Tuning the 4E Wizard

After a second night of gaming with my 4E Wizard, Bayne, I think I’m better getting the hang of using him effectively. I’ve made a few tweaks to play style and have a better understanding of what feats I should prioritize in the future.

Position: Given my groups “kick down the door” play style, I found it very valuable to position Bayne just behind the front line fighters. That way, when the door flies open, Bayne is typically in good position to get early line-of-sight and line-of-effect. This pays off in a big way if you also score a surprise round.

Improved Initiative: I don’t have it – yet. But I will. In one encounter last night I had the great fortune of rolling very well on initiative and exploiting a surprise opportunity. Here’s how it went down. Fighter kicks in door. Group of baddies look up in alarm. Bayne, up first, casts a Scorching Burst capturing no less than five (!) of them together. Hitting each one left them tagged with cold vulnerability from the Arcane Fire feat and primed for his next shot. The rest of the good guys go with no one fully closing the gap between parties to spoil the follow-up shot. Top of Round 1, Bayne follows up with Icy Terrain not only doing bonus damage but dropping those he hits prone. All-in-all a beautiful moment sweetened with the luck of three (!) crit rolls. Lesson learned: You need that early shot. Lets face it, once the baddies see a wizard they typically know not to hang around in a tight group.

Flaming Sphere: For this evening’s game, I memorized Flaming Sphere and left Sleep in the Spellbook. Our group tends to push through encounters, so the sphere got one use during the evening – just as Sleep had the first game night. I have to say I enjoyed the flexibility that the Flaming Sphere provided. Flaming Sphere allowed Bayne to alternate control as necessary across two different areas of the battlefield. I say ‘alternate’ because it was a constant trade between moving the sphere or Bayne, attacking with the sphere or Bayne, and, of course Bayne’s every minor action was spent sustaining the sphere. Finally, the fact that Flaming Sphere is a persistent spell that can last the whole encounter made the wizard that much more fun for me to play compared to the one shot and done nature of Sleep.

Level 2: After two extended nights of gaming, Bayne hit level 2. As promised, Improved Initiative was at the top of his feat list. I also took this opportunity to swap out the Implement Expertise feat for Versatile Expertise. Versatile Expertise not only allows me to retain the Tome Implement attack bonus, but supplement it with a dagger attack bonus. Though I don’t resort to the dagger often, it’s good to have that attack bonus when I do. For Utility feats I selected Jump and loaded Strategist’s Epiphany into the spellbook. Recall that the Tome of Readiness path allows me to swap between those two utility feats during an encounter – nice! Both provide tactical flexibility for the entire party – and you knew I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to use a history roll for initiative, even if it is just once a day!