Giving up spell schools

[Cranthis]

Ok so if anyone has read some of my posts, I'm making a Fighter/Wizard/abjurant champion. I'm using focused specialist wizard. I need to give up 3 schools of magic, which can not be Abjuration (obviously) divination (also obvious) or Evocation (I know its weird, but its mostly a combat based character)

What schools should I give up? One will probably be Illusion.

[Deathkeeper]

A lot of people say Enchantment is good to give up since lots of strong enemies are immune to it anyway. I suppose Conjuration and Transmutation are available for sacrifice, but I wouldn't give up both, because those schools are very large and very helpful, even for a combat class.

[TuggyNE]

Strongly consider using Conjuration for your direct damage/battlefield control needs, instead of Evocation. (As a bonus, you get to teleport, summon minions, and so on, and ignore SR for many of your important spells.) Evocation only has a few gems, and they aren't the combat spells (contingency, for example, hurts to give up, but not fireball). In point of fact, Conjuration (and Transmutation) are strong enough to make Focused Specializing in them quite rewarding; it's difficult to run out of good picks in either of those.

Illusion, on the other hand, has a lot of useful buffs, as well as some very helpful non-mind-affecting no-SR control spells.

You could probably safely give up Enchantment, and perhaps Necromancy (loss of spectral hand and various debuffs is unfortunate, but survivable) and Evocation.

[zimmerwald1915]

Have you considered the troika Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy for banning?

[dwlc2000]

If you absolutely can't ban evocation, ban illusion, enchantment and necromancy. If you come to your senses about evocation, swap it for necromancy.

[Boci]

If you absolutely can't ban evocation, ban illusion, enchantment and necromancy. If you come to your senses about evocation, swap it for necromancy.

Evocation has contingency, great thunderclap, wall of force, howling chain and isn't as vulnerable to deathward/immunity to death effects. Keeping evocation over necromancery is a valid choice.

[Cranthis]

I'm not giving up evocation because its a mostly martial character, and the character would not give up the blasty-ness of Evocation.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I'm not giving up evocation because its a mostly martial character, and the character would not give up the blasty-ness of Evocation.

That's what Conjuration is for.

[Shinovar]

This actually shouldn't be too hard. Instead of looking at the schools to give up, look at the ones you must keep. You need to keep Abjuration, Divination, and Evocation. That just leaves two. It would be very unwise to give up both Conjuration and Transmutation and I would suggest keeping both. That means banning Necromancy, Illusion, and Enchantment. If you really need one of those, you can swap either Conjuration or Transmutation for it, but only give up both if you absolutely have to for character concept.

[Boci]

I'm not giving up evocation because its a mostly martial character, and the character would not give up the blasty-ness of Evocation.

A wizard has high intelligence should be able to tell which school would be the most useful to them, and would thus be able to deduce that conjuration for blastiness and utility is a superior choice to evocation. Even if they keep evocation, it wouldn't be for blast spells but more for the force effects of the school + contingency and howling chain.

Still, its your character, and I would echo the choice of enchantment, illusion and necromancery.

[Shinovar]

That's what Conjuration is for.

While Conjuration does give you blasty spells, They aren't as powerful as Evocation. At least not in low-op games. If you aren't fighting things with Fire Resistance at low to mid levels, fireball and scorching ray can be really powerful, at least if damage is all you are after.

[Cranthis]

I believe I will give up Illusion, Necromancy, and Enchantment.

A wizard has high intelligence should be able to tell which school would be the most useful to them, and would thus be able to deduce that conjuration for blastiness and utility is a superior choice to evocation.
They are both blasty, ecovation is just blasty-er.

[Shinovar]

A wizard has high intelligence should be able to tell which school would be the most useful to them, and would thus be able to deduce that conjuration for blastiness and utility is a superior choice to evocation.

Smart doesn't always mean you make wise choices. I know many incredibly intelligent people that make bad decisions all the time. Smart people can still make bad choices once emotions get involved. Yes, a wizard-level intelligence individual should be able to know that conjuration would be better than evocation if they were unbiased, but smart doesn't mean unbiased. And people are stubborn.

