Incursion Mage guide

Mage

Stats:
STR 8
DEX 14
CON 14
INT 18
WIS 15
CHA 8
LUC 14

Race:
Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, or Drow

Feats:
Guildmage
Mystic Preparation
Spell Penetration
Augment Summoning
Run

One Body, One Soul and Zen Defense are also worth considering. Expertise is also worth considering, even if you don't get Zen Defense.

Skills:
Having extremely high INT means lots of skill points, and if you're a Human as well, then whoo boy, you'll have tons of skill points. As always, Decipher Script is great. Use Magic is good, but since you can already cast spells, you don't need it nearly as much as melee-only characters do, but it's still pretty useful. Healing is always good, but I think a mage can also get by without it, with the proper spells, but it can save your ass in the early levels. Concentration is pretty good, helps you resist some status effects and have a higher success rate of spellcasting during stressful conditions. Intuition is nice for helping you have a better idea of what to use scrolls of identify/the identify spell on. Grabbing Lockpicking if you're human is good too. Athletics is really nice too, for giving you a higher movement rate to kite enemies and blast them down.

Mages also excel at scribing scrolls and brewing potions, but item creation costs both money and experience points, but that's usually not a big issue near the end of the game, when you hit the level cap and have a bunch of leftover experience points you don't need. Illusioncraft if you're gonna focus on being an Illusionist, duh. Knowledge (Magic) is nice for identifying magical items at a library, lifting curses at a library, a better chance of use-IDing scrolls, and gives you more formulas for creating potions and scrolls. Metamagic is good if you like using Metamagic, but some (myself included) find Metamagic to be too limited in use, due to it using fatigue points.

Counterspell seems to be bugged, currently; when there's a bunch of spellcasters around, it seems like choosing "no" when it asks you to counterspell still takes up time segments as if you had chosen "yes", so being around a bunch of enemy Mages/Druids/Priests/Shamans/etc. can get you killed, because they'll keep casting spells over and over, and eat up your turns so you lose a near-infinite number of turns where you just stand there, get hit, and die.

Schools:
Each mage chooses a school of magic to specialize in, which dictates which schools of magic they excel at (their chosen school being their strongest, followed by schools that compliment it), and which schools they are less good at. They're all good choices, and most schools have specialization bonuses other than the bonuses to certain schools, ie. Divination specialists get +1 INT every 4 levels, and 3 extra skill points per level.

Arcana is a nice starter school, as it's versatility means you are not hindered in any school of magic, though they don't get a specialization bonus other than higher Arcana proficiency, as Arcana's power IS it's diversity.

Necromancy is good, as the Drain spells are very useful, undead minions are helpful, some saving throw bonuses, and get Treat Poison as a class skill, and the schools Necromancers are poorer at aren't too much of a hit. Major Drain can give you permanent intrinsics and stats if you kill an enemy with it and you're a Necromancy specialist, kind of like the orc's corpse eating ability, but I don't think using Major Drain subjects you to disease or poison like eating a corpse does. You also get access to certain signature Necromancy spells earlier, like Animate Dead as a 3rd level spell instead of a 5th level.

As mentioned, Divination gives some nice stat and skill boosts, and it's school penalties are rather light.

Evocations carries some hefty school penalties, but makes you a rather effective blaster-type Mage, and gives you more fatigue points so you can use metamagic feats more often.

Illusionists play quite a bit differently. You need to raise your illusionist skill to be good at it, and they play a bit like spellcasty Rogues, with some rather unique spells.

Thaumaturgy is the buffing school. A Thaumaturgist gets better buffs than any other specialist, and Thaumaturgy specialiZation grants you a little extra max HP per level, and gives you proficiency with all light weapons (mages only start out proficient with dagger and Quarterstaff). It isn't unheard of for a Thaumaturgist to buff himself up to the point where he's almost as physically strong as a Warrior. You'll probably want higher STR if you're gonna be a Thaumatugist.

Description:
Mages are unparalleled in versatility. Not even Druidic or Priestly magic is as versatile and expansive as Arcane magic is. However, Mages are rather physically frail, getting very few HP per level, and are extremely heavily penalized for wearing armor heavier than leather. Some opt to take unconventional approaches to remedy this, such as focusing more on buff spells, or even playing Orc Mages and pumping up constitution.

Mages get a ton of skill points, and 2 bonus feats (you can only choose metamagic feats or item creation feats with these 2 bonus feats) via leveling up, so Human Mages get a huge amount of skills and feats, representing the very pinnacle of versatility in Incursion. Just get whatever extra feats look good, but feats that only give skill points aren't typically needed, as Human Mages get a ton of skill points as it is.

Humans are always a good choice for any class whatsoever, and are usually my go-to race.

Elves have excellent stat modifiers as a Mage, and a large number of useful racial abilities. Their weaknesses are rather glaring, however; they cannot cast Necromantic magic at all, and take a huge amount of extra damage when attacked with weapons made of iron. A low-level Mage without the Necromantic spell Minor Drain will have a difficult time in the early game, and the weakness to iron weapons is a downright Achilles' Heel.

