What schools to ban on a Deathwalker Necromancer?

[Giegue]

As the title asks. For those who do not know, the Deathwalker is one of three "classes" that are essentially necromancy specialist wizards that trade their bonus feats and first level class features for special abilities focused on necromancy. They still, however, have all the benefits of a necromancy specialist wizard as well as the drawbacks, and that is where I am stuck.

As I love minions, the Deathwalker immedatly stuck out as interesting. It not only gets rebuke undead(Though this dosen't come online until level 15 sadly), but another ability that allows them to control skeletons and zombies beyond their control limit. They also get piles of undead-esc properties many of which really help bolster saves and defense. However, where I am stuck is what schools to ban. Necromancy, obviously, is not an option. I've already decided to eschew enchantment, since illusion is the more valuable of the two "mind effecting" schools. However, my second school I cannot choose. Most people would say evocation, but I plan on taking arcane disciple to get both desecrate and early animate dead, and since desecrate happens to be evocation if I banned it I would not be able to cast it, and desecrate IMO is a very important spell for a minion-based necromancer. In addition, cutting off evocation means I lose healing for my minions as the only way a wizardly necromancer can really heal their undead is through the lord of the uttercold feat, which I did plan on building towards.

So, my question to you all is what should be my second banned school? Any help would be appreciated.

[Malvanis]

Obviously since you have already ruled the "go to" schools for banning you either have to pick abjuration, conjuration and tranmutation. Out of these your best bet would be abjuration, though you would take a major hit. I would say ban evocation, or if absolutely not, illusion. Otherwise you will have to ban one of the good schools. I would not recommended this. However, there is a three feat chain in Magic of Faerun that allows you to regain a banned spell school. I forget with this feat chain is called, sorry.

[dascarletm]

Abjuration: Lots of good defensive buffs, as well as many good anti-caster spells such as AMF and dispel line... Hard to drop, but livable

Conjuration: Being a minionmancer you need this one, even though the majority of your minions will be Necro spawned. There is just too many good spells to drop. Can I get a teleport?

Divination: Non-option

Enchantment: Your first choice to drop

Evocation: As you said normally a solid choice of drop (though there are a few gems, Contingency?). As you are going to heal with this that makes it doubly hard, also Fel animate, but you should use that on like acid splash.

Illusion: Good buffs, Blur, Mirror Image, Blink, etc. Makes losing Abjuration easier

Necromancy: Your chosen specialty

Transmutation: My favorite school. Keep it.

I'd drop Abjuration, but if you would reconsider keeping evoc, I'd drop that. I'd look for other ways to heal (cleric cohort, wands, inverse belt of healing...).

[papr_weezl8472]

My advice would be to drop Evocation anyway, and pick up Desecrate from some other source (like a ring of desecration (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x).) You can power Lord of the Uttercold through Conjuration or, as you've kept Illusion, through Shadow Evocations. The only thing you're losing that's not easy to replace is Contingency, honestly.

[Randomguy]

I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to cast desecrate from Arcane Disciple even if you banned evocation. The banned school only applies to wizard spells, so a wizard that banned evocation and took a bunch of cleric levels would be able to cast it. It seems to me that you'd be able to too.

And Lord of the Uttercold applies to any spells with the cold descriptor, not just evocation spells, and there are enough damage dealing, cold conjuration spells to suit your purposes, like Zone of Glacial Cold from frostburn, Lesser Orb of Cold and Orb of Cold.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would go ahead and ban illusion. Yes, it's a great school, but mind effecting powers are weak and illusion really has a hard time at later levels.

[Giegue]

I'm honestly not sure about the desecrate thing, If I don't lose desecrate from dropping evocation, it is an option I suppose. If I do, however, then no, evocation cannot be banned. Desecrate is ABSOLUTELY 100% NEEDED for this character and I HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE WITH A BURNING PASSION character builds that are reliant on items for a key component of what they do(which is why I never play fighter types) so I DO NOT want to be reliant on an item to get desecrate. End of story.

As for illusion, I suppose it would be the next most viable ban, but losing illusion hurts hard at low levels. Higher levels, yes, illusion becomes less potent but most of the best low level spells(invis, color spray, mirror image ect...) happen to be illusion. But if I am forced to drop it I may just drop it...

