any help for a winpy wizzard?


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Mage armor and false life are staples that will get you started.

If you have a cleric that willing, shield other will greatly increase your life expectancy.

In general, you should avoid melee combat whenever possible. However, if you get stuck one of the best save your butt spells at your level is either dimension door or ottiluke's resistant sphere. D door will get you out of the fight quickly. Ottiluke's will take you out of the fight, but make you invulnerable to many forms of attack when you encase yourself inside it.
 

Mirror Image?
Displacement?
Greater Invisibility?

Dimension Door!
Have your friends (and/or summoned monsters) block for you!

Cheers, -- N
 


Maybe you could tell us what you have now (not that 'crap' isn't descriptive) and we can fill in the blanks.

The general rule with wizards is to prevent yourself from being hit altogether, so use things that provide a miss chance...mirror image, blur, displacement, invis, blink, (darkness), clouds. Things that absorb damage, like energy resist or stoneskin and things that raise your hitpoints like false life, bear's endurance along with spells that help your saves, like heroism or resistance items. Things that up your AC, like natural armor items, shield, mage armor, protection items...but if you are trying to avoid getting hit by upping your AC, you are already too close for comfort IME.

Did I cover everything?
 


...Other party members?

("Hey Magus Supreme, why aren't you casting any more fireballs or Ennervates or Magic Missiles or Scorching Rays?" "I have died three times in the past two weeks. Since none of you seem willing to protect me, I must do it myself. Thus, those spell slots are mostly filled with Mage Armour, 3xShield, 2xeach Blur, Invis, Mirror Image, Displacement, Dimension Door, False Life, Resist Energy, and so on and so forth. I go have a Darkness spell I was holding to save my bacon that I could cast though, once I'm done casting defensive spells at the start of each combat. Should happen in 2-3 rounds...Oh, when I'm in trouble you'll come and help me? What a novel idea!" :)

--The above, of course, assumes that the party *isn't* making efforts to help the wizard if he gets in trouble. Maybe they are.
 

Never play a wizard defensively, it will get you killed even more often and the other party members will whine that you're a useless coward. Experience.

Shield Other as mentioned above is your best bet. We managed to keep our elven wizard with Con 9 (later 10) alive till level 12 even though he had about 25 hitpoints at that time... Park the clerictank in front of him and make the other party members kill everything off as fast as possible.
 

A tasty bit of cheese is to buy (or make) a mithral buckler. It has no armor check penalty, it has no spell failure chance. Enchant it for more protective goodness.
If you're willing to risk a 1 in 20 chance of spell failure, get a mithral heavy shield for 1 more point of AC.
 

Darklone said:
Shield Other as mentioned above is your best bet. We managed to keep our elven wizard with Con 9 (later 10) alive till level 12 even though he had about 25 hitpoints at that time... Park the clerictank in front of him and make the other party members kill everything off as fast as possible.
Yes, I know what you mean. We are trying to keep a human Wiz 11 alive in a very game with regular lethal encounters. And he doesn't have False Life. Essentially the monk and cleric look after him whilst the warriors and rogue go on the offensive.

As for Shield Other, in one of my live games we use it on one of the fighters. Saved him twice now from certain death - once from a gargantuan scorpion, and one other I can't quite recall - as he can now enter a combat and soak up incredible damage that would surely kill one of us otherwise (usually the rate of damage is higher than what we can heal/cure in the same time, assuming we can even do that).
 

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