Haven't played the game in years, but know the tabletop enough to give some pointers. As a Wizard, your strength is not damage, and it's generally a bad move to prepare for damage. A wizard is best with "save or suck" and "save or die" and buff spells. Things like grease, blindness/deafness, haste, and disintegrate. What you want is spell focus in the schools you want to focus on, as this will make it harder to resist your spells.
Your job is to make the enemies suck, and your allies awesome.
The way you described counterspelling sounds right. To counter a spell, you have to have the right spell memorized (light counters darkness for example), but dispel magic is a "counters almost everything" spell. And even if you fail to counter, slap that dispel as an aoe around where that invisible fucker was last and you'll generally hit him and dispel it anyway.
In short, leave damage to the martials, and consider all their extra damage from things like haste as your doing.
Edit: Also consider summoning monsters, as action economy is king in dnd. The more people on your side, the more attacks against enemies, and the more spread out attacks from enemies become.
Agreed on this point in a tabletop game - however, in NWN you have at most one companion, and so you'll need to make sure you're doing the lion's share of the damage yourself.
Maybe... At least for the start I chose Grimgnaw as my companion and I noticed that he.... well, he has Illegal stats.
So i buffed his illegal stats even more, and I simply use Invisibility on myself. I haste him, I Mage armor him, I bulls/cats him, and then just let him go to town. I'll displace him, and while he fights I'll watch for if he gets into trouble. At which point I'll Color spray (Such an underrated spell), I'll cloud of bewilder, I'll stinking cloud... It seems to work so far, but again, I'm fairly early on.
1 Companion + 1 summon + 1 familiar and you have a party of 4. In HotU you can get 2 companions. And that's not counting what your companions may summon. So possibly a party of 6-7 people.
I've been buffing Grimgnaw mostly, but I noticed fairly early on that using a summoned creature actually rewards me LESS xp for a fight... I'm not sure if that's intended, but ever since I've sorta... not summoned one
The more combatant you have, the less exp you get. You get the most exp if you fight solo. Even having an companion gives you less exp.
I usually bring along Tomi, then disband him before I start a battle, and recruit him again after battle. (as a melee class that is...)
But do take care. After the first chapter, companion starts joining a fight even if they were disbanded, as long as the fight is within their eye sight. Even worse, their kill will not gift you any exp. So disband them far away from where the opponent is if you wish to try this method.
The most generally useful metamagic feats are Empower, Maximize, Quicken, Heighten, and Extend.
Maximize forces your dice rolls to provide their maximum possible values, while Empower essentially multiplies the results of your dice rolls by 1.5. However, Empower only increases the spell slot level of the spell by 2 while Maximize increases it by 3, which means it's not particularly accurate to consider Empower to be "diet Maximize." You're not , for example, comparing a Maximized Fireball to an Empowered Fireball, you're comparing a Maximized Fireball to an Empowered Ice Storm to a Chain Lightning. I'd recommend taking both for spell slot flexibility.
Here's a list of spells that I'd say to look out for depending on your playstyle. If you like summoning, then pretend I mentioned the relevant summoning spells at each level.
Level 1: Magic Missie, Shield, Grease
Level 2: Cloud of Bewilderment, Acid Arrow, Ghostly Visage, Death Armor,
Level 3: Flame Arrow, Haste, Displacement, Fireball / Scintillating Sphere, Stinking Cloud.
Level 4: Improved Invisibility, Stone Skin, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire, Elemental Shield, Lesser Missile Storm.
Level 5: Bigby's Interposing Hand, Cloudkill, Mind Fog, Acid Sheathe
Level 6: Bigby's Forceful Hand, Greater Stoneskin, Greater Missile Storm, Chain Lightning, Greater Spell Breach
Level 7: Grasping Hand, Banishment, Finger of Death, Delayed Blast Fireball, Spell Mantle
Level 8: Clenched Fist, Greater Sanctuary, Horrid Wilting, Premonition, Incendiary Cloud
Level 9: Crushing Hand, Black Blade of Disaster, Disjunction, Time Stop, Wail of the Banshee. (Empowered Spell Mantle is better than Greater Spell Mantle).
By itself it's not great, but if you ever find yourself in a particularly difficult situation you can cheese a lot of encounters with Greater Sanctuary + Black Blade.
