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Zhalath
2009-05-23, 12:47 PM
Whenever a spellcasting thread comes up on this forum, it seems like I always see the Big Three come up: Conjuration, Transmutation, and Illusion.
Now, I understand the power of Transmutation and Illusion, but why is Conjuration the untouchable king of magic? What's so great about Conjuration?

tyckspoon
2009-05-23, 12:52 PM
Teleport, Grease, Web, Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles, Summon Monster (X), Planar Binding, Wall of Iron, Wall of Stone, Solid Fog, Acid Fog, Glitterdust, Mage Armor and, oh yes, Gate for the ultimate in 'screw it, I win.' That's like 70% of the most useful arcane spells in the PHB. All are Conjuration.

Keld Denar
2009-05-23, 12:55 PM
Conjouration has both the largest selection of spells, but a generally high concentration of highly useful spells. Its generally common knowledge that in most situations, dealing damage is sub-optimial since a foe with 100000000 hp fights the same as a foe with 1 hp. That means that disabling, inconveniencing, and otherwise making life difficult for your foes produces a lot more results. A Blinded foe with full HP is a lot less dangeous than a non-blinded foe with 1/3 HP.

Conjouration has a great number of spells that do just this. Even from low levels, Grease is pretty good, and Glitterdust/Web are amazing when you get them at 3rd. As you get higher, the game gets better. Solid Fog is only countered by 2 things...teleporting and Freedom of Movement. Otherwise its 2-3 rounds of slugging through it to get out the other side. Even higher levels get some real killer stuff with various walls and battlefield manipulations. Its just good!

Plus, MOST Conjourations completely ignore SR...which, in itself is very very very useful. Not many other schools have such blatent disregard for SR.

Oh, yea. Mobility spells too. Almost all spells that change your position are Conjourations. These spells are generally considered to be lumped in with utility, but are also very effective battlefield control when you can teleport your allies around the battle with various effects. My high level wizard just used a Benign Transposition to save an ally who was about to get full attack mauled by a big baddy, landing the ally next to the party cleric who could patch him up before returning to the battle.

Logalmier
2009-05-23, 12:56 PM
Conjuration has a little bit of everything... okay, so it has a lot of everything. And some of that everything is potentially gamebreaking. Conjuration isn't good because of its summoning spells (besides planar binding and Gate), but it has other extremely good spells and options. You can teleport with it, you can get good area effects with it, hell, you can even do direct damage with it. You get spells that make you think "What the hell? Why isn't that in evocation or abjuration?" It has great ways of neutralizing the enemy, just like transmutation, but unlike transmutation it focuses more on everything useful, rather than everything useful that alters things.

So in short, it's broken. Even without a bunch of splatbooks it's broken. And with a bunch of spat books, well... :smallsigh:

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-23, 01:35 PM
Conjuration has amazing summoning spells and is better at Evocation's main shtick than Evocation is.

Twilight Jack
2009-05-23, 02:03 PM
Conjuration has amazing summoning spells and is better at Evocation's main shtick than Evocation is.

By which we mean that Conjuration's direct damage, while generally offering less raw massive devestation than Evocation, tends to bypass spell resistance in the bargain, which Evocation never does.

So your Conjuration blasting actually offers greater power at higher levels, when most monsters worth their CR actually sport spell resistance.

Not that you should be building your Conjurer as a blaster anyhow, but sometimes you need to nuke a mofo.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-05-23, 02:17 PM
Because it does EVERYTHING, generally better than any other college can.

Blastomancy: Generally seen as Evocation's shtick. However, you've got things like the Orb spells, which in addition to doing more damage (single target), also bypass Spell Resistance. You also get things like Acid Cloud, which does consistent damage.

Battlefield Control. Again, a lot of Ignore Spell Resistance in this category as well. You get things like Solid Fog, Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, Glitterdust, Web... basically, it's the kind of battlefield control.

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Zhalath
2009-05-23, 02:23 PM
I am suitably convinced about the spells themselves. But, still, more questions about Conjuration.

What feats work well with Conjuration?

What prestige classes support Conjuration well?

No, I'm not using this information to build a character (at least, not right now).

raptor1056
2009-05-23, 02:32 PM
Feats? Any that can extend the duration of battlefield control have been helpful to me (especially when fighting big hordes.)
PrCs-- Red Wizard. Broken, broken, broken. More specialization in what's just about the best school ever.

