Not sure what you mean by battle-mage. When I fly solo, I use Fire and Earth spells to boost my strength before fights.
you gotta have stun. become a master and it only costs 5mp. the lock picing spell too. prowing is good too. be a master so you can run and sneak. have high con and will power of course oh and dex. and remember, every piont into melee is just slowly turng you into another fighter but have the stillwater blade. those crazy zorpal bunnies. you know. killing machines they are.
If you put one CP into Fire and one into Earth, you will eventually be able to boost yourself to 20 STR and 16 DEX or vice-versa. Seems like a pretty good trade-off to me. Just crank up the points in WILL and INT.
if your going to be a mage, get harm and boost dext to 20. you can fire off about 7 harm spells a round and kill everything before your party even gets to it. untill you get your dex up to 20 use the first level fire spell. it raises your dex temporaraly. also get the shield spell. if you do that then you become almost invincible in combat. i never even use my weapon.
Get Unlocking Cantrip, Teleportation, Agility of Fire, Wall of Fire, Fireflash, Harm, Create Undead, and the whole of White Necronmantic.
Are you than old time D&D player, That was one of the few rules they have that I just hate that magic user cannot use sword or wear armour. There is no just thing as than pure mage. There is just time when you donot want to waste the points you must pay to cast harm on than lowly rat as you might need it those point later on in the same battle so it you have points in melee you can use than sword without hurten yourself. In almost very fantansy novel I read magic user have use melee or bow weapon to attack or defence thenself. I like the 4th edition D&D BOOK(3rd edition as their are not counting the original D&D.}.
definately go for temporal, hasten in particular, i ALWAYS had that going with my mage char/game really comes in useful during battles and if you master it you never have to worry about the fatigue cost
best solo-mage spells Although I never solo, I usually get all of necro white, temporal and force, as well as getting entangle and fireflash. However, I'm just starting a new char and mastering force instead, because of how good people say it is. Anyway, with judicious use of tempus fugit (turn it off after a battle) and plenty of greater fatigue restores, as well as black necro mastery (so harm only costs 2 fatigue) most monsters never get to me, or my party members :smile: Whoops! I meant fatigue potions. <font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nugget of Joy on 2001-12-22 10:50 ]</font>
Well, I've reached the highest level in Force, Summoning and Conveyance. I find them very useful. I usually summon one or two deamons and cast the Shield spell on them. Haven't met anything they couldn't kill yet. The Teleportation spell is one of the best spells if you ask me. No more walking.