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taltamir
2010-03-27, 10:11 AM
the biggest complain about enchantment is that level 1 spells (protection from X) shut down the whole school.

this is not true as protection from X only suppresses charms and compulsions that have a duration. Any instantaneous charm or compulsion (example, feeble-mind) and any mind effecting spell that isn't a charm or compulsion ignores said spell.

also, the level 1 variety has a pitiful duration... but magic circle against X is still very low level, has longer duration, and affects the whole party.
A bigger claim would be that the 8th level spell mind blank shuts down the entire school of enchantment. this is actually true.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mindBlank.htm

however, the ultimate wizard is considered a battlefield controller. and a mere level 4 spell called freedom of movement shuts down any direct battlefield control.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/freedomOfMovement.htm

for walls and the like there is http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spiderclimb.htm and various sources of flight (and in DnD if you can't fly you lose).

Certainly, you will never ever come across a creature worth casting charm person on who isn't immune to it, and most monsters are immune to it too... but charm person isn't the only spell enchantment has to offer.
Besides, monsters are not nearly as big a threat as another wizard or sorcerer is, and for the other wizard you have the amazing feeblemind spell in enchantment, while the battlefield controller will try in vain to contain a freedom of movement, flying, wall-disintegrating wizard who is coming to melt his brain.

I have always listed enchantment as "the first school to ban" but I am having to rethink this position now.

Aron Times
2010-03-27, 10:21 AM
The trick is not to rely solely on Enchantment spells. Try dispelling their mental protections and then enslave them with your compulsions. Works well for me.

SilverStar
2010-03-27, 10:21 AM
I'd rather ban illusion than enchantment.

At low levels, those Charms can be a lifesaver.

Vangor
2010-03-27, 10:37 AM
Enchantment has always been my favorite simply due to the roleplaying potential.

Smiling Knight
2010-03-27, 10:38 AM
If I understand correctly, the greater problem with enchantment is that there are a whole lot of things flat-out immune to it: undead, golems, oozes, plants, etc., which is more common in PvE than other opposing wizards being batman battlefield controllers, though each group plays differently.

DoubleEdit: though IIRC taltimir does play games like that, so enchantment would be better there.

taltamir
2010-03-27, 10:44 AM
If I understand correctly, the greater problem with enchantment is that there are a whole lot of things flat-out immune to it: undead, golems, oozes, plants, etc., which is more common in PvE than other opposing wizards being batman battlefield controllers, though each group plays differently.

the thing is... undead, golems, and oozes are not that much of a threat. If you are facing a diverse set of enemies you will encounter enemy wizards (the BBEG usually) and a bunch of undead, golems and oozes. the enemy wizard is a much greater threat, and he is dealt with better via enchantment then battlefield control... while his minions and mooks are better dealt with via battlefield control then enchantment... well who cares they are minions and mooks.
Golems are the scariest of those but golems also automatically fail against any illusion... make an illusion of a wall and attack it through the wall.

Godskook
2010-03-27, 10:47 AM
Enchantment is the first school to ban, not because it lacks power, but rather because that power seems to be considered 1-dimensional in nature.
however, the ultimate wizard is considered a battlefield controller. and a mere level 4 spell called freedom of movement shuts down any direct battlefield control.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/freedomOfMovement.htm

for walls and the like there is http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spiderclimb.htm and various sources of flight (and in DnD if you can't fly you lose).

Um....

Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling walls can not be evaded by anything short of teleportation(ignored, maybe, but not evaded), teleport abilities that work without depriving the user of important actions are rare and hard to come by. Harder still when you're deprived of LOS from wall of smoke or LOE from wall of stone.

As to Freedom of Movement, it fails to negate the entire spell of the spells it works on, and Fog Cloud and Cloudkill are both still 100% against such an enemy. So's the SM line, which is both battlefield control and the BSF, rolled into one spell.

