Wizard Handbook: PF2 Legacy Class Guide

Introduction

The Wizard has been my favorite class since 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons.Powerful, versatile, and thematically interesting, the Wizard goes out intothe world to test their wits and their knowledge against whatever challengethe multiverse has to offer.

The Wizard is the iconic arcane spellcaster. With a broad and diverse spell list, the Wizard can solve nearly any problem magically. In a party, your role is defined by the spells you employ. You can serve as a Blaster with area damage spells like fireball, a Defender by summoning creatures to stand between your party and your enemies, a Face by enchanting other creatures, a Scholar with your vast Intelligence and ample skills, a Scout with divination spells and stealth options like Invisibility, a Striker with single-target spells like Disintegrate and Power Word Kill, a Support caster with a wide range of buffs, debuffs, and area control spells, and a Utility caster with access to all manner of spells for solving the world’s mundane problems with magic.

In truth, there is very little that the Wizard can’t do, and while it’s notthe uber-class that it was in previous editions, the Wizard is still aprofoundly capable and versatile class. However, with great versatility comesgreat complexity. Playing a wizard involves a lot of planning, tracking, andmanagement. You can keep the class simple by playing an Evoker and solvingyour problems by blowing them up, but many wizards will have a large suite ofspecialized tools and will need to choose from a long list of options toemploy in any given situation. If you’re afraid of “analysis paralysis”,consider other class options like the Sorcerer.

Also see our Arcane Spell List Breakdown.

Introduction
Disclaimer
Wizard Class Features
Subclasses – Arcane School
Ability Scores
Ancestries
Backgrounds
Skills and Skill Feats
- General Skill Feats
Feats
- Wizard Feats
  - 1st Level
  - 2nd Level
  - 4th Level
  - 6th Level
  - 8th Level
  - 10th Level
  - 12th Level
  - 14th Level
  - 16th Level
  - 18th Level
  - 20th Level
- General Feats
Weapons
Armor
Wizard Focus Spells
- Abjuration
- Conjuration
- Divination
- Evocation
- Enchantment
- Illusion
- Necromancy
- Transmutation
- Universalist
Archetypes

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options whichare extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
Orange: OK options, or useful optionsthat only apply in rare circ*mstances. Useful sometimes.
Green: Good options. Useful often.
Blue: Fantastic options, often essentialto the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Wizard Class Features

Key Ability: Intelligence. Like any spellcaster it’s used for your Spell Attacks and for your Spell DCs. Those are two of your most important stats, so keep your Intelligence as high as you can get it. Intelligence also grants you additional Trained skills at 1st level, allowing you to easily invest in numerous skills, including Lore options which other classes often need to ignore in favor of more important skills.

Hit Points: 6+Con hit points. Fortunately, youhave plenty of room to boost your ability scores so your Constitution bonuscan compensate.

Initial Proficiencies: The Wizard’sproficiencies are terrible. Your high Intelligence will give you an abundanceof Trained skills, but that’s the height of the Wizard’s proficiencies inanything except spellcasting.

Perception: Trained at 1st level, and itmaxes out at Expert at 11th level. Expect to rely on allies for Perceptionchecks, and strongly consider Incredible Initiative if you don’t want to golate in the turn order in every fight.
Saving Throws: Only one good saving throw.Will is a great option, but only one good saving throw is still a serioushandicap, and it never improves past Master. Your other saving throws willalso increase to expert, but no further. You can take the Canny Acumen feat,but that won’t get you past Expert until 17th level, so you’ll spend most ofyour career with absolutely dismal saving throws compared to yourallies.
Skills: Arcana, plus 2+int Trained skillsat 1st level, for a total of 3+. That’s standard, and with 18 Intelligenceat 1st level you’ll have plenty of trained skills. You should get more thananyone except the Alchemist and the Rogue.
Attacks: 5 weapons plus unarmed strikes. Adagger is your best weapon option. Don’t expect to use any weapon except inthe most unusual circ*mstances.
Defenses: No armor proficiencies, and yourproficiency in Unarmored Defense never increases past Expert. Expect to relyon spells like Mystic Armor, and be sure that you have nice sturdy friends tohide behind. The Wizard’s saves are also terrible.
Spells: Standard progression for full spellcasters.

Arcane Spellcasting: The Wizard uses the Arcane spell list,and they are prepared spellcasters so you need to prepare a spell in each ofyour spell slots during your Daily Preparations.

Heightened Spells: Heightening spells is an importantmechanic in Pathfinder 2e. Important spells like Mage Armor scale with spelllevel, allowing them to stay relevant long after you learned them. Sincewizards don’t use a Spell Repertoire, you only need to learn a spell once,then you can prepare it at any level that you can cast.
Cantrips: Fantastic every time, on anycharacter, in any amount. Wizards can prepare 5 cantrips, and they startwith 10 in their spellbook so you have lots of room to customize yourarsenal every day.
Spellbook: Your spellbook is your mostvaluable possession. Guard it jealously; if you lose it, you’ll be unable toprepare spells. Also, expect to buy several over the course of your career.They have a finite number of pages, and as you gain levels your spells willtake up increasing numbers of pages. If you add spells to your spellbookbeyond the free 2 spells that you gain at each level, you’ll exacerbate thisproblem. Fortunately, after very low levels the cost of extra spell bookswill be negligible.

