Three questions about wizards.

[Mystic Muse]

1. Where would the prices be for buying spells to add to your spellbook?
2. Is a Blessed Book a worthwhile investment?
3. What exactly does Focused Specialist do? I'm just having trouble with this mainly. "You lose one spell slot from each level of wizard spell you can cast. If you later gain the ability to cast higher level wizard spells, you lose one spell slot from each new level of spells you can cast."

Does this mean you can only gain one new spell upon level up instead of the traditional two? If not, what exactly does losing spell slots entail for a wizard?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. Right here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm); to copy from an NPC's spellbook/library, it's spell level x 50 gp. To put them into your spellbook, it's an extra 100 gp per page, 1 page per spell level. That means 150 gp per spell level total to add a new spell to your spellbook, assuming you can find a helpful enough NPC/organization to sell you knowledge. Otherwise you're buying a scroll of a given spell, and still spending 100 gp per page.

2. Nearly always, yes.

3. Focused Specialist gives you -1 spell slot per spell level from your general spell slots, and +2 spell slots per spell level that can only be used to prepare spells of your specialty school. It has absolutely no affect on your new spells learned when you level up, only how many you can cast each day.

[Hirax]

To clarify focused specialist, the +2 specialty spells is in addition to the +1 from regular specialization, for for instance once you've maxed your 1st level spells per day, you get 3 spells that can be from any school, and 3 from your specialty school.

[Endarire]

Focused Specialists are sometimes worth it. Conjuration (especially for Malconvokers), Transmutation, and Illusion (for Shadowcraft Mages) are the most worth it.

Unlike a 'fixed list caster' (Warmage, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer), you still have access to the remaining Wizard schools and you're still a Wizard! You may lose access to half the schools, but the remaining schools will make up for it if you're wise as your Wizard.

[nyjastul69]

To clarify focused specialist, the +2 specialty spells is in addition to the +1 from regular specialization, for for instance once you've maxed your 1st level spells per day, you get 3 spells that can be from any school, and 3 from your specialty school.

The focused specialist to which you're refering can cast 3 spells from any school, or any non-prohibited school? My understanding is that a focused specialist can't cast spells from prohibited schools.

[Hirax]

Er, non-prohibited, yeah.

[nyjastul69]

Er, non-prohibited, yeah.

I assumed that. There is however a chance you had a work around I was unaware of. I was hoping though. :smallfrown:
It's also good for the sake of clarity.

[Hirax]

Well, there's the feat line in Lost Empires of Faerun, but a 3 feat investment to get a school back is probably not worth it.

[Acanous]

FS Illusionists lose the least here, ban Evocation, Conjuration and Enchantment. Use shadow variants for the first two. The Conj ban hurts the most, but if you're going Killer Gnome it's not going to matter anyhow. Plus you keep Transmutation and Abjuration, two of the best schools.

So really you lose out on one school and two subschools, but cast like you're spontanious.

FS Conj into Malconvoker is pretty good, but keep in mind you *Need* to keep Abjuration for Circle of prot from X, it's neccesary for Planar Binding.
Which means you get Conj, Div, Abj, pick one other school, rest are banned. Most people take Transmutation, but there's a decent argument for Illusion.

FS Transmutation is probably the best possible straight-wizard build. There's a substitute class feature in the PHB2 that allows you to pick one non-transmutation spell every 5 levels and treat it as a transmutation spell. That means you can ban pretty much any other school you want, and still get the signature spells from it. (Like Contingeancy from Evocation, Greater Teleport from Conjuration, Greater Invisibility from Illusion, etc)

There is a three-feat tree from Lost Empires of Faerun (I believe, it's been a while) that gives you, in this order: 1. A single spell from a prohibited school
2. Ability to cast scrolls/use completion items from a prohibited school 3. Full access to your prohibited school.
This means if you're Human and using flaws, you can have all schools unlocked again at lv 15. Ban Necromancy, it doesn't get anything good 'til level 11 anyhow.

Finally, if you're playing with Pathfinder material, Prohibited school just means it costs 2x GP to learn a spell, and 2 slots to cast it.
That's right. Focused Specialists with Pathfinder solves all your problems.

[Mystic Muse]

FS Illusionists lose the least here, ban Evocation, Conjuration and Enchantment. Use shadow variants for the first two. The Conj ban hurts the most, but if you're going Killer Gnome it's not going to matter anyhow. Plus you keep Transmutation and Abjuration, two of the best schools. Can't use the Shadowcraft Mage. My cousin isn't playing a gnome (I'm building this for him. I'm playing the DM, so technically I could allow it, but I think the other two players would be rather mad if I did.



FS Conj into Malconvoker is pretty good, but keep in mind you *Need* to keep Abjuration for Circle of prot from X, it's neccesary for Planar Binding.
Which means you get Conj, Div, Abj, pick one other school, rest are banned. Most people take Transmutation, but there's a decent argument for Illusion. Focused specialist only makes you lose one additional school. The wizard can keep the three you mentioned, plus Transmutation and Illusion.


