Welcome to the Pathfinder Second Edition Free Basic Rules! Here you will find the very basics of play, and just enough options to build a handful of low-level characters. For hundreds of more pages, rules, characters, options, artwork, and more, upgrade to the complete Pathfinder Player Core!

You are an eternal student of the secrets of the universe, using your mastery of magic to cast powerful spells. You treat magic like a science, cross-referencing the latest texts on practical spellcraftwith ancient tomes to discover and understand arcane magic. Yet magical theory is vast, and there’s no way you can study it all. Most wizards learn through formal schooling, with their curriculum informing a specific rubric, although particularly driven researchers sometimes piece together their own theories.

Key Attribute

Intelligence

At 1st level, your class gives you an attribute boost to Intelligence.

Hit Points

6 plus your Constitution modifier

You increase your maximum number of HP by this number at 1st level and every level thereafter.

During Combat Encounters...

You likely try to stay out of the fray, carefully judging when to use your spells. You save your most powerful magic to incapacitate threatening foes and use your cantrips when only weaker foes remain. When enemies pull out tricks like invisibility or flight, you answer with spells like revealing light or earthbind, leveling the field for your allies.

During Social Encounters...

You provide a well of knowledge about arcane matters and solve arguments with logic.

While Exploring...

You locate magical auras and determine the significance of magical writing or phenomena you uncover. When you run across an unusual obstacle to further exploration, you probably have a scroll that will make it easier to overcome.

In Downtime...

You learn new spells, craft magic items, or scribe scrolls for your party, and seek out new and exciting formulas in addition to spells. You might even forge scholarly connections and establish a school or guild of your own.

You Might...

• Have an unquenchable intellectual curiosity about how everything in the world around you works—magic in particular.
• Look for ways to apply the teachings of your school to any situation, seeing problems through the lens of the spells you’ve devoted your life to learning.
• Use esoteric jargon and technical terms to precisely describe the minutiae of magical effects, even though the difference is probably lost on other people.

Others Probably...

• Consider you to be incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous.
• Fear what your magic can do to their minds, bodies, and souls, and ask that you avoid casting spells in polite company, as few can identify whether one of your spells is harmless or malevolent until it’s too late.
• Assume you can easily solve all their problems, from dangerous weather to poor crop yields, and ask you for spells that can help them get whatever they desire.

Initial Proficiencies

At 1st level, you gain the listed proficiency ranks in the following statistics. You are untrained in anything not listed unless you gain a better proficiency rank in some other way.

Perception

Trained in Perception

Saving Throws

Trained in Fortitude
Trained in Reflex
Expert in Will

Skills

Trained in Arcana
Trained in a number of additional skills equal to 2 plus your Intelligence modifier

Attacks

Trained in simple weapons
Trained in unarmed attacks

Defenses

Untrained in all armor
Trained in unarmored defense

Spells

Trained in spell attack modifier
Trained in spell DC

Class DC

Trained in wizard class DC

Wizard Advancement

Class Features

You gain these abilities as a wizard. Abilities gained at higher levels list the levels next to their names.

Ancestry and Background

In addition to what you get from your class at 1st level, you have the benefits of your selected ancestry and background. These are described in Chapter 2.

Attribute Boosts

In addition to what you get from your class at 1st level, you have four free boosts to different attribute modifiers.

At 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, you get four free boosts to different attribute modifiers. If an attribute modifier is already +4 or higher, it takes two boosts to increase it; you get a partial boost, and must boost that attribute again at a later level to increase it by 1.

Initial Proficiencies

At 1st level you gain a number of proficiencies that represent your basic training. These are noted at the start of this class.

Wizard Spellcasting

Through dedicated study and practice, you can construct spells with academic rigor by shaping arcane magic. You are a spellcaster, and you can cast spells of the arcane tradition using the Cast a Spell activity. As a wizard, when you cast spells, your incantations likely specify exactly what forces you call on and how to shape them, and your gestures precisely shape and direct your magic while circles of arcane runes flare to life.

At 1st level, you can prepare up to two 1st-rank spells and five cantrips each morning from the spells in your spellbook (see below), as well as one extra curriculum cantrip and one extra curriculum spell of each rank you can cast from your arcane school. Prepared spells remain available to you until you cast them or until you prepare your spells again. The number of spells you can prepare is called your spell slots.

As you increase in level as a wizard, the number of spells you can prepare each day increases, as does the highest rank of spell you can cast, as shown in the Wizard Spells per Day table.