Arcane School: See “Subclasses – Arcane School”, below.

Arcane Bond: Recast any one spell youprepared today. This is hugely useful, and it makes it easier to prepare adiverse array of spells rather than preparing Fireball 8 times.

Arcane Thesis: Arcane thesis adds an extramechanic to your Wizard. While this option isn’t as defining as your ArcaneSchool, it’s a helpful extra ability which will remain useful at everylevel.

Improved Familiar Attunement^CRB: Familiars are really good, but their capabilities are limited by theirnumber of abilities. Normally you only get two, so this triples the numberof abilities which you can give your familiar. You can also take the EnhanceFamiliar feat to add another 2.
Metamagical Experimentation^CRB: More class feats is always great, but the level limitations on the secondfeat means that you’ll probably end up learning a metamagic feat thenretraining it once you can take it with Metamagical Experimentation. It alsoseems unlikely that you’ll change out your chosen metamagic feat frequently.Changing out metamagic feats to prepare for expected challenges doesn’t makeas much sense as changing your spells for the day.
Spell Blending^CRB: This is a gamble. Higher-level spells grow dramatically in power, butit’s hard to say if a small number of higher-level spell slots are betterthan the regular spell slot arrangement. If you take this option, expect toburn a big spell or two right at the beginning of a fight in a way that willdefine the outcome of the fight, then expect to fall back on cantrips.
Spell Substitution^CRB: If you can’t decide what to choose for your Arcane Thesis, SpellSubstitution is a great option. Wizards are generally stuck with the optionsthat they picked at the beginning of a day, and you can rarely predict yourneeds with perfect accuracy. This is great for when you encounter unexpectedobstacles and don’t have time to spend 8 hours resting in order tore-prepare spells.
Staff Nexus^APG: Before you go any further, go read the rules for Casting Spells from aStaff and Preparing a Staff. If you don’t know those rules, none of theadvice I’m about to give you will make any sense.
The Makeshift Staff starts off very weak, but grows in efficacy as yougain levels, and takes a massive jump when you upgrade it to a real magicstaff. At levels 1 and 2, basically all that it does is give you an extracantrip per day since you still get to prepare your normal number ofcantrips. You get one 1st-level spell in the staff, but you need to spenda 1st-level slot to get 1 charge so you’re effectively turning a 1st-levelspell slot into a 1st-level slot, leaving you right where you started.
Normally when you Prepare a Staff you get some free charges, but theMakeshift Staff doesn’t get that benefit (until you turn it into a realstaff), so you need to expend a spell slot to get any use out of theleveled spell in your staff. As you gain access to higher-level spellslots, you can turn them into multiple slots for repeated castings of your1st-level spell, so it’s really important that the spell which you chooseis a going to remain useful throughout your career without casting thespell at a higher spell level. Choose carefully.
When you eventually turn your Makeshift Staff into a real staff, it’s ahuge upgrade. Magic staffs are available as early as level 3, but most areeither level 4 or 6 at their lowest-level version. Once you upgrade, youadd your cantrip and 1st-level spell to your upgrade staff, giving you atotally unique item. You could have a Staff of Ice that can also be usedto cast Produce Flame and Magic Missile (not great examples of a powerfulcombo, but a good example of the mechanic). Keep in mind that you get nospecial benefits to perform this upgrade, so you’ll need to put some SkillIncreases into Crafting.
If you’re going to take Staff Nexus, you need to be prepared to do twothings: first, you need to like how staffs work and want to use them;second, you need to craft magic items (mostly your staff, but your partyis inevitably going to ask you to make other stuff). If you’re okay withthat, and if you don’t mind suffering through low levels with theMakeshift Staff, you’ll do just fine.

Wizard Feats: See Wizard feats, below.

Subclasses – Arcane School

Generalist

The ability to re-cast one spell of every spell level that you can cast meansthat you get as many leveled spells in total as a Specialist, but you’re morelimited in the number of individual spells that you can prepare. You get anextra 1st-level Wizard feat, and more class feats are always a good thing, andyou get access to several feats like Bond Conservation and UniversalVersatility.

Specialist

You choose to be a specialist for two reasons: Focus spells, and an extraspell slot at each spell level. The extra spell slot is limited to yourschool, but many schools have options at every level which are good enough toprepare every day. However, because your extra spell slot is limited and youcan’t re-cast expended spells (unless you prepared duplicates), you can’tmatch the versatility of the Generalist. Requiring you to spend a Class Featto get your second school spell seems like an unnecessary tax, so if yourschool’s second school spell is bad don’t waste a feat on it.

Ability Scores

The Wizard’s ability scores are dead simple: You need Intelligence for yourspells, and you need Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom for your defenses.

Str: Dump. Wizards have no need for Strength.You’re not carrying heavy equipment, and you’re not wearing armor.

Dex: AC and Reflex saves. You’ll eventuallywant at least 16, but don’t bother getting more than 20.

Con: Hit points and Fortitude savingthrows.

Int: Your Key Ability Score.

Wis: Perception and Will saves.

Cha: Probably a dump stat unless you wantto use your numerous skills to play the party’s Face, or if you want to useDemoralize with your third action every turn.

Ancestries

An Intelligence boost is crucial, but since Free Ability Boosts are part ofevery Ancestry that’s easy to accomplish. Bonuses to other important abilityscores are helpful, but not crucial, so Ancestry Feats are often as importantas an Intelligence Increase.