But mainly, you're missing the point of battlefield control. The point isn't to actually lockdown everyone, the point is to slow them down enough that your team wins the "# of useful actions this combat" game. If your wall of stone forced the enemy wizard to cast disintegrate at a wall after one or more of his teammates is unable to act usefully, instead of your teammates, you're winning by a large margin.


while the battlefield controller will try in vain to contain a freedom of movement, flying, wall-disintegrating wizard who is coming to melt his brain.

A battlefield controller does not 'contain', he 'distracts', 'divides', and 'slows down' the enemy while his team kills them. A battlefield controller is worthless without a team, despite the flavor in the 'Being God' handbook. He's also likely packing a few orbs of fire, for just such a case where damage+daze would be incredibly effective.


I have always listed enchantment as "the first school to ban" but I am having to rethink this position now.

Enchantment, to me, is a 'first school to ban, unless core to character concept' type of school. If I'm really intent on using it, I'd have no problem banning something else, or even specializing. Its the cases where I've already chosen my concept, and it doesn't include Enchantment, that I ban the school out of hand.

AmberVael
2010-03-27, 10:55 AM
the thing is... undead, golems, and oozes are not that much of a threat. If you are facing a diverse set of enemies you will encounter enemy wizards (the BBEG usually) and a bunch of undead, golems and oozes. the enemy wizard is a much greater threat, and he is dealt with better via enchantment then battlefield control... while his minions and mooks are better dealt with via battlefield control then enchantment... well who cares they are minions and mooks.
Golems are the scariest of those but golems also automatically fail against any illusion... make an illusion of a wall and attack it through the wall.

This is a very silly thing to say.

Even if you discount all the other types... undead. Freakin' undead.

Undead are an extremely threatening group of creatures, and they're not just creatures. They're insanely likely candidates for BBEGs and the like. Vampires, you know. Also liches- you do read Order of the Stick, right? Yeah, liches are dangerous. Then there are ghosts.

Also, undead can serve as that big boss monster type thing. The wide variety of undead templates mean that you can pretty much apply them to any creature you want, making a really creepy huge monster to toss at characters. No enchantment on that thing.


Are you always going to face threatening, enchantment immune creatures? Hopefully not- but the problem is that enchantment is one of the easiest schools to completely shut down, and it is very likely that you will face a threatening entity at some point which will be completely untouchable via enchantment.

This alone might not make Enchantment a good school to drop... but the thing comes in that if you still have most of the other schools you can get similar effects without the drawback.

So that's the argument. Is enchantment bad? No. It can just be replaced, and the other schools don't have this glaring weakness.

Kurald Galain
2010-03-27, 11:01 AM
While there are enough restrictions on Enchantment to make it less strong than Transmutation or Conjuration, it remains nevertheless a good school, except possibly in undead-heavy campaigns. Indeed it is not the case that the first-level Protection From Evil spell shuts it down.

Yukitsu
2010-03-27, 11:04 AM
The problem with enchantment, is that many players are too linear to do anything more than cast those spells on their target. When you encounter something that's immune to enchantments, you cast it on someone who can deal with the encounter for you.

boomwolf
2010-03-27, 11:08 AM
I suspect that enchantment used to be the most powerful spell school of all, so they nerfed the hell out of it, and then never tested the nerf to figure it was too much of a nerf.

Either that or they decided that while mind-control is cool, its a bitch when it happens to PC's, so they made it weak in order to prevent the players loosing control over their characters all the time.

DragoonWraith
2010-03-27, 11:12 AM
Either that or they decided that while mind-control is cool, its a bitch when it happens to PC's, so they made it weak in order to prevent the players loosing control over their characters all the time.
Not just PCs, but important NPCs, too. The game gets kind of wonky when instead of taking a quest you just Charm the quest giver into giving you the reward without doing the quest...

FishAreWet
2010-03-27, 11:19 AM
There is a large set of creature types immune to the school. But more importantly, almost every single spell is Will Negates. Unless you can get arbitrarily high DCs, a good CO rule of thumb is to always assume the opponent will make the save.