Some of your spells require you to attempt a spell attack to see how effective they are, or have your enemies roll against your spell DC (typically by attempting a saving throw). Since your key attribute is Intelligence, your spell attack modifier and spell DC use your Intelligence modifier.

Heightening Spells

When you get spell slots of 2nd rank and higher, you can fill those slots with stronger versions of lower-rank spells. This increases the spell’s rank, heightening it to match the spell slot. Many spells have specific improvements when they are heightened to certain ranks.

Cantrips

Some of your spells are cantrips. A cantrip is a special type of spell that doesn’t use spell slots. You can cast a cantrip at will, any number of times per day. A cantrip is always automatically heightened to half your level rounded up—this is usually equal to the highest rank of wizard spell slot you have. For example, as a 1st-level wizard, your cantrips are 1st-rank spells, and as a 5th-level wizard, your cantrips are 3rd-rank spells.

Spellbook

Every arcane spell has a written version, which you record in your personalized book of spells. You start with a spellbook worth 10 sp or less, which you receive for free and must study each day to prepare your spells. Your spellbook’s form and name are up to you. It might be a musty, leather-bound tome or an assortment of thin metal disks connected to a brass ring; its name might be esoteric, like The Tome of Silent Shadows or something more academic, like Advanced Pyromantic Applications of Jalmeri Elemental Theory.

The spellbook contains your choice of 10 arcane cantrips and five 1st-rank arcane spells. You choose these from the common spells on the arcane spell list or from other arcane spells you gain access to. You also add two 1st-rank spells from the curriculum of your arcane school (except in the case of the school of unified magical theory, as described in that school).

Each time you gain a level, you add two arcane spells to your spellbook, of any spell rank for which you have spell slots, chosen from common spells of your tradition or others you gain access to and learn via Learn a Spell. When you gain spell slots of a new rank, you also add an additional spell from your school’s curriculum (unless it’s the school of unified magical theory).

Wizard Spells Per Day

* The archwizard’s spellcraft class feature gives you a 10th-rank spell slot that works a bit differently from other spell slots.

Arcane Thesis

During your studies to become a full-fledged wizard, you produced a thesis of unique magical research. You gain a special benefit depending on the topic of your thesis research. The arcane thesis topics presented in this book are below; your specific thesis probably has a much longer and more technical title like “On the Methods of Spell Interpolation and the Genesis of a New Understanding of the Building Blocks of Magic.”

Experimental Spellshaping

Your thesis posits that the magical practice of spellshaping can be realized more efficiently by altering variables and parameters as you cast, imitating the wizards of long ago who had to work out their own spells themselves. This allows you efficient access to various spellshape effects.

You gain one 1st-level spellshape wizard feat of your choice. Starting at 4th level, during your daily preparations, you can gain a spellshape wizard feat of your choice that has a level requirement of no more than half your level, which you can use until your next daily preparations.

Improved Familiar Attunement

You’ve long held that fine-tuning the magic that bonds a wizard and their familiar can improve the mystic connection and yield greater results, compared to the safe yet generic bond most wizards currently use. You’ve formed such a pact with your familiar, gaining more advantages from it than most wizards. You gain the Familiar wizard feat. Your familiar gains an extra ability, and it gains an additional extra ability when you reach 6th, 12th, and 18th levels.

Your connection with your familiar alters your arcane bond class feature so that you store your magical energy in your familiar, rather than an item you own; you also gain the Drain Familiar free action instead of Drain Bonded Item. Drain Familiar can be used any time an ability would allow you to use Drain Bonded Item and functions identically, except that you draw magic from your familiar instead of an item.

Spell Blending

You theorize that spell slots are a shorthand for an underlying energy that powers all spellcasting, and you’ve found a way to tinker with the hierarchy of spell slots, combining them to fuel more powerful spells.

During your daily preparations, you can trade two spell slots of the same spell rank for a bonus spell slot of up to 2 spell ranks higher than the traded spell slots. You can exchange as many spell slots as you have available. Bonus spell slots must be of a spell rank you can normally cast, and each bonus spell slot must be of a different spell rank. You can also trade any spell slot for two additional cantrips, though you can’t trade more than one spell slot at a time for additional cantrips in this way.

Spell Substitution

You don’t accept the fact that once spells are prepared, they can’t be changed until your next daily preparations, and you have uncovered a shortcut allowing you to substitute new spells for those you originally prepared.