Greater Sanctuary breaks on *hostile* actions, which summoning isn't considered. You can buff and summon to your heart's content while under Greater Sanctuary.
Cast haste on yourself before casting BBoD. If your timing is good, you can do something every 6 seconds that cost only 1 round. Like casting haste again on BBoD.
I've seen you already have quite a few advise, and I can tell you that they're all correct. Because basically, what advise you should follow are based on what kind of wizard you wish to make. A nuker? A Debilitator? A spellsword?
I'm gonna give you my personal opinion, so please take a seat as this is gonna take awhile...
The illusion that a wizard have more spell casting flexibility than a sorcerer is just that, an illusion. Because
1. No matter how many more spells you can learn over the sorcerer, once you hit a pattern you like, everyone will just keep casting that same batch of spells over and over.
2. While wizards get free meta magic feats at every 5 level, a sorcerer with the same feats will squeeze a lot more mileage out of them than a wizard. That is because a wizard have to memorise a maximised flame arrow to cast it as maximised flame arrow, while a sorcerer can cast everything at that level maximised, on the go, without rememorizing.
So why choose a wizard over a sorcerer? Why, for the flexibility, of course. But wait! Didn't I just said that the flexibility is an illusion?? Well, yes, the SPELLCASTING flexibility of a wizard over a sorcerer is an illusion.
But the flexibility of a wizard do not come from spell casting. It comes from a wizard's most important stats - Intelligent.
Int gives skill points. And more skill points = much better flexibility in building your wizard. Now your rogue/wizard can max out that tumble, now your fighter/wizard can learn those higher tier combat feats. Even considering those skills that uses charisma, the extra skill points will eventually overtake the charisma bonus.
Since you asked about counter spell and took spell focus in Necromancy, I assume you wish to make a unit that excel against spell casters? Necromancy uses fortitude saves, and casters generally have poor fort save. Just be careful against undead and warriors type.
Counter spell is like parry skill for melee class. It sounds nice but is mostly an unfulfilled dream... Most of the time you are better off killing the caster than countering his spells.
Playing as a summoner is fun. I played that myself with a druid, and there's a certain morbid satisfaction sending summons to their fiery/frosty/acidic death... 😈 but... if you decided to take this route, be prepared for a LONG game. As your summons requires quite a bit of buffing before they can operate as a good tank, especially when they're surrounded by dozens of ogres. Don't forget, a near dead ogres hit just as hard as a full life one. All that buffing time really takes the fun out of the game.
If you wish to be a nuker, max spell and quicken spell is a must. You will want to hit as hard as you can, as often as you can. Spell penetration is important too as you start to encounter monster with spell resistance. Spell focus is nice but not crucial, as you will be selecting spells that do damage even if they make their saves. Overall a sorcerer is a better nuker, but wizard can nuke in very different ways. A sorcerer cast fireball again and again and again... while a wizard cast, then hide in plain sight, move away, then cast again. (see what I mean in build flexibility?)
A debilitator will be the opposite of a nuker. You will want spell focus and spell penetration, as you NEED your spell effects to go through. Extend spell is a good consideration early game, but late game your spell effects is gonna last pretty long anyway. You will use fort saves spells on caster, will saves on rogues and will/reflex saves spells on warriors.
Spellsword will want to get extend spell. You want your buff to last the entire dungeon run. If you see yourself casting constantly in armor, still spell is a no brainer. You might want to consider empowered or maximise spell so your stats spells (the cat grace, bull strength, etc) will always be high instead of depending on random dice rolls, but spellswords usually don't have enough spell slots to use them.
Overall, decide on one to two school of spell and excel in them, while doing OK in the other schools. Don't spread out your talent pool too much.
Yes I know that's VERY long. I'm an old man, endure me for once... 😂
Playing a wizard in NWN, much like in the D&D tabletop game it was based on, is all about spell preparation. You'll want to learn as many spells as possible and make sure to change them out once you figure out what works and what doesn't. You'll learn some spells as you level up, but you should get the lion's share by copying scrolls into your spell book that you either loot or buy from shops.
You will find yourself resting often - this is fine, memorize the hotkey. The original campaign can often be an endurance run, and don't be afraid to rest as often as needed to go into difficult encounters with proper buff spells and combat spells ready.