Godskook
2010-03-27, 11:23 AM
I suspect that enchantment used to be the most powerful spell school of all, so they nerfed the hell out of it, and then never tested the nerf to figure it was too much of a nerf.

Either that or they decided that while mind-control is cool, its a bitch when it happens to PC's, so they made it weak in order to prevent the players loosing control over their characters all the time.

Except PCs are some of the more vulnerable groups to the school. Prior to mindblank, you just can't have protections up all day long against it, and your team typically has the highest power/person value, especially once you factor in gear. Worse still, they tend to be 'persons' rather than 'monsters'.

Lysander
2010-03-27, 11:47 AM
The fact is enchantment is a GREAT school, just not suited for wandering deep into a dungeon battling ghouls and random monsters. It assumes that the wizard is still a member of society, has to interact with people, and likes to operate with a degree of subtlety. Its only useful if your campaign involves living people.

Gralamin
2010-03-27, 12:21 PM
The fact is enchantment is a GREAT school, just not suited for wandering deep into a dungeon battling ghouls and random monsters. It assumes that the wizard is still a member of society, has to interact with people, and likes to operate with a degree of subtlety. Its only useful if your campaign involves living people.

Living people? You mean, people still being alive after the PCs pass through? I don't understand. :smallconfused: :smalltongue:

peacenlove
2010-03-27, 01:26 PM
Living people? You mean, people still being alive after the PCs pass through? I don't understand. :smallconfused: :smalltongue:

You know the people you mindrape (sorry programmed amnesia for those pesky do gooders out there) into being your slaves and die to fuel the xp costs to gate an arbitarily high number of succubi :smallbiggrin:

That shows just about the usefulness of this school.

elonin
2010-03-27, 01:52 PM
I'd say that the enchantment school is similar to the evocation school. Both are somewhat easily countered but have somewhat cool effects. Personally I tend to prefer using enchantment to grab a minion or for questioning survivors after the fight is over. It's also useful for social intrigue style games.

Private-Prinny
2010-03-27, 01:54 PM
Enchantment isn't bad, but it isn't on the same level as Conjuration and the like.

My personal favorite is to use a Malconvoker to bind a Balor, and make the following deal: "Give up your spell resistance and fail your save against my next spell, and I'll let you kill my entire party." "I accept." "PROGRAMMED AMNESIA!"

You now have your very own Balor slave.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-03-27, 02:12 PM
Oh god not this again.

Keld Denar
2010-03-27, 02:44 PM
The other main problem with Enchantment is that most of the spells in it overlap with Transmutation and Illusion. Both cover the Will save or X very well, and the buffing, and some other things that Enchantment doesn't have.

Is the same reason Evocation is considered weak. Its still magic, and magic is good. Its just that everything Evocation is supposed to do well, Conjouration does better. If you were gonna drop any schools, you want to drop the ones that don't leave any bases uncovered. Dropping Enchantment and keeping Transmutation and Illusion does that. Sure, you lose the power of Dominated slaves to do your bidding, but you still have the Will save or X power that Slow and Solipism and other spells give.

CockroachTeaParty
2010-03-27, 02:45 PM
Mechanical relevance aside, I often ban Enchantment out of moral principle. It is my opinion that Enchantment is easily the most evil school of magic, worse than the foulest necromancy. Robbing a thinking mind of its ability to think and choose for itself is a heinous crime in my eyes.

Sure, Slay Living will kill you, but look at what spells like Feeblemind, Dominate, or Mind Rape/Programmed Amnesia can do. There are fates worse than death, and most of them are Enchantment spells.

taltamir
2010-03-27, 02:59 PM
But mainly, you're missing the point of battlefield control. The point isn't to actually lockdown everyone, the point is to slow them down enough that your team wins the "# of useful actions this combat" game. If your wall of stone forced the enemy wizard to cast disintegrate at a wall after one or more of his teammates is unable to act usefully, instead of your teammates, you're winning by a large margin.

