Looking for advice on a Utility Mage build

[(E)]

How about looking through the spell colleges and making a list of the first two or three spells in each and using this as a start point?
This strikes me as something that models "apprentice" education.
I'm working from memory here so I might get a couple wrong
Shape air as a "combat" spell
Illusion is fairly versatile
Apportation, light, ignite fire are all "beginner" looking spells with some versatility.
Itch, sense life.

[malloyd]

Information and crafting spells are the really useful ones for a utility mage - you don't have to be terrifically good at them for them to be useful, since immediate success is not all that critical.

Some stuff is pretty basic just to being a wizard - Ignite Fire, Light, Apportation, Simple Illusion, Detect Magic.

Beyond that some chains to consider:

Purify - Create - Shape - Walk On Air. Walk on Air beats out Levitate for letting you use your normal Move, and not depending on weight. Flight is better, but costs more (and requires Magery 2, though that isn't a problem for this character)

Sense Foes - Sense Emotion - Persuasion - Beast Soother - Master
This build lets you avoid a lot of fights if the GM bothers with reaction rolls much, a fairly modest reaction improvement will usually convert a fight into let you leave. Animal IQ being what it is Master pretty much ensures you can stop one animal that's attacking you and hold it until the rest of the party can get it off you.

Branching off this chain
Sense Foes - Sense Emotion - Truthsayer
Sense Foes - Sense Danger - Watchdog - Mystic Mist
Sense Foes - Sense Emotion - Fear - either/or Terror or Panic
Panic doesn't actually take out foes, but can split a bunch of attacking fodder into two fights. Terror isn't terrific, but every once in a while a fright check can be really debilitating even against an otherwise very tough foe.

Seek Earth - Seek Plant - Pathfinder - Seeker. If you also have Aura add See Secrets. The "find the critical component" chain.

Seek Earth - Shape Earth. From here there are a lot of good choices
- Earth to Stone - Flesh to Stone
- Earth Vision
- 2 other Earth spells - Walk Through Earth
- Find Weakness - Weaken - Reshape (take a craft skill or two with this and you can pretty much *always* find a job)

Lend Energy - Recover Energy and
Lend Energy - Lend Vitality - Minor Healing are pretty obvious, but consider
Lend Energy - Might A minute of being really strong can be surprisingly handy.

Test Food - Season. Usefulness may vary depending on what your GM will believe counts as a "seasoning"

Seek Food - Far Tasting. The hidden bonus to Far Tasting is you *automatically succeed* on a Taste or Smell PER roll using it.

Sense Life - Body Reading and
Detect Magic - Aura
These are potentially highly versatile detection spells, but rather sensitive to what the GM is willing to interpret it as capable of.

Apportation - Keen Vision - Wizard Eye
Keen Vision - Infravision

Light - Continual Light - Wall of Light - Flash. Wall of Light is the block vision spell Darkness fails to be.

Inspired Creation. Your GM should have fixed this, but if not, well automatically critically succeed on a craft roll, as if I were a master 5 levels better, and with no prerequisites at all?. Seriously why doesn't every craftsmen in the universe learn this as the first stage of an apprenticeship?

Apportation - Missile Shield (duh, another spell that's not properly balanced)
Apportation - Distant Blow. Kind of a niche application, but handy if there is a target you need to take down even if they run away.
Apportation - Turn Blade. An overlooked spell, but it's cheap and doesn't count as your defense, so go ahead and try it with whatever you are actually doing to defend. It's big plus isn't actually reducing damage, but that if it works the weapon goes *unready*.
Apportation - Dancing Object. Ask your GM how he plans to treat handing your virtual ST 15 servant a 10 foot pole and telling him to whirl it around as fast as possible at knee height. It's not strictly an attack but definitely is a serious battlefield obstacle. You can do Blade Barrier variations too.

Haste - Great Haste and Quick March

Death Vision. Death Vision is slow, but *not resisted*, so if your allies can keep him busy for 3 seconds you've got a really good shot at giving them at least a turn where he's stunned.
Following on here
Death Vision - Summon Spirit - Animation. Questioning the dead is occasionally useful, and while Animation is very temporary, it's also a lot less objectionable than Zombie. And hey, maybe you can sweet talk your GM into more advanced Mass or longer duration versions.
If you took Fear, you might also want to think about Sense Spirits - Turn Spirit. Lots of parties are fairly weak against Spirits, so even this not very terrific spell can give you a chance to shine as useful in a tricky situation.

