This is for my E6 game. I usually have fewer than 4 encounters per day.


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Roll: Support and key encounter intervention.
Alignment: Any
Hit Dice: d6
Skills per Level: 6+Int

Class Skills: The wizard’s class skills are Appraise (Int), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Fly (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (all) (Int), Linguistics (Int), Profession (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex) and Spellcraft (Int).

Level      Spells per Day
1      3/1
2      4/2
3      4/2/1
4      4/3/2
5      4/3/2/1
6      4/4/3/2

Level      BAB   Fort   Ref   Will   Special
1      +0   +0   +0   +2   Scribe Scroll, Find Familiar, Cantrips,
2      +1   +0   +0   +3   Arcane Ability
3      +1   +1   +1   +3   
4      +2   +1   +1   +4   Arcane Ability
5      +2   +1   +1   +4   
6      +3   +2   +2   +5   Arcane Ability

Class Features

The following are the class features of the wizard.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Wizards are proficient with the club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff, but not with any type of armor or shield. Armor interferes with a wizard’s movements, which can cause his spells with somatic components to fail.

Spells: A wizard casts arcane spells drawn from the sorcerer/wizard spell list presented in Chapter 10. A wizard must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time. To learn, prepare, or cast a spell, the wizard must have an Intelligence score equal to at least 10 + double the spell level.

The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a wizard’s spell is 10 + the spell level + Cha.

A wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. His base daily spell allotment is given on the Spells per Day table.

Wizards do not gain additional spells per day for having a high Intelligence.

A wizard may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.

Spellbooks: A wizard must study his spellbook each day to prepare his spells. He cannot prepare any spell not recorded in his spellbook, except for read magic, which all wizards can prepare from memory. A wizard begins play with a spellbook containing all 0-level wizard spells plus three 1st-level spells of his choice. The wizard also selects a number of additional 1st-level spells equal to his Intelligence modifier to add to the spellbook. At each new wizard level, he gains two new spells of any spell level or levels that he can cast (based on his new wizard level) for his spellbook. At any time, a wizard can also add spells found in other wizards’ spellbooks to his own (see Chapter 9).

Scribe Scroll: At first level, the wizard gains the feat “Scribe Scroll” for free.

Find Familiar: The wizard gains a familiar according to page 82 of the core rules.

Cantrips: Wizards can prepare a number of cantrips, or 0-level spells, each day, as noted on Table 3–16 under “Spells per Day.” These spells are cast like any other spell, but they are not expended when cast and may be used again.

Arcane Ability: At levels 2, 4 and 6 the wizard may select and Arcane Ability. In place of an Arcane Ability, the wizard may select a metamagic or item creation feat for which he meets the prerequisites.


Arcane Blast

The Wizard gains a range touch attack. This attack is a blast of pure magical energy which deals 1d6 + Cha to damage. This ability gains an additional 1d6 damage at levels 4 and 6.

Arcane Blast has a range of 60’. It scores critical hits on 20 (x2). This power can be improved by selecting combat feats.

Armor of Magic

The wizard gains the supernatural ability to cast “Mage Armor “on himself at will. At level 4 and 6, add +1 to the AC this suit provides.

Energy Substitution

When the wizard prepares a spell, he can choose to change the type of damage it deals. By selecting this Arcane Ability, the wizard becomes proficient at changing the type of energy to one of the following (pick when taking this ability): Fire, Cold, Electricity or Acid.

Evil Eye

The wizard can substitute, “Hypnotism,” for the casting of any first level. She may substitute ”Hold Person” for the casting of any 3rd level spell.

Invocation of Inner Light

The wizard may reroll one failed willpower saving throw per day. If the second roll is successful, the mage may cast any one spell she prepared that morning, even if it has already been cast. The spell must be cast on her next action and is considered to be 2 spell levels higher for the purposes of applying a metamagic feat.

Mantra

The wizard can substitute “Protection from Evil,” for any 1st level spell. He can substitute “Magic Circle Against Evil,” for any 3rd level spell.

Protective Magic

The wizard gains a +2 bonus to both Reflex and Fortitude saving throws provided she is capable of using her magic normally. This bonus reflects the wizard’s ability to invoke her magic to protect her, move her and fortify her in a thousand different minor ways.

Pure Body

The wizard becomes immune to magical afflictions such as mummy rot, vampirism, taint or lycanthropy, though she is still susceptible to ordinary illness. In order to take this power, the wizard must be Chaotic Good or Lawful Good.

Shadow Magic

While in a place dark enough to produce Concealment (including magically created darkness), the wizard gains the following abilities:

Shadow Bend: The ability to manipulate shadows as if they were a physical substance gives the wizard a permanent at will ability to cast Prestidigitation, Unseen Servant and Silent Image. The spell, “Silent Image” can only be used to create shadows and shadowy figures.

Shadow Master
Prerequisite: Shadow Magic

The wizard can choose to cast “Darkness” in place of any 2nd level spell he has memorized. The wizard can substitute “Black Light” for any 3rd level spell he has memorized.

See, I think at E6 you'll be fine because the problem with wizards isn't so much the class itself as the synergy that results from how the class interacts with its spell list (same with clerics). The 3.5 spell list contains tons of problematic spells (which I understand PF keeps a lot of) and the wizard can pick and choose with a lot of freedom which ones he's going to use.

For example, a sorcerer's selection of spells isn't as contextual as a smart wizards, which means you can just grab the monsters that are immune to fire to defeat his fireball (one of the two spells he knows at that level) or whatever it happens to be.

The easiest way to get wizards under control is to limit the spell list. E6 already does this by level, but it's worth looking at Midnight's solution (making zap and save or dies much harder to obtain). You might also find the alternate spell lists I assembled for a rebuild of the d20 system I did a while ago helpful.

BTW, if you're gonna do this for wizards, be sure to do it for clerics and druids too.

Thanks for the link. I think your spell list is good but it wouldn't solve my issue with it. A lot of spells, even ones on your list, are encounter breaking. I don't like having to custom design encounters to compete with PC abilities: I like them to be just whatever I think they should be.

To me, old school D&D had the wizard as an awesome one trick pony, and he had to pick when to use that trick. Now, they are a 5 trick pony and can cast and fight during 4 or 5 encounters. The only way to counter that is by having half a dozen fights hard enough to draw out a spell: which is how the Pathfinder Adventure Paths are written. That's not how I play though. I usually have one or two fights tops. Because I don't play the constant train of fights method, wizards can blow through their spells. If they only had one or two, this wouldn't be a big deal. The fact that a first level wizard is casting sleep four times in one fight is fucking annoying. Rather than get rid of sleep all together, I'm basically just telling her she can only do it once.

Hmm. So if your problem is just that you only have one or two encounters a day...maybe a fix would be to slow down how quickly wizards get spells back...?

e.g. instead of recuperating every spell when they sleep, recover one spell each night, or require a whole day spent in meditation to get back their complement of spells ?

That would work assuming I paced adventure with that in mind. Really though, I just like the 1 e chart: 1 1st level spell at first level and 1 3rd level spell at 5th.

The extra abilities are just icing rather than a trade for the lost spells per day.