[Boci]

Smart doesn't always mean you make wise choices. I know many incredibly intelligent people that make bad decisions all the time. Smart people can still make bad choices once emotions get involved. Yes, a wizard-level intelligence individual should be able to know that conjuration would be better than evocation if they were unbiased, but smart doesn't mean unbiased. And people are stubborn.

Sure, but when it comes to life and death, theres only so much I can buy for a smart person engangering their own life by choosing sub-par options out of stubborness. They aren't always going to make the absolute best choices, but a smart fighter shouldn't be wielding a lance on their underdark raid even if its the traditional weapon of his house.

[Shinovar]

Sure, but when it comes to life and death, theres only so much I can buy for a smart person engangering their own life by choosing sub-par options out of stubborness. They aren't always going to make the absolute best choices, but a smart fighter shouldn't be wielding a lance on their underdark raid even if its the traditional weapon of his house.


He would if that were the weapon he felt most comfortable with, the one he was raised using. People stick with what they are used to. The same would be true for a wizard. He would use the spells that he first learned and found success with.

I get what you are saying. Wizards are smart and they should make good choices. But I don't like the argument that wizards will always do the right thing because they are smart. We don't see it working that way in real life.

[navar100]

People mock evocation, but contrary to their belief it is not an atrocious school. Not every single opponent you will face is energy immune with evasion. Evocation is not the be all end all most superior spells EVAR, but they don't have to be and aren't supposed to be.

Foremost problem is your AC. You will suffer arcane spell failure for wearing heavy armor. To give up Conjuration means giving up Mage Armor. Illusion offers defensive spells of its own such as Blur, Mirror Image, and Displacement. Invisibility doesn't help because you want to fight but Greater Invisibility does. Necromancy can be banned safely. It has nice spells of its own but aren't absolute must have for a fighter/magic user. If your DM will allow Abjurant Champion's defensive AC shtick to work with Mage Armor anyway as logic says it should but RAW says no since it's not an abjuration spells, then keep Conjuration and dump Illusion. If your DM prefers RAW, then dump Conjuration and keep Illusion for your defensive spells. Keep Transmutation because it has nice buff spells. That means you can dump Enchantment.

Shorthand: Dump Necromancy and Enchantment. Dump Illusion if Abjurant Champion works with Mage Armor by DM ok. Dump Conjuration if not.

[Boci]

He would if that were the weapon he felt most comfortable with, the one he was raised using. People stick with what they are used to.

And then he gets caught in the narrow passageway where he cannot use the weapon, engangering his own life and that of his companions because he is unable to help pin down the enemy. Or he doesn't because he thought of that first and realised that staying alieve is more important than family tradition and that he can always wield a lance onc ehe gets back out on the open.


People mock evocation, but contrary to their belief it is not an atrocious school.

Most people belief it to be a sub par school, not an atrocious one.

[Shinovar]

And then he gets caught in the narrow passageway where he cannot use the weapon, engangering his own life and that of his companions because he is unable to help pin down the enemy. Or he doesn't because he thought of that first and realised that staying alieve is more important than family tradition and that he can always wield a lance onc ehe gets back out on the open.

Or he would use his backup weapon. You make it sound like he is only going to use evocation and nothing else. Its just one of his 5 schools

[Augmental]

People mock evocation, but contrary to their belief it is not an atrocious school. Not every single opponent you will face is energy immune with evasion. Evocation is not the be all end all most superior spells EVAR, but they don't have to be and aren't supposed to be.

Evocation isn't completely worthless, but it's definitely less useful than the other spell schools. There are plenty of blasty Conjuration spells, not to mention HP damage is a sub-par strategy to begin with.

[Shinovar]

Evocation isn't completely worthless, but it's definitely less useful than the other spell schools. There are plenty of blasty Conjuration spells, not to mention HP damage is a sub-par strategy to begin with.

It is a sub-par strategy. But if its your chosen strategy, Evocation is the best way to accomplish it. Not only, but the best.

[Boci]

But I don't like the argument that wizards will always do the right thing because they are smart. We don't see it working that way in real life.

