Wizard Build Suggestions (PHB ONLY!)

[jbear]

If you are going to spend your human feat on proficiency with a long sword, you may as well go eladrin, who gets it for free, and then you teleport and get a +2 bonus to dex which raises your initiative and is more 'ranger-like'.

Do you want the longsword to multi-class into sword-mage ? Obviously not if you're only using the phb. If you ever want to hit with it you will need melee training (also not in the phb). Actually many viable builds for a wizaed using a longsword are denied to you by restrincting your sources.

Having a +2 from the eladrin in dexterity makes it very east to achieve the required 13 to multi-class with ranger.

Any just a few thoughts after having read your character concept.

 

[GakToid]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I need some time to review my options. I'll post my final build when it's ready.

-Gak Toid

 

[GakToid]

How does wintertouched and lasting frost affect the evaluation of cold based powers? Does ray of frost "look good"?

There doesn't seem be much feat support for other damage types in the PHB. Does cold need the bump or are the other choices simply inferior?

-Gak Toid

 

[Nifft]

How does wintertouched and lasting frost affect the evaluation of cold based powers? Does ray of frost "look good"?

No. Not in my opinion anyway. It's hard to set up, and the payoff is that you have to use a crappy at-will power which becomes slightly less crappy.

Now, if you have a whole party geared towards Frost-cheese, with the Rogue and Fighter swinging around Frost weapons, and most other party members able to use those same feats: you can pretty much count on always having a target around who is already suffering from Vulnerable 5 Cold, and then it becomes a reasonable choice. But not otherwise.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Destil]

There's some level of feat support for most everything but necrotic, generally in paragon, though fire and radiant are both in epic. Cold, force and thunder have two feats each (force and thunder sharing Solid Sound), with every other damage type having one.

Cold is easily the strongest (though I think thunder is quite good too). Radiant is most likely the weakest, since it only triggers on a crit if memory serves. There's plenty of support for radiant in later books, however.

Ray of frost is at least less middling with the cold support, what it really does it crank up the power level of the other wizard cold powers, which are often quite good (lots of area denial and better status effects for encounters and dallies).

 

[Turtlejay]

What sucks though, is that a lot of the support for those other damage types are not in the PHB. And the cold damage cheese only matures at Paragon. If you want to exploit it, you can retrain a feat at tenth, and your at will at eleventh, and boom, you did it. For the first ten levels though, you should have a plan besides 'hanging on until I get good'. I am discovering again why those kinds of characters don't last long.

It would be much better to build a solid, rounded character based on your character ideals (his rangeryness and wizardlikeness) and enjoy that, than to shoehorn him into a cheesy feat/power combo.

Jay

 

[GakToid]

What sucks though, is that a lot of the support for those other damage types are not in the PHB. And the cold damage cheese only matures at Paragon. If you want to exploit it, you can retrain a feat at tenth, and your at will at eleventh, and boom, you did it. For the first ten levels though, you should have a plan besides 'hanging on until I get good'. I am discovering again why those kinds of characters don't last long.

It would be much better to build a solid, rounded character based on your character ideals (his rangeryness and wizardlikeness) and enjoy that, than to shoehorn him into a cheesy feat/power combo.

Jay

That's good advice Jay. Definitely a trap I find myself falling into too often.

Right now I'm trying to decided between staff and orb. My initial design had more of a controller focus. As the character concept has developed I'm leaning more toward a rangery style. Warrior of the Wild is probably a sub-optimal feat choice, but it fits. I can always pick up orb at 11 (if I live that long).

I think I just talked myself into staff.

-Gak Toid

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Be sure, not many multiclass feats are suboptimal... it gives you a 2d6 damage boost and a nice skill training.

longsword and staff doesn´t work that well. A staff is nearly as good in melee as the longsword, wizard of the spiral tower doesn´t work well with the staff implement. You lose out the AC bonus.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It would be much better to build a solid, rounded character based on your character ideals (his rangeryness and wizardlikeness) and enjoy that, than to shoehorn him into a cheesy feat/power combo.

Jay

I have never encountered a PC which made it into their cheesy built... usually such builts evolve from playing a rounded character first...

have some xp

 

[GakToid]

longsword and staff doesn´t work that well. A staff is nearly as good in melee as the longsword, wizard of the spiral tower doesn´t work well with the staff implement. You lose out the AC bonus.

Well...phooey.
Corellon's Implement seems like a pretty crappy feature if you still have to wield the implement in question to get the implement mastery bonuses.

"Hey guys! I don't need my wand to cast spells, except when I need my wand to cast spells. WTF?"

Getting a 13 dex with human is awkward:
Str 8 (-1)
Con 13 (+1)
Dex 13 (+1)
Int 16+2 = 18 (+4)
Wis 14 (+2)
Cha 12 (+1)

-Gak Toid