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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6828610" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I was re-reading the guide recently, had a couple of comments, may add more at some point:(1) RE: healing,It's not clear whether the bolded is intended to apply specifically to in-combat healing or is a generic observation, but in the general case it's actually untrue. Except in the deadliest of fights (10x Deadly or so), out-of-combat is generally more efficient than damage prevention in terms of spell points-per-encounter. Where damage prevention has the edge is in risk management, not efficiency. Spending a sorcery point and five spell points on Extended Aura of Vitality may heal 240 HP of damage (with a Life Cleric dip), whereas preventing 60 out of 90 HP of damage with Wall of Force costs 7 spell points and still requires you to spend more on healing the 30 points of damage that you did take--but Wall of Force pretty much guarantees that nobody will die in this combat and that matters immensely.So, for easy fights, you can rely on just healing the damage afterwards, but for tough fights break out the proactive damage prevention.(2) I saw a comment that "Guards and Wards" doesn't have much use in actual adventuring, but it's actually pretty fantastic because of the "no friendly fire" clause and the 10 minute casting time. If you can sneak into the Red Dragon's lair and buy yourself ten minutes, you can set yourself up with a defensive hard point to fall back into at any time, allowing you to strafe him and/or his minions at low risk. Anyone who follows you into your hard point gets hit, at no action economy cost to you, with heavy obscurement (to which you are immune, granting effective Greater Invisibility to all of the PCs), Web spells on every stairway (make one if you have to), and either Suggestion or Stinking Cloud in a location of your choice--I recommend putting Stinking Cloud on top of a Web so the enemy can't use his action to break free of the Web.Having a fallback point completely changes the nature of a fight, enables hit-and-run tactics, lets you leverage out-of-combat healing more effectively, makes it easier to use illlusions, etc.For example, TreantMonk mentions having trouble coming up with a good use for Arcane Gate, but if the other end of Arcane Gate connects to the middle of a heavily obscured, Webbed stairway which Suggests to anyone who arrives there that they need to 'throw down your weapons and surrender immediately', I think you can see how Arcane Gate becomes a crackerjack assault spell for taking an enemy hardpoint. PC zips through, kills an enemy, step back through the Arcane Gate. Any enemies which follow to attack get taken out of play. Even if they succeed on all their saves, they are isolated and alone and will be quickly killed, thus completely justifying the "surrender immediately" suggestion as a "reasonable" one.(3) RE:Since Magic Jar lets you take permanent possession of any humanoid, the best thing to do with it is to capture a Werebear or Weretiger (if necessary, create one using True Polymorph) and take possession of it. Now you have 50% or 100% more HP, possibly higher Dex, and are immune to normal weapons.</blockquote>

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