Playing a level 1 Wizard for a 3.5 game. 18 intelligence

Sleep. The others don't really matter. Just make sure you have sleep.

How come you need to prepare three? By my math you have to prepare 3 level 0 spells and 2 level 1 spells. Anyway, here are some recommendations:

Level 0 spells:

>Prestidigitation
I always have this prepared, it's amazing. Shame its duration doesn't scale by caster level, but it's really fun nonetheless.
>Detect Magic
Have at least one cast of this at all times, more if you can.
>Read Magic
Can be useful but since you are not often in a situation where you have to decipher the writing right now (as opposed to tucking it into your bag, preparing the spell for the next day and knowing what it says then) plus the fact that you can often use a simple Spellcraft roll to accomplish this makes it less useful than the previous two options.
>Light
You often have torches, but torches can be extinguished and can be impossible to light under certain circumstances. This spell is okay overall, but not immensely useful.
>Ghost Sound
This is fun and useful both in and out of combat. You can almost always find a way to use this every day, even if it's just for a prank. This spell saved my wizard's life once at 4th level - it's pretty great too since unlike most level 0 spells its effects actually scale with caster level.
>Caltrops
Never used this, but it sounds okay. You should just let another party member buy some instead, though - this basically just replicates the effect of a cheap tool.

Cont.

Be useful, but only if it helps someone do a task or when no one else can.

A battlefield control wizard that sets up advantages will get protected way before a blaster or lone wolf wizard.

Level 1 spells:

>Mage Armor
Always have this and cast it at the first round of combat. Lasts for a whole hour per caster level and gives you AC on par with the melee fighters in your party. At 6 HP you should avoid getting hit rather than trying to reduce damage and this definitely helps. Definitely learn this, almost always have it prepared, at least in the first couple of levels and probably later too.
>Shield
A bit overkill and lasts for a shorter amount of time, but it's definitely useful. At level 1 though there is something better you can do with that one level 1 spell slot you have left. At slightly higher levels it becomes more useful and then plummets again when you get spells like Greater Mage Armor. Might be worthwhile to learn, could be useful to prepare in the level 3-6 range.
>Grease
Let opponents fall over, giving you some breathing room against the rest of your adversaries or giving a nice opening to injure them greatly while they're significantly more open to attacks. Personally never used this, but I've heard many good things.
>Unseen Servant
No combat utility, but just a fun spell. Might be cool depending on what kind of character you're playing, otherwise just forget about it.
>Summon Monster I
Cool, but not much utility due to the limited selection and short duration, you're better off picking some of higher level instances of this spell when the duration and creature selection is meaningful. It's still decent and can be used creatively since you can summon various creatures in a location of your choice (hint hint flanking bonus)
>Charm Person
Very useful if used carefully. Prepare this if you expect to be in a more social, urban situation, you'll be surprised at the amount of mileage you get out of this. Good candidate to learn.
>Sleep
Enemies fall asleep, which means they are helpless and you are free to let your melee combatant get a guaranteed critical hit on them plus they die instantly from it if they don't make their save.

It's a rule i never see anyone use, but can't you not prepare a spell? You can only cast X spells per day, but it only take an hour/15 minutes or something to prepare a spell, so you could load up some combat spells and just leave one slot for utilities that you don't need immediately, but also don't want to take an 8 hour nap for.

Here's three spells you absolutely need:

>Ventriloquism
>Feather Fall
>Mount

Summon your mount, jump off a cliff while riding it, cast feather fall on yourself but not your horse, dismount, and while you're floating cast ventriloquism to make your target look up right before the horse hits them. Your goal is time is just right that they get a big ol' mouthful of horse cock.

True strike.

you can decide not to prepare a spell, but it will still take you an hour of study to prepare it later on,if I remember RAW correctly. I would say that the time it takes to prepare a spell is a function of your level though. since you can prepare more spells for the day in that same hour when at a higher level. still kinda goes against the spirit of the wizard class though. if you want to cast on the fly play a sorcerer.

Magic Missile is also nice to pick up, bot not use early.
Also, no love for Color Spray?