Seek - Identify - Heal - Bless Plants. This is another guaranteed make a living chain. Seek - Identify - Shape Plants is good too - not as versatile as Reshape, but a shorter chain. If you take another Plant spell then your 7th should be Essential Wood, which will cover for the shortcomings of plant material in a lot of Shape applications. If your GM will let you have Resilient Vegetation from Plant Spells, that's a nice 6th choice.

Seek - Purify - Create Water - Icy Weapon. The hidden gem in Create Water is the amazingly effective fire extinguishing mist form. Icy Weapon is one of the easier routes to a "magic weapon", should you happen to encounter something that requires one to harm, and fewer things seem immune to cold than to flashier forms of energy.

Also, don't overlook non-spell skills. If your niche is information and crafting, well there are lots of non-magical ways of approaching those. The difference between default and even one point in an actual skill is a *lot* if you pick ones nobody else in the party has at all and it turns out to be necessary.

There are *lots* of good options here: Animal Handling (something kind of exotic), Archaeology (sometimes handy for dealing with fragile loot), Armoury/TL0 (you never know when the GM is going to drop you naked in the wilderness), Artist (drawing is really handy for showing the NPCs something that you saw but couldn't bring with you, pottery and woodworking are handy crafts that are rarely taken) , Cartography (though that's one most parties will remember to have somebody take), Connoisseur (Visual Arts), Dreaming, Expert Skill (Natural Philosophy), Farming (well what were you *expecting* to do with those Plant spells), Geography (Political), Knot-Tying (my players overlook this one a lot, and just assume they can tie things up or on), Jeweler (another good loot appraisal skill), Leatherworking (another not very popular craft that still works pretty well even stuck in the wilderness with minimal tools), Lip Reading (which can be really handy if you have vision enhancing spells), Masonry (a great career adjunct to that Shape Earth spell, Architecture or Engineering (civil) is worth thinking about too), Mechanic (heavy lifting), Metallurgy (what is this made of anyway?, is that an ore?), Naturalist, Occultism, Pharmacy (Herbal), Physiology, Prospecting, Research, Scrounging, Sewing (that critical success by a craft master you can get out of Inspired Creation can turn relatively ordinary materials into a disproportionately expensive garment), Theology (some religion you *don't* believe in, the Cleric probably took the local faith after all) and Writing.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Why would someone with IQ 13 and Magery 3 have Wealth (Poor) unless they were part of a religious order? If nothing else, they could learn healing magic and earn a comfortable living from curing diseases and healing injuries. Even if they avoided healing magic, they should still be able to earn a comfortable living with anything that they wanted to do even if they were a disgraced apprentice (though they might end up engaged in criminal activities).

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Excellent question. When you don't graduate from one of the academies, you're not allowed to practice magic (unclear whether just professionally or at all) and even if it's the former, people don't usually trust unlicensed magicians.

The character also suffers from Chronic Depression. Doing odd, underpaid (no guild membership) jobs around town is basically why her Wealth is not Dead Broke.

This was asked and answered so my apologies for butting in, but it seems to me that the majority of GURPS characters have glaring personality flaws or other life challenges that justify them earning far less than their potential.

I think everyone knows someone intelligent that also has a relatively minor version of Laziness or Chronic Pain or Odious Personal Habit: Intransigent that keeps them in entry level jobs or part-time work and/or welfare.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Test Food - Season. Usefulness may vary depending on what your GM will believe counts as a "seasoning"

Alternately, Decay - Purify Food - Prepare Game. Decay is kind of useless, and Purify Food is conditionally useful. Prepare Game is awesome if you're dealing with livestock or monster hunting at all: 5-20 minutes to recover the energy used to cast Prepare Game is likely significantly less time than a conventional butcher will spend cutting up a sheep, cow, deer, pig, or dragon.

It's a spell we've started pushing for the casters in our DF game to have, because skinning a dragon in the middle of a dungeon is neither something you want to forgo nor something you want to spend a couple of hours doing.

[D10]

Well, I have already posted on the thread you mentioned, so im gonna try to add to that here.

Would it be possible to boost IQ to 15 (or higher magery)? That way with 1 point your starting level with spells will be 16, which is great for obvious reasons. Also with regards to stats, one thing that makes wizards powerfull is large ammounts of FP, so keep that in mind.