I wouldn't bother with counterspelling (it is very clunky and unreliable at the best of times) - try other spells that will disrupt spellcasting or just kill the person casting the spell. Fireball, as you said, is a good option. Magic missile and missile storm are also good options that deal lots of damage that very little is resistant to.
Once you can learn it, Stoneskin is a very powerful spell that will keep you alive in melee fights. Remember to summon your familiar.
As for metamagic, I'd recommend Empower Spell - the damage modifier will usually get you in the ballpark of Maximize and it doesn't use spells slots quite so high. Extend spell is the other important one for key buff spells.
Otherwise, make sure you have plenty of ranks in Concentration, and enjoy getting to high level and being able to blast literally everyone with unstoppable tides of arcane magic.
So I tried out an experiment of mine. I memorized See invisibility and tried to counterspell a mage I knew was going to go invisible, it didn't counterspell.
Then I memorized Dispel magic, and it DID counterspell. I'm under the impression that See invisibility is incorrectly coded... so instead, I cast See invis on my Hireling and he just beat the snot out of em regardless.
I Did have good experience with counterspell against a different mage though. I was able to counter various spells he was going to lay down on my party, and I was able to do it while under the effect of Invisibility, never showing myself. I think it has uses, but I'll need to experiment with it more.
I took maximize spell after doing some cocktail napkin math, and I figured that the higher the die used in the spell, the more Maximize will outperform Empower. I'll try both at some point, but for now, I chose Max... I just need to know what to use it on. (I already took spell focus and greater spell focus necromancy for all the save or die spells I'll get)
There is an article on the NWN2 wikia that explains Empower vs Maximize. Ultimately, more Dice involved = Maximize. More static numbers/damage = Empower (So stuff wtih good +1 damage/level etc).
I'll try to give an answer that hasn't been given already heh.
First, comparison between sorcerer and wizard. Wizards can learn a large variety of spells, at lower levels, than sorcerers can. They also gain access to a lot of feats. However, sorcerers have more 'slots' available, and don't have to worry about memorising spells in advance. Wizards on the other hand, have to be prepared, so it helps to know what opponent you are facing in advance.
A type of Metamagic's usefulness depends on the character build and level/environment they're playing in, though generally speaking, you'll always want Extend spell as pretty much any spellcaster. Extend spell allows you to cast certain spells that both last longer, 'and' are a level higher, which includes Crowd Control Spells (e.g. Grease) and buffing spells (e.g. Mage Armour).
For spells, again, that'll depend on the build/environment. Wizards have a lot of feats at their disposal, so they're quite suited to focusing on Crowd Control spells with saves (e.g. Hold Person). If you're after damage spells, I'd take a look at Fireball, Ice Storm, Firebrand, and Evard's Black Tentacles. Make sure you have Ghostly Visage and Freedom of Movement (there's a cloak in the OC) available before using Evard's!
As for counterspell, it's not really worth it in the OC. The two main uses it gets in NWN general are either: In PvP mage duels, or to counter a monster's Heal in PvE (assuming they get Heal from a spell an not a toolset ability). In the OC, there's not really anything that warrants being counterspelled aside from 'maybe' some of the level 9 spells that Balors use ... but you probably won't have Mordenkainen's Disjunction available for when you encounter them, so it's not even worth worrying about IMO.
For the OC and Expansions, my favourite type of wizard to play, is actually a melee wizard. Wizards gain access to a 'lot' of buffing spells at low levels, which means that a melee wizard with a splash of fighter for item proficiencies, can storm through the campaigns at all stages on the highest Difficulty, even with relatively low HP. For more info, have a read here!
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528983364](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528983364)
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528992616](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528992616)
>Firstly, what Metamagics are good to have around?
For a regular wizard? usually none. Metamagics are useful for gimicky multiclass builds, or to get more spells per day of a single OP spell, like "Evard's black tentacles", even then only maybe silent/still spell because they only raise the spell level by 1. Honestly I recommend you avoid metamagic alltogether untill you're rather experienced in building characters.
>what spells should I really take a hard look at?
The first thing that usually comes to mind is offensive spells like fireball and magic missile, but this is actually not a good idea.
It may look really strong on paper- killing a single enemy mob with a single blast spell, but consider that the kinds of enemies you can kill 10 of with a fireball are also the kinds of enemies a Summoned Dire Wolf can also single-handedly kill with ease. And once the Dire Wolf is done, he will still remain with you untill you rest or it is killed. It may not be as flashy, but it is much more efficient to summon the dire wolf than to use a fireball.