Dwarves aren't the best spellcasters in ability, but they get a CON bonus which really helps a Mage's survivability, and Dwarves can regenerate fatigue points without having to sleep at an Inn, so they can utilize Metamagic quite freely. Normally, Metamagic is extremely powerful but very limited in it's use, but in a Dwarf's hands, Metamagic is both powerful and fairly frequent. They are especially well-suited to be Evokers because of how good they are with fatigue points and Metamagic, and they make excellent melee Thaumaturgists, as they are rather sturdy; Dwarven Focus helps them in combat, and they are proficient with axes.

Gnomes are good at Illusions, and have a few handy racial feats. Floating Disc is a must, though, as small characters can't carry much.

Drow are an excellent race all-around, but are especially suited to spellcasting and stealthy classes. Among other useful abilities, they are rather resistant to your enemy's magic, as well as the sharpest infravision in the game (their infravision is even superior to every enemy's in the game, in fact).

The distribution of the starting stats is mostly a matter of preference. High INT for spellcasting and high WIS for more mana is obvious. A little extra strength can help you carry more items, but the spell Floating Disc usually takes care of this just fine. Extra DEX and CON are good to make your Mage more sturdy. Extra CHA could help you afford spellbooks and other items from shops better, as well as helps you recruit allies and get neutrals to offer you services or sell stuff to you, but the high luck in this build covers the need of items pretty well. LUC does various things, such as make you more likely to find good items, and less likely to encounter enemies that are stronger than the average monster found on the current dungeon floor. Also, Higher LUC raises Mage Armor's protection.

Mages are well-suited to a few Prestige classes, such as Alienist, Crimson Adept (not yet implemented), Elementalist (not yet implemented), and Loremaster.

As for starting spells, Minor Drain is practically a must, as it dishes out decent damage and heals you, so you don't have to go to the Inn as often, and you use less healing potions. Floating Disc is important, so you can carry more loot, and most Mages even start off slightly encumbered, which slows them down a bit, and Mages need good movement speed to kite their enemies. Expeditious Retreat is great, it makes you move much faster, which really helps kite, but it does make you less effective in melee combat, but this doesn't matter to most mages. Shield, Mage Armor, and False Life really help you survive. Force Bolt is powerful and knocks enemies back, sometimes knocking them down, so you can blast away at helpless enemies.

Wizard Lock is useful, but I usually get it when I get to level 2. Mount sounds awesome, but Mages are typically bad with mounts (Thaumaturgists might have more use for it.) There are also spells that improve your diplomatic relations, and these can be handy, depending on your playstyle.

The way buff spells work, the more you buff you buff yourself, the more you "bleed mana"; if you have 80 or so mana devoted to buff spells, then once in every 10 or so encounters, you will be subject to "mana bleed", where you lose one "permanent" point of mana that won't regenerate until you sleep. Due to this, you don't wanna bog yourself down with every single buff ever, so I'll list the ones I use on a standard Mage:

Endure Fire 2
Endure Cold 2
Resist Water 5
Expeditious Retreat 5
Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law 5
Mage Armor 10
Shield 10
Floating Disc 10
False Life 15
Minor Globe of Invulnerability 25
Displacement 30
Blink 30

Those numbers add up to 129 mana with my build if you took the Mystic Preparation feat and after INT modifiers, which will make you occasionally bleed one mana, but 131 would make you bleed two mana, so this list of buffs is a good compromise. Blink + Displacement make you very hard to hit with physical attacks and make ranged attacks seldom hit you, and the defensive buffs make the occasional physical attack not hit quite so hard, and are especially helpful for surviving the early game. (Blink + Displacement does not make you literally immune to physical attacks, though; it's not a 100% miss chance, it's two 50% miss chances rolled back to back, so the enemy has a 50% chance to hit you, then if he rolls the proper amount, he has to roll against a 50% chance again, and if he makes that roll, then he gets a shot at you.) Minor Globe of Invulnerability makes your opponent unable to cast level 3 or lower magic if they're within 3 squares of you, so in tandem with Blink and Displacement, you're close to untouchable.

Resist Water is important, trust me; my first Mage I got to level 8 lost all of his spellbooks to some damn Water Elementals that soaked and destroyed them, and other items. With Resist Water on, you can also swim much more effectively; you won't be asked to confirm to enter deep water, but there's still a slim chance of drowning. Endure Fire/Cold is there because it's really cheap and helps, and Endure Fire lets you walk on brimstone without taking damage (and reduces the damage from walking on hotter surfaces). From there, go with one of the Protection spells I listed to round out the list and protect you. Summoned enemies not being able to hit you is nice.

Mana Bleed isn't a huge issue later on, though, so you could take more buffs if you want. I ended up taking a few more buffs, and I'm glad I did.

(Note that which school you chose to specialize in can affect the mana cost; I usually play an Arcana specialist, and I think Minor Globe was only 23 mana to cast, despite being a 30 mana spell.)

This is the build that brought me my first victory in the Roguelike genre (not counting the mostly easy console dungeon crawlers like the Chocobo Dungeon games).