Eldariel
2009-05-23, 02:33 PM
As said, it's really simple: It does everything. In an effort to simplify the issue, I'll make a quick catalogue of what Conjuration does:
-Best battlefield manipulation/enemy inconveniencing spells without saves or SR (completely isolate some opponents effectively halving the difficulty of an encounter, trap some big bad mofos while they're taking damage and you're buffing or some such)
-Great damage (gets better out-of-core; in core, this part is mediocre, but it's still there)
-Great save-or-be-screwed spells including rare ones targeting Reflex, and some save-and-be-screwed spells
-Summons to replicate whatever you can't do yourself (spells you don't have access to, tanking, whatever)
-Planar Binding-line to effectively generate at best few levels higher of an ally for yourself (ever had a Glabrezu with you on level 11? Or hell, Pit Fiend on level 15? They can easily solo most encounters you face then; by RAW there's no limit to how many you can bind too)
-Teleportation, the ultima in terms of mobility and one of the principal reasons high level casters are so untouchable and invaluable. Also Mount and the like
-All the Creation-spells that have a crapton of creative uses to be efficient (simplest being to create expensive and tough-to-acquire poisons in large quantities for free and using Any Generic Delivery Mechanism Of Your Choice)
-On top of all that, a ton of random utility like Leomund's Secret Chest, Mordenkainen's Magnicient Mansion, Teleport Object, etc.


Really, no other school does as many things as Conjuration, nor as well. Conjuration is really the school; if you could pick only one school, Conjuration would very probably be the best choice.

EDIT: Seemingly very late.

Keld Denar
2009-05-23, 02:34 PM
As a spell school, as long as you keep your full casting progression, you'll keep getting newer and better conjourations. The only PrCs that really get mucky with Conjouration more than others are Master Specialist (CMage), Malconvoker (CScoundrel), Thamaturge (DMG, requires shananigans to for a wizard to enter), and maybe Alienist (CArcane). Of those, all but Master Specialist are summoning focused classes. Master Specialist embraces most aspects of Conjouration, boosting summoning, long duration spells, and general speed of casting.

There are some nice Alt Class Features for Conjourers too. Abrupt Jaunt in the PHBII gives you a 10' teleport as an IMMEDIATE ACTION, +int times per day. Thats generally considered one of the most powerful defensive abilities to have.

UA (and the SRD online) have ACFs that give up your familiar to enhance your ability to cast Summon spells. If this is your thing, take a look there.

If you are summoning, Augmented Summoning is a powerful feat. +4 Str and Con for your summons mean more damage and more HP.

Complete Mage has the feat Cloudy Conjourations, which gives you a mini fog cloud every time you cast a Conjouration spell. Place it next to you to cut off enemies LoSight, or on your enemies to no-save Sicken them. Its GOOD.

Other than that, just being a wizard and not banning Conjouration means you have all of those options at your disposal. I'm playing a high level Focused Specialist Conjourer atm, and I STILL don't have enough spell slots to memorize all of the Conjourations I want to use. Such a good school of magic.

valadil
2009-05-23, 03:11 PM
Conjuration has save or screw for any save with no SR. It's also got some decent touch spells if you wanna avoid saves entirely.

Optimystik
2009-05-23, 03:32 PM
The only PrCs that really get mucky with Conjouration more than others are Master Specialist (CMage), Malconvoker (CScoundrel), Thamaturge (DMG, requires shananigans to for a wizard to enter), and maybe Alienist (CArcane). Of those, all but Master Specialist are summoning focused classes. Master Specialist embraces most aspects of Conjouration, boosting summoning, long duration spells, and general speed of casting.

Of that list, my favorite by far is Malconvoker. Awesome power and even more awesome flavor. Linky (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=918792) for the Malconvoker Handbook, it's a must read for any summoner at all, not just 'vokers.

Alienist is just creepy. I've tried to get behind it but... yecch!

shadzar
2009-05-23, 03:52 PM
Maybe the school definition was lost in 3rd but here it is from 2e:


Conjuration/summoning spells bring something to the caster from elsewhere. Conjuration normally produces matter or items from some other place. Summoning enables the caster to compel living creatures and powers to appear in his presence or to channel extraplanar energies through himself.


Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

Any spell that can bring something else into being or command it to come to you is pretty darn strong, and more often will be the most used spells other than those which just cause damage.

Personally my favorite specialist type was conjurer following by diviner, with invocationist as third.

There is just so much good in them and so much you can do with being able to move things to your will.

Logalmier
2009-05-23, 05:29 PM
And don't forget those handy Summon Elemental Monolith spells! Summoning gigantic earth elementals that can single-handedly take a large city. I've actually done that before, summoned an elemental monolith to tear down the city walls and kill all their troops before ordering my army to take the city. And if you can cast it more than once you can have multiple monoliths pound there crummy city to dust. That's somthing you could never do with a Meteor Swarm or Time Stop (you might be able to do it with Shapechange, but why put yourself in that much risk when you can summon something to do it for you?)

Devils_Advocate
2009-05-23, 05:30 PM
Transmutation and Conjuration are both... broad. In very helpful ways.

Transmutation: "I Change the thing that's the way I don't want it to be into being the way I want it to be."

Conjuration: "I summon forth a Thing to solve this problem."

Almost anything can be done with the right Change or the right Thing, because those are extremely broad categories.