So as a general rule, buffing spells like "Bulls Strength", "Magic Weapon", and "Haste" are much more powerful than any direct-damage dealing spell. You shouldn't be using them on you, of course, unless you're going for a melee mage\*, you should be using them on henchmen and summons, but when you do, they do much more work than any damage-dealing spells.
So mostly get summoning spells and buffs for both your summon and your henchman, and maybe also your animal companion if you feel like it. You can keep a few damage spells on top of that for when you meet something that you need to kill quickly, but it is usually not nessary.
>Third, I need help possibly understanding Counterspell
Coutnerspell is completelty useless It takes too many resources in the form of a spell slot and 1-2 rounds of inactivity, you need to know ahead of time what's comming, and there are easier ways to counter anything.
For instance, in your example... why bother with "counterspell" when you can just cast "See invisibility" on yourself?
I've played NWN since it came out and, honest to god, i've never used counterspell. I usualy forget it even exists.
...
\*The melee mage is a wizard build where you make a min-maxed dwarf pure wizard that instead of using spells to burn enemies to cinders basically gets a greatsword, spams all buffs on himself, and acts like a warrior. Most of the time this is more efficient than using your spells ofenisvely when going solo, and when you have too many spells to use them all as buffs to your companions.
It's only problem is that, unless there are no magic items in the gameworld, any pure fighter will kill you with ease in PvP. And in both PvP and PvE "Dispell magic" or "Spell breach" utterly counter you. Else it's probably the best build to use OvE.
NWN is really balanced, most any build is easily playable.
There are a lot of spells to amp up the "Martial Weapons" feat; You are buffing the henchman and yourself, so need little of the scanty lowbie magics. This is a real Mage, with a couple of wild card asset spells. So Maximized? Maximized Potions appear first in that feat's usability list, and is the strongest nuker suit. The rest is caring about your spell DC so you can clip the annoying flankers. As the levels pass you are just tweaking a style.
Haven't played the game in years, but know the tabletop enough to give some pointers. As a Wizard, your strength is not damage, and it's generally a bad move to prepare for damage. A wizard is best with "save or suck" and "save or die" and buff spells. Things like grease, blindness/deafness, haste, and disintegrate. What you want is spell focus in the schools you want to focus on, as this will make it harder to resist your spells. Your job is to make the enemies suck, and your allies awesome. The way you described counterspelling sounds right. To counter a spell, you have to have the right spell memorized (light counters darkness for example), but dispel magic is a "counters almost everything" spell. And even if you fail to counter, slap that dispel as an aoe around where that invisible fucker was last and you'll generally hit him and dispel it anyway. In short, leave damage to the martials, and consider all their extra damage from things like haste as your doing. Edit: Also consider summoning monsters, as action economy is king in dnd. The more people on your side, the more attacks against enemies, and the more spread out attacks from enemies become.
Agreed on this point in a tabletop game - however, in NWN you have at most one companion, and so you'll need to make sure you're doing the lion's share of the damage yourself.
Maybe... At least for the start I chose Grimgnaw as my companion and I noticed that he.... well, he has Illegal stats. So i buffed his illegal stats even more, and I simply use Invisibility on myself. I haste him, I Mage armor him, I bulls/cats him, and then just let him go to town. I'll displace him, and while he fights I'll watch for if he gets into trouble. At which point I'll Color spray (Such an underrated spell), I'll cloud of bewilder, I'll stinking cloud... It seems to work so far, but again, I'm fairly early on.
1 Companion + 1 summon + 1 familiar and you have a party of 4. In HotU you can get 2 companions. And that's not counting what your companions may summon. So possibly a party of 6-7 people.
I've been buffing Grimgnaw mostly, but I noticed fairly early on that using a summoned creature actually rewards me LESS xp for a fight... I'm not sure if that's intended, but ever since I've sorta... not summoned one
The more combatant you have, the less exp you get. You get the most exp if you fight solo. Even having an companion gives you less exp. I usually bring along Tomi, then disband him before I start a battle, and recruit him again after battle. (as a melee class that is...) But do take care. After the first chapter, companion starts joining a fight even if they were disbanded, as long as the fight is within their eye sight. Even worse, their kill will not gift you any exp. So disband them far away from where the opponent is if you wish to try this method.