You can spend 10 minutes to empty one of your prepared spell slots and prepare a different spell from your spellbook in its place. If you are interrupted during such a swap, the original spell remains prepared and can still be cast. You can try again to swap out the spell later, but you must start the process over again.

Staff Nexus

Your thesis maintains that early and intense adoption of staves from the first days of study can create a symbiotic bond between spellcaster and staff, allowing them to create remarkable magic together. You’ve formed such a connection with a makeshift staff you built, and you are ready to infuse any staff you encounter with greater power.

You begin play with a makeshift staff of your own invention. It has the magical trait and contains one cantrip and one 1st-rank spell, both from your spellbook. During your daily preparations, you can expend one spell to grant the staff a number of charges equal to that spell’s rank, which dissipate after 24 hours. While you are holding the staff, you can Cast the Spells it contains. The 1st-rank spell consumes 1 charge but the cantrip doesn’t require charges.

You can Craft your makeshift staff into any other type of magical staff for the new staff’s usual cost, adding the two spells you originally chose to the staff you Craft. This staff gains charges from preparing it along with expended spells. Magical staves are described in GM Core.

At 8th level, you can expend two spells instead of one when preparing any staff, adding additional charges equal to the combined ranks of the expended spells. At 16th level, you can expend up to a total of three spells to add charges to the staff, adding additional charges equal to the combined ranks of all three spells.

Arcane School

Most wizards acquire their knowledge of spells from a formal educational institution, such as the Arcanamirium or the Magaambya. At 1st level, you choose your arcane school, which grants you magical abilities.

You gain additional spells and spell slots from the curriculum taught at the school you attended. Arcane schools are described in detail on page 198. Some wizards follow the school of unified magical theory, which attempts to forge a new school by studying independently and drawing information from a multitude of texts and tutors. Though a wizard with this approach lacks the focus of formal training, they have greater flexibility.

Key Term

You’ll see the following key term in many wizard abilities.

Spellshape: Actions with the spellshape trait tweak the properties of your spells. These actions usually come from spellshape feats. You must use a spellshape action directly before Casting the Spell you want to alter. If you use any action (including free actions and reactions) other than Cast a Spell directly after, you waste the benefits of the spellshape action. Any additional effects added by a spellshape action are part of the spell’s effect, not of the spellshape action itself.

Arcane Bond

You place some of your magical power in a bonded item. Each day when you prepare your spells, you can designate a single item you own as your bonded item. This is typically an item associated with spellcasting, such as a wand, ring, or staff, but you are free to designate a weapon or other item. You gain the Drain Bonded Item free action.

Drain Bonded Item [free-action]
Arcane, Wizard

Frequency once per day
Requirements Your bonded item is on your person.

You expend the magical power stored in your bonded item. During the current turn, you can cast one spell you prepared today and already cast, without spending a spell slot. You must still Cast the Spell and meet the spell’s other requirements.

Skill Feats     2nd

At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, you gain a skill feat. Skill feats can be found in Chapter 4 and have the skill trait. You must be trained or better in the corresponding skill to select a skill feat.

Wizard Feats     2nd

At 2nd level and every even-numbered level thereafter, you gain a wizard class feat. 

Wizard Feats by Name

General Feats     3rd

At 3rd level and every 4 levels thereafter, you gain a general feat. General feats are listed in Chapter 5.

Skill Increases     3rd

At 3rd level and every 2 levels thereafter, you gain a skill increase. You can use this increase either to increase your proficiency rank to trained in one skill you’re untrained in, or to increase your proficiency rank in one skill in which you’re already trained to expert.

At 7th level, you can use skill increases to increase your proficiency rank to master in a skill in which you’re already an expert, and at 15th level, you can use them to increase your proficiency rank to legendary in a skill in which you’re already a master.

Ancestry Feats     5th

In addition to the ancestry feat you started with, you gain an ancestry feat at 5th level and every 4 levels thereafter. The list of ancestry feats available to you can be found in your ancestry’s entry in Chapter 2.

Reflex Expertise     5th

You’ve developed a knack for dodging danger. Your proficiency rank for Reflex saves increases to expert.

Arcane Schools

Your arcane school is where you devoted yourself to the study of spellcraft. Whether you learned in the storied halls of a formal institution, via an apprenticeship with an archmage, or taught yourself from secondhand tomes, your arcane school indelibly set the curriculum and direction of your magic.

