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evil-frosty
2009-08-15, 09:42 AM
So i am going to be building a wizard for a game and want to specialize, or be a focused specialist. Dont know which yet. And was wondering what schools do i ban? I know evocation, but if i go focused specialist i have to drop 2 other schools. So what would be optimal to ban?

OverdrivePrime
2009-08-15, 09:46 AM
Tell us a little more about your character and his/her personality and it'll be easier to figure out what sorts of arcane power he'd be drawn to, and what sorts he'd turn up his nose at.

Focused specialist is pretty cool, but is quite a sacrifice.

RTGoodman
2009-08-15, 09:49 AM
In general, you can drop Evocation and either Necromancy or Enchantment. NEVER drop Conjuration, and you should think HARD before getting rid of Abjuration, Illusion, and/or Transmutation. You CAN'T lose Divination.

Personally, and many CharOp people might disagree, I think Focused Specialist is TOO big of a sacrifice. If I specialize, it's usually in Divination, so I lose as few schools as possible. Personally, I'd rather go with a Grey Elf Wizard with the RotW Elven Generalist racial substitution levels.

Kurald Galain
2009-08-15, 09:56 AM
Don't let the people fool you, focused specialist is awesome. You get so much more spells per day that it's simply amazing.

Sure, you won't get That One Uber-spell from every school. But you'll still have literally thousands of spells to pick from anyway; it's just an optimization fallacy that you Really Do Need school X only because it contains one spell that's so good.

Schools to drop? Evocation, of course. Either illusion or enchantment, because of the big overlap, but probably not both. Necromancy, it's a solid school but many characters aren't "into that". And Abjuration is a safe drop as long as your party contains any other kind of caster.

Jalor
2009-08-15, 09:57 AM
Low level or mid/high level?

At low levels, be a Focused Specialist Conjurer barring Enchantment, Evocation, and Necromancy. Focus on battlefield control spells like Grease and Wall of Smoke (Spell Compendium). At 3rd level you get Web and Glitterdust, which are encounter-breaking. I recommend the Cloudy Conjuration feat from Complete Mage, which can both block line of sight and cause a status effect. The Sculpt Spell metamagic feat is also good.

At mid-level, go with an ordinary Conjurer. Ban Evocation and either Enchantment (if your game is mostly hack and slash) or Necromancy (if your game is mostly roleplaying). If you're uncreative, you might want to ban Illusion instead of Enchantment, but Illusion has some good combat spells as well. Take battlefield control and utility spells, with a couple of debuffs. Enervation is good if you kept Necromancy. Shivering Touch is just cheesy. Evard's Black Tentacles can deny low-Str enemies any useful actions for an entire combat.

High levels are similar, but make a Transmuter instead. It's more versatile and better at buffing. Remember that your goal is not to blow everything up or summon huge monsters, it's to make your enemies waste actions and make your party members into superheroes.

Sinfire Titan
2009-08-15, 10:01 AM
The only time you keep Necromancy is if you spoecifically focus on abusing some of those spells. If not, drop Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy. Abjuration is considerably more powerful than Necromancy unless you focus on boosting your Necromancy spells.




If you specialize in Illusion, you have a lot of options. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5382.0) Some of that may apply to Transmutation and Conjuration, but Illusion can get Save DCs in the mid 40's fairly easily.

Scarlet Tropix
2009-08-15, 10:03 AM
I personally only ever bother focusing on Divination and removing Evocation, simply because I like having both options and more spells. But we're not talking about me.

What are you considering focusing on? It's semi-relevant to schools you might want to drop, although the answer is nearly always Evocation and Enchantment because of their low level of usefulness.

Of course back in 3.0 I always dropped Divination and Necromancy, so...

waterpenguin43
2009-08-15, 10:12 AM
If you are going to be an conjurer, get rid of illusion or enchantment (preferably enchantment). I find that conjurers and evokers both should get rid of one of those, but abjuration is also safe as long as you have a cleric of something on the party (or better, an earth shugenja, or for healing a water shugenja).
Necromancy is probably one of the best options if the game has lots of role playing in it.
Edit: For battlefield control, bar abjuration and necromancy, if you want to be focussed, take out enchantment as well. Also, take mostly creation spells, with wall of ice, wall of stone and acid fog, you will make the battlefied very tricky for foes. Summoning conjurations also help for that.

evil-frosty
2009-08-15, 10:12 AM
I wanted him to be more of a battlefield controller type. For personality i havent given it much thought as there is very limited role-play in the game. The game is starting low level but will be going into high levels maybe epic if we push our DM enough but doubtful at best.

I was thinking of specializing in conjuration or transmutation maybe illusion. And the party has 2 other clerics and a sorcerer so abjuration i think should be rather well covered.

Proven_Paradox
2009-08-15, 10:56 AM
If you've got two clerics on your team already, drop abjuration; they can handle it. I would focus specialize in either conjuration or transmutation. It's probably a good idea to pick up levels in Master Specialist as well (though the Greater Esoterica for transmutation is utterly worthless, the rest is really good). Drop evocation, abjuration, and either enchantment or necromancy. I personally would go with enchantment; I don't like losing Enervation. But it depends on the character, and often if I'm playing something with a good alignment, they'll end up developing a distaste for necromancy.

Keld Denar
2009-08-15, 11:44 AM
If others have Abjurations covered, by all means drop it.

I LOVE my FS Conjourer. He's got TONS of spell. Conjouration is just so useful I have no problem filling all 3 of my FS slots with useful Conjourations. Black Tenticles and Solid Fog are stables, as are Grease and Glitterdust. Even at level 12, my Conjourer found Glitterdust to be his most effective spell in one encounter since the foes seemed to be able to deflect all his rays and go ethereal to avoid his fogs.

I wouldn't drop Necromancy. There are TONS of great Necromancy spells that start useful and STAY useful. Ray of Enfeeblement is good at most levels. It really brings brutes down to size. Ray of Exhaustion is decent too, and stacks with Ray of Enfeeblement (and Escalating Enfeeblement from Complete Mage). I don't even need to talk about Enervation, its amazingness speaks for itself, and even False Life is a lot of fun. Higher level Necromany is rather meh, but the lower level ones metamagic VERY well. Between Conjouration and Necromany, you'll have verys strong debuffage that'll help you do what everyone wants wizards to do, deliver your foes blinded, slowed, prone, enfeebled, nausiated, stunned, and wrapped up in a nice ribbon for your melee party members to slice n dice.

evil-frosty
2009-08-15, 11:56 AM
So drop evocation, enchantment, and abjuration. And go Focused Conjuror.

Keld Denar
2009-08-15, 12:08 PM
That would be my recomendation, yes. That, or go Killer Gnome. Yer character, yer call though! Best of luck.

evil-frosty
2009-08-15, 12:17 PM
Thank you for the help, i have very little experience making wizards.