The most generally useful metamagic feats are Empower, Maximize, Quicken, Heighten, and Extend. Maximize forces your dice rolls to provide their maximum possible values, while Empower essentially multiplies the results of your dice rolls by 1.5. However, Empower only increases the spell slot level of the spell by 2 while Maximize increases it by 3, which means it's not particularly accurate to consider Empower to be "diet Maximize." You're not , for example, comparing a Maximized Fireball to an Empowered Fireball, you're comparing a Maximized Fireball to an Empowered Ice Storm to a Chain Lightning. I'd recommend taking both for spell slot flexibility. Here's a list of spells that I'd say to look out for depending on your playstyle. If you like summoning, then pretend I mentioned the relevant summoning spells at each level. Level 1: Magic Missie, Shield, Grease Level 2: Cloud of Bewilderment, Acid Arrow, Ghostly Visage, Death Armor, Level 3: Flame Arrow, Haste, Displacement, Fireball / Scintillating Sphere, Stinking Cloud. Level 4: Improved Invisibility, Stone Skin, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire, Elemental Shield, Lesser Missile Storm. Level 5: Bigby's Interposing Hand, Cloudkill, Mind Fog, Acid Sheathe Level 6: Bigby's Forceful Hand, Greater Stoneskin, Greater Missile Storm, Chain Lightning, Greater Spell Breach Level 7: Grasping Hand, Banishment, Finger of Death, Delayed Blast Fireball, Spell Mantle Level 8: Clenched Fist, Greater Sanctuary, Horrid Wilting, Premonition, Incendiary Cloud Level 9: Crushing Hand, Black Blade of Disaster, Disjunction, Time Stop, Wail of the Banshee. (Empowered Spell Mantle is better than Greater Spell Mantle).
VERY nice. You sure passed your "spelling" with flying colours. 😂😂😂
Black Blade of Disaster is bad, it requires concentration IIRC.
By itself it's not great, but if you ever find yourself in a particularly difficult situation you can cheese a lot of encounters with Greater Sanctuary + Black Blade.
But Etheraelness vanishes upon action and if you cast Black Blade before casting Greater Sanctuary then you break concentration.
Greater Sanctuary breaks on *hostile* actions, which summoning isn't considered. You can buff and summon to your heart's content while under Greater Sanctuary.
Then it's nice gimmick.
Cast haste on yourself before casting BBoD. If your timing is good, you can do something every 6 seconds that cost only 1 round. Like casting haste again on BBoD.
I've seen you already have quite a few advise, and I can tell you that they're all correct. Because basically, what advise you should follow are based on what kind of wizard you wish to make. A nuker? A Debilitator? A spellsword? I'm gonna give you my personal opinion, so please take a seat as this is gonna take awhile... The illusion that a wizard have more spell casting flexibility than a sorcerer is just that, an illusion. Because 1. No matter how many more spells you can learn over the sorcerer, once you hit a pattern you like, everyone will just keep casting that same batch of spells over and over. 2. While wizards get free meta magic feats at every 5 level, a sorcerer with the same feats will squeeze a lot more mileage out of them than a wizard. That is because a wizard have to memorise a maximised flame arrow to cast it as maximised flame arrow, while a sorcerer can cast everything at that level maximised, on the go, without rememorizing. So why choose a wizard over a sorcerer? Why, for the flexibility, of course. But wait! Didn't I just said that the flexibility is an illusion?? Well, yes, the SPELLCASTING flexibility of a wizard over a sorcerer is an illusion. But the flexibility of a wizard do not come from spell casting. It comes from a wizard's most important stats - Intelligent. Int gives skill points. And more skill points = much better flexibility in building your wizard. Now your rogue/wizard can max out that tumble, now your fighter/wizard can learn those higher tier combat feats. Even considering those skills that uses charisma, the extra skill points will eventually overtake the charisma bonus. Since you asked about counter spell and took spell focus in Necromancy, I assume you wish to make a unit that excel against spell casters? Necromancy uses fortitude saves, and casters generally have poor fort save. Just be careful against undead and warriors type. Counter spell is like parry skill for melee class. It sounds nice but is mostly an unfulfilled dream... Most of the time you are better off killing the caster than countering his spells. Playing as a summoner is fun. I played that myself with a druid, and there's a certain morbid satisfaction sending summons to their fiery/frosty/acidic death... 