This is only the case if your team is comprised of more valuable individuals than their team.
aka, 5 PC team vs 1 BBEG wizard, trading your actions your team wins.

but if its BBEG with his 10 elite guardians who all have PC class levels and are well built, trading your action for his means you lose.

Also, the "controller" does a lot more then just put up walls. buffs and debuffs are also a major part of it, and enchantment can be used to both buff and debuff. And cloudkill is a save or die.
Basically, don't misrepresent it as "either you are casting charm person/dominate, or you are casting every other good spell and tactic".


Mechanical relevance aside, I often ban Enchantment out of moral principle. It is my opinion that Enchantment is easily the most evil school of magic, worse than the foulest necromancy. Robbing a thinking mind of its ability to think and choose for itself is a heinous crime in my eyes.

Sure, Slay Living will kill you, but look at what spells like Feeblemind, Dominate, or Mind Rape/Programmed Amnesia can do. There are fates worse than death, and most of them are Enchantment spells.

I completely agree in this regards actually. Necromancy is cartoonist "evil"... friendly and safe for the whole family.
Mind control is the uttermost of horror and evil and depravity and most of the school should have the [evil] descriptor.


Undead are an extremely threatening group of creatures, and they're not just creatures. They're insanely likely candidates for BBEGs and the like. Vampires, you know. Also liches- you do read Order of the Stick, right? Yeah, liches are dangerous. Then there are ghosts.

Also, undead can serve as that big boss monster type thing. The wide variety of undead templates mean that you can pretty much apply them to any creature you want, making a really creepy huge monster to toss at characters. No enchantment on that thing.

and when you come across undead you use other spells... you cast feeblemind on enemy wizards and sorcerers, and you cast undeath to death on enemy undead. You should have a varied toolbox of spells, just because enchantment isn't useful against certain subsets of enemies doesn't mean its useless.

Volkov
2010-03-27, 03:03 PM
the thing is... undead, golems, and oozes are not that much of a threat. If you are facing a diverse set of enemies you will encounter enemy wizards (the BBEG usually) and a bunch of undead, golems and oozes. the enemy wizard is a much greater threat, and he is dealt with better via enchantment then battlefield control... while his minions and mooks are better dealt with via battlefield control then enchantment... well who cares they are minions and mooks.
Golems are the scariest of those but golems also automatically fail against any illusion... make an illusion of a wall and attack it through the wall.

What if the enemy wizard is a lich or an awakened skeleton?

taltamir
2010-03-27, 03:07 PM
What if the enemy wizard is a lich or an awakened skeleton?

use a spell from the other 7 schools?
enchantment is far from ideal, but its not as "useless" as its made out to be.

Volkov
2010-03-27, 03:11 PM
use a spell from the other 7 schools?
enchantment is far from ideal, but its not as "useless" as its made out to be.

Your spells are counterspelled and his Minions and cohorts and lackeys swarm over you and kill you. One of them has intercourse with your corpse.

taltamir
2010-03-27, 03:13 PM
Your spells are counterspelled and his Minions and cohorts and lackeys swarm over you and kill you. One of them has intercourse with your corpse.

oh god that is hilarious!
to be fair though, he could counter-spell your spells regardless.

Tar Palantir
2010-03-27, 03:18 PM
use a spell from the other 7 schools?
enchantment is far from ideal, but its not as "useless" as its made out to be.

It's not that it's useless, it's just less useful than Conjuration, Transmutation, Necromancy, Abjuration, and (arguably) Illusion; thus it is often banned.

