. I also don't think I want gondsman since he feels more like a tinkerer, while I want something purely arcane. My main concern is that I need my builds to be relatively strong mechanically, else I get frustrated. So first question, can I make a strong summoner/DC build that does not include PM/gondsman? And by strong I mean at least solo PVE play all the way through (not the first lvls ofc, but all the rest). I also want epic gate, named summons etc.

Yes, you can make a strong summoner/DC without PM/Techsmith. Thaumaturge gets pretty strong summons as well, and simply taking Spell Focus: Conjuration line will make all summons stronger. As to solo all the way through this has more to do with player skill than build in many cases.

2) Prohibited school: Most posts point to divination, but at least for my first caster I want Teleport/mark rune. Blinking around the map end exploring is something I want to do. I ve read that shadow walk can replace teleport but the spell descriptions don't help much. Teleport is important to me. Apart from that I also want to be a party buffer + my summons buffer, I don't think I want to loose Gr.Hero. SO it seems I need Divination, Transmutation, Enchantment, Conj(obviously). Can I choose necromancy? Or a summoner must have necro?

You can get by with any prohibited school. I had a wizard with prohibited school of Evocation and it was fine (would have sucked in pvp, but you said your concerned about PvE only). As a summoner I would want to keep Transmutation, Illusion and Enchantment to buff up my summons. Necromancy won't hurt to drop if you don't want it, it has strong spells, but they are not the only options.

3) Skills: I gather I need max diplomacy and obv concentration,spellcraft. Tumble 10. UMD? some lore would be nice for RP purposes too.

Tumble is not entirely necessary since you can buff yourself to be immune to pretty much anything. UMD isn't really necessary either, but sure if you want it you can get some use out of cleric wands (it isn't needed). Diplomacy is key to max if you want to some day have a chance at negotiating with a true name being. Lore skills are also important to be able to read dusty tomes to find the true names.

4) Classes: I don't mind dipping in any class for mechanical benefits, but I want to retain the pure arcane caster feel overall. So no to gishes, warlocks and whatnot.

Based on your criteria, my main suggestion would be W15/T5/AM10. Archmage requires two spell focus feats, one will be conjuration (Required for Thaumaturge) and the other can be whatever you want to cast as your DC spells. Transmutation (Flesh to Stone), Enchantment (Mass Hold Monster, Dominate Monster), and Illusion (Solipsism, Weird) are all strong candidates alongside Necromancy (unless you chose it as your prohibited school). You will want to take W10 and W15 in epics for two extra epic feats. You can grab epic gate and 6 Great INT's for strong DCs, or you could go for 4 Great INT's and 2 Epic Spell Focus (conjuration/whatever your second school is). DCs would be 1 lower, but your summons will be stronger.

There are other combinations that could benefit you such as Blood Magus from a DC perspective, but this split should be well balanced and allow you to do what you seem to want. If you pick Enchantment as your second Spell Focus you could have some fun with a summon and a dominated mob (and shadow simulacrum for a third!) which might be just what you're looking for, since you also have mass save or sit there spell, though with Mass Hold Monster (and all hold spells) they get a save every round...

[Deathgrowl]

Don't listen to them. Build a proper DC mage and just use the summons you have. They're good enough. And when they're not, you have spells to back them up. Alternatively you can dominate one of the very powerful mobs we have on the server and buff it up to boss-like standards.

Wizard26/archmage4 can get you 32+spell level in one school. Only way to increase that is by going shadow adept or red wizard.

I play a wizard16/asoc10/archmage4 because it gets 31+spell level in one school, 30+spell level in a second and 29+spell level in all the others while ASOC also provides great versatility to use damage spells where the DC spells struggle. It's also great for spell management.

You can of course also just go wizard20/archmage10 or wizard10/asoc10/archmage10 but that loses a lot of spell slots for things that aren't THAT huge gains for a DC mage:
- Mastery of elements on a wizard always felt sort of useless to me. The trick of playing a wizard is to know what spells to prepare after all.
- Mastery of Shaping is also largely useless. Yeah, I guess Meteor Swarm is fun to throw, but you'd be much better off spending your level 9 spells on Wails or whatever else. Greater Fireburst is a popular blast spell, but I personally prefer Firebrand as it doesn't force you to center the aoe on yourself and it hits specifically enemies, making Mastery of Shaping useless for that particular spell. The only times it would be nice is with cloud spells, but that doesn't work mechanically anyways.
- Arcane Fire is fun, I guess. But not worth a sacrificing a level 9 slot for.
- Spell-Like abilities on a wizard feels like trading away some of your versatility for being more like a sorcerer. I never ever ever would want to do this, though I suppose this is partly an RP choice for me rather than a mechanical one. Pick an SLA you will always use to grind and you're basically set for grinding. I can't stand grinding, so I just drop that whole idea.

