Building my first 3rd-edition wizard. What are the essentials?

[two]

boring but brutally effective

This is a little boring - but very effective.

Cast Mirror Image at the start of any dangerous conflict. Or even when you suspect it (reasonably long duration). EVERY TIME.

You will be essentially immune from targeted spells, and immune to arrow/melee damage for a few rounds at least - often the entire battle.

You will be hit by area effect spells, so keep your reflex save high...high dex... that's about all you need. Have a reasonably high Int, Con, and Dex. Or Con, Int, and Dex.

That's all. Move on.

 

[Felon]

Y'know, I was looking at Enlarge Spell or even Widen Spell as a way to deal with some of the shortcomings of spells with short range, but Sculpt Spell seems to really beat the pants off them in terms of cost/effect ratio. Forget doubling the size of a 15 foot cone or 30 foot line, just turn the sucker into a 20 foot spread or a 40 foot cone or heck, four 10 foot cubes. One way or another, that should do it--and for only +1 spell level instead of Widen Spell's +3! Of course, it's for area spells only, but I can work with that. Am I missing some hidden cost?

 

[Felon]

Evocation is awful, don't specialize in it. Direct damage is a poor choice when you can cast save or die and de-buff spells instead. Specialize in divination, conjuration, or transmutation; drop evocation, enchantment, or necromancy.

I know where you're coming from: one Hold Monster can make short work of a battle. Having said that, damage gets sold short. Save-or-die is often "die-or-nothing", and frankly I don't like that kind of unreliability. When they're consistently ineffective, they're boring; when they're consistently effective, they're boring. Nor do I really blame a DM for fudging on saves when it comes to mages trying to blandise BBEG encounters with anticlimactic one-shots.

Direct amage is reliable, because it's what the game was built to handle. I'd rather be Thor whalloping the bad guys with a big-arse hammer than the Scarlet Witch defeating Galactus with a twiddle of her fingers any day of the week. That's just a matter of personal taste I suppose.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Well, one advantage of playing a direct-damage type is that you play along the same lines as the fighter-types. If you do well, they do well, and vice versa. Playing most other types, like a save-or-dead/petrified/held/polymorphed-into-squirrel/etc specialist is that as you get high level, you will see monsters with flat immunities to your specialties. (Constructs laugh at enchanters, undead don't care about save-or-die, and at really high levels, Abominations don't care about anything)

But on the topic of spellbooks and wizard essentials: The Blessed Book is quite a nice item. 1000 pages, and resistant to minor environmental troubles.
I also find Resilient Sphere a good buy for an evoker. In one adventure, my party found itself in a room with 4 Iron Golems (and a delay-blast fireball trap set to go off 2 rounds after the golems attack). Knowing my wizard was 99% useless (and not knowing about the trap) I put myself in the resilient sphere to protect myself from their poison-gas breath attacks. Man, when that fireball went off, I was sure glad I had the sphere up! Not only did it save my Elven wizard from eating 4 saves against death poison, but also from taking 20d6 fire damage, which, if the poison didn't get me, would have killed me for sure. (Even if I had made the save)
Learn a single wall spell, like Wall of Stone or Wall of Ice. Always keep one prepared. They are quite handy.
If you want to blast things, take a variety of attack spells. Don't prepare 4 fireballs, because when a Fire Giant shows up, you will wish you hadn't. Fireball & Lightning Bolt are good in many situations, but lesser spells like scorching ray should be your main weapon until you can size up your foe. For blasting - Take Empower Spell - An empowered fireball is far more useful against a frost giant than Cone of Cold . (And possibly killing it in one hit!)

 

[stonegod]

Another plus on direct damage spells: Not all things you must attack are creatures. Weapons, doors, locks, ships. Sonic and acid, or course, work best for this.

If you want raw damage, warmage is the way to go. However, I like playing oddball wizards, so mileage will very (I'm currently in a crazed demon-summoning mode---and conjuration gives you plenty of direct damage spells w/o the controversial orb spells).

 

[stonegod]

You will be essentially immune from targeted spells, and immune to arrow/melee damage for a few rounds at least

In melee, at comparable level, the images will be down in about 2 rounds if you stay still on average---they are really easy to hit. However, the main thing to keep in mind is that the mirror images do nothing if your attacker
- Just closes their eyes (and take the 50% blindness chance)
- Has scent, tremorsense, blindsight, or blindsense.
- Dispels it (as the mirror image spell can be targeted directly)
So, its a good defense, but not perfect.

