The Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide

[JoeGKushner]

Kick Monster Butt

You're looking at the only strategy guide for the revised edition of the world's most popular role playing game. Let's be real -- the game's about combat, not charisma! This strategy guide gives you the strategies and techniques you need to win. It's like a football coach's playbook, or a video game champion's cheat codes. Feat combos, sneaky spell uses, multiclassing secrets, and abusing the rules: that's what it's all about.

Build the Perfect Magic User

Pick the wrong spells and you'll be pushing up daisies. Pick the right ones and you'll be racking up XP! This book is all about making the right decisions to build the perfect magic user. Whether you're a wizard, sorcerer, or other arcane spellcaster, if you're interested in combat, you'll learn how to max out your abilities.

Make the Right Decisions

What's the best option: "front end" spells with attack rolls, or "back end" spells that give the target a save? What's your best chance of survival: max out your ability to beat spell resistance, or max out your save DCs? Is Weapon Focus (ray) really a good choice, even for a ray specialist? When you're through with this book, you'll know the answers.

But Don't Tell the DM

Everything in this guide comes straight from the core rulebooks. It's 100 percent official material; all we do is tell you how to use it. But you don't want your DM to read this book. Just think, all these useful tips and suggestions in the hands of the guy who runs the monsters! Shudder. Keep this one tucked away or you'll regret it.


First of Its Kind

This book has no new rules, no new feats, and no new prestige classes. Instead, it brings to d20 the most popular book category of the video game industry: the strategy guide. The Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide tells wizards, sorcerers, and other arcane spellcasters how to make the right decisions to build the perfect magic user -- using only the 100 percent official rules presented in the PHB. Chock full of tables, charts, stats, and comparisons with all the number-crunching done for you, it's a first-of-its-kind product useable in ANY d20 campaign.

Developer: Jason Little
Writers: Glyn Dewey, Jason Little, Anthony Pryor
Graphic Design: Duncan Fielden


GMG4311. 96 pages, $19.99.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Power Gamer’s 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide
Written by Glyn Dewey, Jason Little, Anthony Pryor
Published by Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com
GMG 4311
ISBN: 0-9768085-0-1
96 b & w pages
$19.99

The Power Gamer’s 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide is perfect for those new players who want to know how to run an effect wizard or sorcerer in the new D&D game.

On the cover, it claims “The 100% Official Guide to Kicking Monster Butt and Winning the Game.” That tells you a few things about the product. One, it’s working with material out of the SRD. If you’re playing something like Iron Heroes, Black Company or Arcana Evolved, while some of the advice might be useful to you, especially for AE, it’s written for the core D&D player.

The second thing is that while focusing on using the game engine to it’s fullest, it’s also a bit tongue in check.

Broken up into seven different chapters with four appendices, the book provides a wide list of opinions and options to make your mage a more useful spellcaster, regardless of what type of mage you’re trying to play.

It does this by looking at the various things that make up a character, almost just like the Player’s Handbook. For example, let’s start with your ability scores. Where should you place your dump stat? What’s the most important secondary stats? Things like that. It then moves onto races. Which races are best for which arcane spellcasting option and why.

While some of these elements are of common sense to the long term player, others are useful on the way that the author points out that some races for the wizard, like the half-elf and half-orc, don’t really offer a lot in terms of payoff in abilities. It’s an interesting, almost honest look at how some of the races are skewed towards different play types.

After you have stats and race, what’s next? In this case, it’d be skills and then feats. These chapters are useful for those who been fooled by the utility of Combat Casting, a feat that should’ve probably been updated to a +5 bonus in dangerous situations as Skill Focus is only 1 less and works in all situations. It’s a good breakdown of feats and has several feat progressions and ideas on how to get the most out of your feats.

In looking at arcane spellcasters, one of their abilities is a familiar. Which familiar works best and why? This is covered, as is a quick run down of the differences between the wizard and the sorcerer. The former with the ability to have an unlimited number of known spells but the limit that he has to memorize them, the latter with a limited spell selection, but can cast any spell they know as long as they have slots open for it.

Probably of more interest to some, is the idea of the archetypes. The authors break down the different core roles that a wizard often fills in the group as follows; blaster, controller, saboteur, and support specialist. It’s a good section that gets used in terms of appropriate spells, schools that might be good for specializing in, and even spells by archtype.

For those who wonder what mages might do to augment themselves further, a chapter on equipment provides a good breakdown of what to own by type. For example, healing has it’s own section, as does defense. The big break in sections here, are consumable magic items, things that are temporary like wands, potions, and scrolls, against those that are permanent, like amulets, gloves, and armor.

