How can a Mage even Hope to Survive?

[Redwood]

I am playing my mage from the start of chapter one several times to make sure he can survive the rest of the game. I am hoping that the treasure and difficulty of monsters go up when he advances in level but not too much so the game won't be a bust.

[GymJam]

Wizards/Sorcerers tend to get stronger as the game goes on. If you use summons or have a good henchman for a frontline, you shouldn't have much problem surviving. Especially if you use spells like mage armor or ghostly visage on yourself.

[wendigo211]

Try the melee mage approach for the first few levels, load up with buff spells (Mage Armor, Shield, (Greater) Magic Weapon, Haste, Ghostly Visage, etc.) and hit things with a staff or plink away with a crossbow. By the time the approach stops working you'll be high level enough to start using offensive magic.

[Tesseract]

Melee classes definitely have an advantage early on, but if you play it smart then casters are quite viable. Taking Daelan as your henchman helps to balance your party out.

But then... the final few boss fights of the original campaign are downright unfair to pure spellcasters.

[Redwood]

Thanks to all three of you. That helps. I like playing with the cleric female henchperson because a low hit point mage needs to be healed a lot.

[Jorlaan]

Snagging 1-2 levels of fighter is not a terrible way for a wizard to go. It helps a good deal with HP and some saves and the extra feats are always good to have.

[Redwood]

Originally posted by Jorlaan:

Snagging 1-2 levels of fighter is not a terrible way for a wizard to go. It helps a good deal with HP and some saves and the extra feats are always good to have.

I did give my mage a normal shield. It helps until I forget and try to cast a spell with it on.

[пинг-пон]

I started playing yesterday with elf sorcerer without henchman or summons (because you apparently get less exp if you have someone else in party) and what really helped me to survive early was the sleep spell. Elves are immune to sleep so you can't harm yourself and sleeping targets will die in one hit, AND this spell can hit multiple targets. You can even take the enchantment magic school focus feat to increase the chance of success. Another useful thing is invisibility, saved me many times. It generally gets better later. Oh also you could take fairy as your familiar, it could disarm traps and unlock doors/chests, and gets an improved invisibility spell later.

[Redwood]

Originally posted by пт на фид:

I started playing yesterday with elf sorcerer without henchman or summons (because you apparently get less exp if you have someone else in party) and what really helped me to survive early was the sleep spell. Elves are immune to sleep so you can't harm yourself and sleeping targets will die in one hit, AND this spell can hit multiple targets. You can even take the enchantment magic school focus feat to increase the chance of success. Another useful thing is invisibility, saved me many times. It generally gets better later. Oh also you could take fairy as your familiar, it could disarm traps and unlock doors/chests, and gets an improved invisibility spell later.

I forgot that elves cannot be put to sleep! I will use that next time. Invisiblity is nice if you don't mind running away. I have a hard time getting myelf to do that.

[jonnin]

early game a lot of cheap tactics and resting too much. Poor wiz needs a nap after every other fight.


wizards (and sorc ) have some major weakness. You have to do a bit of research to overcome them. Low health, low armor, and low BAB and few feats on top of being considerably weaker every time you take a non caster level. What you have to do is find ways to overcome these weaknesses with your magic or by multi-classing. Doing it with magic means a tough go of the first 5 or 6 levels. Multiclassing means being a mediocre fighter for the first 5-6 levels.

some amazing combos out there... 1 level of shadowdancer, hide and nuke. Monk level or 2, armor and deflect arrows.. paladin/sorc sorc/RDD fight well, just to name a couple of them.

[Bishop]

Sleep will single handedly carry you for first 4 levels against any living creature. Just cast it and go for free coup de grace. Rince and repeat.
After that its all about picking correct spells and knowing when and how using them.

All original compaigns are actually extremely caster friendly. You can rest almost anywhere anytime without any problems. Try playing something like Swordflight with a low level caster. It's just pure nightmare where you can't rest in 90% of locations at all and the rest 10% will keep spawning huge packs of random mobs when you try to rest..

[Shia Luck]

Originally posted by Jorlaan:

Snagging 1-2 levels of fighter is not a terrible way for a wizard to go. It helps a good deal with HP and some saves and the extra feats are always good to have.

