03-12-2004 00:18									#211
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Hey you guys, I need some advice on a wizard build. I was planning on just going straight levels in wizard as the server I play is bloody slow levelling. Any idea how I can make a worthwhile nonmagical contribution to combat ? What feats do you find useful?

Hes mostly always going to be running around in a 5 man party so Im probably not going to get stuck in melee too often, so I can afford to throw everything into my wizard abilitys I think.

	03-12-2004 03:07									#212
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Take an elf wizard, then you can use a longbow without burning a feat. Get the Rapid Shot and Point Blank Shot feats. With magic arrows, and an ok DEX, you'll be alright. Use a melee type pet and a summoned monster as an extra layer of meatshield.

Apart from that... a slow levelling server is best suited to taking straight wizard levels. Perhaps 1 level of Rogue to start with, one later on, and one at about level 20 (wizard 17/Rogue 3) will allow you to stockpile skillpoints (high INT) and burn them on the nice rogue skills at the appropriate moments. You'll also pick up 2d6 sneak attack doing that. Once into Epic levels, the wizard stops improving quite so much. You simply can't get many more spells per day.

But yeah, mostly straight wizard to become effective as fast as possible, or lightly season with rogue for a few extra skills.

-Jam

	03-12-2004 04:24									#213
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It kinda depends, Rogue/Wizard (+ maybe WM) is nice, or Fighter/Wizard/Pale Master is a nice combo.

	04-12-2004 17:46									#214
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Nice combos, yeah, but on a slow levelling server they won't start to realise their potential for a loooooooong while.

I'd go 1 level of Rogue, 6 levels of Wizard, 1 level of Rogue, 6 levels of Wizard, 1 level of Rogue, then Wizard all the way.

Or.

1 level of Rogue, 3 levels of wizard, then alternate 2 levels of Rogue and 2 levels of Wizard untill you have 7 levels of Rogue. Then wizard all the way untill you get a couple of 9th level spells (level 24) That's a kind of moderately fast build, you get the ultimate wizard power pretty soonish, but while you are getting there you'll be a competent Rogue too.

-Jam

	04-12-2004 18:14									#215
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With the versatility in NWN I prefer fast levelling and lots of chars to slow levelling and one char.

	04-12-2004 20:42									#216
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Yep totally agree there. I doubt I would play on this server if it wasnt for my friends there. Folderol is a refreshing change, I will have more time for it when I have finished moving house

Im still up in the air about what to do with my character, and it all kicks off tomorrow. Ive played a few practice mages on various servers I have played on, and all my builds seem to suck Maybe Im too used to battering things as fighter types, or not letting them get to high enough level.

We already have a F/Wiz/PM in the party, and they are the only other arcane spellcaster. Hes planning on only taking 3 levels of wiz, so Im left to look after all the high end magic.

I think Im probably going to end up with 3 rogue levels before 10th and leave it at that. On this server you get xp for casting spells, and you are rewarded for casting a variety of spells. I want to keep getting new levels of spells every 2/3 levels if I can, so I dont lag behind the rest of the party in xp and have to resort to the craftable natural resource system for my xp

A gnome with a shortbow its looking like.

	05-12-2004 05:31									#217
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I'd lay off the rogue if you already have a rogue in your party.

power gaming multiclassing

you are supposed to be a wizard dammit! not a thief!

	05-12-2004 05:35									#218
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quote: Originally posted by Snotty Yep totally agree there. I doubt I would play on this server if it wasnt for my friends there. Folderol is a refreshing change, I will have more time for it when I have finished moving house Im still up in the air about what to do with my character, and it all kicks off tomorrow. Ive played a few practice mages on various servers I have played on, and all my builds seem to suck Maybe Im too used to battering things as fighter types, or not letting them get to high enough level. We already have a F/Wiz/PM in the party, and they are the only other arcane spellcaster. Hes planning on only taking 3 levels of wiz, so Im left to look after all the high end magic. I think Im probably going to end up with 3 rogue levels before 10th and leave it at that. On this server you get xp for casting spells, and you are rewarded for casting a variety of spells. I want to keep getting new levels of spells every 2/3 levels if I can, so I dont lag behind the rest of the party in xp and have to resort to the craftable natural resource system for my xp A gnome with a shortbow its looking like.

