13th Age 2E Pregenerated Character Builds: Omnischooled Polyarcanist Wizard

By Jay Godden

In this series, I’m presenting two different pregenerated builds for every 13^th Age Heroes’ Handbook character class, at all levels. My goal is to present complete mechanical builds using only standard elements and rules from the Heroes’ Handbook, ready for you to apply your own backgrounds, icon relationships, and One Unique Thing.

In this pair of articles, we look at two potential builds for the Wizard.

Wizards are defined by their spells. They get more than anyone else, and can use them to solve a wide range of problems. Most wizards have a mixture of spells that offer single target damage, battlefield control, area of effect blasts, or utility. Unlike sorcerers, wizard talents and feats don’t improve specific types of spells, instead offering them more powerful offence or defence or widening their options even further.

Compared to 1e the Wizard is relatively unchanged. Most of its talents have been improved a bit (or cheapened to a feat in the case of Cantrip Mastery), and there are some new talents to pick from. Since spells now have even-level versions you will see significant improvements to your casting at every level-up, making for a smoother experience overall. There are also a number of new and interesting spells, from the lowly at-will Mana Storm, to the mighty and high-level Power Word Kill.

Wizards are one of the more complicated classes in the Heroes Handbook, as even the simplest of them will have to make decisions about when to use exactly which of their many limited use spells. The most complicated wizards will also be balancing choices around using cantrips, rituals, utility spells, and variants of spells to accomplish various improvisational effects curated to their circumstances.

OMNISCHOOLED POLYARCANIST WIZARD

Download the Omnischooled Polyarcanist Wizard character sheets here. These sheets make use of the class-specific character sheets designed for second edition by Miguel Friginal.

This Wizard aims to have a magical solution to every situation they find themselves in. Your talents all give you additional spells (and in the case of Polysyllabic Verbalisations and Wizard’s Familiar, this can even be in the middle of an arc!). This means you can be responsive to situations as they unfold, and select specialist tools to solve unique challenges. This is one of the more complicated ways to play a wizard, since you need to be aware of all the spells you haven’t prepared as well as the ones you have in order to get the most out of the build.

As usual magic item choices are left out of the character sheets, check with your GM to see if they will be granting you any. Weird mysterious artefacts and wondrous items with niche use cases might be what you’re most interested in to expand your repertoire, in addition to typical choices like an arcane implement.

Talents

High Arcana

As well as making your spells a bit better at overcoming resistance, this talent gives you a bonus spell, Counter Magic. Very useful when duelling other (inferior, obviously) spellcasters.

Vance’s Polysyllabic Verbalisations

This talent calls for creativity from you, the player and your character. When you cast your spells, you can cast a specialised variant by spending additional actions to vocalise the full name. This might lead to additional effects as negotiated with the GM, and at later levels you can even get bonus spells from these extended castings.

Wizard’s Familiar

Your magical helper (possibly a raven) provides a number of benefits. Most relevant to this build is that when you run out of spells, you can roll saves to try to access one last bonus spell that your familiar has prepared.

Kin Power

High Elves Eminence helps with the accuracy of your mind-altering spells, and helps to protect you from attacks that might affect your ability to cast spells effectively. With a zenith feat we can also pick up Mystic Initiative for even more High Elf goodness.

Attributes

In order to master all your specialist spells, you need a mighty Intelligence. Everything else is secondary: Str 12 (+1) Dex 15 (+2) Con 15 (+2) Wis 14 (+2) Int 19 (+4) Cha 10 (+0).

1^st level

Attributes: Str 12 (+1) Dex 15 (+2) Con 15 (+2) Wis 14 (+2) Int 19 (+4) Cha 10 (+0).

Kin Power: Eminence

Talents: High Arcana, Vance’s Polysyllabic Verbalisations, Wizard’s Familiar (Mimic, Flight)

Spells/powers: Counter Magic, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp, Acid Arrow, Colour Spray, Shield (You can and should change your spells freely when you have a full heal-up, these spells are just suggestions for a default arc, but remember you have to have at least two at-will spells.)

Feat: A: Colour Spray

2^nd level

New spell (Utility Spell), new feat (A: Utility Spell).

3^rd level

New spell (Confusion), new feat (A: Vance’s Polysyllabic Verbalisations).

4^th level

+1 to three attributes (Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence), new feat (A: Cantrip Mastery).

5^th level

New spells (Denial), new feat (C: Denial).

6^th level

New feat (C: Colour Spray).

7^th level

+1 to four attributes (Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence), new spell (Haste), new feat (C: High Arcana).

8^th level

New feat (E: Vance’s Polysyllabic Verbalisations).

9^th level

New spell (Disintegrate), new feat (E: Wizard’s Familiar).

10^th level

+1 to five attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence), new spell (Teleport Shield), new feat (E: Disintegrate).

Zenith feat

New feat (Z: Zenith Adventurer, E: Powerful Kin, A: Eminence), new kin power (Mystic Initiative).