Curriculum Spells: You automatically add some of the spells listed in your school’s curriculum to your spellbook. At 1st level, you add a cantrip and two 1st-rank spells of your choice. As soon as you gain the ability to cast wizard spells of a new rank, choose one of the spells from your curriculum of that rank to add to your spellbook. A superscript “U” indicates an uncommon spell. Your GM might allow you to swap or add other spells to your curriculum if they strongly fit the theme.

Spell Slots: Each day, you can prepare an extra cantrip from your curriculum. You also gain an extra spell slot at each spell rank for which you have wizard spell slots. You can prepare only spells from your school’s curriculum in these extra slots. Any spell listed in your curriculum of a suitable spell rank is eligible to be prepared in each of these extra slots, regardless of how you added the spell to your spellbook.

School Spells: School spells are a type of focus spell. It costs 1 Focus Point to cast a focus spell, and you start with a focus pool of 1 Focus Point. You refill your focus pool during your daily preparations, and you can regain 1 Focus Point by spending 10 minutes using the Refocus activity to study your spellbook or conduct arcane research.

Focus spells are automatically heightened to half your level rounded up, much like cantrips. Focus spells don’t require spell slots, and you can’t cast them using spell slots. Certain feats give you more focus spells. The maximum Focus Points your focus pool can hold is equal to the number of focus spells you have, but it can never be more than 3 points.

You learn the initial school spell, which is unique to your school. You can learn the advanced school spell with the Advanced School Spell feat.

School of Ars Grammatica

Runes and wards, numbers and letters—they underpin all magic, making them the logical subject for a wizard who studies fundamental forces. Perhaps you studied at the Pathfinder Society’s School of Spells or a similar institution, but whether you’re lacing your words with magic to compel others, casting wards around your workshop, or destabilizing the very structure of an opponent’s spells, you know this unassuming school carries elegant power.

Curriculum cantrips: message, sigil; 1st: command, disguise magic, runic body, runic weapon; 2nd: dispel magic, translate; 3rd: enthrall, veil of privacy^U; 4th: dispelling globe^U, suggestion; 5th: sending, truespeech^U; 6th: repulsion, spellwrack; 7th: contingency, planar seal^U; 8th: quandary, unrelenting observation; 9th: detonate magic^U

School Spells initial: protective wards; advanced: rune of observation

School of Battle Magic

Magic is power, and there are always those who will use power for the art of battle. You may have studied in the military of a nation of the brink of war—Cheliax and Andoran perhaps, or Geb and Nex. You summon whirling energies that can lay waste to both soldiers and armies, while being sure not to neglect arcane countermeasures for common tactical complications or the shields and defenses that keep combatants alive on the battlefield.

Curriculum cantrips: shield, telekinetic projectile; 1st: breathe fire, force barrage, mystic armor; 2nd: mist, resist energy; 3rd: earthbind, fireball; 4th: wall of fire, weapon storm; 5th: howling blizzard, impaling spike; 6th: chain lightning, disintegrate; 7th: energy aegis, true target; 8th: arctic rift, desiccate; 9th: falling stars

School Spells initial: force bolt; advanced: energy absorption

School of the Boundary

Why use your magic to affect something as pedestrian as the physical world? Whether you studied at the College of Dimensional Studies in Katapesh or an underground school in haunted Ustalav, you’ve turned your magic past the Universe to the forces beyond, summoning spirits and shades, manipulating dimensions and planes, and treading in a place not meant for mortals.

Curriculum cantrips: telekinetic hand, void warp; 1st: grim tendrils, phantasmal minion, summon undead; 2nd: darkness, see the unseen; 3rd: bind undead, ghostly weapon; 4th: flicker, translocate; 5th: banishment, invoke spirits; 6th: teleport^U, vampiric exsanguination; 7th: eclipse burst, interplanar teleport^U; 8th: quandary, unrelenting observation; 9th: massacre

School Spells initial: fortify summoning; advanced: spiral of horrors

School of Civic Wizardry

Whether you studied in Manaket’s Occularium or the Academy of Applied Magic, you learned that the fruits of arcane studies—like any other field—should ultimately help the common citizen. You’ve learned the humble art of construction, of finding lost people and things, of moving speedily among buildings and moats—yet these same arts can be turned to demolition, and the constructs you animate to build bridges can just as easily tear them down.

