Wizard Build Suggestions (PHB ONLY!)

[Cross]

Re: PHB 1 - I'm actually the DM in question for Gak Toid, and we did talk it over. Right now, we're sticking with the basics primarily because we're going to be rotating through 2-3 DMs, most of which don't have all the books. While the Character Builder goes a long way toward helping with that, there are things in the books that the basic class/item/race descriptions just don't cover, and that I need to know about before I'm willing to open the floodgates.

And yes, my paranoia meter starts pinging every time we start bringing in new items or powers, but some of that is holdover from 3.5 splatbooks, so it's probably not justified anymore. 8)

-Cross

 

[Turtlejay]

Cross - It is *somewhat* justified. Perhaps you could just have your players run any non-core choices by you? That might be a bit too much work, but at least it opens things up a little bit.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with running a PHB only game, if everyone is on the same page and having fun.

Gak Toid - Color Spray is on my list of powers not to take. I took it once, early on. It is a trap. Not being enemies only, and in such a large area, means you will struggle to find useful times to throw it out there. Since it is an encounter power, you will struggle constantly to do so. My opinion, anyways. If you can't tell, I am hugely biased towards Fire Shroud.

As for implement choice. . .While the orb is IMO the best one in the PHB, it doesn't really blossom until you can use it more often, and that means having more than one or two (save ends) powers. That is not until Paragon, usually. You can afford to take Staff or Wand, and then feat to gain Orb at Paragon. Wand is useful if you have a great single target power to use it on, or at the very least a multi target with a good effect. Staff is all around good, since we all like higher defenses. A wizard with good starting Int, Leather Armor, and the Staff, will be a tough nut to crack. In the end, though, this is a play style choice. Will you be in a position where your defenses will need to be high often enough to warrant taking the Staff class feature? Will you have any single target effects that you would like to ensure hit?

Also, keep in mind that with the wand, if you want to increase its effectiveness, you are pumping a stat that does little else for you. It shares a defense with Int, and you are not expected to have Dex skills trained like some of the martial classes in your party.

Jay

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, I think paranoia is largely not required with 4e expansions and power books. Not that there is literally NO increase in power with new books but its very slight and the main effect is a LOT more build choices. Martial Power and AV1 did introduce some material that was a bit OP, but they did a good job of errata on it. PHB has a pretty limited selection of items sadly too, so AV1 is a really big plus to have. OTOH there are perfectly good reasons to want to stick to the core books, just don't hobble your game in the process. I know my players started to feel a bit constrained until a couple more books came out.

My views on the various implements may be a bit different than most, but I tend to look at things more from a perspective of tactical principles vs individual numbers.

Staff of Defense: This is the weakest of all the implements. It is purely defensive. Defense doesn't help you wrest control of a fight and win. Its not a bad thing on its own, but it has the least overall effectiveness on the average. Really only useful for a wizard that is going to go up front and blast away with close spells.

Wand of Accuracy: Pure offense. From a straight conceptual standpoint this is the strongest. It is untrue that it is only good for single target spells. All spells need to hit and there will OFTEN be a key enemy you want to make sure you hit even when the spell is an area effect. The dex/int overlap thing IS non-ideal but even having a 14 dex and not boosting it ever again is fine, +2 is +2 regardless of if you're level 1 or level 30. In fact its when its hardest to hit that pluses are worth the most.

Orb of Imposition: This one is harder to rate. OoI obviously is attractive in terms of "locking down" monsters, but that is NOT its only use. Just imposing a save penalty on almost any condition when that condition is hampering the enemy or extending a spell effect by a round when it is giving effective battlefield control is golden. Its quite easy to argue this is the best IM, though Wand of Accuracy does give it a run for its money. In many ways they are doing largely the same thing.

Given the good melee power of your party I just don't see Staff as a particularly good choice.