Zeta Kai
2010-03-27, 03:23 PM
One reason that I respect Enchantment is that one of my players uses the school brilliantly. If there's anything that he can't enchant, then he'll just go enchant something else, & use his thrall to go beat up the immune creature. Charms, suggestions, & dominations are easily defended against, but not everyone is going to take all of the necessary precautions. And it only takes one chink in the mental armor, & you're just a Will save away from being thrown at some golem that's in the Enchanter's way. I have to steer the campaign far from large cities, or he'll have a large pool of potential thrall-ammo.

The Glyphstone
2010-03-27, 03:32 PM
Enchantment isn't bad, but it isn't on the same level as Conjuration and the like.

My personal favorite is to use a Malconvoker to bind a Balor, and make the following deal: "Give up your spell resistance and fail your save against my next spell, and I'll let you kill my entire party." "I accept." "PROGRAMMED AMNESIA!"

You now have your very own Balor slave.

What exactly are you going to do with an Int 3 Balor? That's how stupid one would have to be to agree to this deal, really, since you didn't say what your next spell would be.

For that matter, Programmed Amnesia is a miserable choice for this because of its 10-minute casting time and the fact that Balors auto-pass the Spellcraft check to see what you're doing.

Volkov
2010-03-27, 03:35 PM
What exactly are you going to do with an Int 3 Balor? That's how stupid one would have to be to agree to this deal, really, since you didn't say what your next spell would be.

For that matter, Programmed Amnesia is a miserable choice for this because of its 10-minute casting time and the fact that Balors auto-pass the Spellcraft check to see what you're doing.

And upon seeing it the balor will say in a calm, but creepy voice "I see what you did there."

AmberVael
2010-03-27, 03:36 PM
For that matter, Programmed Amnesia is a miserable choice for this because of its 10-minute casting time and the fact that Balors auto-pass the Spellcraft check to see what you're doing.

Also because Balors are demons and really don't care about oaths they swore. Chaotic Evil, you know?

"Oh hey, this person is trying to pull a fast one on me."
*vorpal sworded!*

Superglucose
2010-03-27, 03:37 PM
the biggest complain about enchantment is that level 1 spells (protection from X) shut down the whole school.


Everything around CR 15 has this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mindBlank.htm)


A creature with no Intelligence score is mindless, an automaton operating on simple instincts or programmed instructions. It has immunity to mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects)
Lots of creatures are just immune period

All enchantments are either Compulsions or Charms, and the ench spells under level 3 are not instantaneous.

Enchantment is a powerful school, but there are a large number of extremely easy defenses to it.

TheMadLinguist
2010-03-27, 03:53 PM
The main issue with enchantment is that the bread and butter enchantment spells are duplicated by things in other schools. Consider Suggestion vs. Illusory Script. Same level, but Illusory script is basically suggestion at will.

Godskook
2010-03-27, 04:10 PM
This is only the case if your team is comprised of more valuable individuals than their team.
aka, 5 PC team vs 1 BBEG wizard, trading your actions your team wins.

but if its BBEG with his 10 elite guardians who all have PC class levels and are well built, trading your action for his means you lose.

You'll note that my previous example has both the enemy caster and his teammates losing actions.


Also, the "controller" does a lot more then just put up walls.

I wasn't as much giving a description of the BC concept as I was answering your comments on the flaws. You mentioned walls, I defended them. That simple.


buffs and debuffs are also a major part of it[control], and enchantment can be used to both buff and debuff.

Um, most of us don't lump buffs and debuffs into battlefield control.


And cloudkill is a save or die.

1.Cloudkill is a multi-threat, which is why its such a good spell.

2.While it can be a SoD, most of the time it'll be a Debuff/BC spell(remember, it gives all the benefits of Fog Cloud, on top of the con damage and other potential effects).


Basically, don't misrepresent it as "either you are casting charm person/dominate, or you are casting every other good spell and tactic".

I just...ugh. This makes me think you didn't even read what I wrote!

