First off, I want to announce that I have finally earned a Mage. This it the first mage I have ever got past level 9 or 12 (NWN).
Thank you, thank you. Your applause is overwhelming.
I will give the credit to Pyro for starting a tank just so I could level without dieing every 3 seconds. I finally made it past 21, I'm 24 or 26 as I write this. Leveling alone is still a bitch, but not as bad as when I was under level 15.
I mostly wanted to check out some of the Lich parameters, good points and bad. So far, my worst failing is that I can't get See Invisible or True Seeing. At level one, I chose Necromancy School which turned off Divination spells. So far, most of the spells I use aren't even Necromancy Spells. I have taken all the spell focus feats for Necromancy, just as outlined for a Lich. (NO! I can't actually become a true Lich yet. I am 'play testing' to see how it might be from a players perspective.)
I took 20 levels of Wizard and then started Pale Master. And yes, I am Chaotic Evil. The thing I am noticing and don't like at all is this: PM is not increasing my spell slots.
I did kill The Sleeping Dragon rather easily. My spells didn't touch the Rak. I will change my spell list and try again.
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Congrats on making a mage! I like mine and had fun leveling them.
I had thought about making what I call a "death mage" which basically means focusing everything twords necromancy, but decided against it.
Oh, you can forget soloing the Rak with a mage.
I agree with Simon, and I’ll give this little bit of advice to newbie mages out there:
Bosses you can easily kill with a Wiz/PM:
Royal Assassin
StridAst
Frost Giant Badass
Sheelo
Gold Dragon
Bosses you can kill with a Wiz/PM if you have lots of HP and get creative with your spells:
Devastation Beetle
Krenshar
Cockatrice
Medusa
Abominable Snowman
Killer Shark (you had better have well over 1000hp or have a good healer behind you)
Ryuji
Bosses that are theoretically possible to kill with a Mage, but you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning:
Bloody Sabbath
Rakshasa
Black Betty
Not a complete list, but that’s what I got off the top of my head.
PS: You can tell how bored I am at work on a specific day by how much I contribute to the Blog on that day :P
The drows are also bosses easily dealt with by a mage/pm..
To kill Sabbath, you just need to have enough caster levels, which the typical mage/pm doesn't have..
Rak.. well, you need to be lucky, cause the days of rak killing himself on acid shields are long gone.
Deurack, you forgot about The evil one.. a beast so powerful that few had the chance to say they soloed that challenge.. Mephistopheles..
Some have indeed killed that beast but always with a healer sidekick by their side.
But two legendary wizards... ah, I remember them well.. they've killed Meph and lived to tell the tale.
Belpheron and Cain.. I wonder what happened to those two.. hmm
Skullcrusher killed Black Sabbath alone. Skullcrusher is a novelty build, Monk with unarmed dev crit. No, I didn't dev Sabbath, and I died three times before I got him, but I got him. I beat the snott out of him with my gloved hands and I was alone and without buffs (other than what I can do myself).
For those that need to know, Monk/Sorc/PM 21/3/16. Epic Warding, Epic Mage Armor and True Strike are my only real buffs.
Oh, yeah, selfish me. Congrats Q on Moreta, your first mage.
Yeah, Meph and the Drow would go into the second category, you can do it but you need either have alot of HP or be a good mage user.
Yeah well the spell using is exactly what I've been trying to talk you into for the past month. Any save vs DC-driven spell except for the facepalms is almost useless here.
We can make a devver and it works, we can make an imploder and it works, but a wailer is completely out of the question.
oh and uhm about that not touching the rak with your 20 mage lvls, if my lvl 40 pure caster can't touch him with a finger of death and only kill him with wails, how do you expect him to even flinch if you do it with half the caster lvls?
I was really hoping some of you would talk about mage building like you have done with melee builds.
I know that nobody wants to give up to many secret strategies, which is why nobody (self included) has printed a level-by-level building recipe.
There are 2 basic mage builds. I have a few others rattling around in my head but I’m not telling what they are.
Build 1 – 29 Wizard / 10 Pale Master / 1 Class with Tumble & Discipline
I’ve already talked about this build in the “List of the Classics” post.
1 Paladin / 38 Sorcerer / 1 Monk
While this build doesn’t have the immunity to Crits that other build does, it has a much higher caster level and due to Divine Grace from the 1 level of Paladin it has very good saving throws. Take the Classes and levels exactly as they are shown in the build description. Taking Paladin first will give you access to Heavy Armor and Shields and the good saving throws. Take all your spell casting levels up to level 39 and then take Monk at 40. This is where you dump at least 40 points into Discipline and Tumble.
I don’t think that a level by level guide to making a mage would be very helpful, because there are many different ways to make them. The hardest part of playing a mage is leveling them up, and there are as many different ideas on how and where you should do that as there are players. Xp’ing with a mage will depend largely on what spells and abilities you have and how creative and skillful at using the spells you are. However, there are some underlying themes that every good mage build will follow.