Catfolk^APG: The Boosts/Flaws work fine, but nearly none of the Catfolk’s Ancestry Featssupport the Wizard. Black Cat Curse is really good, but one feat at 13th levelisn’t enough on its own. Consider Adopted Ancestry or a Versatile Heritage ifyou’re determined to play a catfolk.

Dwarf: The Dwarf’s Ability Boosts workgreat if you put the Free Ability Boost into Intelligence, but Dwarf AncestryFeats offer very little for the Wizard. Strongly consider Adopted Ancestry.

Elf: The Elf’s Ability Boosts are great,but a Constitution Flaw is really problematic, so you may want to use theVoluntary Flaws rules to offset the Constitution penalty. Seer Elf gets youDetect Magic for free, and Otherwordly Magic gets you an extra Arcane cantrip(though it’s an innate spell so it’s still Charisma-based), so you can expandyour cantrip options, but the Gnome can get cantrips from other spell lists,which dramatically expands your options.

Gnome: Despite the lack of a fixedIntelligence increase, the Gnome works surprisingly well if you put your FreeAbility Boost into Intelligence. Gnome Ancestry Feats can get youautomatically-scaling Lore skills, extra cantrips, a familiar, and a few otherexcellent options. Two of the Gnome’s Heritages give you additional cantrips,but since they’re innate spells they’ll be Charisma-based, so look for utilityoptions rather than offensive ones, especially from other spellcastingtraditions which offer spells that the Wizard can’t normally select.

Goblin: With your Free Ability Boost inIntelligence, the Goblin’s ability increases look similar to the Gnome’s. BurnIt! is a great option for blasters, and you could make good use of Very Sneakyand Very Very Sneaky, but those don’t specifically supplement yourcapabilities as a wizard so I’m not sure if they’re better than what you couldget from Adopted Ancestry.

Halfling: Workable ability boosts, andHalfling Luck is good on literally every character. Cultural Adaptability canget you Burn It! from the Goblin Ancestry Feats, too. Unfortunately, none ofthe heritages look especially helpful.

Human: Take the Voluntary Flaws to dumpStrength and Charisma, and you can do +2 to Dex, Con, and Int (or switch Dexor Con to Wis if you’d like). There isn’t anything you need from VersatileHeritage, so consider other options. If you take Half-Elf you can easily takemulticlass archetype feats for other spellcasting classes. Adapted Cantriplooks tempting, but it’s only useful for offensive options and wizards alreadyget the best offensive options.

Kobold^APG: Despite lacking a built-in Intelligence Boost, the Kobold has a lot tooffer. The Spellscale Kobold gets you a free Arcane cantrip (though rememberthat it’s innate so it’s Charisma-based, so stick to utility options), KoboldBreath offers an easy offensive option similar to cantrips, and at higherlevels the Dracomancer feat chain offers some additional spellcasting.Defensively, options like Cringe and Ally’s Shelter offer ways to compensatefor your poor durability.

Orc^APG: Nothing useful for the Wizard beyond the Free Ability Boost.

Ratfolk^APG: Perfect Ability Boosts/Flaws, and access to a familiar without spending aClass Feat. However, the Ratfolks other Ancestry Feat options do little forthe Wizard, so consider Adopted Ancestry or a Versatile Heritage to expandyour options.

Tengu^APG: Nothing useful for the Wizard beyond the Free Ability Boost.

Backgrounds

All that you need from your background is Intelligence, and since everybackground includes a Free Ability Boost, you can always get the Intelligenceboost. Look for backgrounds with useful skills or which get you a skill featthat you had your eyes on.

If you’re having trouble deciding, here are some suggestions:

Artisan
Scholar
Tinker

Skills and Skill Feats

You get Skill Increases at 3rd and 5th level to raise skills to Expert, increases at 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th level to raise skills to Master, and increases at 15th, 17th, and 19th level to raise skills to Legendary. That means that you can maximize at most three skills, and the rest of your skills might not advance beyond Trained.

You get Skill Feats at even-numbered levels, giving you a total of 10 Skill Feats (and maybe another from your Background) by 20th level. Generally, you want to invest these feats in the same skills which you are choosing to maximize, though in some cases you may want to grab feats from skills which don’t require that you be more than Trained.