Greenish
2010-03-27, 04:28 PM
enchantment is far from ideal, but its not as "useless" as its made out to be.Please give us an actual example of someone calling enchantment "useless". No school of magic is useless (they're all magic, after all), but some are better than others, and when you have to drop some, you'll choose the ones which offer the least. Evocation is jam-packed with double-threat damage+BC spells, but it doesn't offer anything other schools couldn't duplicate. Same goes for enchantment: it's good, it's great, but it's less than optimal, like you admitted yourself.

Aron Times
2010-03-27, 05:02 PM
Watch Code Geass, and tell me how useless Enchantment is.

Nero24200
2010-03-27, 05:17 PM
Not a big fan of Enchantment for a few reasons.

It's very hit and miss, since if it work's it's powerful, but if it doesn't it's useless. A fireball that doesn't down the foe will still knock some hit points off unless it has immunity or evasion, a summoned creature will get another chance to do something if it fails the first time, and spells like Mage Armour or such always work - it's just a question of how long and if it's dispelled. Enchanments on the other hand...not so much.

Also, they tend to be more "DM Fiat" spells. I like knowing that if I launch a disintegrate ray at a foe that it'll do 2D6 damage per level or 5D6 on a succesful save. However, with enchantments, some of the reprecussions can become hard to guess.

elonin
2010-03-27, 06:26 PM
Not a big fan of Enchantment for a few reasons.

It's very hit and miss, since if it work's it's powerful, but if it doesn't it's useless. A fireball that doesn't down the foe will still knock some hit points off unless it has immunity or evasion, a summoned creature will get another chance to do something if it fails the first time, and spells like Mage Armour or such always work - it's just a question of how long and if it's dispelled. Enchanments on the other hand...not so much.

Also, they tend to be more "DM Fiat" spells. I like knowing that if I launch a disintegrate ray at a foe that it'll do 2D6 damage per level or 5D6 on a succesful save. However, with enchantments, some of the reprecussions can become hard to guess.

How is Illusion that different from enchantment? Many of it's spells allow you to do just about anything within the senses that are within the bounds of the spell.

T.G. Oskar
2010-03-27, 06:43 PM
This is only the case if your team is comprised of more valuable individuals than their team.
aka, 5 PC team vs 1 BBEG wizard, trading your actions your team wins.

but if its BBEG with his 10 elite guardians who all have PC class levels and are well built, trading your action for his means you lose.

I have a little trifle with this. Certainly, you are facing a potential TPK situation in here. This is not the situation that you might be looking for, considering that you're technically facing a CR 5-6 levels beyond your own?

Consider what you have said. BBEG + 10 elite guardians. I presume these aren't people that took Fighter levels, given your purpose of being "well built". Well built means several things.

I'll go with "BBEG scryed on the party and took two antitheses of each party member for every one of the player characters". So, if your meat shield is a well built Ubercharger, you'll have a Chain Tripper AND something else to counter it. They're "well-built", so you made them to either be a challenge or be on the same degree of optimization; if the party has a Batman Wizard, you can expect either the same degree of optimization on the entire party or an average enough that the end result would be superior to all party members except the Wizard. And that's just the 10 party members; quite probably the BBEG Wizard is on the same level of optimization. That's not a fair battle; that's a DM saying in very mechanical terms "rocks fall, party dies".

Now, enchantment-wise...I don't say enchantment is a bad inversion, but I agree with the rest of the people around. If I were to specialize, I wouldn't get Enchantment for more than one reason. I wouldn't be an Enchanter because I don't want to be weak where the action really is (battle) by the time I face mindless undead, oozes, plants and constructs. That alone cripples a good deal of my spellcasting; at least 9 spells of the list are potentially worthless in the battle (the extra slot for specialization), and the benefits I may seek for enchantment will be unavailable (Spell Focus, GSF for example). If I were to choose another specialization, I find that there are things in Necromancy that may justify banning Evocation. I couldn't ban Abjuration because that takes away Dispel Magic, Resist Energy, Shield, Superior Resistance and Maw of Chaos between others. Conjuration nulls Teleportation and the orb spells. Transmutation is a mistake to ban, since it takes away Polymorph, Haste, Enlarge Person, Rope Trick, Slow, between others. And I cannot ban Divination (and rarely understood why, since in old sessions you couldn't ban Lesser Divinations nor specialize on those either). So it's either the boom-boom spells, the mind-warping spells or the death-themed spells.