- Unless you’re planning on pumping your Dexterity and relying on your Dex bonus along with EMA for good AC, you should get Shield Proficiency, Armor Proficiency (Heavy) and the Still Spell Feat. I’m not saying that I recommend wearing heavy armor and a tower shield as you’re xp’ing. Wait until you get above level 20, get some decent Spell Craft get Automatic Still Spell 1, 2, and 3. Wearing the Gold Dragon armor and the Dev Shield along with EMA will give your mage a very respectable AC. Both my 29/10/1 builds have at least 77 AC.
- Make sure that you get Maximize Spell, Empower Spell and either Silent Spell or Still Spell. Using these metamagic feats will allow you to cast your power spells many more times per rest period than you could without them. (I know that this might seem like common sense to most people but I actually had an argument with someone when I tried to explain this to them that ended with the person not understanding what I was talking about and calling me a cheater and an idiot, so I’m not making any assumptions.) I’ll explain what I mean by this: assume that you have Isaacs Greater Missile Storm (IGMS) memorized and are a 20th level Wizard. This will give you the ability to cast four 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spells before having to rest again to replenish your spells. IGMS is a 6th level spell, so without the metamagic feats listed above you would only be able to cast 4 IGMS before having to rest. However, you can use Still Spell to increase the “caster level” of the spell to 7th and fill your 7th level spell slots with 4 “Stilled IGMS”. Likewise, you can use Empower spell to make IGMS an 8th level spell and Maximize spell to make IGMS a 9th level spell. This means that you will be capable of casting IGMS 16 times before having to rest instead of only 4.
- IGMS is one of the best damage dealing spells in the game –IF – you are fighting 2 or fewer opponents. If you have 3 or more opponents then you should use Flame Brand.
- One of the most effective ways to XP as a mage is to cast damage reduction spells on yourself along with either Acid Sheath or Elemental Shield and then let the monsters kill themselves by hitting you. This, combined with either IGMS or Flame Brand will allow you to kill many different types of enemies very quickly as long as you have enough HP and Healing Kits to keep you alive. The best possible damage reduction spell available to a mage is Epic Warding. However, you won’t have access to Epic Warding until around level 32 or 33, and while Premonition is a decent spell, being immune to Critical Hits and having good damage reduction is much better. ‘Nuff Said.
- The above point is why people who play mages hate monsters that are immune to both Acid and Fire with a fierce passion and avoid areas populated by these abominations like the plague unless accompanied by some burly melee types wielding heavy weapons.
If I think of anything else I’ll post it later. I actually need to get back to work now :p
lol, I have a few mages on my account and every last one is lvld the exact same way. I make it, blow stuff up and get to lvl 40. Everything in between has become so standard that I didn't even think of mentioning it.
Deurack pretty much sums it up, igms, acid sheath, ew and firebrand is pure destruction under a button when casted on the right enemy.
A few extra things that are good to look out for. Depending if you're going to base your mage around constitution, charisma/intellige, or dex, and in a very strange case even str. The thing is, that (I'm probably gonna step on some people's toes here, I had quite the argument with psyammy on this a while ago) a cha/int based mage isn't even half as good in badlands as it could possibly be.
The DC's aren't all that great and except for those few bosses where you can only hope for the lucky 1 like the rak and bruce they're pretty much a waste. Every single build will get his saves above 50 at least, and this added to the 1d20 dice pretty much renders most spells useless wich is why we end up with so many igms spammers.
There are of course a few exceptions, to be more precise the bigsy hands. Bigsby's Forcefull Hand is pure humiliation for any dex build without sr. The other one, Bigsby's Crushing Hand is hardly any use unless you're cha/int based wich leads to my point why these 2 exceptions work.
Both spells depend on the STR modifier of the victim instead of the usual fort, ref, or will save.
A short summary of what makes BFH so great is this,
Bullrush: caster rolls 1d20 + 14 vs target's roll of 1d20 + target's strength modifier + target's size modifier.
now anyone who's made a few dexers knows that there's no way in hell he's gonna make that save.
Right, moving on. A str based mage, why should we bother? Just like BFH is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a dexer or another mage. Kd pretty much puts and end to the mages every move. Against KD we need discipline wich is both gained by adding to the feat and, good guess by stacking str to the top. And, since our DC-driven spells are almost useless here anyways we just so happen to have a lot of ability points to spare.
K, that's pretty much all I can think of right now. And to those of you who think that it was absolutely unnecessary to put this much info something we already knew, it seemed to me like it was asked so bite me.
Hiya Blade here,
I have just finished making my Chaotic Evil Wizard 20 / PaleMaster 10 specializing in Necromancy.
It would be fun to playtest the new Lich stuff if it is available yet :)
All the best .....Blade :)
Pale Lichblade
The Lich is not ready yet. Do not take a 3rd class as that won't be allowed. You can put the other 10 level towards the first two classes as you wish.
I am working on the next mod update as we speak.
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