how i broke the wizard and became the most powerful person in the party

[Stake A Vamp]

so, here is what i did.

i created a human wizard (level 6) that can cast wearing armour

here's how it works.

feat 1: still spell
feat (human): light armour proficiency
feat 2: medium armour proficiency
feat (wizard) 1: silent spell
feat 3: practical meta-magic (still spell)

my DM allowed this (for anyonee who has read my other posts i am involved in two campaigns, one as DM, one as a Player). whay should i do next (currently wearing breastplate and throwing around fireballs)

[Tanuki Tales]

I'm not being mean here and please don't take my following question as meaning any kind of offense:

Are you exactly aware of what a Wizard is capable of and how insignificantly small potatoes your build is?

[Setra]

Correct me if I am wrong but...

Don't you need Dragon Blood, and Spontaneous Casting for PMM?

Also, doesn't it not reduce metamagic below one spell above the spell level?

[DMofDarkness]

Congradulations. You managed to cast spells while wearing a piece of armor for +5 AC.

Unfortunately, while that's impressive for your group in particular, on any optimization forum, that is remarkably unimpressive, to be honest. Alter Self into a Lizardfolk gives you the same armor bonus, requires no feats, and can be used to stack with other armor.

If you want to see what breaking a Wizard looks like, look at some of Emporer Tippy's posts. In fact, let me save you the effort.

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

Shapechange -> Zodar -> Wish -> Scroll of Ice Assassin of an Aleax of you -> shift to non Zodar form -> Zodar -> Wish for a Power Stone of Fusion -> shift to non Zodar form -> Zodar -> Wish for a Power Stone of Astral Seed -> shift to non Zodar form -> Zodar -> Wish for a Thought Bottle -> Use Power Stone of of Fusion on Ice Assassin -> Use Power Stone of Astral Seed -> Use Thought Bottle -> Kill yourself -> Return from Astral Seed -> Use Thought Bottle to regain lost level.

There you go, now the only one who can ever harm you is you thanks to Singular Enemy (Ex). Total cost was 3,825 GP for the Scroll of Shapechange.

Note that this loop also grants you infinite wishes if you spend more time turning into a Zodar.

[Lightlawbliss]

you just used 2 feats to get a breastplate and another to compensate for it...

before too long you and/or the cleric will be casting spells that make that breastplate look like a playground toy and all the advantage it gives over an enchanted robe will become miniscule for a primary caster.

Not to mention you are sacrificing your highest lvl spells to cast weaker ones, and can't efficiently use your first levels.

[Tanuki Tales]

Originally Posted by DMofDarkness

Note that this loop also grants you infinite wishes if you spend more time turning into a Zodar.

To be fair, didn't Tippy point out that you didn't need to necessarily be a Wizard for that trick to work?

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Yeah, this is less "Breaking the Wizard" and more "Using feats in exactly the manner the game designers intended."

[Stake A Vamp]

well,i thought it was cool (goes and pouts in corner)

i suppose i should rename the thread, also, did not catch all those prereqs for PMM

[DMofDarkness]

Originally Posted by Tanuki Tales

To be fair, didn't Tippy point out that you didn't need to necessarily be a Wizard for that trick to work?

Yes, but being a Wizard helps.

Combine that with Grey Elf Domain Wizard 1 with the substitution level, Alacritous Cogitation, and Versatile Spellcaster to get Shapechange at level 1, and it becomes significantly more Wizard based.

[ericgrau]

Originally Posted by FreakyCheeseMan

Yeah, this is less "Breaking the Wizard" and more "Using feats in exactly the manner the game designers intended."

Pretty much. Even so, it isn't useless. Don't forget in typical casual games wizards do get stabbed, so armor is handy. And it takes trivial optimization to keep AC relevant at all levels. For dungeon runs (or anything under an hour), alter self is handy, yes, but it also stacks with all other AC so you can and should do both. Doesn't help at all with wilderness ambush issues, though.

In short, OP, you seem to be having fun so continue as you were. Pick up alter self to cast at entrances to places. For the rest of the time there's magic armor, ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, dusty rose prism ioun stone and a buckler. You may use a masterwork or magic buckler without proficiency because there's no armor check penalty and therefore no non-proficiency penalty.

