Before choosing stats as a wizard the first thing you need to decide on is simply what 'type' of wizard do you want to be?
The choices, as I see them are 'pure wizard' or 'warrior wizard.' It is entirely plausible to try for a mix of the two but you will run out of stat points very quickly and will find it difficult to cover all bases and get satisfaction from your character.
What I mean by a pure wizard is simply a wizard who considers spell casting to be the most important thing to get right. This doesn't mean that you ignore melee, it just means that you sort out your stats based on the spells you wish to cast and then decide which melee weapon suits the stat distribution you now have.
A pure wizard will choose their target spells, work out which method branch those spells use the most and then focus their stat point distribution based on that.
Once you have chosen the spells you want to use count up the number of stages which use Elemental, Mental, Physical and Spiritual skill checks. For example, choosing TPA, EFF and EHA would give you a Chosen Spell Stages score which looks like this:
| Elemental | 2 |
| Mental | 3 |
| Physical | 8 |
| Spiritual | 0 |
Which would tell you, for that choice of spells, you would need a dex/int based stat choice. You would have to work harder on your elemental skills, but the ease of advancing your most frequently used skills would more than make up for the extra work. An example for this wizard would possibly be - Con: 8, Wis: 8, Str: 13, Int: 17, Dex: 19.
Taking a choice of NES, TPA and PFG gives the following Chosen Spell Stages table:
| Elemental | 6 |
| Mental | 3 |
| Physical | 6 |
| Spiritual | 0 |
This shows that a dex/con/int mix would be needed.
Many young wizards dream of one day being able to hurl lightning at their foes using NES and the truly ambitious have JotHSD fixed in their minds, their future target being the taming of storm dragons.
A nice side effect of boosting the stats for Elemental magic will be the reward in hit points. A character with a healthy con stat will also find that poisons do less damage, which could also be a boon.
Another neat side effect of con is the boost it will give to your defensive magic bonus, allowing your shield casting to be faster and more reliable.
The fact that the mental skills branch is entirely dependant on intelligence is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing if you wish to follow the purest of pure mage routes, a curse to those wanting to focus more on fighting.
Boosting your int stat will have a knock on effect across the entire magic tree as well as several other skills, the most notable being other.perception, fighting.special.tactics and fighting.special.weapons.
Physical methods are used in a lot of spells and, depending on your personal preference, may make up over 50% of your total number of Chosen Spell Stages.
The dex you would take to improve the Physical tree would also help you with fighting, as the defences are all reliant on dexterity as are most of the melee weapon skills.
A high dex allocation will also help with your misc spells, allowing you to cast them faster and, depending on the misc spell in question, for longer or with more power.
The most obvious spell which makes use of the spiritual tree is of course DKDD, a spell which has caused a large number of deaths both to the caster and the target.
Many forget that JPoCT, still considered a staple spell for most wizards, has a large spiritual component to it in the form of a difficult banishing check. There is speculation that the banishing skill check is responsible for determining the frequency of misportals.
Getting the wisdom for spiritual magic will help with a number of other skills, such as other.perception and fighting.special.tactics, as well as magic.spells.special, allowing you to store more spells in your mind. A large amount of wis will also help slightly with offensive, defensive and misc spell casting.
Strength is still very important as without an adequate strength allocation you will be unable to carry the components you need to cast your spells, and will need to continually run back and forth gathering a few components at a time.
As a result of this, I would advise you to make your strength no lower then 13 points while other wizards say no lower then 15, especially if you want to use NES or JotHSD because of the heavy torches you need for those spells. My wizard (Gelmir) is managing fine with 13 strength, he wears some armour and is able to carry 40 carrots, 40 candles, a shield for TPA and 2 buckets of ash without going over 35% burden.
I think it's also worth mentioning at the point that you can't use pointy things while casting NES as the lightning will strike you, rather than your intended target, so you'll want to factor this into your re-arrange if you plan on making heavy/any use of NES. 'Pointy', I believe (someone send me a correcting e-mail if I'm wrong please) is defined as anything with a pierce attack.
A warrior wizard is played as if they were a warrior. They don't see spells as the primary aim, more as a nice additional feature which they can use as and when they wish.
The important stats for a warrior wizard are strength and dexterity for the fighting tree and ability to wear armour. A warrior wizard's most important choices will centre around their choice of defence and melee. These choices will dictate which stats are important, not spell method skills or Chosen Spell Stages.
A warrior wizard's choices may result in them having ideal stats for one or two spells, but this will be more through coincidence than design.
Most warrior wizards rely on their fighting.defence skills and fall back on armour. Generally they would rather use TPA and EFF as nice additional layers of defence, rather than their primary protection.
I wrote this as a brief guide to weapon choice. When I wrote it I was mainly thinking of warriors, but it would apply just as well to wizarding.
I wrote this to give information on the defensive options available to warriors, but it too would apply to a wizard.
Choosing your stats as a wizard is very difficult and many are liable to make substantial mistakes when deciding how to allocate those precious points. If you follow my advice and the age old advice of "Think twice, choose once" then you should have something which is workable, if not perfect. In my experience there is no such thing as a perfect wizard rearrange, only the best fit for you.
Of course, the links to the spell information wouldn't be possible without the fine work by Andrew White (Gaelen) and the numerous other contributors at the Spellcheck Project. Check it out, if you are serious about wizarding then that will be one of your best sources of information on spells.
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