FS Transmutation is probably the best possible straight-wizard build. There's a substitute class feature in the PHB2 that allows you to pick one non-transmutation spell every 5 levels and treat it as a transmutation spell. That means you can ban pretty much any other school you want, and still get the signature spells from it. (Like Contingeancy from Evocation, Greater Teleport from Conjuration, Greater Invisibility from Illusion, etc) Unless my cousin is opposed (I think he wanted to play a Conjurer, but I'll ask him this Friday.) I'll probably go with this.

[nyjastul69]

Well, there's the feat line in Lost Empires of Faerun, but a 3 feat investment to get a school back is probably not worth it.

Huh, I own that book but haven't looked at it in years. I didn't realize, or simply forgot, that chain existed. It's, as you said, very expensive. TYVM for pointing it out. :)

[Myou]

FS Illusionists lose the least here, ban Evocation, Conjuration and Enchantment. Use shadow variants for the first two. The Conj ban hurts the most, but if you're going Killer Gnome it's not going to matter anyhow. Plus you keep Transmutation and Abjuration, two of the best schools.

So really you lose out on one school and two subschools, but cast like you're spontanious.

FS Conj into Malconvoker is pretty good, but keep in mind you *Need* to keep Abjuration for Circle of prot from X, it's neccesary for Planar Binding.
Which means you get Conj, Div, Abj, pick one other school, rest are banned. Most people take Transmutation, but there's a decent argument for Illusion.

FS Transmutation is probably the best possible straight-wizard build. There's a substitute class feature in the PHB2 that allows you to pick one non-transmutation spell every 5 levels and treat it as a transmutation spell. That means you can ban pretty much any other school you want, and still get the signature spells from it. (Like Contingeancy from Evocation, Greater Teleport from Conjuration, Greater Invisibility from Illusion, etc)

There is a three-feat tree from Lost Empires of Faerun (I believe, it's been a while) that gives you, in this order: 1. A single spell from a prohibited school
2. Ability to cast scrolls/use completion items from a prohibited school 3. Full access to your prohibited school.
This means if you're Human and using flaws, you can have all schools unlocked again at lv 15. Ban Necromancy, it doesn't get anything good 'til level 11 anyhow.

Finally, if you're playing with Pathfinder material, Prohibited school just means it costs 2x GP to learn a spell, and 2 slots to cast it.
That's right. Focused Specialists with Pathfinder solves all your problems.

No no no no no, never ban Conjuration! Ban the schools that don't have half the good spells. Evocation, enchantment and necromancy are the easiest choices. If you have another party caster who can cover abjuration, you could lose that rather than necromancy. But you should never ban conjuration or transmutation.

[Mystic Muse]

Banned Schools are going to be Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy.

[ericgrau]

Ban Necromancy, it doesn't get anything good 'til level 11 anyhow.
Ray of enfeeblement becomes my favorite 1st level spell starting roughly level 5. Works well empowered. Effectively takes a single tough melee foe out of the fight without a save. Sure he can try, but it won't go well.

Some other necromancies I love: false life, vampiric touch in spell storing weaponry, enervation, magic jar, wail of the banshee. Some of these can be empowered too. Waves of exhaustion, the various undead raising spells, circle of death and clone are ok. I prefer false life over, say, mirror image because you can cast it in the morning and get a nice pool of HP on your d4 self. Roughly the first 3 rounds decide a fight, so blowing the primary 1/3 of your offense on defense is extremely painful. And during the buffing round I'd rather cast haste.

Actually I find less favorite necromancies at higher levels, without much on spell levels 6-8. What 6th level spell are you referring to? Maybe it's because I prefer no-save effects or area save effects over those that are single target with a save.

I finally decided to say screw trying out quirky new spells this time I'm going to pick all my favorites and the bulk of them ended up being evocation, conjuration, necromancy and transmutation. I realized the only illusion I love is greater invisibility so I took a risk on varying things a bit and banning illusion. It's also fine if you want to to the focused conjurer banning evocation thing. But even if it really is da shiz-bomb, when every build in your circle does it it's fun once and then you risk boredom. I think abjuration, enchantment and illusion have some decent spells but they're the most niche and easiest to go without. I used to say the same about necromancy until I looked past raising undead and death effecting things.

EDIT:

FS Illusionists lose the least here, ban Evocation, Conjuration and Enchantment. Use shadow variants for the first two.
Unless heavily optimized with shadowcraft cheese those are horrible substitutes that should not be used except for utility purposes. It's like saying you don't need a flamethrower because you have a book of matches. No, no, no, no, never for combat, but maybe for campfires. But I like how you terrified everyone by bringing it to its logical conclusion and suggested the ban of conjuration as well.

[Big Fau]

Focused Specialists are sometimes worth it. Conjuration (especially for Malconvokers), Transmutation, and Illusion (for Shadowcraft Mages) are the most worth it.

Not entirely relevant, but if I were going to be a Focused Specialist in either Illusion or Transmutation, I'd just use the Changeling Wizard racial sub level and specialize in both.