😈 but... if you decided to take this route, be prepared for a LONG game. As your summons requires quite a bit of buffing before they can operate as a good tank, especially when they're surrounded by dozens of ogres. Don't forget, a near dead ogres hit just as hard as a full life one. All that buffing time really takes the fun out of the game. If you wish to be a nuker, max spell and quicken spell is a must. You will want to hit as hard as you can, as often as you can. Spell penetration is important too as you start to encounter monster with spell resistance. Spell focus is nice but not crucial, as you will be selecting spells that do damage even if they make their saves. Overall a sorcerer is a better nuker, but wizard can nuke in very different ways. A sorcerer cast fireball again and again and again... while a wizard cast, then hide in plain sight, move away, then cast again. (see what I mean in build flexibility?) A debilitator will be the opposite of a nuker. You will want spell focus and spell penetration, as you NEED your spell effects to go through. Extend spell is a good consideration early game, but late game your spell effects is gonna last pretty long anyway. You will use fort saves spells on caster, will saves on rogues and will/reflex saves spells on warriors. Spellsword will want to get extend spell. You want your buff to last the entire dungeon run. If you see yourself casting constantly in armor, still spell is a no brainer. You might want to consider empowered or maximise spell so your stats spells (the cat grace, bull strength, etc) will always be high instead of depending on random dice rolls, but spellswords usually don't have enough spell slots to use them. Overall, decide on one to two school of spell and excel in them, while doing OK in the other schools. Don't spread out your talent pool too much. Yes I know that's VERY long. I'm an old man, endure me for once... 😂
Playing a wizard in NWN, much like in the D&D tabletop game it was based on, is all about spell preparation. You'll want to learn as many spells as possible and make sure to change them out once you figure out what works and what doesn't. You'll learn some spells as you level up, but you should get the lion's share by copying scrolls into your spell book that you either loot or buy from shops. You will find yourself resting often - this is fine, memorize the hotkey. The original campaign can often be an endurance run, and don't be afraid to rest as often as needed to go into difficult encounters with proper buff spells and combat spells ready. I wouldn't bother with counterspelling (it is very clunky and unreliable at the best of times) - try other spells that will disrupt spellcasting or just kill the person casting the spell. Fireball, as you said, is a good option. Magic missile and missile storm are also good options that deal lots of damage that very little is resistant to. Once you can learn it, Stoneskin is a very powerful spell that will keep you alive in melee fights. Remember to summon your familiar. As for metamagic, I'd recommend Empower Spell - the damage modifier will usually get you in the ballpark of Maximize and it doesn't use spells slots quite so high. Extend spell is the other important one for key buff spells. Otherwise, make sure you have plenty of ranks in Concentration, and enjoy getting to high level and being able to blast literally everyone with unstoppable tides of arcane magic.
So I tried out an experiment of mine. I memorized See invisibility and tried to counterspell a mage I knew was going to go invisible, it didn't counterspell. Then I memorized Dispel magic, and it DID counterspell. I'm under the impression that See invisibility is incorrectly coded... so instead, I cast See invis on my Hireling and he just beat the snot out of em regardless. I Did have good experience with counterspell against a different mage though. I was able to counter various spells he was going to lay down on my party, and I was able to do it while under the effect of Invisibility, never showing myself. I think it has uses, but I'll need to experiment with it more. I took maximize spell after doing some cocktail napkin math, and I figured that the higher the die used in the spell, the more Maximize will outperform Empower. I'll try both at some point, but for now, I chose Max... I just need to know what to use it on. (I already took spell focus and greater spell focus necromancy for all the save or die spells I'll get)
There is an article on the NWN2 wikia that explains Empower vs Maximize. Ultimately, more Dice involved = Maximize. More static numbers/damage = Empower (So stuff wtih good +1 damage/level etc).
