Divination [3.5]

[Fortuna]

Good ladies and gentlepersons of the playground, I put it to you that even the Giant's extra divination spells are insufficient to rescue a languishing school of magic. I humbly request your aid in rectifying this grievious miscarriage of justice and game balance. Go for your lives.

[Latronis]

I certainly shall

tomorrow

[Ichneumon]

You could give divination some twist and try to give knowledge to targets other than yourself. Combining this with some Cthulu-like insane-turning knowledge, you could have some sort of offensive spells.

[deuxhero]

The spells by The Giant the TC alreddy mentioned do just that...

[Latronis]

Well I'm sure you can justify divination buffs with offensive applications through fluff easily enough.

Actually they likely already exist, but i kinda can't think of any atm but i am sure they do!

[Ponce]

Who are you trying to fix it for? What class?

Clerics and druid are usually fine because they can access any divination spell on their list within 24 hours.

Even for a wizard, there are plenty of divination spells that are the plot equivalent of pumping an engine with nitrous oxide, and simply adding them to your spellbook is a very good idea. If you let them take Spontaneous Divination (CC), divination becomes monstrously powerful. Specializing in divination is worth it, even if you had to drop two schools (which you don't), and as the Logic Ninja pointed out, even if you could drop divination when specializing in another school, you'd be a fool to do so.

That only really leaves spontaneous casters. Divination isn't really their thing.

All in all, Divination is fine. It has loads of awesome spells that the other schools can't replicate.

The Giant's spells, while cool, aren't accessible until the later, quasi-playable stages of pre-epic play.

[ericgrau]

IMO it depends how much your DM railroads. If you're stuck with no leads then divination can easily become awesome to keep from abandoning a quest. But most DMs won't let that happen regardless of your spell list.

Otherwise divination is still the scry of scry and die. But then major enemies might have defenses, and a railroading DM might defend even minor enemies.

[Harperfan7]

I think divination spells are fine. Any one divination spell can either be the weakest or most powerful spell in your arsenal, depending on how and when they are used (kinda like wizards).

[deuxhero]

Personally Corpse Read and Final Vision (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jbe2RVkN4S7kRnMoy2U.html) are likely to show more use then the ones in Knowledge is Power (except possibly creature sense). Do you want to be blasting (let alone with divination?), damage with the possibility of a confuse effect (per insanity) would have been better (though simply a spell, a good spell, one level lower with some damage on top, non-mind effecting is good though).

[Fortuna]

Specifically, I want to make a kind of back lines (as in a small cave several hundred miles away) caster viable, and felt that the best way to do that would be to divine any imminent problems and communicate them to your team. Unfortunately, there isn't much that will help with that.

[Lysander]

I'm actually not a fan of offensive divination spells. I prefer knowledge = power not knowledge = laser beams. Spells that drive people insane seem best suited as enchantments. It just seems more elegant for a divination wizard to defeat opponents through cleverness and planning, not shoot magic at them.