Never said that, and real life rarely allows us to witness the minds of people who go to dangerous places full of things that want to kill them for a living. If you wizard studied evocation because they fought it would be the best and it turned out too late not to be, that's believable. If your wizard studied evocation because they didn't intend to be adventurers and then where suddenly thrust into that life and couldn't un and relearn the magic, that's believable. But a wizard knowing putting their life at risk because they like weak spells? That draws some question marks from me.

[darksolitaire]

Spell Reprieve-Item Reprieve-Arcane Transfiguration feat chain from Lost Empires of Faerun allows you to un-ban one of your banned school. Three feats is low price to get illusion school.

[Cranthis]

We can all tell that you are a good optimizer Boci, no need to keep telling us the same thing over and over again. You too Shinovar.

I optimize characters based on the character themselves. And yes it would be a highly intelligent character, but that doesn't mean he has to think exactly like you.

[Boci]

We can all tell that you are a good optimizer Boci, no need to keep telling us the same thing over and over again. You too Shinovar.

I'm also a roleplayer, which is why I offered two ways for a wizard to use evocation whilst still living up to their intellect. Obviously that's kist my opinion, but I thought I'd share it.

[Cranthis]

Yeah, let me clarify real quick. The character was originally a soldier interested in magic, and took the path of a wizard. The person who taught him Wizardry, told him that Evocation was used the most in war, since almost all of its spells are combat related. So he kept that one. He is still keeping Conjuration as well. So this whole conversation has been pointless past a point.

[Boci]

Yeah, let me clarify real quick. The character was originally a soldier interested in magic, and took the path of a wizard. The person who taught him Wizardry, told him that Evocation was used the most in war, since almost all of its spells are combat related. So he kept that one. He is still keeping Conjuration as well. So this whole conversation has been pointless past a point.

For you maybe, but other people read these threads, so they can see two sides of an argument presented.

[Randomguy]

I'd say necromancy and enchantment for sure: Neither have many buffs/combat focused spells that a gish would find useful.

That leaves illusion, which really is a shame, since it has a lot of good combat buffs like mirror image and blur.

Although I suppose you could ban conjuration instead, and use Shadow Conjuration when you absolutely need a conjuration spell. Conjuration is powerful, but most of it's spells are either blasting, teleportation, summoning or battlefield control. You're a gish, so you don't really care about summoning or battlefield control, and you could use items for short range teleportation and shadow walk for long ranged teleportation, and you've got evocation for blasting. You lose out on most SR:No blasty spells, but if something has SR you could just melee it to death.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yeah, let me clarify real quick. The character was originally a soldier interested in magic, and took the path of a wizard. The person who taught him Wizardry, told him that Evocation was used the most in war, since almost all of its spells are combat related. So he kept that one. He is still keeping Conjuration as well. So this whole conversation has been pointless past a point.

But that begs the question: Why would Evocation be the school most used in warfare?

Transmutation has stuff that affects both armies. Even the lowest level wizard can be teamed up with a polearm fighter to cast Enlarge Person on. There's also Haste, Slow, Polymorph, Bull's Strength, etc.

Conjuration has summons and battlefield control. As soon as a conjurer hits 5th level, he can summon 1d4+1 fiendish hawks, with +4 con and str from Augment Summoning. They also have Spell Resistance of 6, which means they have a 25% chance of shrugging off a 1st level wizard's Magic Missile or Burning Hands (neither of which do much damage anyway), plus they can completely ignore Burning Hands thanks to fire resistance 5. Grease and Color Spray are awesome stuff that can be used at level 1. The Evocation battlefield control spells don't really come online until the point where you're mopping the floor with mortal armies, and by then, you have Conjuration battlefield control that's even better. You also have some blasty stuff.

Illusion can be devastating, or it can be a weaker version of Transmutation, depending on how your DM lets you use illusions. But between illusions and buffs, this can bring a lot of control and help.

[Boci]

But that begs the question: Why would Evocation be the school most used in warfare?