Acrobatics (Dex): Surprisingly importantbecause it’s used for maneuvering while flying.
- Cat Fall: Being knocked prone whileflying is an easy way to counter flying creatures, and enemies can do itjust as easily to you as you can do it to them. Cat Fall will reduce theeffective distance you’ve fallen, allowing you to take less damage froma fall. However, the effects of Cat Fall scale based on your Proficiencylevel, so it may not be worth the skill feat unless you plan to increaseyour proficiency in Acrobatics.
Arcana (Int): Essential, and you get itfor free.
- Arcane Sense: If you can make DetectMagic free, you should cast it frequently any time that there’s even aremote chance that you’ll encounter magic. You’re going to maximizeArcana anyway, so this will get better as you gain levels. Of course,Detect Magic is a Cantrip which you could get by several means, andnormal Cantrip scaling will be faster than waiting to become Legendaryin Arcana.
- Magical Shorthand: Wizards can, intheory, buy access to every spell on their spell list. Using downtime toreduce or even eliminate the cost to learn new spells can eventuallysave you a significant amount of gold, though you’ll give up time thatyou could spend crafting things.
- Unified Theory: Your Intelligence willalways exceed your Wisdom, so your Arcana will always exceed your Natureand Religion, so at the very least this is a numeric boost to thoseskills. More importantly, you don’t need to spend Skill Increases onNature, Occultism, or Religion.
Athletics (Str): Strength is your dumpstat.
Crafting (Int): You’re probably thesmartest person in the party, and someone in the party needs it tohandle magic runes, repairing items, etc. Also, Scroll Savant is reallygood.
Deception (Cha): Wizards are not a greatFace since they have no dependence on Charisma.
Diplomacy (Cha): Wizards are not a greatFace since they have no dependence on Charisma.
Intimidation (Cha): Casting a spell istypically a 2-Action Activity, which means that in many rounds you’ll have aspare Action and not much to do with it. In those situations, Demoralize isa great use of an Action. However, that spare action may also be importantfor the Sustain a Spell action.
Lore (Int): Too numerous and too vaguely-defined.
Medicine (Wis): You’ll have enoughWisdom to make Medicine viable, but hopefully you’ll be in a party withsomeone else who can cover it so that you can focus on Intelligence-basedskills.
Nature (Wis): Despite being Wisdom-based,Nature may be an important skill for the Wizard so that you can identifyspells being cast by other spellcasters.
Occultism (Int): On par with Arcana, andyou have plenty of Intelligence to make it work.
- Bizarre Magic: Most enemies won’t beable to identify your magic, and the few that can will rarely care.
Performance (Cha): There is no way for theWizard to make use of this short of things like the Goblin Song feat.
Religion (Wis): Despite beingWisdom-based, Religion may be an important skill for the Wizard so that youcan identify spells being cast by other spellcasters.
Society (Int): The closest thing you’llget to a Face skill, and it also serves as the knowledge skill for humanoidsocieties.
Stealth (Dex): Never a bad choice, butdon’t expect to be good at it.
Survival (Wis): Too situational.
Thievery (Dex): Solve these problems withmagic, or leave it to someone who focuses on Dexterity.

General Skill Feats

Magical Crafting: Depending on yourcampaign, crafting during downtime can be a huge asset. But if your campaignrarely includes downtime in somewhere suitable to crafting, you’ll be finewithout this.
Recognize Spell: With high Intelligence,passable Wisdom, and easy access to spellcasting-related skills, the Wizardis perhaps the best-suited character to identifying enemy spells. You alsohave access to Counterspell and other means to counteract magic, so beingable to identify spells as a Reaction can be a powerful tool against enemyspellcasters.
- Quick Recognition: Using a FreeAction means that you can identify spells multiple time between turns,which is crucial against multiple enemy spellcasters or if you need yourReaction for something else.

Feats

Wizard Feats

For the full list of Wizard Class Feats, see theWizard Feats page onArchives of Nethys.

1st Level

Counterspell^CRB: Countering enemy spells is great, but you need to have that same spellprepared just to have the opportunity. It’s hard enough when you have aspell repertoire and can burn an appropriate spell slot, but when you’re aprepared caster your ability to counter spells drops precipitously as you gothrough the day casting spells.
Eschew Materials^CRB: Too situational. A spell component pouch is not a significant burdenunless your DM is explicitly working to make spellcasting components achallenge.
Familiar^CRB: Familiars are really good. For help with your familiar, seeourPractical Guide to Familiars.
Hand of the Apprentice^CRB: See “Focus Spells”, below. Only take this if you want to take UniversalVersatility.
Reach Spell^CRB: Wonderful if you like touch spells, but there aren’t enough touch spellsto justify the feat when you can choose Familiar and use the Spell Deliveryability to accomplish the same thing.
Spellbook Prodigy^APG: Don’t take this at first level. The primary function of this feat is toprotect you from failure when you attempt to Learn a Spell. If you roll aFailure, you must normally wait until you gain a level to try to learnthat spell again. At low levels the gold to learn a spell that you cancast isn’t significant compared to how much gold you’ll find as you gainlevels, and you’re going to gain levels fast enough that it’s mostly aninconvenience, so the consequences for failure are both minor andshort-term.
On top of that, it’s pretty easy to avoid a Critical Failure to Learn aSpell. A 1st-level wizard who is Trained in Arcana with 18 Intelligence(basically every wizard) has a +7 bonus to Arcana checks. The DC tolearn a 1st-level spell is 15, so you can only Criticaly Fail on anatural 1.
Of course, the math changes a bit as you gain levels, but if you’reputting Ability Boosts into Intelligence and Skill Increases into Arcanaat every opportunity, the DC remains low enough that you can only roll aCritical Failure on a natural 1 for most spell levels for most of yourcareer. If you’re worried, get an apprentice and have them Aid you for a+1 (every good wizard needs an apprentice or two), look for items thatgrant you an item bonus to the skill (Cognitive Mutagen, Orange AeonStone, Hat of the Magi, etc.), and see if you can bring in other stufflike the Guidance spell. A few inexpensive bonuses can minimize aCritical Failure to rolling a Natural 1.
The one arguement in favor of this feat is 20th level. If you reach20th level and still want to learn spells, rolling a Critical Failuremeans that you can never attempt to learn that spell again. That’s aterrible tragedy for a wizard fortunate enough to reach 20th level, butyou can still reduce that chance to 5% (a natural 1), and you get up to4 10th-level spells for free anyway. Plan to take your favorites withyour 4 guaranteed spells, attempt to learn anything else you want atlevel 19, then retry any critical failures at level 20. The odds ofrolling a critical failure for the same spell twice by this method are 1in 400.
Widen Spell^CRB: Essential for blasters. Even a minor boost could mean one or twoadditional targets with a single spell, which can dramatically improve howmuch you get out of your spell slots.