I had a gnome illusionist (wizard essentually- but I was role playing illusionist, and I also did spell focus illusion and evocation- I can't give up evocation for nothing) for the official expansion campaigns. They start off slow, but can be very powerful builds. You'll be a lot better off when you play for real, as you'll have better protection around you. I had no pansy ass rogue levels in my build.

The high level spells for wizard are simply amazing. I'd leave off the rogue levels so you can get to those spells earlier.

You mentioned XP for casting spells, are there also material components for casting spells? I have seen some hard-hardcore servers that go with the players handbook and require material components to cast spells. Like a diamond for casting stonesking etc.

Once you get to those multiple missile spells- you can annhilate just about anything.

	05-12-2004 06:38									#219
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Speaking of high levels, does anyone know of some good high level modules?

I played Sands of Fate 1 – Shadows over Heliopolis (really good ) and The Gods Themselves wich is very good too but extremly short
I preffer good story over combat, but I´m a bit tired now of playing low level characters, any ideas?

	05-12-2004 09:18									#220
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Sands of Fate I found to be quite good. A while ago I went through the Mines of Twin Summit and found it rather enjoyable. I'm somewhat early into the second part of it but finding it somewhat dull so far (a bit overly hack and slash).

	05-12-2004 15:47									#221
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident I'd lay off the rogue if you already have a rogue in your party. power gaming multiclassing you are supposed to be a wizard dammit! not a thief!

It's not about powergaming, it's about making a well-rounded character. All my characters have 3 classes.

	05-12-2004 21:49									#222
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I´m going to try the Mines of Twin Summit, thanks

	05-12-2004 21:56									#223
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quote: Originally posted by Jamski My ninja plan. Race is human, btw. -Jam

Wait, a rogue with only 14 dex? I'm surprised. I can never bring myself to lower a rogue's starting dex below 15.

Anything in the off hand?

(And yes, I try to use dual-wield with ALL my rogue chars. )

	06-12-2004 01:37									#224
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quote: Wait, a rogue with only 14 dex? I'm surprised. I can never bring myself to lower a rogue's starting dex below 15

They're basically a STR based fighting character, but with access to the whole range of Rogue/Assassin abilities.

quote: Anything in the off hand?

Nope Not unless I decide to burn some of those feats at the very end to get the dual wield options. I've been using the off-hand to carry torches of various kinds, or just keeping it empty. This character is more about the single killing blow than any kind of seriously balanced plan. I fully expect to see damage of about 200+ on sneak+critical+death attack, and then have to RUN AWAY before I get my ass creamed.

-Jam

	06-12-2004 02:07									#225
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Sounds a good character for you.

	06-12-2004 03:04									#226
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Too bad he didn´t get to level up in the ED&D Quest

	06-12-2004 04:37									#227
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There's still time if the RAINBOW SPIRIT TROUT can help me defeat the HASSELSPIDER OF DOOM.

-Jam

	06-12-2004 06:13									#228
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interesting rogue build. I may try it out. I've been making my rogues with a dexterity of 18. And lately I've been unhappy with those builds.

I end up running for my life trying to get distances from the enemies so I can fire my ranged weapons. That's not very fun for me.

I'd like to create a more melee orientated rogue.

	06-12-2004 14:14									#229
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I went for a 16 con gnome in the end, and bought improved initiative and toughness at 3rd. The rest of the party is 5th, and I am about 800 xp away and we have only had one death in the party so far (and that was before 3rd level so no xp loss). I put some of my excess skill points into tumbling and bought boots of +4 tumbling, and my character seems to have quite high survivability despite his 12 AC. Ive got enough hp to take a blow or two while running to hide behind the fighters

Diss convinced me to go straight Wiz in the end My heavy crossbow is doing nough damage for now, and 7th level onwards I will have enough spels to blow between rests to make shooting much less worthwhile.