Mechanically you have a point, but the case above does not require that evocation be the most used. It merely requires that the PC's mentor believe that evocation is the most used.

This can have a number of reasons:

The wizard academies of the land teach that evocation is the magic of war, and few wizards have ever been able to test this theory.

The king hires evocation heavy wizard for his army, and refuses to listen to those who tell him that other spell casters would be better, believing himself to be an expert on military matters

[Cranthis]

The wizard academies of the land teach that evocation is the magic of war, and few wizards have ever been able to test this theory.

Wow. Way to pull something straight from my backstory, without having read it. You win one awesome point. The only difference is its just one school that teaches this, in my person's homeland there are Arcane schools for everything. A very magic based country.

Yes, I know the various other schools are better, but again, it is due to my characters background. See above quote.

[navar100]

Too bad. Evocation sucks. You're playing wrong. Change your character or don't play. The Forum has spoken!

[Augmental]

Too bad. Evocation sucks. You're playing wrong. Change your character or don't play. The Forum has spoken!

Nobody here is saying that. :smallsigh:

[dextercorvia]

If you are keeping evocation, make sure you get the best out of it. I happen to like it for low level blasting -- which is useful once in a while. Frost Breath is a nice damage + lose a turn spell. The damage isn't as much as it could be, but daze is a good rider. Make sure you pick up the really good stuff, like Wind Wall, Wall of Force, and Contingency. Great Thunderclap is fun, too.

[dascarletm]

A powerful evoker would be a bane to any phalanx heavy army. Allowing their sides calvary a greater superiority on the battlefield. Sure, you don't have the battlefield control of the conjurer, but if you were to have a squad of 10 or so lvl 5 Evokers you would have 20ft. radius bursts of death all over the place. Yeah the conjurers got the single target killers with the orbs and delicious Web (which sadly in the plains of battle wouldn't work unless you got good terrain for it), but the en' mass death dealing to large groups of troops, delicious. Lots of versatility in area effects could be real useful.

For a Gish though, if you are focusing your damage to be in your weapons I say keep it that way. You'll probably get more use out of other spells than evocation. If you want to have the versatility in AOE and force spells go with it though. Contingency you can get with craft contingency, though.

[Deathkeeper]

I don't see a problem with using Evocation. After all, wizards in-universe don't necessarily think that it's a weak school, only "we" do. Add that to the fact that he's a soldier with a martial mindset, direct damage might be what he prefers.

[Cranthis]

Too bad. Evocation sucks. You're playing wrong. Change your character or don't play. The Forum has spoken!
Someone needs to calm down.

Anyways, yeah, the character would prefer blasty and area of affect. But he is keeping both conjuration and evocation, so he is good.

[Boci]

Someone needs to calm down.

Blue can indicate sarcasm, and I know it does for navar100 because their opinions on the subject are not that. Unless you were calling him out on his borderline passive aggressive and certainly unneccissary "joke".

[Cranthis]

I don't see a problem with using Evocation. After all, wizards in-universe don't necessarily think that it's a weak school, only "we" do. Add that to the fact that he's a soldier with a martial mindset, direct damage might be what he prefers.

Exactly.


Blue can indicate sarcasm, and I know it does for navar100 because their opinions on the subject are not that. Unless you were calling him out on his borderline passive aggressive and certainly unneccissary "joke".

Oh, I had no idea. Sorry. I've only actually used these forums for about 3 days now.

[Boci]

Oh, I had no idea. Sorry. I've only actually used these forums for about 3 days now.

No need to apologize, its hardly a forum wide agreed way of expressing it. And misunderstandings like this do make a case for /sarcasm as a superior method as its easier to understand if you haven't heard of the practise.

[Cranthis]

Either way I'm good, now that I know. Sorry Navar100

[TuggyNE]

Oh, I had no idea. Sorry. I've only actually used these forums for about 3 days now.

Ah, yeah, I have it in my sig to make it clear to anyone when I use blue myself what it signifies.

But back on topic: essentially, your character concept is based on the idea (in-character) that Evocation = blasty awesomeness. Which is, as mentioned, fine; playgrounders tend to be eager* to ensure that players (as opposed to their characters) do not labor under this misconception, so that they can make decisions clearly from two perspectives (in and out of character).