Then there's...ethics? I personally don't find Enchantment as a bad school with spells like Whelm or Hideous Laughter, but you reach Programmed Amnesia or Dominate Person and you draw the line right there. Such things happen with Necromancy as well; I approve of Bestow Curse, but not so much of Create Undead as a player. Evocation? I like to make things go boom and I have no qualms at it so as long as I point it at the bad guys, so that would probably be the least I'd negate, even if there's an Illusion spell that essentially duplicates the entire school. Then again, as people have mentioned here, Enchantment is more easily resisted than Evocation...

Having said that, I find stuff like Hideous Laughter and Irresistible Dance to be awesome "control" spells, were it not because of their almost prohibitive restrictions. The concept of blocking pretty much all of the Enchantment spells with a 1st level spell that has a lot of access (I mean, you can get Protection or Magic Circle against X as a permanent class feature if you look closely, not to mention in several magic items...) doesn't help. The fact that being mindless or having Mind Block doesn't help. The idea that, to go safely, you need to have an insanely high DC for those spells or else risk losing your turn doesn't help. The fact that Enhancement spells offer nothing when failed doesn't make them invaluable for me (they can be made scrolls for all I know, much like most of all D&D spells). Top to that is Hideous Laughter being a low-level spell, which means already having a low DC (or perhaps a much higher through Heighten Spell, but you might want Heighten Spell for a really effective spell that could use the DC boost), and you can see why Enchantment doesn't get much love.

Enchantment, most like Illusion, requires to be creative. An enchanter that goes for Heroism or Rage may have a better chance than one that goes for mind-domination spells. Hold Person is a great spell; Mass Hold Person is much better; Mass Hold Monster is the best. If you can find ways to deal with people that can be mentally affected, the latter is a spell that potentially ends battles. A freely Chained Hold Monster may get you similar results much earlier, much better results if you can increase the save DC to insane levels. But it requires that finesse to know how to maximize the effect of those spells. It also requires knowing when it's better to use X enchantment spell over Y enchantment spell. Finally, it pays to know that you really need to be very creative with some of the spells, namely the Charm X spells and Suggestion. If you can't work effectively with those spells, then Enchantment is bad. BAD. Conjuration and Transmutation are easier to handle in that regard, because their effects are pretty easy to understand.

Which is why Enchantment is not so liked. It is a complex school to play with, full of potentially game-breaking spells that have far too many restrictions, and that have one too many defenses against.

Darth Stabber
2010-03-27, 07:14 PM
Nobody worth their salt will call enchantment useless. But when you specialize as a wizard you give up schools, so why not pick one that is useless against a quarter of the monster manual, and one that has nothing but explosions. There you go, now you can be good at one of the best schools, Transmutation or Conjuration.

To argue that enchantment shouldn't be dropped from a power game perspective means you must convince people that it is better than at least one other school (I take it as granted that it is better than evocation though YMMV). Necro is useful for a wide variety of things, and you can be good and still use enough to make it better than ench. Divination can't be banned. Trans and conjuration are the schools of the gods. Abjuration can stop nearly anything and has some nice battlefield control to boot. and Illusion is good because shadow evo gives you all the spells you banned from evo and has enough good control elements to be good on it's own. So if you have to ban two schools the obvious choice is evo and enchantment.

Outside of a powergaming perspective, it really doesn't matter (although you still should not ban trans or conj since there is too much there too lose). And from a pure roleplay perspective an enchanter is just as good as a transmuter or evoker. Now for generalists and Sorcerers it really doesn't matter what spell is in what school, and the whole debate is moot.