2nd Level

Cantrip Expansion^CRB: You only get to prepare 5 cantrips, and at low levels that’s not a lot ofoptions when you only have a few spell slots to throw around. At higherlevels you might retrain this when you’ve got more leveled spells to relyon.
Conceal Spell^CRB: Situational. Most of the time it won’t matter if other creatures noticeyou casting a spell. But if you want to remain undetected while castingspells, this is absolutely necessary. You’ll also need to invest in theDeception and Stealth skills.
Energy Ablation^APG: I love the concept, but the Action cost is too high for the amount ofresistance in the vast majority of cases. You’ll also run into situationswhere enemies have resistance or immunity to whatever type of damage theydeal (such as red dragons being immune to fire) so casting a spell to gettemporary resistance to that damage type may not affect your enemies. Inother situations enemies may simply change the type of damage that they’redealing (spellcasters, etc.). The best use case for this is enemies dealingdamage of one type multiple times in small amounts, but of a type whichthey’re not resistant to. Enemies using weapons with runes that addelemental damage are a good example, but situations like that are notcommon.
Enhanced Familiar^CRB: Familiars are really good, and expanding their limited number ofabilities can make them even better. For advice on what to do with the extraabilities, see myPractical Guide to Familiars.
Nonlethal Spell^APG: Situational by design. Most players are totally fine with their fireballskilling their enemies, but if you need to take an enemy captive this can bea helpful option. You only want to use this when there’s a chance thatyou’ll reduce the target(s) to 0 hit points because of the 1-Action cost, sotry to get an idea of your enemyies’ condition before you decide to make aspell nonlethal. Curiously, the rules for the Nonlethal trait don’t specifyhow it affects objects, so dropping a nonlethal fireball into a room maystill incinerate everything in it while leaving the occupants merelyunconscious.

4th Level

Bespell Weapon^CRB: Wizards are terrible at using weapons. Adding a d6 of damage won’t changethat. This is, at best, an option for multiclass archetype.
Call Bonded Item^APG: Situational by design. If you have a Bonded Item, losing it will ruinyour whole day, but if that’s happening to you often enough that you needCall Bonded Item, you’re doing something really weird and you should stop.Consider using a ring as your Bonded Item so that you’re not tempted tothrow it and so that you can’t be disarmed.
Linked Focus^CRB: An extraFocus Point each day in a pinch. Unfortunately, this only works if you DrainBonded Item to re-cast one of your curriculum spells, which reduces howuseful Drain Bonded Item is. If you need more Focus Points, there’s a FamiliarAbility for that.
Irezoko Tattoo^(A:CLO) (Uncommon):One extra Focus Point per day. Helpful if you depend heavily on Focus Spells, especially before you can Refocus to get more than one point.
Silent Spell⁽⁾:No longer has an effect. Use Subtle Spell instead.
Undying Conviction⁽⁾:Very situational. This might matter in a campaign where the protagonists are primarily undead or undead adjacent, but in a typicaly campaign this will probably never matter.

6th Level

Convincing Illusion^APG: Essential if you’re using illusions frequently, but most wizards won’tuse this often enough to justify the feat. For an illusionist (or ageneralist pretending to be one), this can make it nearly impossible forcreatures to disebelieve your illusions, dramatically improving theireffectiveness. However, it costs your Reaction so if multiple foes pass thecheck/save you’re still in trouble.
Detonating Spell^(KoL) (Uncommon):Not worth the additional action cost. If you want area damage, cast an area damage spell instead of trying to turn a single-target damage spell into an AOE.
Spell Penetration^CRB: Onlysituationally useful simply because not every creature has a Status bonus tosaves.
Split Slot^APG: Good for spells which you don’t know for certain that you’ll need in agiven day. I recommend picking a situational spell like Resist Energy pairedwith a simple, go-to offensive spell like Acid Arrow.
Steady Spellcasting^CRB: The Flat Check is too difficult to make this feat an easy choice. Youhave a success rate of just 30%. If you’re in a situation where you mightlose a spell, cast a cantrip so that losing it won’t cost you anything.