 

[Felon]

In melee, at comparable level, the images will be down in about 2 rounds if you stay still on average---they are really easy to hit. However, the main thing to keep in mind is that the mirror images do nothing if your attacker
- Just closes their eyes (and take the 50% blindness chance)
- Has scent, tremorsense, blindsight, or blindsense.
- Dispels it (as the mirror image spell can be targeted directly)
So, its a good defense, but not perfect.

Good points. Also, remember from my post above, illusion is one of the four schools facing the specialist chopping block.

 

[Felon]

If you want raw damage, warmage is the way to go. However, I like playing oddball wizards, so mileage will very (I'm currently in a crazed demon-summoning mode---and conjuration gives you plenty of direct damage spells w/o the controversial orb spells).

Warmage is always tempting with a character that starts high enough level to cast fireball. They're a little disappointing at lower levels because most spells on their list have short ranges and are largely single-target.

So yeah, I was sorely tempted, but y'know, there are just so many cool battle spells they don't get access to. Advanced Learning was a great way to address this, but the implementation was not so hot. They only get AL four times, and the first one doesn't really count because there is a dearth of nifty first-level evocation spells that aren't already on their list.

 

[Felon]

Learn a single wall spell, like Wall of Stone or Wall of Ice. Always keep one prepared. They are quite handy.
If you want to blast things, take a variety of attack spells. Don't prepare 4 fireballs, because when a Fire Giant shows up, you will wish you hadn't. Fireball & Lightning Bolt are good in many situations, but lesser spells like scorching ray should be your main weapon until you can size up your foe. For blasting - Take Empower Spell - An empowered fireball is far more useful against a frost giant than Cone of Cold . (And possibly killing it in one hit!)

Thanks for the pointers!

Empower Spell and Sculpt Spell are my two metamagic must-haves. Next on the wish list would Metamagic Vigor, Metamagic School Focus, and Residual Magic, all from Complete Mage (great book, and largely my inspiration).

 

[two]

In melee, at comparable level, the images will be down in about 2 rounds if you stay still on average---they are really easy to hit. However, the main thing to keep in mind is that the mirror images do nothing if your attacker
- Just closes their eyes (and take the 50% blindness chance)
- Has scent, tremorsense, blindsight, or blindsense.
- Dispels it (as the mirror image spell can be targeted directly)
So, its a good defense, but not perfect.

That's all true. But if your enemy closes their eyes, it upgrades your Mirror Image spell to Improved Invisibility - to some extent. I'm quite happy with that.

The images will only go down in 2 rounds if something is full attacking with 3+ attacks. Obviously, if your wizard is in melee range, move away. And if something is ineffectually attacking your images, well... that's ok. Cast it again and let your friends beat on the enemy. It's just a 2nd level spell; pretty small sacrifice. Plus, of course, you are not taking damage while the enemy is using up actions.

Usually your wizzie isn't in melee range from the first round on. But if he is, you will be happy you are Mirror Imaged!

Vs. a bunch of archers it is usually (not always) effective because the archers will avoid shooting the useless images instead of targeting other PC's who are easier to hit.

Scent, tremorsense, etc. are pretty rare. Scent does not help that much.

Dispelling: if they use a 3rd level spell to dispel it, recast it. You are trading 2 for 3, and they are not doing any real damage. Keeping the enemy NPC wizzie busy dispelling a 2nd level spell is completely useful!

No, of course Mirror Image is not a "I win" button - thank god.

You can get around it. You forgot to mention "True Seeing". Pretty much overkill, but...it works.

But 95% of the time, the enemy will see the wizzie with a bunch of images, and other PC's without a bunch of images, and.... target their precious attacks against a PC they have a good chance of actually hitting.

That's the real benefit.

The enemies know their actions are precious; they are not going to squander a charge, or a Hold Person, or a round of arrows on a Mirror Imaged PC. It's stupid. Might as well target something you KNOW can be hit without a miss chance.

This does not work as well against mindless critters. But against mindless critters, you have a LOT of other things to do!