Wizard

A few unintelligible words and fleeting gestures carry more power than a battleaxe, when they are the words and gestures of a wizard. These simple acts make magic seem easy, but they only hint at the time the wizard must spend poring over her spellbook preparing each spell for casting, and the years before that spent in apprenticeship to learn the arts of magic. Wizards depend on intensive study to create their magic. They examine musty old tomes, debate magical theory with their peers, and practice minor magics whenever they can. For a wizard, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. 

Homeland: Just like the sorcerer, wizards are most common in Tez and Arcoti. The difference is that wizards can use the abundance of universities found in Arcoti’s cities to their advantage in order to hone their spellcasting abilities. Other than these two kingdoms, wizards tend to be found in Trifia because of the competition to get into Empress Bloom’s Board of Wizardry.

Adventures: Wizards conduct their adventures with caution and forethought. When prepared, they can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. They seek knowledge, power, and the resources to conduct their studies. They may also have any of the noble or ignoble motivations that other adventurers have. 

Characteristics: The wizard’s strength is her spells. Everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition to learning new spells, a wizard can, over time, learn to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. Some wizards prefer to specialize in a certain type of magic. Specialization makes a wizard more powerful in her chosen field, but it denies her access to some of the spells that lie outside that field. (See School Specialization.) Like a sorcerer, a wizard can call a familiar—a small, magical animal companion that serves her. For some wizards, their familiars are their only true friends. 

Alignment: Overall, wizards show a slight tendency toward law over chaos because the study of magic rewards those who are disciplined. Illusionists and transmuters, however, are masters of deception and change, respectively. They favor chaos over law. 

Background: Wizards recognize each other as comrades or rivals. Even wizards from very different cultures or magical traditions have much in common because they all conform to the same laws of magic. Unlike fighters or rogues, wizards see themselves as members of a distinct, if diverse, group. In civilized lands where wizards study in academies, schools, or guilds, wizards also identify themselves and others according to membership in these formal organizations. But while a guild magician may look down her nose at a rustic wizard who learned his arts from a doddering hermit, she nevertheless can’t deny the rustic’s identity as a wizard. 

Other Classes: Wizards prefer to work with members of other classes. They love to cast their spells from behind strong fighters, to “magic up” rogues and send them out to scout, and to rely on the divine healing of clerics. They may find members of certain classes (such as sorcerers, rogues, and bards) to be not quite serious enough, but they’re not judgmental. 

Role: The wizard’s role depends somewhat on her spell selection, but most wizards share certain similarities in function. They are among the most offensively minded of the spellcasting classes, with a broad range of options available for neutralizing enemies. Some wizards provide great support to their comrades by way of their spells, while others may focus on divination or other facets of wizardry

Abilities: Intelligence determines how powerful a spell a wizard can cast, how many spells she can cast, and how hard those spells are to resist (see Spells, below). A high Dexterity score is helpful for a wizard, who typically wears little or no armor, because it provides her with a bonus to Armor Class. A good Constitution score gives a wizard extra hit points, a resource that she is otherwise very low on. 

Alignment: Any. 

Hit Die: d4.

Class Skills: The wizard’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Profession (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int). See Chapter 4: Skills for skill descriptions. 

Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int modifier) × 4. 

Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier.  

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Wizards are proficient with the club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff, but not with any type of armor or shield. Armor of any type interferes with a wizard’s movements, which can cause her spells with somatic components to fail. 

Arcane spells and armor: Wizards and sorcerers do not know how to wear armor effectively. If desired, they can wear armor anyway (though they’ll be clumsy in it), or they can gain training in the proper use of armor (with the various Armor Proficiency feats—light, medium, and heavy—and the Shield Proficiency feat), or they can multiclass to add a class that grants them armor proficiency. Even if a wizard or sorcerer is wearing armor with which he or she is proficient, however, it might still interfere with spellcasting. Most characters have a difficult time casting arcane spells while wearing armor or carrying shields (see Arcane Spell Failure). The armor restricts the complicated gestures that a wizard or sorcerer must make while casting any spell that has a somatic component (most do). To find the arcane spell failure chance for a wizard or sorcerer wearing a certain type of armor, see Items. By contrast, bards not only know how to wear light armor effectively, but they can also ignore the arcane spell failure chance for such armor. However, they too wear heavier armor ineffectively and must either learn to wear heavier armor via the appropriate Armor Proficiency feat (medium or heavy) or add a class (such as fighter) that grants them such proficiency as a class feature. A bard wearing armor heavier than light or using any type of shield incurs the normal arcane spell failure chance, even if he becomes proficient with that armor. If a spell doesn’t have a somatic component, an arcane spellcaster can cast it with no problem while wearing armor. Such spells can also be cast even if the caster’s hands are bound or if he or she is grappling (although Concentration checks still apply normally). Also, the metamagic feat Still Spell allows a spellcaster to prepare or cast a spell at one spell level higher than normal without the somatic component. This also provides a way to cast a spell while wearing armor without risking arcane spell failure. See Feats for more about metamagic feats such as Still Spell.

