Improving (Greater) Spell Focus

[MesiDoomstalker]

I've always been miffed about how weak the Spell Focus line of feats is. A minor benefit that only actually benefits a few schools (most of which are weak because of their dependence on saves). Schools like Abjuration, Divination, and Necromancy and Transmutation to a lesser extent get little benefit from the feats as few if any spells on the list have a save to begin with. Not to mention a culmative +3 won't do much.

So I propose (Greater) Spell Focus give a specific benefit to a given school (and only spells from that school). These benefits should patch up holes in the schools effectivness, such as ignoring immunity to mind-effecting to a degree for Enchantment, or improve upon its strengths. So lets look at each school and figure out its strengths and weaknesses and how to improve or minimize them respectivly.

Abjuration: Very few spells that actually allow a save as it is mostly protective spells. Lot of buff.

Conjuration: Strong school already. Plenty of No SR/No Save spells, summoing, teleportation. Not sure of any 'weaknesses' per sae.

Divination: Little, if any, directly offensive spells. Only a few actually provide a save, most have time consuming casting times.

Enchantment: Primarily (read: almost exclusively) [Mind-Effecting] among other subcategories that have a myriad of ways to be immune. Language-Dependent is another that is easy to be 'immune' to because of language barriers. But, plenty of spells allow a save.

Evocation: Almost exclusively Duration:Instananeous, Ref: Half, SR: Yes across the board. But good damage output.

Illusion: Highly flexible but [Pattern] and [Phantasm] are all [Mind-Effecting] and thus same issue as enchantment.

Necromancy: Lots of Ray-based debuffs and Death Effects (that allow a save).

Transmutation: Lots of buffs and a few Save-or-Die effects. No universal weaknesses I can see per sae.

Playgrounders, any advice on how to fix or improve a school, universally or mostly so, in two feats? Any glaring oversights in my quick analysis of the schools that should be mentioned?

[Andion Isurand]

How about offering a choice between +1 DC and +1 caster level each time you cast a spell from the school?

[nedz]

The cumulative is +2 not +3; unless you are a Gnome casting Illusions say.

CDiv also contains alignment based Spell Focus feats though not a Greater version of these. BoED does contain a slightly improved version of the Good flavour, but its a very minor bump.

These feats are only really of interest to characters who specialise in spells with saves from a particular school (or type). If no such spells exist then that feat is redundant.

For summoning: Spell Focus(conjuration) is a pre-req for Augment Summoning, and Imbue Summoning also IIRC. Whilst this is a feat tax it is still a reasonable option.

[MesiDoomstalker]

How about offering a choice between +1 DC and +1 caster level each time you cast a spell from the school?

That is exactly what I want to do. I'm just not sure how to do it. I'd rather avoid generalizing it becuase it won't be able to address each school individually.


The cumulative is +2 not +3; unless you are a Gnome casting Illusions say.

CDiv also contains alignment based Spell Focus feats though not a Greater version of these. BoED does contain a slightly improved version of the Good flavour, but its a very minor bump.

These feats are only really of interest to characters who specialise in spells with saves from a particular school (or type). If no such spells exist then that feat is redundant.

For summoning: Spell Focus(conjuration) is a pre-req for Augment Summoning, and Imbue Summoning also IIRC. Whilst this is a feat tax it is still a reasonable option.

I wasn't looking for more Spell Focus options as written. I wanted to know if the Playground had any ideas how to improve the school by the cost of a feat or 2 and call it Spell Focus.

[Randomguy]

These already exist, kind of. They just aren't called spell focus. There's a feat that improves every school in complete mage: Unsettling enchantment, Dazzling Illusion, Cloudy Conjuration, fearful necromancy, and the like.

[Godskook]

1.You're really under-valuing the benefits the feats give to a save-dependent god-caster. Spell DCs, in casual play, are rigged in a caster's favor already, and adding to this by more than minor amounts is dangerously close to making the saves pointless.

2.I agree that there should be spell focus alternatives for no-DC spells so that a Transmuter can be recognized as an Archmage without needing to get the normal feats, but it should come from a different feat.