8th Level

Advanced School Spell^CRB: The effectiveness varies by school. See “Focus Spells”, below.
Bond Conservation^CRB: This allowsyou to cast several previously-cast non-cantrip spells per day, but the timelimit requires them to be cast on your next turn, so you need to cast1-Action or 2-Action spells to keep the chain going. Working your way downto your lowest-rank spells isn’t always a good option in combat, but if youdon’t need to move, you can easily work your way down through the SpellRanks casting progressively weaker offensive spells. Just be mindful of theAction cost to Sustain (or just avoid Sustained spells), and remember that casting a 3-Action spell won’tleave you room to activate Bond Conservation.
The biggest danger in this combo is the lack of movement. If possible, start cascading while you’re in cover.
Chaotic Spell^{(WtD #3)}:The effects are good for the most part, and avoiding damage resistances/immunities is great, but the random nature of the feat makes it unpredictable, and unpredictability means that it’s not consistently useful.
Form Retention^APG: Great if you want to stretch your spell across more than one encounter,but in many parties you’ll need time between encounters to Refocus, to TreatWounds, and to repair damaged equipment like shields, so the 10-minuteduration won’t be a significant improvement. This can still work in partieswho can manage back-to-back fights without issue, but even then I wouldn’tuse this for every one of your polymorph spells.
Helt’s Spelldance^(Fb) (uncommon):A good option to get yourself out of melee, and it also imposes a save penalty. Of course, it requires you to invest in Performance, which is otherwise nearly useless. This isn’t an easy choice for the Wizard.Consider teleporting.
Universal Versatility^CRB: Many of the 1st-level Focus Spells are very good, and you can switchbetween them any time you Refocus, which potentially means trying a newspell every time you get into a fight.

10th Level

Overwhelming Energy^CRB: Crucial for Evokers, but you can always change tactics and cast spellswhich don’t deal energy damage.
Quickened Casting^CRB: Even though it’s only once per day, this is still really good. Mostspells have a 2-Action casting time, so getting two spells out in a singleturn means that you’re doing the most important part of two turns in asingle turn.
Scroll Savant^CRB: At the bare minimum, this is 2 more spell slots every day, and eventually grows to 4. But you canalso give these to allies, allowing them to cast spells without you doing itfor them (though they will need to be Arcana spellcasters unless they take Trick Magic Item). This is especially useful for spells that target the caster but which might be dangerous or unhelpful for you to use.

12th Level

Clever Counterspell^CRB: Finally a way to make Counterspelling even remotely effective! It onlytook 11 levels after you considered Counterspell. This is great motivationto learn every spell you possibly can. The prepared spell you sacrificedoesn’t need to be the same spell level as the spell you’re countering. Thespells do need to share one trait (the spellcasting tradition doesn’tcount), but that’s a laughably easy requirement to meet since there are only7 schools of magic, and the school is a trait on each spell.
Diviner Sense^APG: Rolling Initiative twice is excellent, but it’s hard to predict whenenemies with qualify to trigger this feat so it’s only situationallyuseful.
Forcible Energy^APG: For a single character using this on its own, this is a minor damageboost provided that you can follow your first spell with one or more otherspells which deal the same type of damage. Spells which deal persistentdamage like Acid Arrow are a great choice, as are spells which canrepeatedly deal damage like Flaming Sphere, and you can repeatedly applyForcible Enemy by casting cantrips to renew the effect and keep theVulnerability in place at minimal cost.
However, 5 or 10 extra damage per turn isn’t amazing on its own. Toreally get the most out Forcible Energy, you need to coordinate with yourallies. Every ally that can deal damage of the same type will dealadditional damage thanks to the Vulnerability, so coordinate with yourallies to emphasize acid, electricity, fire, and sonic damage options.Even martial allies can join in thanks to Weapon Property Runes, anddealing as little as 1 damage of the appopriate type is enough to triggerthe bonus damage from Vulnerability. If everyone in a party of four cantrigger the Vulnerability one time, that’s 20 additional damage at thecost of a single Action, and the more times your party can hit the target,the more powerful Forcible Energy becomes.
Magic Sense^CRB: Having Detect Magic running constantly is great, but it’s also a Cantripso you can keep it running constantly everywhere except in combat withoutdifficulty. Using Detect Magic in combat is uncommon.

14th Level

Bonded Focus^CRB: If you’re relying on Focus Points in any significant way, you need this.The rules for Refocus are written specifically so that you can’t Refocusmultiple times in succession: After you regain a Focus Point by any means,you must spend a Focus Point again before you can Refocus. So: If you have aFocus Pool larger than one point, you almost certainly need this feat.Unfortunately the Wizard doesn’t have a way to recover three Focus Pointswhile Refocusing.
Reflect Spell^CRB: If you’re going to counter spells, you’re probably countering somethingoffensive and dangerous enough to justify spending a spell slot to counterit. If that’s the case, turning it back on the caster is really great. Thisdoesn’t fix any of the problems with Counterspell, but it makes itconsiderably more exciting to use.
Superior Bond^CRB: Combined withBond Conservation you can perform two cascading series of spells, though thesecond spell does need to be 2 ranks lower than the first spell in yourprevious Cascade.

16th Level

Effortless Concentration^CRB: If you rely on spells which require you to sustain them as an Action(entirely possible at this level), this could be a free action every turn.Get a bunch of spells going, sustain two or three, then roll them into afight and wreck things without casting more spells.
Spell Tinker^CRB: Situationally useful, and whether or not you can use this effectivelydepends heavily on what spells you chose to learn and which ones yougenerally prepare.
The limitation on the effects of a choice persisting are frustratingly vague. Spells like Resist Energy are called out as examples, but also you can’t change the spell if prior effects would persist in any way. Does dealing damage qualify? Does preventing damage qualify? I think the intent is to prevent abuse cases such as infinite healing, but the result is frustrating and the text leaves your GM to clean up the mess.