>Color Spray
Better than sleep imho, lasts for a shorter time and has less range but since you are close anyway that doesn't matter as much, and the effects can affect more creatures and more powerful creatures and can't be woken up by damage since they're unconscious rather than asleep. This can very quickly dispatch even higher level enemies. Definitely learn this and almost always prepare it.
>Disguise Self
Can be more useful than Invisibility in many situations. Pretty decent at lower levels but situational and gets outpaced hard by the natural skill of rogues and similar classes because it doesn't scale. Still fun in a lot of out-of-combat scenarios though.
>Silent Image
By many hailed as the best level 1 spell in core, and rightfully so. You can get incredibly creative with this, and I have yet to encounter a out- or in-combat scenario where I could not think of a use for this spell. Learn this, prepare this, you'll be happy you did.
>Ray of Enfeeblement
Laugh at your enemy as he can't move as fast under the weight of his own armor and deals way less damage. Ability score damage is always great, and this spell scales to boot so it'll remain decent for a long time.
>Enlarge Person
Your fighter becomes quite a bit stronger and can hit enemies at a greater range. Most enemies can't get out of his threat range easily either using a five foot step. Great buff in many situations.

That's all core spells, I'll go over the SpC spells quickly but since I have little to no experience with those I'll only name the ones that really stand out.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have your spare slot.

Say the rogue can't pick a door, there's no pressing danger. Okay guys, lets hold up here for a minute, and I'll work on a ritual to open this, and you get out your study and your candles and your spell book, and your reagents and you do all your shit for a 'knock' spell and it takes like an hour to do all of this, and now the door is open. That'd be great to me.

True strike is hot garbage. Great, you get a guaranteed hit for pitiful damage while you waste two rounds and a spell slot you could've used to end the encounter entirely.

I still don't understand the appeal of Magic Missile, it just looks really mediocre overall. There are plenty of better blast spells, ways to ensure that you hit your opponent and ways to hit incorporeal creatures. Color Spray is my second favorite level 1 spell after Silent Image, I just didn't have the room to post it due to character limit.

True, but I think that it was 15 minutes at least and otherwise a function of how many spell levels you're preparing versus the total number of spell levels you can prepare in total. So if you leave a level 0 slot empty that'd be 0 minutes normally but it takes at least 15 minutes always, and if you're a level 3 wizard with 2 level 2 spells, 3 level 1 spells and 4 level 0 spells you could leave a level 1 and a level 2 slot empty and prepare them later in (1*1 + 1*2)/(3*1 + 2*2) * 1 hour = 3/7 * 1 hour = about 25 minutes

>I still don't understand the appeal of Magic Missile
I'm probably coloured by playing Baldur's Gate and AD&D and barely ever playing 3.5.

Same here. Magic missile in AD&D is a necessity (to me) for a wizard to survive at lower levels.

>I still don't understand the appeal of Magic Missile, it just looks really mediocre overall.
(Level/2 rounded up)d4+level damage that is only resisted by like four creatures at a range of 150 ft +10ft/level that CANNOT MISS EVER is pretty good. Sure you could throw a fireball to kill some goblins around the dodging rogue, or you could turn your magic missiles into fists and punch the Villian at 100 paces.

Personally I sort of have a boner for cantrips and finding snide little ways to do cheeky, clever things with them.

Like using metamagic/class features to get a lot of/unlimited uses. (Before it was a standard assumption ala 4e of course.)But then me and my friends were always munchkiny and loved doing things like that. Probably why we took to DOTA and stuff so readily. The idea of combining options to get a nasty, "better than the other guy" build always appealed to us.

Wasn't there that one cantrip that would heal for 1 point of HP?

>Benign Transposition
So much yes. Someone is charging at the weak wizard? Whatever will you do! Well, you could switch places with the angry dwarf fighter with the huge axe that was almost done beating his opponent to a bloody pulp anyway, that's what. You could set up a myriad of ambushes and traps like this, since this spell doesn't need line of sight either, as long as you know where your target is. Let one of your party members lay down all their weapons and come with the enemy for 'negotiations' and swap them for your fighter, for example. Great spell overall.
>Mage Hand, Greater
Limited telekinesis, but can carry up to a gnome or halfling carrying little gear (creatures do get a save though). And it lasts for as long as you want to concentrate on it, which means that you can pretty much have this out indefinitely if you don't need to move very quickly, have nothing to break your concentration and don't need to cast any other spells. Dropping heavy spiky objects on enemies can be more effective than a fireball, and the out of combat applications for this are almost limitless.
>Persistent blade
Arguably better than Summon Monster I due to it being indestructible while still providing the flank bonus. Not amazing, but pretty good nonetheless.
>Guided Shot
This doesn't sound great until you realize that it's A: A swift action, so you can immediately make use of it and B: Applies to any spell that is requires a ranged touch attack... including many spells. Additionally, with many AoE spells you can just target a square, which can then also have anything but total cover and still get hit reliably. Alternatively, you could snipe someone with your crossbow because you get no penalties for firing at 10x range increment, but spells don't get that and it's honestly a waste of this spell. This spell only gets more useful at higher levels, it's a good one.