I personally think you're focusing too much on damage output with your spell load too. Even with doing the most possible damage you can do a wizard does poor damage on the whole. People that have played "striker wizards" have been pretty uniformly disappointed in the result. At least take one of Scorching Burst or Icy Terrain. TWave you will really just basically never use from experience in this type of party. You just can't get in there with it and pushing a few enemies back a couple squares really isn't much control. Your going to find basically your only at-will use choice is CoD (or SB if you're human) 99% of the time. Same with Icy Rays vs Fire Shroud. FS looks nice in theory and you'll use it a fair amount, but the damage you can do is frankly not that impressive. Icy Rays will do less damage but when you need a monster to stand still, which happens a good bit you'll be thankful for it. Plus OoI or WoA will work well with it.

At least do yourself the favor of taking ONE real control spell. Things do get better at 5th when you can roll out Big Stinky since it uniquely combines a nice control aspect with a lot of damage.

Level 7 is a good one to use to pick up a pure damage spell. Winter's Wrath is pretty marginal so you might as well pick up something like Fire Burst or Lightning bolt. Level 9 is pretty much a shoe in for Wall of Fire, though Ice Storm isn't bad. WoF plus Spectral Ram = baaaaad wizard!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

just some notes on your build:

- Eladrin soldier and wepon fokus don´t stack

- wis and charisma that high is fine for RP and skills but not so defensively.

- your constitution could be higher even when you are not taking staff as implementsince it affects hp, surges and fort defense. (not so important if you make sure you dont get into melee that often.

- dexterity is not so bad for a wizard, it affects some nice skills (maybe stealth with eladrin feature) and it allows for using a ranged weapon as a basic attack and most important: very high initiative which is more important than hitting sometimes. You also don´t need to improve dexterity at all! a +3 bonus is still really good, even at high levels. So you can afford to start with a 16, but bump wisdom to make second implement orb worthwhile at paragon.

abdul you ninjad me^^

i just have to read something and maybe i will have a funny build soon^^

too bad... doesn´t work

here is a build with your selected spells and spells and trying get as much out of point buy as possible. (but putting points in charisma instead of constitution as you had in your build, which comes in handy for spell focus and at level 16 against minions at least)

You could take shield proficiency if you see that AC is an issue instead of eladrin soldier or blade opportunity or alertness. I chose blade opportunity and a reasonable stregth to make the choice of longsword worthwhile before paragon tier. I don´t like a shield for style reasons. Also toughness and durable could be good substitutes for blade opportunity or alertness if hp or surges are an issue.

here is what i have:

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Soveliss, level 11
Eladrin, Wizard, Wizard of the Spiral Tower
Build: War Wizard
Arcane Implement Mastery: Wand of Accuracy
Second Implement: Orb of Imposition
Corellon's Implement: Wand
FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 14, Con 11, Dex 18, Int 21, Wis 14, Cha 13.
STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 13, Con 10, Dex 13, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 12.

AC: 25 Fort: 19 Reflex: 22 Will: 22
HP: 61 Surges: 6 Surge Value: 15
TRAINED SKILLS
Perception +12, Arcana +17, Nature +12, Insight +12, Dungeoneering +12, Stealth +14
UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +9, Bluff +6, Diplomacy +6, Endurance +7, Heal +7, History +12, Intimidate +6, Religion +10, Streetwise +6, Thievery +9, Athletics +7
FEATS
Wizard: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Warrior of the Wild
Level 2: Armor Proficiency (Leather)
Level 4: Improved Initiative
Level 6: Eladrin Soldier
Level 8: Blade Opportunist
Level 10: Alertness (retrained to Spell Focus at Level 11)
Level 11: Second Implement
POWERS
Wizard at-will 1: Cloud of Daggers
Wizard at-will 1: Thunderwave
Wizard encounter 1: Chill Strike
Wizard daily 1: Flaming Sphere
Wizard daily 1 Spellbook: Sleep
Wizard utility 2: Shield
Wizard utility 2 Spellbook: Expeditious Retreat
Wizard encounter 3: Color Spray
Wizard daily 5: Stinking Cloud
Wizard daily 5 Spellbook: Web
Wizard utility 6: Levitate
Wizard utility 6 Spellbook: Wall of Fog
Wizard encounter 7: Winter's Wrath
Wizard daily 9: Ice Storm
Wizard daily 9 Spellbook: Wall of Fire
Wizard utility 10: Arcane Gate
Wizard utility 10 Spellbook: Blur
ITEMS
Spellbook, Adventurer's Kit, Magic Longsword +3, Sunleaf Leather Armor +3, Cloak of Survival +2, Orb of Sanguinary Repercussions +2, Gloves of Piercing (heroic tier)
RITUALS
Tenser's Floating Disk, Magic Circle, Comprehend Language, Make Whole, Detect Object
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