All elemental colleges are good, but I think in your avg situation, earth is the best college because walk through earth + earth vision can literally turn someone into the tactical equivalent of a submarine

Fire is good, at lower levels what I like the most about it is easy access to resist fire and resist cold spells. While water can allow your group to trivialize some aquatic challenge. Air is an interesting one, it sinergizes with earth in a few ways, and has some interesting defensive options, but what I like the most on the air college is the lightning spells

Light and darkness is also a very good utility college, it provides light, is a hard counter to vampires (sunlight + sunbolt), and has invisibility + see invisibility. It can also be used to negate vision penalties in tricky situations with nightvision/infravision/darkvision, for instance, you can use the darkness spell to blind enemies inside an area and have a friend under the dark vision spell attack them inside the darkness, it also has hawk vision which is decent for ranged characters and small vision, which I consider UBER since its a -2 to all melle attacks that cant be resisted (altho some GMs would rule that an artifact and make you roll vs HT). Finally blur is a good defensive buff

The knowledge tree is one of the most usefull things ever, specially wizard eye and the history spells.

Make and break extremelly unsatisfying before you get to archmage like power level

Communication and empathy will turn you into a telephone/mind hacker, and it is a pre requisite to powerfull mind spells, such as charm, fear, etc. So if you intent on getting mind spells, its a good complement (or you can get empathy advg and ignore comm/emp)

I feel like necromancy is a must in a DF situation since you are likely to need affect spirits at some point to beat some ghosties.

Meta-spells are a staple of utility mages, after all its where dispel is at, as well as ward (and the super awesome sovereign ward).

Sounds is a mixed bag, it has utilities such as mage stealth, but most of its spells have pre requisites in other colleges and usually to produce subpar effects.

Plant is a good college with tons of utility spells, in my table we rule that if you transform someone into a plant thro plant form other or body of wood, you can use rejuvenate plant to heal them (we treat the effect like a lesser version or great healing, it brings you to positive 1HP and a person can only be affected by it once). You also have spells like walk through wood that can be real life savers in certain situations.

Animal spells can be powerful, but I feel like its a niche thing, and depends a lot on the GM putting stuff you can take advantage off in your path, for that reason I wouldnt recommend it for a support wizard.

The food college is one those things that while in theory good, can usually be achieved by other means.

The gate college is amazing, I think phase and phase other are the best blocking spells in the game, specially because they do not require enemy resistance to work. Create door, sanctuary are worth their weight in gold

Illusion and creation is good as well, my experience has seen it mostly being used to disguise people and to create mounts on demand, niches that it fills better than any other college.

Hope that helped

[CeeDub]

Wow, a big thank you to you all, especially malloyd and D10 for your in-depth analysis and experience with DF spellslinging!

Originally Posted by D10

Would it be possible to boost IQ to 15 (or higher magery)?

I would love to take Magery 4, but isn't Magery 3 the recommended maximum for classic DF? Almost certain I read that somewhere. B66!

I will definitely think about boosting IQ. It's easily worth it, but I might hit the CP cap with all the spells I'd like to take.

Speaking of, how many CP do you usually pump into spells? As a percentage or out of 150 + disadvantages (total of ~210)?

[AlexanderHowl]

IQ 14 [80] and Magery 3 [35] tends to be the default levels for generalist mages, as it gives H spells level 15 for 1 point and VH spells level 15 for 2 points. I would argue that mages with a combined IQ plus Magery below 17 require significantly more specialization that avoid punitive character point costs. At a combined IQ plus Magery of 15, I would suggest specializing in a single college. At a combined IQ plus Magery of 13, I would suggest specializing in one spell. At a combined IQ plus Magery 11, I would suggest a non-magical profession.

[edk926]

Given that you'll want some general skills for non-magical situations, at your IQ + Magery, you could easily be very diverse at 50 CPs.

[(E)]

When it come to casting ability vs number of spells known its kind of a sliding scale, an apprentice type character for a game that is expected to run for a while might only have 10-15 points in spells. Narratively more experienced characters might have more points invested in known spells.

Talking to the GM about how they want to run some of the nitty gritty of magic might help. How hard is it to acquire new spells? Any house rules? How experienced is the average opponent with handling magic. That kind of thing

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Speaking of, how many CP do you usually pump into spells? As a percentage or out of 150 + disadvantages (total of ~210)?

For a dedicated mage, it's easy to find yourself with 30+ spells at character creation. You may not use all or even most of them, but you can see situations where you could use them so you buy them.

Deciding how to improve a mage is a struggle: you can always use another spell to cover a different contingency, but improving IQ, Magery, and Energy Reserve make your existing spells more effective. You may also want mundane abilities like Combat Reflexes, High Pain Threshold, Luck, better attributes, or additional mundane skills. I've never had a mage character that couldn't spend more CP than they'd earned.

I suspect somewhere around 60+ spells, you have more spells than you can easily remember, and you probably have a good enough spell for most contingencies. But there are 500+ spells in Magic, and even if only a quarter of them are any good, you still have less than half the good spells with 60 spells.