[Fouredged Sword]

At low level focus on fell drain sonic snap, then command undead the wight you create from killing something with negative levels.

[papr_weezl8472]

I'm honestly not sure about the desecrate thing, If I don't lose desecrate from dropping evocation, it is an option I suppose.

You don't lose Desecrate from dropping Evocation. Banning a school effectively removes all the spells of that school from your class spell list, but you're not getting Desecrate from your class list, so you're fine.

[Giegue]

Command undead is useless on anything other then uninteligent undead, you know that right? Rebuke undead is better and totally superior in every way when it comes to intelligent undead. Luckily, this character does get rebuke, at the same strength of a cleric of equal level, just not until level 15. Before that it's a passable option, but once I get rebuke command undead becomes totally obsolete for any undead with intelligence.

So I guess I should ban illusion and Enchantment? That seems to be the best option at the moment, but if anybody knows whether banning evocation would cut off access to desecrate from arcane disciple that would be very helpful as if it doesn't then evocation becomes a somewhat more viable ban.

[dascarletm]

I'm pretty sure that if you drop evoc you lose desecrate. Since the feat says that you add the spells to your class list, and "you may learn theses spells from your class list as normal."

[Giegue]

That sucks. Oh well, looks like I'll just be forced to ban illusion along with enchantment.

[sleepyphoenixx]

What does the rest of your party look like? If you're not the only caster in the group banning Abjuration becomes a lot less painful.
Banning Illusion certainly hurts but having someone in the party capable of casting Abjuration spells is pretty much essential in most campaigns.
I would never even consider banning Transmutation or Conjuration, both schools are far to varied and useful compared to the rest.

[Giegue]

Indeed, either would I. As for the rest of the party this is theorycraft for later use, not for an actual game. The current game I'm in I'm happily running an archivist. This is simply theroycraft for future use on the off chance I actually get to run an arcane caster.

[ArcturusV]

Hmm, strange. I wouldn't have gone for banning Illusions either. I think I agree with Abjuration myself. I mean you said as you level in this (Sorry I'm not familiar with this ACF set), you already gain all the benefits of being an undead. That includes a lot of things that you'd normally want Abjuration for. Mind blank? Well I'm undead, that already immunes me. AMF to avoid stuff that's nasty? Well most of the real nasty stuff is either mind effecting (see above), or targets your Fortitude Save, which as having undead traits you're almost immune to anyway (sans a few corner cases like disintegrate). Since you're a Necromancer, rather than a Conjurer, effects like Magic Circles aren't really needed to bind your minions. Your big loss is on Disjunction and Dispels. Disjunction is something that, if you're with a team they probably don't want you casting anyway. The dispels are admittedly a pain in the ass to lose however. But I don't consider it a crippling flaw.

Illusions though are just insanely handy. I'm always loathe to drop them. They're great force multipliers and with a bit of creativity are a swiss army knife that can accomplish things that normally require a much higher level of power.

[Spuddles]

Command undead is useless on anything other then uninteligent undead, you know that right? Rebuke undead is better and totally superior in every way when it comes to intelligent undead. Luckily, this character does get rebuke, at the same strength of a cleric of equal level, just not until level 15. Before that it's a passable option, but once I get rebuke command undead becomes totally obsolete for any undead with intelligence.

So I guess I should ban illusion and Enchantment? That seems to be the best option at the moment, but if anybody knows whether banning evocation would cut off access to desecrate from arcane disciple that would be very helpful as if it doesn't then evocation becomes a somewhat more viable ban.

It requires a standard action to issue commands to a rebuked undead. Command Undead is as "useless" as Charm Monster, except it can't be blocked with Mind Blank or other things that particularly block Enchantment spells. It can be stopped with Protection from Evil, but so can Rebuke.

[dascarletm]

You get rebuking so late in the game (unless you are starting at almost that level) you should hardly consider it in your school banning choice.

Sadly rebuking (so I hear) is best at low-mid levels.

[Fouredged Sword]

Abjurations can be gained through the party cleric though, or just get good UMD and scroll your way to win. Abjurations that are hard to do without are generally ether long term buffs used to counter particular situations or utility abilities.

At higher level, when you start to feel the pain of missing abjurations, you have undead hords to bury the problem under.