The Wizard-Sorcerer

[Author Roland Rogers is a 13-year-old 13th Age player whose One Unique Thing is that he Knows All the Monsters. Inspired by ASH LAWS character builds, here is a dual-class character created at all levels.]

In 13th Age, dual class characters can be much more powerful than single class characters. This is not always true -a Ranger-Wizard is more powerful than a Ranger, but a Commander is more powerful than a Commander-Fighter.

There are many good combinations, and each are good at different things, but the Wizard-Sorcerer is easily the combination that does the most damage.

Download the character sheet files here.

Play style

This Wizard-Sorcerer is built for combat.

You do have enough hit points to take quite a lot of damage but generally, because of your low AC, you should stay back, and stay behind your more armoured allies. The main point of this combination is to do as much damage as possible, although you do have a lot of non-damage spells, such as Confusion, Sleep, Shield and Haste.

Since you have so many spells, many o fwhich are daily spells, you don’t have to save your best spells for the most important battles. If you do run out of daily spells, just use Ray of Frost or Magic Missile.

You have the spell Shocking Grasp which can be done every round as a quick action. It’s a gamble, because you have to move over and engage the enemy, but if you hit, you pop free automatically. It’s good for finishing off a weak target, or wearing down a stronger target quickly.

If there is an enemy magic-user, you have counter-magic to stop their spells.

Use infernal heritage in an important battle each day to roll 2 D20s per attack, and get more out of your numerous daily spells.

Benefits

You have around twice as many spells if you were only a wizard, or only a sorcerer, even though some of them are a level lower.

With the Adventurer feat for Sorcerer dual class, once per day you can spend an action to gather power for a wizard spell and then evoke it, for example if a 1st level Acid Arrow does 4d10 damage, then gathering power would make it do 8d10 damage, and evoking would make it do its maximum possible damage, so it would be 80 damage at 1st level. Additionally, with spells like Force Salvo that have more than one attack, each bolt at third level will do 80 damage, and you get 5 bolts.

You get the high MD of a Wizard (12) and the good PD of a Sorcerer (11).

At 1st level, you get twice as many spells and no disadvantages.

You have the utility spells of a Sorcerer (Unearthly Glamour, Dragon’s Leap) and the utility spells of a Wizard (Levitate, Feather Fall) so there isn’t much you can’t do.

At 10th level, you can gather power, and then cast an evoked Meteor Swarm, which for 2-4 rounds will attack a group of enemies in the battle for 400 damage.

Disadvantages

You get the next level of spells a level late, and you will generally have some weak spells, for example at 10th level, you still have one 5th level spell.

You have a low armour class and physical defence.

You have high hit points, but low recovery dice, so you are likely to run out of recoveries if you take lots of damage.