Of immediate use to people making characters higher than first level, would be the sample mage kits with several different lists of items according to level and the gold they should have to spend at those levels, including level 5, 10, and 15.

The chapters end on combat and making sure that your mage is of use to the group and of course, keeping yourself alive. One thing that’s of great use to players, but annoying as a GM for the meta knowledge it has, is the break down of monsters by type in terms of their good saves. It also breaks the monsters down by different categories and includes an example. In looking at toughs, these are the “thugs” of the game, the giants, humanoids, and monstrous humanoids. It then uses it’s archetype system, to talk about how each archetype would handle the different monsters in a paragraph or two.

For example, in looking at the undead, the blaster is advised to dish out as much damage as possible, especially on any unique or potent undead that are in the group over targets such as standard skeletons and zombies.

The appendices contain various tables like spell saves vs. target DCs, or caster checks vs. target’s spell resistance.

The book is perfect for a new player or for the casual player who might be interested in kicking up his utility to the group. It’s not going to appeal to people who use a ton of third party material, although the advice and core ideas are still sound, and it’s not going to appeal to those who put the “role” emphasis on the game as it notes that certain classes and choices, while perhaps valid, are just not the most effective.

If you’re looking to add some oomph to your wizard, this strategy guide is a good place to start.

 

[buzz]

I woiuld just add that, even as a veteran player, I learned a LOT from this book. This and the Warrior guide have been the most useful supplements I've purchased for D&D/d20. It's 4 to 4.5 stars IMO. I look forward to more guides from Goodman.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I look forward to seeing your review buzz.

 

[trancejeremy]

Oook-zap

The Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide
(The 100% Official Guide to Kicking Monster Butt and Winning the Game)



Strategy guides and hint books for computer adventure and role-playing games have a long history , existing almost as long as the games themselves. I remember long before the internet, reading walk-throughs and hints from Scorpia in Computer Gaming World and on the dial-up service GEnie. They've now become almost an industry to themselves, with virtually every game getting at least one official guide and many popular games get one or two unofficial guides.

However, a strategy guide or a hint book to a pen & paper roleplaying game is somewhat novel. I can't think of any before this series, "The Power Gamer's 3.5 ___________ Strategy Guide" from Goodman Games (in this case, "Wizard". It's dedicated to helping players create characters who excel in combat (and all around adventuring) created purely through the use of the actual core-rules, not additional splatbooks.

I guess for one reason, creating characters to take advantage of the rules system or maximizing a characters abilities according to the rules is often given a bad name, "Min-maxing" or "Munchkin". But it's like watching reality TV. A lot of people do it, few people admit it.

Another thing, few companies want to admit their rules systems are broken or can be exploited, and so won't publish a book on it themselves and other companies really can't (or won't). Since d20 lets anyone publish, not just the company that put out the original rules, other companies can.


Although the name of the book say it's for wizards, it's actually also for sorcerers as well. On the other hand, it says for other arcane spellcasters, but the other arcane spellcaster, the Bard, isn't really covered. So it's just for Wizards and Sorcerers. Or "Mages" as the book collectively refers to those two classes.

It's solely based on stuff in the d20 SRD, so it's 100% "official", that is, no 3rd party feats or skills or spells or such. So if you are a player, the advice in this book should apply to you unless your DM has house rules. And even if he does, then it will at least get you thinking strategically and tactically when it comes to your character.

The Book Itself

The book divides spellcasters into 4 archetypes - Blaster, Controller, Saboteur, and Support Specialist. Blasters deal damage to enemies, Controllers manipulate and weaken opponents, Saboteurs alter the battlefield and and Support Specialists make the rest of the party better. By picking one (or maybe two) archetypes, the mage can do that job better than if he tries to do something of everything.


The first part of the book deals with creating a character. That is, which races work the best, and how to assign a character's stats, as well as feats and even which familiar is best.

While some of this is obvious, a lot depends on what sort of role the mage will play. For instance, while everyone needs a high intelligence (or charisma for sorcerers), "blasters" will need a high dexterity to help them with their ray and touch attacks. While not every archetype has a different priority, there is some difference.




Spellcasters have two special sorts of important feats: metamagic (which improves spells cast) and magical crafting (which lets them make magical goodies). The wizard gets a fair amount of feats, but a sorcerer doesn't, so just which feats to pick can be very important.