hehe, yeah, its hard to come up with variant wizard builds with only PHB. You really need a bigger feat selection. With PHB2 feats available you can open up the longsword as a real weapon or with dragon feats get staff fighting and start to get into some decent melee builds, but not so much with just PHB. You can do the Iron Mage thing, sort of, but its fairly limited. Really your choices come down to which PP to choose and whether or not to dump everything but INT/WIS or spread your stats around and do a longer term build and take Wand first.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t think its so bad actually.

With abilities spread you can take elemental feats and such things. But since he wants eladrin soldier earlier, he should also take blade opportunist for those times he actually has a use for the sword.

Edit to the build: Maybe it would be a wiser choice to have corellons implement orb instead of wand if you leveled up the wizard because you won´t have to get an orb and can use your old wand

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, if he's going to seriously pursue the orb path later on then he probably really will need a real orb, or two. I guess there would be a few ways to skin that cat but it doesn't matter much in terms of what he picks to start with. Either of the two implements will be handy right away.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Re: PHB 1 - I'm actually the DM in question for Gak Toid, and we did talk it over. Right now, we're sticking with the basics primarily because we're going to be rotating through 2-3 DMs, most of which don't have all the books. While the Character Builder goes a long way toward helping with that, there are things in the books that the basic class/item/race descriptions just don't cover, and that I need to know about before I'm willing to open the floodgates.

And yes, my paranoia meter starts pinging every time we start bringing in new items or powers, but some of that is holdover from 3.5 splatbooks, so it's probably not justified anymore. 8)

-Cross

As a warning from one DM to another, and from someone whose first 4e character was a wizard:

4e combats should be built differently from 3e/3.5e. Having a couple stronger monsters as opposed to several lesser ones makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of a Wizard. It can be frustrating to constantly fight combats with 1-3 monsters when you specialize in area spells. I'm not saying don't have smaller combats, but make sure to vary things up

With Arcane Power, this is less of a potential problem (PLENTY of single-target control options, especially the illusion stuff) but it's still there.

 

[GakToid]

For reference, here's the list of heroic powers in the PHB that the orb can be applied to:

cloud of daggers*
ray of frost
acid arrow (daily)
sleep (daily)*
fire shroud (encounter)*
web (daily)*
ice storm (daily)*
lightning serpent (daily)

* powers I'm considering

-Gak Toid

 

[GakToid]

I've decided I'm making this too complicated. I can role play the ranger bit. Back to my original character:

Race: Human
Class: Wizard
Implement Mastery: Orb of Imposition

Ability Scores, with racial adjustments:
Str 8 (-1)
Con 12 (+1)
Dex 10 (+0)
Int 16+2 = 18 (+4)
Wis 16 (+3)
Cha 12 (+1)

powers
at-will: cloud of daggers, scorching burst, thunderwave
level 1 encounter: icy terrain (chill strike?)
level 1 daily: flaming sphere, sleep (freezing cloud?)
level 2 utility: expeditious retreat, shield
level 3 encounter: icy rays (color spray?) (fire shroud?)
level 5 daily: stinking cloud, web
level 6 utility: dimension door, wall of fog
level 7 encounter: winter's wrath
level 9 daily: ice storm, wall of fire
level 10 utility: arcane gate, blur

feats
level 1: Action Surge
human: Human Perseverance
level 2: Armor Proficiency (leather)
level 4: Improved Initiative
level 6: ????
level 8: ????
level 10: ????

rituals
level 1: animal messenger, comprehend language, make whole
level 5: enchant magic item, ????

-Gak Toid