18th Level

Infinite Possibilities^CRB: That’s a massive amount of versatility, but I don’t know if it’s worthsuch a high-level class feat. At this level you can afford cart loads ofscrolls to cover all of those situational spells that you would use this tocast.
Reprepare Spell^CRB: Limiting the spell to spells without a duration means that blast spellslike Fireball are usually your best options. Sure, recharging a spell slotis always great, but by this level you have 9th-level spells and your4th-level spells probably stopped being a go-to offensive option a very longtime ago, so you’e most likely to look for low-level utility options. Butat that point, why not buy some scrolls?
Second Chance Spell^APG: Enchantment spells include some of the best single-target save-or-suckoptions available, such as Power Word Kill. However, save-or-suck spellsfrequently have no effect if the target succeeds on the save, so you’reoften gambling a spell slot to cast them. This makes that gambleconsiderably safer. Even so, I would only take this if you heavily favorenchantment spells.

20th Level

Archwizard’s Might^CRB: The coolest thing you will ever do is to cast a 10th-level spell. You getone slot (2 if you’re a specialist, and you can re-use it if you’re ageneralist), so this doubles how many times you can do the coolest thing youclass is capable of doing.
Metamagic Mastery^CRB: Really tempting, but there just aren’t enough good metamagic feats tomake this worthwhile.
Reclaim Spell^{(PF #156)} (Uncommon):This grants you the ability to Dismiss some spells of 4th rank or lower which otherwise could not be dismissed. Situations where that is useful are exceptionally rare, and can usually be handled by dispelling them.
Spell Combination^CRB: Casting two spells at the same time has a lot of potential, but I haven’tfound any combinations which are good enough to give up another 10th-levelspell slot.
Spell Mastery^APG: Four high-level spell slots may actually be better than a single10th-level spell slot. Pick spells at levels 6, 7, 8, and 9. You want theseto be spells which you’ll use basically every day without fail, so you wantthem to be both powerful and versatile. Buffs with long durations which youcast daily, such as Contingency, are good examples.
Worldsphere Gravity^{(PF #168)} (Uncommon):Both effects are good, but won’t be as consistently useful as other 20th-level feats.

General Feats

Canny Acumen^CRB: Wizards have poor saves and poor Perception. The only problem with thisfeat is that you can’t take it more than once.
Incredible Initiative^CRB: Casting an area control spell before anyone else acts can win a fightbefore it begins, so rolling well on initiative is often crucial forspellcasters.
Toughness^CRB: Wizards have few hit points, so more never hurt, but you should also beworking really hard to avoid being targeted by things that deal damage.

Weapons

Crossbow (Any)^(PC1): At low levelsthe option make a 1-Action Strike with a crossbow can be a major damageboost once per encounter. I don’t recommend reloading during combat If youhave 2 Actions to reload, spend them casting a cantrip.
Dagger^(CRB): The onlymelee weapon that you have any reasonable chance to hit with, but you shoulduse it only when you have absolutely no other choice.

Armor

Explorer’s Clothing: Basically just afancy outfit that you can apply magic runes to. Mage Armor is probablyenough, but if you want property runes you’ll need a permanent suit of“armor”. Don’t worry about the Dexterity Cap, either; if you’re exceeding 20Dexterity you’re probably doing something unusual.

Wizard Focus Spells

Abjuration

Protective Ward: Mathematically similar to using a Parry weapon or a buckler, and since this is a Status bonus it will stack with Circ*mstance bonuses from options like Parry or Raise a Shield. However, the radius is tiny and grows slowly, often compelling you to be much closer to danger than a wizard should be.
Energy Absorption: The biggest problemwith temporary damage resistances is that you typically need to guess whattype of resistance you need. This removes that challenge, and the damageresistance is both good and scales with level, so this will remain a greatoption at any level.

Conjuration

Augment Summoning: A +1 bonus for a fullminute will make a difference for a summoned creature, but theaction economy here is hard. AugmentSummoning only takes one Action, but you likely spent 3 Actions to summon the creature, then you’re probably spending an Action toMaintain the Spell which summoned the creature you’re targeting. So unlessyou have Quickened Casting or Effortless Concentration, you’re left with asingle Action on your second turn. That probably means that you won’t be casting anotherspell since so few spells have a 1-Action casting time. Unless your summoned creaturecan completely replace you in a fight (which is possible) or the fight is going to be extremely long, you probably can’t afford the Action to cast this.
Dimensional Steps: Cheap, easy,short-range teleportation. Unfortunately it has the Somatic trait so youmight not be able to use it while restrained.

Divination

Diviner’s Sight: Unfortunately, you can’tuse this on attack rolls or flat checks, but even so it’s still good. Youcould use this before an ally makes a risky skill check like disarming atrap, or you could use this while an ally is trying to resist a problematicongoing effect. The biggest difficulty is simply knowing when to use it.Because the effect ends at then end of your next turn you can use it foryour own benefit, but targeting yourself doesn’t simplify the issue ofknowing when to cast it.
Vigilant Eye: Clairvoyance takes a fullminute to cast and lasts 10 minutes; Vigilant Eye takes an Action to castand lasts an hour. I don’t know if it’s always useful, but if you want tosit around while your party Refocuses, you can use this to keep watch whileyou recover your Focus Points.