Which is the better metamagic feat, "Empower Spell" or "Maximize Spell"? In most cases, according to the guide, "Empower Spell" is better since it costs one fewer spell level. Similarly, just which item creation feats are best to get? What are the downsides of each one? And how about other general feats, which ones are worth taking? Most players I know take "Combat Casting" to help spellcasting in combat, but this book makes an excellent case that "Skill Focus (Concentration)" is an all around better pick.


What spells a mage casts is just as important as how well he casts them, so there is a large chapter on spell selection.

For damage spells, there is a handy chart which displays the average amount of damage done by that spell by each level of the spellcaster. Including lower level spells maximized and empowered by metamagic and how much damage is done if the target makes their save.

Spells for other archetypes aren't as obvious, but each gets a breakdown on which spells are worth using and which spells sound useful but aren't.

Some of the advice could be clearer. For instance, there's a section called "The Half Life of Burning Hands" which discusses how some spells are more useful at lower levels, but then get to be less useful as the casting level increases. It shows a chart of an empowered Fireball vs. Cone of Cold and how Cone of Cold does more damage at higher levels.

I would have liked to have seen charts (or simply a list) of other spells that are also less useful at high levels. It mentions that "Scorching Ray" is starting to get long in the tooth at 15th level, but provides no alternative to it.


They say clothes make the man, and there is certainly some truth to that when it comes to what sort of gear a mage has. This guide shows which items are generally too costly for what they deliver, while what other items are bargains.

This is especially useful for players who are familiar with earlier versions of D&D, but not 3.5. Because some magic items have changed dramatically in their usefulness. For instance, Bracers of Armor. They used to be pretty decent. But now they cost more than the bonus they give is really worth, since a similar result to a +4 Bracers of armor can be achieved by using 2 pearls of power to simply cast "Mage Armor" twice a day with a savings of about 14,000 gp.


So you've finally got your mage statted up, feats selected, spells picked, decked out with magic items. Time to chew bubblegum and kick ass. But how to best deal with a type of an opponent? Well, that's covered here, too.

Opponents are broken up into five different categories. Critters (animals, oozes, plants, vermin), Fiends (outsiders, elementals, dragons), Terrors (aberrations, constructs, fey, some magical beasts), Toughs (giants, humanoids, teamsters), and Undead (me after that last joke). With further advice with dealing with enemy spellcasters.

Each archetype of mage is given advice on how to tackle that given category of opponent, along with a more specific example of an opponent in that category.


Lastly there is an appendix listing which spells are best for each mage archetype as well as various probability charts. I'm not sure you'd want your DM to see you use this book, so I don't know how useful those are in practice, unless you want to photocopy them and hide them in your copy of the PHB.






The book is apparently aimed more for function than looks. It's nice and clean looking, but has no artwork in it except for the occasional diagram or chart. As it is, the book is pretty much full, so I guess there is no room for artwork, but if there had been, I think some cartoon/comic style illustrations similar to some in the original Dungeon Master's Guide would have been appropriate.


Final Thoughts...

The book is a well written (and often funny) and fascinating analysis of the wizard and sorcerer classes, and in a way, of the magic system of d20. It's not just for power gamers or munchkins, any d20 player will gain insight into the arcane magic system. Also it seems quite valuable for would be game designers, especially ones making new spells, to accurately gauge the power of their new spells. It's also just the thing for DMs who want to make their player's lives miserable, yet stay within the rules.

It's not perfect though. I would have liked to have seen more info on multi-classing and prestige classes. There's really very little info on that, just a small bit in the feat section analyzing some possible feat selections for a fighter/wizard or paladin/sorcerer. The exclusion of prestige classes is somewhat glaring, since I would suspect most high level characters would take one, but aren't sure if some of the abilities are worth the loss (for instance, the Arch Mage gives up some slots to get some other slots). I also would have liked to have seen some prebuilt sample mages at various levels.

So it seems to me, they could have made a more comprehensive book, including that (particularly info on prestige classes, as they are important to mid to high level characters, and it would have been nice seeing an examination of the 'Mystic Theurge' - it's spawned a number of arugments as to whether it's over or under powered or just right) and perhaps some artwork and made into a 128 page book (which also generally are a better deal for the consumer, since they only cost a few dollars more). Still, not being the publisher, I just don't know how feasible that was. A few typos (including the dreaded page XX error) are about the only flaws in this product. B+

 

[buzz]

While I agree with your rating of this book, your title says this is a review of the Wizard guide, but it's a review of the Warrior guide. Might want to have the mods fix that.