I couldn't disagree more. Rogue, assassin, monk3, SD1 etc can be good multiclass choices, but unless you are purposefully designing a spellsword (in which case you want more than 1 or 2 ftr type levels), all you are doing is making your spells weaker for the entire game. Wizards have so many feats as it is you certainly don't need fighter for that.

Originally posted by Redwood:

Invisiblity is nice if you don't mind running away. I have a hard time getting myelf to do that.

If you have issues playing cleverly, then that will be your toughest challenge. Running in unprepared and expecting to melee out of it is a great way to die as a caster (or any class once you progress to the more difficult modules on the vault or PWs).

The melee mage advice above from wendigo211 is very good (tho sling for halflings, longbow for elves etc, any ranged but a xbow once past lvl10 and don't discount meleeing. ghostly visage is amazing at low levels and with flame weapon on your staff/greatsword you are hitting as hard as a fighter). I'd also not worry about using familiars and summons. The battles generally scale to party size (You might lose one level by the end of the first module.)

Have fun :)

[DopeScope]

try getting COMBAT EXPERTISE when you cast or have multiple enemies on you puts up your AC and doesn't affect your spell casting and early on get spells that boost AC, Natural armor, deflection etc. stack them all together and you can avoid most hits early on. I also suggest taking a few levels in fighter because you can buff up and then equip a melee weapon not relying only on magic to get you through a fight when switching to melee you can throw on armor and shield to further increase your AC. You'll have to put some points in strenght at least up to 14 unless you decide to go ranged and use a bow/crossbow/sling etc then just focus on DEX. Fighter will also give you a nice boost to how much HP you have which is useful early on and later in game. You can also get bull's strenght to improve melee damage, cat's grace for DEX for bows/crossbows, and bears endurance for more hp also stacks with other HP increasing spells.

Use familiars, and summon monster spells they are a huge help and become super helpful in later levels to the point where you don't even have to fight they'll kill everything fo you. remember you can have both your familiar and summoned monster out at the same time.
I'm not an expert on this or anything but I found this multi class works well for me.

[Shia Luck]

Expertise and improves expertise are very good feats for a caster as DopeScope said above. The fighter advice is as useless as I said above. Everytime you take a non caster level your spells get weaker and the chance of an enemy with spell resistance (and there are many) resisting your spells increases.

If you want to multiclass then take something that synergises with INT. Aka rogue, assassin etc. OR something that synergises with mage spells like Monk3. Or something that really helps you survive like shadowdancer. Fighter is doing nothing more than making your mage's spells weak, giving you feats you cant usefully use and messing with your head trying to play a caster like a fighter. You have ghostly visage, ethereal visage, shadow, stoneskin, greater stoneskin etc that make you surviveable. You have familiars and summons to tank. Take martial weapons and get a greatsword/scimitar with flame and keen weapon and do more damage than a fighter with better damage resistance than a fighter.

Do the maths! fighter = up to 10 hp. Mage up to 4 HP with 5 damage resisted by ghostly visage. Take toughness feat and you are equal but doing more damage because of your spells buffing your weapon! AND you soon get damage spells which walk all over anything fighter can offer, so long as you don't dilute your mage levels.

Have fun :)

[jonnin]

If you want a 'spellsword' type I can't recommend enough a sorc/RDD and if that isnt enough mix in a paladin or COT to work off the high cha. The concept is sort of flawed until rather high levels though, due to the stupidly low thaco of casters. That foolishness just works better as a nuke cleric/druid and fighter type.

Consumables really are nice for mages too. A few extra fireballs from a wand could be the difference, and you find wands and scrolls all the time.

I love caster classes but in this game a lot of enemy are heavily immune to magic, move fast, and do a ton of melee damage to you. D&D is designed for a group of 4-6 people to work together, and magic is super effective. But trying to use THOSE rules in a single player game where the bosses are significantly tougher than is reasonable is pretty challenging. Its doable, but its nothing like beint a weaponmaster (example) that crits every other hit for 100 points of damage 5 times per round compared to the wizard that fires off a disintegrate or somethign and does 2d8 when the target resists, if that. You need very high stats that overcome resists and make saving throws unpossible for the enemy to succeed, and that means a bit of R&D on the subject (there are guides online about maxing out these things so your spells stick and are effective).