Help me improve my wizard

[Elephant]

Empowering spells for wand creation is a nice way to become a howitzer. A bit expensive to create, but you will become instant fire support if you use the right spells.

With offensive wands at the ready you can still buff your teammates, and have the capability to do significant damage.

Orb of Force is a good spell to learn since it bypasses pesky elemental resitances.

The last campaign I ran the Mage dominated the party as far as damage dealing. I had to come up with magic and/or elemental resistant foes so that the rest of the party would feel useful. She used an Empowered Fireball (6th Level) Wand and a Wand of Melf's Acid Arrow. She rarely ran out of spells during the course of a session.

Erhm, you can't have a Wand of Empowered Fireball - wands have a cap of 4th level spells, and EF counts as 5th.

Oh, and my DM mentioned he might house-rule the Orb spells due to their no-save, no-SR status.

 

[Thanee]

I would also wait until 9th level for the wand of magic missile, since you are fairly close.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Erhm, you can't have a Wand of Empowered Fireball...

I can (well my character, if she had the Craft Wand feat, which I almost picked up at some point).

Spoiler

6th-level Sorceress/10th-level Incantatrix with Improved Metamagic making Empower Spell +1 level only.

But you are right, that you cannot do that...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Elephant]

I can (well my character, if she had the Craft Wand feat, which I almost picked up at some point).

Spoiler

6th-level Sorceress/10th-level Incantatrix with Improved Metamagic making Empower Spell +1 level only.

But you are right, that you cannot do that...

Bye
Thanee

Ah. Clever use of abilities, that.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well, the first thing to note is that one solution to your problem is simply becoming higher level. Higher level wizards have more spells and don't run out so quickly. So, to some degree, the problem will go away as you increase in level.

But there are other things you can do right now. Here's one. You mentioned that you generally cast haste and enlarge person during combat to help the party's fighters out. Well, instead of spending 2600gp or so to craft a caster level 7 wand of magic missiles, how about spending 375 gp to craft a caster level 1 wand of enlarge person? Enlarge person lasts one combat at caster level one and that's often just as long as you need the caster level 7 enlarge person. So, if you craft a wand of enlarge person and use your spells for magic missile, you'll be better off than if you craft a wand of magic missile and use your spells for enlarge person.

Another thing to consider if you find yourself running out of spells in combat is spells that you can direct as a move action. Flaming sphere probably doesn't do enough damage to still be worthwhile, but you should be able to get some good results out of defenestrating sphere. (Ordinarily, I wounldn't recommend it, but if you find yourself running out of useful spells to cast, it's a good way to still contribute while conserving spells).