Evocation

Force Bolt: There’s an obvious comparisonbetween Force Bolt and Magic Missile. Force Bolt is cast as a single action,which makes it useful to cast alongside other spells which typically taketwo actions. However, the damage isn’t great. You get 1d4+1 at everyodd-numbered spell level, so it will never be a significant amount of damageon its own. Magic Missile, by comparison, can be cast as 1, 2, or 3 actions,and you get an extra 1d4+1 bolt per action. So there’s a lot of overlap, andthe spells are functionally identical if you use the 1-action option. Butthat’s probably not the right comparison to make. Instead, compare ForceBolt to a cantrip. The damage dice scale at the same rate, and eventuallyForce Bolt’s flat damage will exceed the ability bonus to cantrip damage,but the real appeal is the 1-Action casting time. You can have at most 3Focus Points, which means potentially three extra cantrips worth of damageearly in a fight when a little extra damage can be the most impactful.
Elemental Tempest: This is a big pile ofdamage, but the 10-foot range is a serious problem for a wizard.

Enchantment

Charming Words: A great option if you’restuck in melee and need to safely escape, but since it doesn’t prevent hostileactions against your allies it won’t always be useful.
Dread Aura: Decent radius and nosave.

Illusion

Warped Terrain: This is great for chokepoints like hallways, but just putting the effect between you and an enemymight keep them just outside of melee reach, so even casting this with asingle Action may be enough to achieve the desired effect.
Invisibility Cloak: Invisibility is agreat option for a Focus Spell because it’s useful in nearly every adventure,and being able to cast it without a spell slot makes it easier to justifycasting. The gradually improving duration is nice, too. Eventually you cancast this, then remain invisibile while you Refocus to regain your FocusPoints.

Necromancy

Call of the Grave: Sickened 1 is a fine debuff, but you’ll quickly find that your leveled spells will be more impactful unless you can guarantee a Critical Success.
Life Siphon: Healing never hurts, andWizards have terrible few options to restore their own hit points.

Transmutation

Physical Boost: Cast as one action with nosomatic components, but its still a range of touch. I think that’s an error.Even so, this spell is garbage. The bonus is too small to justify rushingnearly into melee just to tap your ally on the shoulder to give them a +2bonus on a single check, and if you’re out of combat I don’t know why youwould waste a Focus Point on any of the affected checks. You could use it onyourself, but that doesn’t help the situation much.
Shifting Form: The speed options and senseoptions are excellent. Even with the limited duration, you can spare asingle Action in combat to get yourself Scent when there are invisiblecreatures around.

Universalist

Hand of the Apprentice: This spell has someserious design problems. First: the damage is garbage, and it falls behindcantrips almost immediately. Cantrips will deal 1d4+Mod at first level,which will match Hand of the Apprentice with any weapon the wizard isTrained with (short of feats, etc.). At 3rd level, 2d4+Mod will matchone-handed martial weapons. At 5th level, 3d4+mod will match two-handedweapons.
Second: There’s no restriction on the weapon, so as-written you could useany weapon you’re capable of holding. Find a greataxe, lug it around, andmagically hurl it at people. As a GM, I would limit this toappropriately-sized weapons in which the caster is at least Trained toavoid abuse, but then the spell immediately stops being useful exceptpossibly for multiclassed fighters.
The only way to make this viable long-term is to use a big weapon and to putStriking runes on it. Even then, you’re spending a lot of gold forsomething you might do once or twice in each fight, and unless you’respending a ton of gold and using a big weapon, the damage will stillquickly fall behind your cantrips.

Archetypes

Alchemist: Advanced Alchemy has a lot tooffer. Alchemical Bombs are a tempting offensive option, butyou’re not proficient.
Barbarian: I don’t know why you would wantthis.
Bard: Charisma-based spellcasting.
Champion: The armor proficiency istempting, but you never advance past Trained, so your unarmor/lightproficiencies will provide just as much AC and won’t impose a massive CheckPenalty.
Cleric: Your Wisdom won’t match yourIntelligence, but it should be good enough to make Cleric spellcasting work.You can also reserve your Cleric spells for non-offensive spells and useyour Wizard spells more offensively so that your comparatively low Wisdomisn’t an issue. If you take Domain Initiate (and possibly Advanced Domain),your domain spells provide and additional option to use your Focus Points ifyour school’s Focus Spells aren’t always useful.
Druid: Very similar benefits to theCleric, and your can take Order Spell to get a Druid Focus Spell. You alsoget great Druid feat options like Animal Companion, which can provide aconvenient mount or something horrifying to throw a bunch of buff spellsonto.
Fighter: Being Trained in martial weaponswon’t suddenly make them a good idea. You can get them up to Expert if youtake Diverse Weapon Expert, but that’s two feats to still be comparablyterrible at using weapons. Your Cantrips will always be a betteridea.
Monk: The best option I can think of is tolearn to throw Shurikens with the leftover Action after casting a 2-Actionspell, but that’s a really terrible idea.
Ranger: I guess you could do somethinguseful with Snares, but I don’t see anything that you couldn’t do betterwith spells.
Rogue: If you really like to use Demoralizewith your third Action after casting 2-Action spells, You’re Next is atempting feat option, but I don’t think it’s worth two class feats to makethat happen.
Sorcerer: Charisma-based spellcasting.

Wizard Handbook: PF2 Legacy Class Guide – RPGBOT (2024)