(cont)

>Playing a level 1 Wizard for a 3.5 game

Pick up a stick, and swing for damage. The statistical differences between you and a Warrior are at best a +4.5. Vs AC 10-12 monsters.

It doesn't fucking matter at that low level. Do whatever you want.

As I said, it's okay, but there are spells that cover all of those things better and the damage still isn't amazing. Plus there are plenty of defensive spells that have 'completely cancels out magic missile' as a side effect. Really, by the time this spell gets good you have either better options or better things to do than blast altogether.

And why are you min/maxing with the wizard? It's not like you'll have every single (or even one of) the perfect spells for the situation at hand. Maybe color spray doesn't even exist in this universe.

>Wall of Smoke
Total concealment, little to no risk of yourself and your allies getting caught in it and may nauseate enemies trying to walk through it. Probably the best concealment spell at this level... but there are still better spells to pick. It's pretty nice, though.

I was gonna list some other stuff here, but none of it is really worth it compared to the stuff listed. My personal recommendations to learn from the level 1 spells?

- Color Spray
- Mage Armor
- Silent Image
- Benign Transposition
- Charm Person
- Mage Hand, Greater
- Enlarge Person

Note though that I favor flexibility, these choices can be very different if you're going for a certain theme or have certain specialized and prohibited schools. You'll also be primarily supportive with these since Color Spray is your only real offensive spell. Though one might argue how much 'effectively ending the encounter with one or two spells' really counts as supportive.

Also remember that you can always learn two more at level 2, so don't be too worried about being precise with your choices right now.

Ah yes, the always popular "Carefully choosing your spells is minmaxing" argument. No, I choose my spells for flexibility primarily. What can I, as wizard, do what other characters can't or can't easily do? I base my spell selection around that, with an addition of favoring flexibility. So many D&D spells are very set in terms of their effects and I like being creative with how I tackle things.

And if color spray doesn't exist in that universe, well, then he'll have to pick a different spell. If none of the spells I recommended exist he'll have to pick different spells too, so what? I don't really get why you're trying to start an argument, the guy asked for advice and I listed some spells that I like, why I like them. And yes, part of why I like spells is about how good they are from a mechanical standpoint, since using weak, situational spells is boring, as is blasting for a couple of rounds and then hiding behind a rock with your crossbow, so I don't recommend any of those options.

Fucking minmaxer

Go away satan

Sleep and colour spray are excellent choices.

At level one, don't think of yourself as a "wizard." Think of yourself as a crossbow-man with the capability to magically solve a few problems per day with magical spells.

I don't have spell compendium on hand, but here's a short list of spells which are useful at low levels and explanations on how to use them. I'm going for "bang for your buck," so more effective and long duration spells are at a premium. I picked 8, so you can choose from your spellbook every day.

Mount: better than summon monster 1. A horse is both stronger and lasts for a longer duration than a summoned monster
Invisible servant: better than Mage hand, unless your GM gives you infinite cantrips per day
Sleep: solve one encounter before the party takes damage
Animate rope: situational, but can be used to shut down an enemy spell-caster
Hold portal: one of the only spells which Gandalf uses. Again, situational, but good for making an escape
Obscuring mist: another escape spell
grease: a classic. Flammable, flexible, disabling control spell
Silent image: strongest level 1 control spell. Put up a fake wall to hide the party for an ambush, create a giant shadow beast to menace goblins, and so on

Notice that I didn't pick any damaging spells.