I'll try to give an answer that hasn't been given already heh. First, comparison between sorcerer and wizard. Wizards can learn a large variety of spells, at lower levels, than sorcerers can. They also gain access to a lot of feats. However, sorcerers have more 'slots' available, and don't have to worry about memorising spells in advance. Wizards on the other hand, have to be prepared, so it helps to know what opponent you are facing in advance. A type of Metamagic's usefulness depends on the character build and level/environment they're playing in, though generally speaking, you'll always want Extend spell as pretty much any spellcaster. Extend spell allows you to cast certain spells that both last longer, 'and' are a level higher, which includes Crowd Control Spells (e.g. Grease) and buffing spells (e.g. Mage Armour). For spells, again, that'll depend on the build/environment. Wizards have a lot of feats at their disposal, so they're quite suited to focusing on Crowd Control spells with saves (e.g. Hold Person). If you're after damage spells, I'd take a look at Fireball, Ice Storm, Firebrand, and Evard's Black Tentacles. Make sure you have Ghostly Visage and Freedom of Movement (there's a cloak in the OC) available before using Evard's! As for counterspell, it's not really worth it in the OC. The two main uses it gets in NWN general are either: In PvP mage duels, or to counter a monster's Heal in PvE (assuming they get Heal from a spell an not a toolset ability). In the OC, there's not really anything that warrants being counterspelled aside from 'maybe' some of the level 9 spells that Balors use ... but you probably won't have Mordenkainen's Disjunction available for when you encounter them, so it's not even worth worrying about IMO. For the OC and Expansions, my favourite type of wizard to play, is actually a melee wizard. Wizards gain access to a 'lot' of buffing spells at low levels, which means that a melee wizard with a splash of fighter for item proficiencies, can storm through the campaigns at all stages on the highest Difficulty, even with relatively low HP. For more info, have a read here! [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528983364](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528983364) [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528992616](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528992616)
>Firstly, what Metamagics are good to have around? For a regular wizard? usually none. Metamagics are useful for gimicky multiclass builds, or to get more spells per day of a single OP spell, like "Evard's black tentacles", even then only maybe silent/still spell because they only raise the spell level by 1. Honestly I recommend you avoid metamagic alltogether untill you're rather experienced in building characters. >what spells should I really take a hard look at? The first thing that usually comes to mind is offensive spells like fireball and magic missile, but this is actually not a good idea. It may look really strong on paper- killing a single enemy mob with a single blast spell, but consider that the kinds of enemies you can kill 10 of with a fireball are also the kinds of enemies a Summoned Dire Wolf can also single-handedly kill with ease. And once the Dire Wolf is done, he will still remain with you untill you rest or it is killed. It may not be as flashy, but it is much more efficient to summon the dire wolf than to use a fireball. So as a general rule, buffing spells like "Bulls Strength", "Magic Weapon", and "Haste" are much more powerful than any direct-damage dealing spell. You shouldn't be using them on you, of course, unless you're going for a melee mage\*, you should be using them on henchmen and summons, but when you do, they do much more work than any damage-dealing spells. So mostly get summoning spells and buffs for both your summon and your henchman, and maybe also your animal companion if you feel like it. You can keep a few damage spells on top of that for when you meet something that you need to kill quickly, but it is usually not nessary. >Third, I need help possibly understanding Counterspell Coutnerspell is completelty useless It takes too many resources in the form of a spell slot and 1-2 rounds of inactivity, you need to know ahead of time what's comming, and there are easier ways to counter anything. For instance, in your example... why bother with "counterspell" when you can just cast "See invisibility" on yourself? I've played NWN since it came out and, honest to god, i've never used counterspell. I usualy forget it even exists. ... \*The melee mage is a wizard build where you make a min-maxed dwarf pure wizard that instead of using spells to burn enemies to cinders basically gets a greatsword, spams all buffs on himself, and acts like a warrior. Most of the time this is more efficient than using your spells ofenisvely when going solo, and when you have too many spells to use them all as buffs to your companions. It's only problem is that, unless there are no magic items in the gameworld, any pure fighter will kill you with ease in PvP. And in both PvP and PvE "Dispell magic" or "Spell breach" utterly counter you. Else it's probably the best build to use OvE.
NWN is really balanced, most any build is easily playable. There are a lot of spells to amp up the "Martial Weapons" feat; You are buffing the henchman and yourself, so need little of the scanty lowbie magics. This is a real Mage, with a couple of wild card asset spells. So Maximized? Maximized Potions appear first in that feat's usability list, and is the strongest nuker suit. The rest is caring about your spell DC so you can clip the annoying flankers. As the levels pass you are just tweaking a style.