No material componants for spells fortunatly. They are mostly hardcore there about the roleplay. Its fun sometimes, and some people have great skill at describing things, and its fun to read what people say, and how they write it, just like forums really. At other times roleplaying is a _real_ drag and I just want to get on with stomping things. We atracted the attention of a dm at one point and they started (non damaging) earthquaking the dungeon and spawning elementals, but we couldnt work out if there was some plot behind it so we left.

	06-12-2004 20:53									#230
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Out of curiosity, what server are you playing on?

	06-12-2004 21:16									#231
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About a year ago I have seen an interesting post in the BioWare fora about the "Spellsword" character. It is a wizard with quite some melee abilities. The idea behind this is to be able to melee the trash mobs that block your way to the bosses without having to waste your spells on them and to rest too often, which feels like cheating and can be annoyingly hard in some dungeons.

I can't bring some serious numbers, but the idea is to get yourself to use a good double bladed weapon like a double bladed sword or a dire mace. You'd have so blow some feats on it, but it is doable. If you build a dwarf as pure wizard, you can start with STR 14 (gives your main hand +2 and your off hand +1 extra punch), DEX 15 (+2 AC, required for Ambidexterity), CON 16 (important, as you have not many HPs), INT 16 (since you're a wizard), WIS 8 (unimportant, your will save will be high enough) and CHA 6.

The character was intended to play through the 2 expansions SoU and HoTU, but I could imagine to play the OC with it as well. It's a fun play on lower levels, though I don't know about its epic abilities. It could be quite possible to multiclass to Fighter later.

	07-12-2004 02:18									#232
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Chucking 4 levels of fighter on a wizard will make them about as good in melee as a straight rogue. But they will be able to buff themselves into melee gods

-Jam

	07-12-2004 04:36									#233
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quote: Originally posted by Snotty Diss convinced me to go straight Wiz in the end My heavy crossbow is doing nough damage for now, and 7th level onwards I will have enough spels to blow between rests to make shooting much less worthwhile.

Btw I think straight Sorc works better than straight wizard, if you want to do a pure build.

	07-12-2004 04:38									#234
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quote: Originally posted by Jamski Chucking 4 levels of fighter on a wizard will make them about as good in melee as a straight rogue. But they will be able to buff themselves into melee gods -Jam

For a meleeing wizard the fighter/wizard/pale master is my favourite build.

	07-12-2004 06:41									#235
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A couple of things:

--Stumbled across the Tomb of Horrors module on NWVault. Naturally, I'd like to assemble a group here to tackle that module. The suggested level range is around 22-30; I think 25th or 26th level would be a good idea.

If we do this, we're going to need a rogue-type char; I'll volunteer to make one. (Specifically, I have a rogue/fighter/WM build in mind. One with 13 dex. ) As for other characters we might need: a (non-melee ) arcane caster, a divine caster (for rezzing and whatnot), and at least one melee char. Post here if you want to join this venture, I can't be the only one geeky enough to be excited about a conversion of Tomb of Horrors into NWN.

--Neversummer 4 server 1 recently (as in, like an hour ago) capped experience at 25th level (apparently, lots of problems with 40th-level uberchars PKing everyone else...)

--Tying the first two items together: Making a build optimized for level 40 is plenty nice. But what about optimizing it for level 25-30 (i.e. lower epic levels)?

Anyway, here's the proposed rogue/fighter/WM build, or the first 25 levels of it.

