I'm playing a Gnome wizard who uses a handaxe. Right now i'm nearly half way through CHP1 (on the secod district). Tell me, wil my mage get very powerful later on in the game. I've noticed even now that he is showing (small) signs that one day he will be beefy. What are mages like later on in the game. My friend told me his brother (who's playing an ELven Wizard with double long swords) that he had a spell where he turned into a dragon and litterally thrashed everybody, is there a spell like this?... What were other people's Wizards or Sorcerers like?

There is a polymorph self spell, which will allow you to turn into various creatures. I have not used it, so I can't really tell you anything about it.

I have a multiplayer wizard (conjurer), and I have to say that generally, wizards don't seem to be as powerful as they were in BG and BG2.
But I haven't tried all the spells.

Generally the "cloud spells", like the black tentacles, cloudkill, etc, that cover a range and stay there for a few minutes, are difficult to use because the monsters usually move out of the area. Instant impact area spells like Fireball and Ice Storm are much better.

There are probably more summoning spells than you will ever use. There's Gate, Planar Binding, Summon or Animate Undead (can't remember the exact name), Create Undead, and of course Monster Summoning 1-6. I liked Planar Binding and the Create Undead best. Monster Summoning usually produced something lame, like a dire badger. Gated monsters will turn on you unless you have all these protectives cast. On everyone in the party.

I have not played my wizard in the single player game, but with a party, she was great. I got mass haste, and everyone loved me :D I had a lot of trouble soloing her through a lot of areas though. She died so easily! I tried mage armor, stoneskin, etc, but nothing really helped until I got Shadow Shield. Then I was practically invincible. It lasted a really long time too, but still had trouble with a lot of the really tough monsters (dragons, balors, etc).

My familiar was awful. I even cast stoneskin and some other protectives on him and 9 times out of 10 he died in 5 minutes anyway. :mad:

I found empower and maximize to be very useful, after a while you don't really use your lower level spells too much, so you can memorize empowered and maximized versions of magic missile, fireball, etc.

Someone mentioned quicken feat as being very usefull, now I wish I would have taken it instead of extend :(

Overall it was a lot harder to play as my wiz than my dwarf Paladin. It was still pretty cool though.

[ September 22, 2002, 19:40: Message edited by: Nutrimat ]

Given a good party, wizards and sorcerers are insanely powerful. Send a couple of tanks up front to take the hits - and avoid casting disruptions - and you will really see what they can do.

I honestly was none too impressed with shapechange because it strips off all your protections. Any acid/fire/whatever resistance your character may have is gone once you turn yourself into a dragon or balor and, really, how hard is it to kill a dragon?