Once you level, you can start shifting away from spells which dictate the flow of the battlefield, but until then, you need to play smart and be very clever

Think about Harry Potter. He doesn't actually really start using battle magic until book 4, with the exception of maybe expelliarmus which is learned in book 2. Until then, he and the gang aren't using magic to attack people, they're applying their limited spells cleverly and carefully.

Take Identify, you will need it.
Take Magic Missile, certain damage.

Sorry man, it says in the rules that the illiterate are not allowed to post on these forums

ah so wizards can't drink wine? I did not know that. Thank you for the insult and teaching me a good lesson.

There is literally no reason to learn Identify at level 1. Magic Missile is a mediocre spell.

The horse summoned by Mount doesn't fight by default though, you need to make a steep DC 25 handle animal check for that, which increases when the horse is wounded. It's more likely to just run when attacked than it is to fight back, so that isn't gonna work like you imagine.

Of course invisible servant is better than mage hand, it's a spell level higher. Greater mage hand is better imho though invisible servant is still neat (why yes i do have an invisible butler)

Forgot about animate rope, though I'd drop hold portal I think for being a bit too situational - though if your campaign involves a lot of dungeon crawling set in buildings it can be worth it.

Other than that though I wholly agree, a level 1 wizard isn't going to do much direct fighting, and neither are higher level wizards for a while for that matter.

Oh, and stay away from metamagic. There are only a few that are worth it and they're far between.

Identify costs 100 gp to cast and is ludicrously situational, smartass. You're better off trying a spellcraft roll or finding someone who has an identify scroll for sale than to actually learn it yourself.

i didn't realize that about mount. that's pretty cool and i like that.

I've consistently taken grappling hooks so i can use animate rope.

Also, get a "bag of tricks." not the item, but a pile of small but useful items. be prepared.

sudden metamagic is amazing

mage hand is flat out better if it's an "infinite cantrip" game, which is a pretty common house rule for 3.5

I don't think greater mage hand is better just because of duration and that you have to use actions to utilize it.

7 spells in spellbook:
-Shield: defensive buff. Gives you +4 AC. The goodness is obvious.
-Grease: battlefield control that can even be save-or-lose. Note that it forces balance checks, and creatures who don't have 5 ranks in balance are flat-footed while making balance checks... which means the party rogue can sneak attack away.
-Mage Armor: defensive buff, so you're not TOTALLY squishy. Hours duration, as much AS as a chain shirt. What mage doesn't take it?
-Charm Person: Utility/Offensive: it makes people your friends. That's all sorts of useful.
-Sleep: Save-or-Lose. Sleep is the low-level "win spell"; even a cleric with 18 WIS only has a +6 will save at level 1, and with 18 INT you can have a DC 15 Sleep, 16 with focuses. That's a pretty solid chance of a failed save. With a 10-WIS fighter or rogue, it's a great chance.
-Silent Image: Utility. It's an illusion. Use your creativity.
-Ray of Enfeeblement: No save. Heavy strength drain can make a fighter useless--he suddenly can't move in his heavy armor! It's always good for dropping people's AB and damage, too. No save, like most ray spells; hitting with the ranged touch can occasionally be an issue.

Prepare: Sleep, Mage Armor, Shield. There, you have the survivability you wanted.

Source: minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=2o67gvvivch0um9v5v6h2084b4&topic=2716 - LogicNinja's Guide to Wizards

Look into being a ... what the fuck is it called, a flesh mage. You attach new bits to yourself.

Slightly underpowered, but fun, and you're more sturdy.

>first time playing, game with coworkers/friends who are all quite noobish too
>DM is experienced and has the know-how to make a game fair and efficient, or so I've heard
>everyone is choosing generic stuff, elf ranger, gnome rogue, half-orc barbarian
>I wanna be the human wizard of the shtick, but I've heard it's complicated and hard for beginners
Anyone have tips/advice? I have the PHB digitally and am getting a physical copy soon, but what other sources can help me firmly root my understanding of wizards just enough to play well?

If PHB means you have access to PHB II, check out Abrupt Jaunt. Best low-level Oh Shit button there is, can press 4 times per day with 18 Int. You need to be a focused conjurer but that's not a bad idea anyway.

Color Spray, Shield/Mage Armor, Magic Missile

Known: Silent Image, Comprehend Languages, Identify, Disguise Self

Prepared spells are to keep up with combat for 3 rounds, the rest of the spells are for general usefulness.