So... I was looking over the spellshaping circles again today, and planning my action usage, and noticed the
Astral Essence circle... Holy crap is it nice. I traded out Screeching Rock for it, and wound up dumping all of my primary spellshaping formulae and instead picking up ones from it. Look at these babies:
Heavenly Alignment (AE, Major)—Call upon convergent stars, granting you and your allies fast healing 1, a +1 bonus to AC and saves, and temporary immunity to the effects of poisons and diseases for five rounds.
Ill Portent (AE, Major)—Deal +2d6 damage with starsurge, target has a 25% chance to take no action for 3 rounds.
Starlight Vision (AE, Minor)—You and your allies can see in natural and magical darkness for five rounds.
So, I can take care of out of combat healing. There's no need to pack around a backpack full of wands. And I can make us immune to poisons and diseases, if we expect to go after something notorious for using those, like wererats...
And if someone else can pick up a nice magical darkness AoE, we can totally go in like a swat team with night vision goggles.
The two spells that are awesome for this are
Blacklight, and the No Light cantrip from the Book of Vile Darkness. The first one is great because you can cast it on an object or creature. So you can pre-cast it during any buffing rounds you have, if you know you're going to be in a fight. The second one is not mobile, but... it's a cantrip. You can't beat that. I think I'll at least pick up a wand of No Light myself.