So the whole point is just to get the +2 spell power and for that you only need archmage 4. Get more wizard levels, and thus more bonus feats at the 5 level intervals (which can be used for Greater Intelligence, if placed in epic levels!).

EDIT: UMD 11-13 (I don't remember exactly which) can be useful to wear class-, race- and/or aligment-restricted items. Not just wands. That is adjusted UMD, not ranks.

[Hawke]

Oh, "don't listen to them"? Come on DG


Ok, DrIzard... That is my Druid /Wizard. Very cool for RP and has decent DC and skills.

My Techsmith has Rogue in it (thanks to all had mentioned the build and I tried it) which means, lots of skills, and summons.

And my Dragonslayer isn't a gish. Not even close. He is quite simply an armored mage.

None of my mages are standard book worms, although my very first was. But now they have all kinds of character. Wait, I see what I did there. Ba-dum-ching!

[Sun Wukong]

My current wizard is going to be a Wizard 30. He goes for the Augment Form feat to get medium bab while under Polymorph or Shapechange spell effects. He is going to have Augment Summoning... Etc.

[MrPsion]

Just want to point out that Conjuration includes summons (obv), blast (generally ranged touch attack) and a variety of DC based crowd control magic (grease, web, evard's, acid fog). And everyone will think you're the coolest when you teleport them out of dangerous situations. This is a very viable school in comparison to Necromancy and as an added bonus Good PCs won't burn you at the stake.

[Deathgrowl]

Just want to point out that Conjuration includes summons (obv), blast (generally ranged touch attack) and a variety of DC based crowd control magic (grease, web, evard's, acid fog). And everyone will think you're the coolest when you teleport them out of dangerous situations. This is a very viable school in comparison to Necromancy and as an added bonus Good PCs won't burn you at the stake.

Good PCs won't burn you at the stake for casting necromancy DC spells either. Very few of them are actually evil, after all. The animate dead, create undead and all that obviously are evil spells, but they're not DC spells.

[Darksol]

Thank you all, after reading your replies and going through the spells again I think I can drop necro. It will make me a bit weaker but I all the other schools have something that I like/need either for RP or gameplay reasons. Will get greater focus on two schools, thinking of conjuration and illusion, perhaps epic conjuration and also epic gate. Probably want a sun elf, unless I really need the extra feat from human.

I am thinking something like Wiz21/Thaum5/AM4, or even W15/ASoC6/Thaum5/AM4. I don't know if the feats fit tho If I dont get ASoC, should I get quicken and maximise?

If someone is willing to set up a build on nwndb it will be realy helpful. I d do it myself but apart from the prereqs I don't know which feats are good/necessary, and I am not sure about when to take each class either.

[Sun Wukong]

http://nwn2db.com/build/?285155 <= Sun Elf Wizard/Thaumaturge/Archmage...

[Darksol]

Thanks a million Sun. Some questions if you don't mind, starting from the top

- Should I get beetle for the HP or rabbit for the saves?
- Do I care that I don't have quicken and/or maximise? From what I see the only way to get them would be to drop sf trasmutation and one epic sf.
- SF Transmutaion is for flesh to stone and disintegrate?
- Is there a benefit in dropping one epic SF for epic gate? Is the summon good/necessary or you feel the added dc from sf is better?
- The DC's on the build are 30 on conj-illusion and 28 on transmutation?

EDIT: I have read that str 8 is going to be very tight with weight and loot. should I consider str 10, dex 12?

[Sun Wukong]

I have never used the familair.

Quicken could be handy, but you can live without it. At most you would use it for spell book management, or to throw few Quickened Phantasmal Killers. But since you have your summons to soak up damage, I do not think it is needed. As for Maximise... It can work with those Orbs... but the mob HPs are truly bloated. Your summons will deal more damage and more reliably.

Spell Focus Transmutation is for the requirements of the Augment Form feat.

You could also choose to lower your intelligence by two Great Intelligence feats, which allows you to pick two epic spells. Spell DCs drop one way or other.

The build posted has the following spell DCs:
10 (Base)
+ 1 (Spellcasting Prodigy)
+ 13 (Intelligence modifier with +4 item from Red Wizards.)
+ 4 (Epic Caster Bonus with Archmage Spell Power II.)
+ 3 (Epic Spell Focus)
= 31 + (Spell Level)

So yeah, you got the spell DCs down correctly.

[Sun Wukong]

As for carrying capacity, yes, it is going to be interesting. But you got bulls, and you can Polymorph into a troll which has 20 or so strength.

[Lockonnow]

dont try tp make you wizard badass or dont try to make you wizard HUMBLE couse any one do in it

[Sun Wukong]

dont try tp make you wizard badass or dont try to make you wizard HUMBLE couse any one do in it

Actually that is sound advice for anyone. If you do not know the build, level, equipment, the player behind, and their willingness to burn gold for PvP UMD - - - Then pretending to be a badass is a bad idea.