 

[Alzrius]

In regards to the mis-titling of this review, I honestly don't know what happened. I titled it the Warrior Strategy Guide, but somehow it's become Wizard Strategy Guide. I didn't make the mistake, as trying to edit the review still shows the original (and correct) title, and editing it doesn't change the listed title.

I can only assume one of the mods somehow made the error. I've already asked them to correct it, so hopefully the title will be fixed soon.

 

[buzz]

Cool. As long as you know about it.

 

[pogre]

The Power Gamer’s 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide

The Power Gamer’s 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide
Publisher: Goodman Games
96 pages
$19.99
Also available as a pdf.

This is a playtest review. Those wanting my general impressions may skip to the Summary at the end of the review.

Following on the heels of the excellent Warrior Guide in this series I was excited to purchase this book. The stated goal of this book is similar to the Warrior Guide: Build the perfect magic-using character to kick butt in D&D. The book is advice on making the right choices on maximizing a magic-using characters effectiveness. Although not quite the indispensable treasure that the Warrior Guide is, this book mostly succeeds.

The Chapters are organized along the lines of player choices made when creating a magic-using character. Chapter one details the best way to arrange ability scores. Chapter two deals with appropriate races. Chapter three covers skills the magic-user should emphasize. Chapter four outlines feats and which ones work best for wizards. Chapter five discusses classes and archetypes. Archetypes are an important element to this book as they define the kind of mage a player wishes to play and the associated appropriate choices.

Chapter six describes the various appropriate spells by archetype. Chapter seven catalogues the equipment a wizard should carry and goes into the various worth of assorted magic items. Chapter seven again, an amusing editing gaff both in the table of contents and the chapter headings, discusses the role of the caster in combat. Finally, the appendices give a number of spreadsheets including spell saves vs. target DCs, caster check vs. target’s spell resistance, and average spell damage by die type.

The introduction of the book outlines a number of difficulties in creating a power gamer guide about spell casters. The main problem is the multitude of factors involved in assessing spell caster performance. Warriors generally require an analysis of how to bring the most damage, the fastest against most opponents. Not easily accomplished with wizards as they can fulfill various roles in the party. The four archetypes outline this difficulty – blaster, controller, saboteur, and support specialist. In a nutshell, should your wizard concentrate on buffing everyone for a combat or launch the fireball, which will do more overall damage to the enemy? An admittedly more difficult analysis than – what is better short sword or long?

Despite the difficulties, the book does a fair job of dispensing advice. The advice of this guide is more stylistic and more arguable than the Warrior’s Guide, but still solid. There is a very interesting discussion of the relative worth of the various metamagic feats in chapter four for example. The relative worth of familiars for the various archetypes is covered in chapter five. A solid discussion of the two blaster archetypes, front-end blasters and back-end blasters, is also found in chapter five. Front-end blasters generally need a touch attack or ray attack and back-end blasters usually require a save from their respective targets. Although the book advocates some choices, it cannot or does not do so conclusively – in short there is a lot of “it depends” language littered throughout.

My favorite two pages in the whole book are found in chapter six – a huge chart covering what certain spells cause in average damage at caster levels 1 through 20. The only drawback is the chart does not adjust damage for the difficulty of the saving throws. Therefore, a higher level spell listed as having the same damage as a lower level spell would in actual gameplay cause more average damage. This is a minor nitpick though, as I find the chart a very helpful comparison. Another helpful pair of charts is the best offensive and defensive buffs by level.

I was surprised at how valuable I found the equipment section. Detailed discussions of which magic items are most helpful to each wizard archetypes are enlightening. Even more helpful to DMs is an example list of effective equipment lists for magic-users by level. I certainly will use this when creating NPCs in my game and scale it down a bit – it uses average PC wealth as a guideline.

I do have a couple of other minor quibbles with this guide: First, the authors mention a few things outside of the phb. Technically Dark Elves are in the core rules – see the MM, but I would say the cast majority of core rules games would not have them as a player race. The second quibble is really a matter of personal preference, but I found the attempts at humor in this book falling short of the Warrior’s Guide.

Summary
The Wizard Strategy Guide attempts to show how to build the best kick butt magic-using characters possible. It mostly succeeds, but falls short of its predecessor. The book rates an 8.5 out of 10 or so, which converts to a 4-star review in ENWorld terms. I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone playing an arcane caster but it is not indispensable as the Warrior Guide.

December 27, 2005
Keith Pogue (AKA pogre)