Im playing a wiz in shackled city. Currently at 17th level and I play in a very balanced group of characters and experienced DM and players. The Wiz already has rings of counter-spell.. dispel magic and greater dispel (nothing sucks worse than taking 10 minutes to buff and having em all dispelled) That solved a whole lot of what if type situations. Staying alive is key in this adventure path, so the thing that kills most mages are save or die spells (based on fort saves) Fireball type spells (reflex saves) and Rays (disintegrate and such). NOw I found it relatively easy to raise all my saves to respectable levels.. Prot. from evil, greater heroism, Loremaster secrets, Cloak of resistance +4.., and that took care of most saves, although you can always roll a 1. Rays ended up being the thing that my Wiz couldn't account for. There is really no way to address all these other issues and still get a touch AC in the high 30's, and thats what you would probably need to really make it matter. Sooo I took Ray deflection from Spell Compedium as my contingent spell. If a ray is fired off at my character, the contingency spell kicks into effect and ray deflection pops up. My DM has allowed this. It has already saved my character 2 times, and prolly would have more, because amazingly enough, I stopped being the target of all those rays. Beholders.., no prob. Disintegrate rays and Prismatic sprays, you can live through 'em.
This has really worked well for me. Are there other spells that might have also fit? Sure. but you can account for most of those situations in other ways. I found Rays to be the one thing my wiz couldn't account for and would lead to his demise.
