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

[Felon]

Brew Potion and Craft Wand are must-have feats. When you go adventuring you want to have bandoleers of scrolls and potions, and a holster of wands. Remember that when you create a wand you don't have to create it fully charged. Do be prepared to start at 7th level instead of 8th - the extra magic items will more than make up for the temporary level difference.

Like I said, time is short in this campaign. Opportunities to craft are few and far between.

I ultimately went with:
Collegiate Wizard
Spell Focus (evocation)
Fiery Burst
Empower Spell
Metamagic School Focus

 

[TYPO5478]

Like I said, time is short in this campaign. Opportunities to craft are few and far between.

In that case, you'll definitely want those quills I mentioned. The Quill of Scribing creates scrolls for you while you do something else (like sleep); still takes 8 hours, but you don't have to be there for it. The Quill of Rapid Scrivening lets you copy a spell into your spellbook much faster than normal (I think it takes 10 minutes, but I don't remember off the top of my head).

As I recall, they're both relatively cheap, too.

 

[Particle_Man]

Wait, back to being confused. If the blessed book lets you scribe spells for free (free of the 100 gp cost anyway), the geometer isn't saving you anything but page count, right?

But since Blessed Books are expensive, it means you can have all of your spells in one Blessed Book, instead of multiple ones.

This is if you plan to have a BIG repertoire of spells, mind you.

 

[TYPO5478]

But since Blessed Books are expensive, it means you can have all of your spells in one Blessed Book, instead of multiple ones.

This is if you plan to have a BIG repertoire of spells, mind you.

Actually, Blessed Books aren't expensive if you put enough spells in them. In fact, the more spells you write into them, the cheaper they get.

And for what it's worth, I've never known a Blessed Book to be too small. I mean, it's got a thousand pages in it. Even if he took every eligible spell from the PHB, he wouldn't use that many pages until halfway through the 9th level spells. Granted, there are more spells in other books, but he probably won't wind up taking every spell available in the PHB, either.

It's likely he could fit all his spells into one Blessed Book even without being a Geometer. Filling up a single Blessed Book is conceivable, I guess, but not until very high (nearly epic) levels; filling up two seems virtually impossible in an actual game setting.

 

[Felon]

In that case, you'll definitely want those quills I mentioned. The Quill of Scribing creates scrolls for you while you do something else (like sleep); still takes 8 hours, but you don't have to be there for it. The Quill of Rapid Scrivening lets you copy a spell into your spellbook much faster than normal (I think it takes 10 minutes, but I don't remember off the top of my head).

I have the quill of scribing. I'll look into the quill of scrivening, thanks.

Actually, Blessed Books aren't expensive if you put enough spells in them. In fact, the more spells you write into them, the cheaper they get.

The book costs 12,000. An 8th-level wizard isn't going to recoup 12k out of scribing spells for a long, long time.

 

[TYPO5478]

I have the quill of scribing. I'll look into the quill of scrivening, thanks.

That's the one in the DMG II, and I told you wrong earlier: it's way expensive. Like 27,000 gp expensive. In fact, in my opinion, it's too expensive. The only reason I can think of for it being that much is because they included three spells in the creation requisites (one of which is fabricate); I certainly don't think it's because it's actually worth that much in terms of usefulness. Maybe ask your DM about removing fabricate from the required spells and recalculate the price. Or just do without. Your call.

The book costs 12,000. An 8th-level wizard isn't going to recoup 12k out of scribing spells for a long, long time.

How long do you plan on being level 8? I got mine (okay, built for half the price) when I was level 7 and immediately wrote enough spells into it to nearly cover the cost completely. Of course, I had been saving up a few scrolls for specifically that purpose. I understand you may not want to spend the money on it as starting equipment, but I highly suggest getting one as soon as possible. I also suggest keeping a separate list of scrolls you're planning to copy into your book. That will allow you to do two things: first, keep track of those particular scrolls so you don't cast them by accident and second, keep a running tally of just how much it will cost to scribe those scrolls. You'd be surprised how fast it adds up. Just keep in mind: every page you write in a normal spellbook is 100 gp you're not spending on buying a Blessed Book.