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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 5618922" data-attributes="member: 40522">I love wizards, I play them every chance I get. When you say "good," I assume that you mean optimizing the mechanical qualities as opposed to role-playing or alignment. Here goes...For ability scores, you want a good Intelligence (around 16 or so). If it's point buy, I would advise you against sinking everything into Intelligence--you don't really need a stellar Intelligence score until later levels, and a bit more balance when you first make your character can make it far more survivable. I'd suggest you go from there with a decent Dexterity score (say, 14 or so) and a decent Constitution. From there, I'd bump your Wisdom and Charisma based on your character's personality, and split any remaining points between Strength and Constitution. Wisdom is nice to have if you want your character to be insightful as well as clever. Keep in mind that "book smarts" never keeps people from doing dumb things, so you might want to have a decent Wisdom score if you see your character as someone that advises others.I highly advise you against using a "dump stat." Many people that play wizards ignore Strength or Charisma. Keep in mind that many monsters inflict ability score damage, and by making these abilities below 10, you're really opening yourself up to being killed in a single hit. For example, shadows deal Strength damage with an incorporeal touch. It'd suck to get killed in a single hit from a shadow because your Strength score is 6.For Pathfinder, your best race choice for a wizard is elf, by a considerable margin. Not only does the elf get a +2 to Intelligence, they also get a +2 to Dexterity--handy for ranged touch attacks (many spells require them) and your AC (since you can't wear armor). Additionally, they begin with proficiency in the longbow and longsword. An elf wizard makes a surprisingly good archer considering that it's not their main thing. Free proficiency with a bow and a bonus to Dex means that you can function well even when you've cast all of your spells.If you can use material from the Advanced Player's Guide, you might consider a gnome if you want to be an illusionist, or if you want to play a specialized type of wizard. For example, gnomes have an alternate racial trait option in the Advanced Player's Guide that allows them to treat their caster level as one higher when they cast fire spells. Still, I believe that elf is your best overall possible choice.Now for class features. Your school selection is important. Not only does it significantly impact your spell selection and give you abilities, it says a great deal about how your wizard approaches magic and the world.I'd advise you to avoid abjuration, necromancy, and the universalist schools. Abjuration is really something that your divine spellcaster should be doing, and bluntly, they can do it better than you. You're about blasting and controlling enemies, not protecting your allies. Necromancy is just too situational to be useful in most cases, and many GMs don't like the idea of characters running around with shambling undead hordes instead of fighting them. The universalist's abilities are just a bit weak, although it's a decent choice since they don't have opposition schools.I'd suggest that you give a serious look to conjuration, evocation, enchantment, and illusion. Conjurors get some cool attack spells, such as acid arrow, web, sleet storm, cloudkill, mage's faithful hound, and stinking cloud. Don't forget summon monster and various planar binding spells, for that matter. If you want to lock down the battlefield and throw monsters at your enemies, a conjuror is a superlative choice. Evokers are perhaps a bit obvious. Many of the most powerful attack spells in the game are evocations, so evoker is your choice if you want to blast, blast, blast. Enchantment and illusion are "tricky" schools, but extremely satisfying if you can pull them off. They revolve around either compelling or deceiving creatures to do your bidding. If you're going to be in many urban areas or dealing with a lot of NPCs, an enchanter or illusionist could be very useful. I wouldn't advise them in a game centered around wilderness areas or traditional dungeon crawls because 1) they rely a bit on social interaction and legerdemain to pull off; 2) many monsters are flat-out immune to these sorts of spells.I'm sort of neutral on divination and transmutation. Both of them have some extremely useful spells, but they tend to benefit others more so than benefit you directly. Diviners can make a party very effective--forewarned is forearmed, after all. Many of the cool utility spells in the game are transmutations, such as knock, enlarge person, bull's strength, make whole, haste, fly, and keen edge. These sorts of casters can be very useful by making the party stronger. This can work very well for you if you can deal with sharing victory with the team rather than blasting everything to cinders with a fireball, but some people don't dig that style of play.I'd pick an arcane focus instead of a familiar. Getting to spontaneously cast an extra spell per day is far more awesome than a magic pet in my book.In the skill department, Spellcraft is your big front-runner. You need it to identify spells that enemy casters are using, to identify magic items via detect magic, and several other useful things that wizards are expected to do. You probably want to pick up Linguistics so you can decipher ancient languages and communicate effectively with more creatures. I'd also give a serious look at Acrobatics. Although it's not a class skill for wizards, Acrobatics can be used to move through a threatened area or even an enemy's space--a real lifesaver if enemies try to cut you off from the rest of the party. Since you don't really wear armor, you can be good at it even if the bard or rogue is a little better than you at it.Again, the elf really shines as a wizard here. Elves gain a bonus to Spellcraft checks to identify magic items, and that high Dex helps you with Acrobatics if you want it. Additionally, you might want to pick up some Perception. Elves get a racial bonus to that too, and with a decent Wisdom score, you can be a sharp-eyed lookout as well as a top-notch spellcaster.Now on to feats... A solid choice for your first-level feat is Spell Focus. Chances are, you're going to cast spells from certain schools repeatedly, and there's no such thing as having a save DC for your spells being too high. If you're a specialist, you should probably get Spell Focus for your school. If not, evocation is a solid choice. Many spells that do direct damage are evocations.You might consider picking up Toughness if you're concerned about survivability at low levels. I'd also advise you to chat with your GM about ray spells. Many GMs consider ray spells to be "weapons" although the rules don't explicitly say it, since you have to make attack rolls with them, using a ray provokes even if the spell itself does not, and they can inflict critical hits. Some GMs agree with this assessment and some do not. Since many cool wizard spells are rays, it's totally worth clearing up the GM's ideas about rays before proceeding.If your GM agrees to functionally treat ray spells as weapons, check out Point Blank Shot (especially if you're playing an elf as I've described above). The bonus to attack and damage rolls is okay, but what you're really picking it up for is so you can get Precise Shot later. Being able to zap critters with disintegrate or ray of fire with more confidence later on is worth two feats to me. And again, if you're the elf with a bow... True strike, magic weapon, cat's grace, and gravity bow (from the Advanced Player's Guide) makes you a damned good archer, on par with rangers or fighters at low levels. Those two feats become really useful if this is the build you're going with.For gear, definitely pick up a decent ranged weapon. You want to be able to do something useful without having to blast all of your spells out (and after you have done so). You'll also need a spell component pouch (obviously), and I'd advise you to pick up a scroll case and as much scroll-making supplies as you can. As a wizard, scrolls are one of your bread-and-butter things and you'll probably be using them frequently.As far as spell selection, I'd advise you to pick up one save-or-die such as sleep or color spray. I really love color spray since it's not limited to total hit dice the way sleep is, and furthermore, the status effects from color spray can't be dispelled by allies shaking you like sleep can.Pick up one spell that affects an area. Burning hands is good here. You want to be able to spread some damage around in an area, such as if you're fighting swarms or just multiple creatures.Get one defensive spell. Shield or mage armor are good here. You might want to consider protection from evil if you think that you'll be facing evil-aligned creatures.For the rest of your spells, you might consider enlarge person, which is awesome for your fighter. Expeditious retreat and detect secret doors are useful if you're exploring dungeons. You might consider charm person if you want to play in some social situations, or maybe hypnotism if you want to deal with enemies without having to kill them.Hope that helps. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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