*Or over-eager sometimes. :smallredface:

[Spuddles]

On topic:
Losing enchantment is no big deal. There are some morale bonuses in there, that's about it, and it's a pretty inefficient way to use spells/day. The one big loss there is ray of stupidity, which one hit KOs animals.

Losing illusion hurts, as it can be used to manipulate with the likes of halluicinatory terrain, as well as for subterfuge with the invisibility line.

Necromancy has debuffs, but many of them rely on a save, and honestly, in the time it takes to cast ray of lameness, I'd rather have just hit the thing with a sword a few times. False Life provides a little HP cushion, but nothing much. Grabbing utter control of mindless undead with a second level slot is fun, especially if your DM sends some huge or nasty bruiser at you. It's actually a decent wand spell, given the lack of save.

You pretty much have to keep transmutation if you want a chance at being able to fight competently.

Conjuration lets you do all the truly crazy wizard stuff- travel wherever you want, force demons and angels to be your friend, create matter out of thin air, conjure tentacles and fogs to annoy your enemies. At low levels, you miss out on on grease, glitterdust, and web, which are extremely efficient at handling just about anything that comes your way. At high levels, you miss out on teleport, plane shift, fabricate, planar binding, summon monster, and creating extra-dimensional pocket planes to hang out in. It also lets you blast, albeit relatively inefficiently. You typically trade a spell level to forgo a save or SR, and a lot of targets to forgo whatever's left. The Playground has got massive crush on orb spells, but to be honest, they're really bad, unless you stack a lot of metamagic on them. Against targets they're likely to hit, the piddling HP damage won't do anything. In general, the damage they produce is low. Waste of a 4th level slot and an action, IMO, unless you specialize in the things.

In which case, you're going to be such a metamagic whore, you may as well stack that stuff on a cone of cold and turn the whole battlefield to a blasted out shell.

If you're looking to blast with conjuration, check out Sandstorm. It's pretty decent, with stuff like flaywind burst.

Evocation comes with good options- howling chain, gust of wind, wind wall, thunderclap or something (it forces a bunch of saves, pretty good control spell), contingency, and most of the force effects (immovable objects are pretty cool). Prismatic effects can be nasty, but that takes until higher levels to kick in.

Don't let people tell you you can replicate evocation with shadow fail. That either requires pretty hefty specialization or waiting a long time to throw spell slots away on things you could be using a wand on. You want to disperse that nasty cloud of acid fog? Oh, that'll be a level 5 spell with only a 20% chance of working, or a level 3 spell that requires a caster check, if it's even a magical effect.


That's what Conjuration is for.

If you want to use up higher level slots for less range and fewer targets. Evocation is solid blasty, if only for target rich environments.


Evocation isn't completely worthless, but it's definitely less useful than the other spell schools. There are plenty of blasty Conjuration spells, not to mention HP damage is a sub-par strategy to begin with.

HP damage is ultimately the most optimal strategy. Blanket HP damage immunity only comes with a few tricks, while other immunities are a dime-a-dozen.

Mind you, you need to be both action and resource efficient to make damage a superior mechanical option to other out-of-the-box choices, like battlefield control.


Never said that, and real life rarely allows us to witness the minds of people who go to dangerous places full of things that want to kill them for a living. If you wizard studied evocation because they fought it would be the best and it turned out too late not to be, that's believable. If your wizard studied evocation because they didn't intend to be adventurers and then where suddenly thrust into that life and couldn't un and relearn the magic, that's believable. But a wizard knowing putting their life at risk because they like weak spells? That draws some question marks from me.

Somehow, I don't think smoking all those deadly kobolds out of their murder holes with a highly precise, and lethal, fireball would be considered that weak of a spell.

And then there's the tactical utility of wind wall and gust of wind. It amuses me that many of conjuration's best battle field control spells can be shut down with a second level evocation.


But that begs the question: Why would Evocation be the school most used in warfare?