Bonus Languages: A wizard may substitute Draconic for one of the bonus languages available to the character because of her race (see Races). Many ancient tomes of magic are written in Draconic, and apprentice wizards often learn it as part of their studies. 

Familiar: A wizard can obtain a familiar in exactly the same manner as a sorcerer can. See the sorcerer description and the accompanying Familiars sidebar for details. 

Scribe Scroll: At 1st level, a wizard gains Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat. This feat enables her to create magic schools (see Scribe Scroll,  and Creating Magic Items). 

Bonus Feats: At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level, a wizard gains a bonus feat. At each such opportunity, she can choose a metamagic feat, an item creation feat, or Spell Mastery. The wizard must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat, including caster level minimums. These bonus feats are in addition to the feat that a character of any class gets every three levels. The wizard is not limited to the categories of item creation feats, metamagic feats, or Spell Mastery when choosing these feats. 

Spellbooks: A wizard must study her spellbook each day to prepare her spells (see Preparing Wizard Spells). She cannot prepare any spell not recorded in her spellbook, except for read magic, which all wizards can prepare from memory. A wizard begins play with a spellbook containing all 0-level wizard spells (except those from her prohibited school or schools, if any; see School Specialization) plus three 1st-level spells of your choice. For each point of Intelligence bonus the wizard has, the spellbook holds one additional 1st-level spell of your choice. At each new wizard level, she gains two new spells of any spell level or levels that she can cast (based on her new wizard level) for her spellbook. For example, when a wizard attains 5th level, she can cast 3rd-level spells. At this point, she can add two new 3rd-level spells to her spellbook, or one 2nd-level spell and one 3rd-level spell, or any combination of two spells between 1st and 3rd level. At any time, a wizard can also add spells found in other wizards’ spellbooks to her own (see Adding Spells to a Wizard’s Spellbook).  

School Specialization: A school is one of eight groupings of spells, each defined by a common theme, such as illusion or necromancy. If desired, a wizard may specialize in one school of magic (see below). Specialization allows a wizard to cast extra spells from her chosen school, but she then never learns to cast spells from some other schools. Essentially, the wizard gains exceptional mastery over a single school by neglecting the study of other schools. A specialist wizard can prepare one additional spell of her specialty school per spell level each day. She also gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft checks to learn the spells of her chosen school (see Adding Spells to a Wizard’s Spellbook). The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic (unless she chooses to specialize in divination; see below), which become her prohibited schools. For instance, if she chooses to specialize in conjuration, she might decide to give up enchantment and necromancy, or evocation and transmutation. A wizard can never give up divination to fulfill this requirement. Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the wizard, and she can’t even cast such spells from scrolls or fire them from wands. She may not change either her specialization or her prohibited schools later. The eight schools of arcane magic are abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, and transmutation. Spells that do not fall into any of these schools are called universal spells. 

Abjuration: Spells that protect, block, or banish. An abjuration specialist is called an abjurer. 

Conjuration: Spells that bring creatures or materials to the caster. A conjuration specialist is called a conjurer.

Divination: Spells that reveal information. A divination specialist is called a diviner. Unlike the other specialists, a diviner must give up only one other school. 

Enchantment: Spells that imbue the recipient with some property or grant the caster power over another being. An enchantment specialist is called an enchanter. 

Evocation: Spells that manipulate energy or create something from nothing. An evocation specialist is called an evoker. 

Illusion: Spells that alter perception or create false images. An illusion specialist is called an illusionist. 

Necromancy: Spells that manipulate, create, or destroy life or life force. A necromancy specialist is called a necromancer. 

Transmutation: Spells that transform the recipient physically or change its properties in a more subtle way. A transmutation specialist is called a transmuter. 

Universal: Not a school, but a category for spells that all wizards can learn. A wizard cannot select universal as a specialty school or as a prohibited school. Only a limited number of spells fall into this category.