[MirddinEmris]

Well, besides being ninjed about practical metamagic not reducing metamagic modifier lower than +1 and requiring being dragonblooded, i should say that you have +5 to AC after spending 3 feats for that, but if you cast Mage Armor, you would have +4, which also applies to against incorporeal touch attacks and doesn't cost any feats or gold and doesn't weight anything. Hardly broken, i say :)

[Jack_Simth]

Originally Posted by DMofDarkness

Yes, but being a Wizard helps.

Combine that with Grey Elf Domain Wizard 1 with the substitution level, Alacritous Cogitation, and Versatile Spellcaster to get Shapechange at level 1, and it becomes significantly more Wizard based.

You're going to have to boost your caster level significantly to do that - see, Shapechange limits the HD of the form to your caster level, and a Zodar has 16 hit dice.

[iDesu]

Originally Posted by DMofDarkness

Combine that with Grey Elf Domain Wizard 1 with the substitution level, Alacritous Cogitation, and Versatile Spellcaster to get Shapechange at level 1, and it becomes significantly more Wizard based.

Does that actually work, though? Begging the question on actually getting the 9th level slot, wouldn't you still need a caster level of 17 to cast shape change?

[Tanuki Tales]

Originally Posted by Stake A Vamp

well,i thought it was cool (goes and pouts in corner)

i suppose i should rename the thread, also, did not catch all those prereqs for PMM

It's cool if you're having fun doing it. I, and I assume the others, just don't want you to feel like you're breaking the game and thus having wrongfun for playing your Wizard the way you want to.

[Just to Browse]

If you're still interesting in this concept and can become a dwarf, Runesmith is also a cool thing.

[eggynack]

Really, you're in the best possible place you can be in a game. You feel like you're doing something so powerful that it's breaking the game, when really you're making some of the least optimal choices you can make. If you can feel really good while doing something generally mediocre, that's a pretty sweet place to be in general.

[DMofDarkness]

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth

You're going to have to boost your caster level significantly to do that - see, Shapechange limits the HD of the form to your caster level, and a Zodar has 16 hit dice.

Completely forgot about that. In that case, the soonest I can do it is level 6, by Shapechanging into a Huge Constrictor Snake that has a Incarnate Zodar Symbiote. If you can find an acquired template that reduces a humanoid's size to Small, though, it can be done at level 1 with a Half-Minotaur Goliath and the shrunken Incarnate Zodar symbiote.

Also, iDesu, you don't actually need a high caster level to cast high level spells. Just the spell slots for them.

[Chronos]

This thread is instructive, though: If you can spend all of your feats on things that don't actually make much difference to a wizard, and spend your spell slots on one of the less-effective spells, and still outperform your party-mates, that tells you something about just how broken wizards are.

[Harrow]

Runesmith from Races of Stone would be a much more efficient version of this. It's a full casting prestige class that requires heavy armor proficiency and effectively gives you Still Spell for free on all your spells. A one level dip in something that gives you heavy armor proficiency and you have something neat and useful at the cost of being a single level behind straight casters.

Then there's luminous armor (Book of Exalted Deeds) (+5 AC, -4 to-hit you with melee) and a greater version (+8 with same penalty) that are both hour/level so you can have them up all day, and they can both give up to an additional +5 AC if you have levels in Abjurant Champion (Complete Mage).

Finally, a Githcraft, Feycraft (DMG II) +1 Mithral Chain Shirt costs 3,200 gold and gives +5 ac for just a bit of gold.

Let's see... you could also go Cleric 1/ Wizard X, get metamagic school focus and heighten spell, heighten a level 0 Cleric spell twice to make it a level 2 spell in a level one slot and you qualify for Geomancer, which gives full wizard casting from that point on and let's you cast wizard spells as Divine spells, so they don't get any arcane spell failure and you can use Divine Metamagic on them, and the Cleric dip gives you two or three domain powers, heavy armor and shield proficiency, and Turn Attempts to power divine metamagic, all on top of the other weird goodies Geomancer gives you.

Those are all the ways to do something like this off the top of my head. Anyone know of any more? I'm not trying to be mean and degrade what you've done, it's actually something I like to do and like knowing more ways to do it.