Curriculum cantrips: prestidigitation, read aura; 1st: hydraulic push, pummeling rubble, summon construct; 2nd: revealing light, water walk; 3rd: cozy cabin, safe passage; 4th: creation, unfettered movement; 5th: control water, wall of stone; 6th: disintegrate, wall of force; 7th: planar palace, retrocognition; 8th: earthquake, pinpoint^U; 9th: foresight

School Spells initial: earthworks; advanced: community restoration

School of Mentalism

As a scholar, you know all too well the importance of a sound mind. Thus, you attended a school—like the Farseer Tower or the Stone of the Seers—that taught the arts of befuddling lesser minds with figments and illusions or implanted sensations and memories.

Curriculum cantrips: daze, figment; 1st: dizzying colors, sleep, sure strike; 2nd: illusory creature, stupefy; 3rd: dream message, mind reading^U; 4th: nightmare, vision of death; 5th: hallucination, illusory scene; 6th: never mind, phantasmal calamity; 7th: project image, warp mind; 8th: disappearance, uncontrollable dance; 9th: phantasmagoria

School Spells initial: charming push; advanced: invisibility cloak

School of Protean Form

The uninitiated often think of wizards as cerebral, focused on their studies more than the body, yet your school of magic taught of the relationship between the two. Your magic, whether learned at a storied institution like Kintargo’s Alabaster Academy or someplace more sinister, like the Fleshforges of Nex, focuses on the ways that living matter can be convinced into another shape for a time, allowing you to polymorph a seed into a vine, a human into a beast, or a harmless germ into a deadly toxin.

Curriculum cantrips: gouging claw, tangle vine; 1st: jump, pest form, spider sting; 2nd: enlarge, humanoid form; 3rd: feet to fins, vampiric feast; 4th: mountain resilience, vapor form; 5th: elemental form, toxic cloud; 6th: cursed metamorphosis, petrify; 7th: duplicate foe, fiery body; 8th: desiccate, monstrosity form; 9th: metamorphosis

School Spells initial: scramble body; advanced: shifting form

School of Unified Magical Theory

You eschew the idea that magic can be neatly expressed by the teachings of any single school or college, instead directing your self-study to pick up the best of every school of magic. In doing so, you’ll find the truths that lie at the intersection of each school, coming closer to the ideal nature of arcane magic. One day, you’ll uncover that single elegant theory detailing all magic (perhaps a theory bearing your name?), but until then, your studies continue.

No Curriculum You don’t have a set curriculum, and so you don’t have curriculum spells and can’t benefit from abilities that specifically affect them. Instead, you gain an additional 1st-level wizard class feat, and you add one 1st-rank spell of your choice to your spellbook to represent your diverse studies.

Your studies into the very nature of magic itself have let you use it more efficiently—instead of using Drain Bonded Item only once per day, you can use it once per day for each rank of spell you can cast, recalling a spell of that rank each time.

School Spells initial: hand of the apprentice; advanced: interdisciplinary incantation

Wizard Feats

At each level that you gain a wizard feat, you can select one of the following feats. You must satisfy any prerequisites before taking the feat.

1st Level

• Counterspell (Wizard)
• Familiar
• Reach Spell (Wizard)
• Spellbook Prodigy
• Widen Spell (Wizard)

2nd Level

• Cantrip Expansion (Wizard)
• Conceal Spell (Wizard)
• Energy Ablation
• Enhanced Familiar (Wizard)
• Nonlethal Spell

4th Level

• Bespell Strikes
• Call Wizardly Tools
• Linked Focus
• Spell Protection Array

Sample Wizards

Student of the Void

Your magic summons spirits, transports you, and lets you channel the energy of other planes. You know about odd creatures and distant realms.

Attributes

Prioritize Intelligence. Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom round out your defenses.

Skills

Arcana, Crafting, Diplomacy, Nature, Occultism, Religion, Society

Arcane School

School of the Boundary

Thesis

Improved familiar attunement

Higher-Level Feats

Enhanced Familiar (2nd), Advanced School Spell (8th), Effortless Concentration (16th)

Mindbender

You excel at bypassing threats without violence, using mental nudges and illusions to fool the senses.

Attributes

Prioritize Intelligence. Increase Dexterity and Charisma so you can sneak and deceive people with skills as well as spells.

Skills

Arcana, Deception, Diplomacy, Occultism, Society, Stealth, Thievery

Arcane School

School of Mentalism

Thesis

Spell blending

Higher-Level Feats

Conceal Spell (2nd), Convincing Illusion (6th), Advanced School Spell (8th), Magic Sense (12th)