Because optimized armies that have to deal with optimized wizards are composed of low level creatures using fell shot and being led by slightly higher level bards, crusaders, and swordsages. Dozens of low level fighters won't even be a blip on the CR radar for a mid level party, but for the party wizard that takes the advice in this thread, they'd get HAMMERED.

I have really laid the hurt down on level 10-13 parties using masses of highly optimized low level humanoids with ranged weapons. I think the MVP was a Warmage, as fireball was guaranteed to kill lots of guys. The rogue with a wand of wind wall did real well, too.

[only1doug]

Too bad. Evocation sucks. You're playing wrong. Change your character or don't play. The Forum has spoken!


Ah, yeah, I have it in my sig to make it clear to anyone when I use blue myself what it signifies.


If you have to tell people its sarcasm then you are doing it wrong.

[TuggyNE]

If you have to tell people its sarcasm then you are doing it wrong.

Now my head hurts.

[Boci]

Somehow, I don't think smoking all those deadly kobolds out of their murder holes with a highly precise, and lethal, fireball would be considered that weak of a spell.

Congratulations, you've thought of a situation were blasting is strong. A slightly contrived situation given the requirement of line of sight and the liberal assumption reguarding smoke, but its one all the same.


And then there's the tactical utility of wind wall and gust of wind. It amuses me that many of conjuration's best battle field control spells can be shut down with a second level evocation.

And this is what people say: evocation's best spells are not the blasty ones. As for GoW beating the fog line of spells, that makes it useful, but limited and is not in of itself an argument for evocation over conjuration.

[Acanous]

For a Gish, I'd keep Transmutation, Necromancy, and Illusion. Evocation does not help you swing your sword. It does something else entirely. I'm not saying it's bad, just that it does not synergize.
Likewise, Conjuration has nothing that helps you swing your sword, and you've got regular armor, so Mage Armor isn't going to help you.
Enchantment does not help you swing your sword. It has one or two buffs (Heroism, hero's feast, greater heroism) but you can get a bard or cleric for that, and really, mind control isn't what you're looking for with this concept.
Abjuration helps your Defenses. Transmutation helps with your Offense. Illusion can help with both and cover gaps if you banned Evo and Conj. Necromancy has a number of good spells that synergize with you swinging your sword. Get a Sword of Spell Storing and toss in Vampiric Touch.

Now, if you want to be Battlefield control, then sure, keep Conjuration, Evocation, and Illusion. But why, in that case, did you go Fighter at all?

[Boci]

Get a Sword of Spell Storing and toss in Vampiric Touch.

Bloodstone works better. It can only store vampire touch, but its auto empowered.


Now, if you want to be Battlefield control, then sure, keep Conjuration, Evocation, and Illusion. But why, in that case, did you go Fighter at all?

Because sometimes its fun to lock your enemies down and then hack and slash them, rather than deligating the second task to your party members?

[Thrice Dead Cat]

A minor note that may help: Dragon Magazine has a feat to recover three spells from a lost school. I am unaware of the number of said magazine, however.

The other option is from Lost Empires of Faerun, which has a feat to recover a spell from one lost school upon taking it. There's also a small ptree to get back the entire school, but such would demand 10 levels in the wizard class proper, sadly.

[Spuddles]

Congratulations, you've thought of a situation were blasting is strong. A slightly contrived situation given the requirement of line of sight and the liberal assumption reguarding smoke, but its one all the same.

Fireball is a spread. It doesn't need LoS. It also has a very explicit area, doesn't move around, and doesn't hang out and threaten your own men. I can see the appeal of it for a military man.

"Smoke out" is a slang term, though now that you mention it, fireball does explicitly set things on fire, and fire hazards also come with smoke hazards. But I meant the 20-40 damage that will kill a bunch of low HD, but dangerous, foes.


And this is what people say: evocation's best spells are not the blasty ones. As for GoW beating the fog line of spells, that makes it useful, but limited and is not in of itself an argument for evocation over conjuration.

It really depends what you're going to be doing, I guess.

[Boci]

Fireball is a spread. It doesn't need LoS.

Yes, but the origin point does.