« Back to Glossary Index

The Scroll Lord

Okay but what if we wanted to make the Wizardest of all the Wizards. The kind of wizards that live, breathe, smell and eat a diet composed strictly of scrolls and spellbooks?

We will take two Archetypes here: Scrollmaster and Scroll Scholar, and the Prestige Class Cyphermage.

Our leveling should look like the following:

Class

Wizard (Scrollmaster, Scroll Scholar) 5/Cyphermage 10/Wizard (Scrollmaster, Scroll Scholar) +5

Favored School

Universalist

Race

We will go for a Half-Elf, putting our floating +2 into Intelligence.

Ability Scores

Once again, we are putting everything into Intelligence.

15Point-Buy

Str 7/Dex 13/Con 13/Int 20/Wis 10/Cha 7

20Point-Buy

Str 7/Dex 14/Con 14/Int 20/Wis 11/Cha 7

25Point-Buy

Str 7/Dex 14/Con 16/Int 20/Wis 11/Cha 7

Traits

Reactionary is great, Hedge Magician will save us so much money in the long term from all these scrolls

Favored Class Bonus

Yeah, if you called HP, you were, in fact, correct.

Skills

Spellcraft, Knowledge(various but especially Arcane), Linguistics.

Feats and Arcane Discoveries by Level

1-Orator

Half-Elf Bonus-Skill Focus(Linguistics)

Wizard Bonus 1-Scribe Scroll

3-Cypher Magic

5-Weapon Finesse Bonus

5-Extend Spell

7-Craft Magic Weapons and Armor

9-Quicken Spell

11-Craft Wondrous Items

13-Craft Constructs

15-Spell Penetration

17-Greater Spell Penetration

19-Improved Initiative

Bonus 20-Knowledge is Power

So we have Orator meaning we are a top tier Social Character by default. Extend Spell and Quicken Spell are our two main Metamagic, Craft Construct will eventually lend us an Adamantine Golem which is stupid, Spell Penetration is good against Spell Resistance and Knowledge is Power is a surprisingly good capstone, letting us use Intelligence on CMB and CMD making those workable. As we can use Scrolls as finessable weapons, Weapon Finesse becomes good for when we have no choice but to become stabby ourselves.

Cypher Lore by Level

Glyph Finder

Swift Scrivener

8-Enhance Scroll

9-Defensive Scroll Caster

10-Analyze Scroll

11-Sin Summoning

12-Focused Scroll

13-Bypass Symbol

14-Extend Scroll

Being able to scribe 2 scrolls per day is essentially doubling our pool of spells we can cast outside of our spell slots which is stupid good, Glyph Finder lets us find and disarm glyphs and symbol spells like a rogue but using Knowledge(Arcane) and Spellcraft, we get bonus on Concentration when reading Scrolls, and we can significantly increase the power of our various scrolls. Plus we get to add a few neat creatures to our Summon Monster spells which is nice.

Spells

As a generalist, the world’s your oyster. Still I would recommend Intelligence Gathering spells such as Scrying, Invisibility, Detect Thoughts, Battlefield Control Spells such as Web and Black Tentacles, along with great buffs such as Form of the Dragon, Fly, Haste and mixing in panic buttons such as Dimension Door, See Invisibility, Contingency and Teleport. You can also afford to prepare a Fireball or two for additional damage. I know how satisfying it is to roll a handful of d6s of damage 😉 Oh yeah, don’t forget Fabricate+Wall of Iron.

Equipment

All the scrolls, ink, spellbook, component pouch.

Final Thoughts on the Build

We have so many Scrolls that we can use in a variety of ways, boosting our defenses and offense, on top of essentially tripling our spellcasting resources which is downright broken. We also get our Adamantine Golem plus all our other shenanigans, and since Necromancy isn’t an Opposition School, we can on top of Summoning legions of monsters and constructs, have our own private army of zombies and skeletons that we can keep in a Portable Hole.

And with our vast array of Scrolls, we can have a panic button ready for quite literally any situation ever, even if we didn’t prepare our spells in advance.

Stupid. Downright Stupid.

« Back to Glossary Index