Human, alignment any
STR 17, DEX 13, CON 14, INT 14, WIS 8, CHA 8
1) Rogue @1, dodge, expertise, sneak +1d6
2) Fighter @1, wfocus (greatsword)
3) Rogue @2, mobility
4) Fighter @2, spring attack, str+1 (18)
5) Fighter @3
6) Rogue @3, sneak +2d6, whirlwind
7) Fighter @4, wspec (greatsword)
8) WM @1, str+1 (19)
9) WM @2, power attack
10) WM @3
11) Rogue @4
12) WM @4, str+1 (20), cleave
13) WM @5, ki crit
14) Fighter @5
15) Rogue @5, improved crit (greatsword), sneak +3d6
16) WM @6, str+1 (21)
17) Rogue @6
18) WM @7, increased multiplier, great cleave
19) Rogue @7, sneak +4d6
20) Rogue @8, str+1 (22)
21) Rogue @9, epic focus (greatsword), sneak +5d6
22) Fighter @6, epic spec (greatsword)
23) Rogue @10, improved evasion
24) Rogue @11, str+1 (23), overcrit (greatsword), sneak +6d6
25) Rogue @12

Could be changed a lot (bunch the WM levels together, take exotic prof and katana focus, or some other stuff). Too lazy to redo the build for a katana weapon master right now.

	07-12-2004 13:09									#236
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quote: Originally posted by Jamski Chucking 4 levels of fighter on a wizard will make them about as good in melee as a straight rogue. But they will be able to buff themselves into melee gods -Jam

But he will be a significantly weaker wizard, while the spellsword remains powerful. Multiclassing is not everything.

	07-12-2004 13:44									#237
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The server is Vives http://24.141.30.114/vives/Default.aspx

Theres about 300mb of hakpaks you need to download, and a two stage registration you need to fill out if you want to play more than 4 (or is it 10?) hours.

All the chat in game is supposed to be roleplayed in character with any out of character stuff in ((double brackets)) or preferably by private message. I would hope that anyone coming from here would be able to follow the rules, otherwise is it just going to create a lot of work for my DM friends trying to sort it out/ban people etc. I know for some this will be like waving a red flag to a bull, but I suppose I just hope for the best.

My login is Midrow if anyone checks it out.

For MCing out of wizard its all about losing the spells, and breaking your spell power progression. I want about a million of those little misiles when I reach higher levels.

	08-12-2004 00:56									#238
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quote: But he will be a significantly weaker wizard, while the spellsword remains powerful. Multiclassing is not everything.

4 levels of fighter will hardly detract from power in the long term. Sure, in the short term they'll not be quite as powerful, but most spells are capped wrt the amount of damage they do, the only notable exception being the über cheesy Issac's spells. Meh. Its worth lagging behind a bit to pick up 3 bonus feats, use all weapons, get an extra attack each round and gain 24 HP.

Oh Vlad, I'm up for the 'poly game I'll bring a level 24 character (rogue 7/wizard 17) if that's ok.

-Jam

	08-12-2004 02:28									#239
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Im game for it. Im not used to epic levels so would probably play a front line fighter/barbarian type. Organizing a time and a date will be fun Im sure. I cant really play on sunday afternoon/evening (gmt) but will try to be flexible the rest of the time.

sounds like a laugh

	08-12-2004 04:29									#240
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quote: Originally posted by Jamski 4 levels of fighter will hardly detract from power in the long term. Sure, in the short term they'll not be quite as powerful, but most spells are capped wrt the amount of damage they do, the only notable exception being the über cheesy Issac's spells. Meh. Its worth lagging behind a bit to pick up 3 bonus feats, use all weapons, get an extra attack each round and gain 24 HP.

You might have overlooked, that the character was designed with the SP campaigns in mind. The OC ends around level 17, SoU around level 13. It is certainly not fun to play a nerfed wizard and then having the game end, when it begins to be fun. By the way, the meager low level spells aren't going to help against the bosses and your low level summoned meatshields would be toast in three hits, too. You end up with a mediocre wizard and a mediocre fighter.

The only exception may be HoTU.