Wrong assumptions concerning the wizard?

[Lactantius]

After reading dozens of handbooks, build tutorials, class comparions and so on, i wonder if the made assumptions in such discussions and handbooks are really true.

To be more specific, I'm talking about the wizard class.

Mostly, a specialist is the recommendation since you lose not much (2 neglectable schools) vs. more staying power (extra spell slots each day).

The following conclusions are therefore made:

1.) You can forego the schools enchantment, necromancy and evocation.

2.) The best school to specialize in is conjuration (and transmutation on rank #2).

3.) Using damage spells is suboptimal since other party members can do that already and a wizard can do so many other "godlike things."


I will comment each topic and try to show why I find some of those statements false (or at least, debatable).

To: Banning schools.
a) enchantment: well, it is true that many creatures types are immune to mind-affecting spells. It is also true that there are a few spells which negate enchantments, too.
But it is also true that you cannot make general guidelines and handbooks without regarding the specific apllication by looking at the adventure, campaign and group play-style.

I bolded this sentence because it fits the whole topic.
For the enchantment school it means that there can occur situations or needs where the problem of the school gets irrelevant.
Some examples:
- the group meets oozes/undead etc: then, the group will handle the situation as they would handle if as if there was no arcane caster around on the first place. Even if we include the wizard to contribute in such fights, he would still be useful by casting some of his non-enchantments (like haste, battlefiled control and so on).
- the adventure/campaign focus is around a city including thematics like intrigue, politics, investigation and all the other urban-related stuff.
In such scenarios, humanoid creatures like humans, elves, halfling and so on appear more often than creatures which are immune to mind-affecting spells.
In such a campaign, enchantments can be very powerful. I would even say that they are en par with divination spells to circumvent city-related obstacles.
So, enchantment is no total waste of a school. It is also not true that you can copy enchantment effects with other schools. Thus, enchantments can be a very unique and effective way to deal with challenges.

b) necromancy: I ban necromancy mostly because of flavor reasons (if I play a good-aligned wizard) but it still hurts.
necromancy has the most effective debuff spells in each spell level. A specialist coul memorize them as a no-brainer each day like this:
1- ray of enfeeblement, 2 - false life/blindness, 3 - ray of exhaustion, 4 - enervation, 5 - waves of fatigue, 6 - fleshshiver, 7 - waves of exhaustion/finger of death 8 - horrid wilting, 9 - wail of the banshee.
I cannot see how other schools produce a similiar effect and therefore making banning necromancy an easy cake.

c) evocation: main argument there is: you must not use damage spells and if you want to, use the orbs.
First of all, we use a house rule which transfers the orb-line to evocation. We did so because it fits the spell description much better since you evoke pure magical energy "out of nothing" instead of conjuring elemental energy. But we also did so to balance out exactly this issue: if you ban evocation, you should really feel that you gave up something (and not circumvent it by using conjuration-based orbs).
Plus, if you use shadow evocation, you must know the evocation spell in in the first place and you must pay material costs in the same way you must pay if for the affected evocation spell (like forcecage). So, try to apply this house rule if you review the issue of banning evocation.

Some would say that even then you would still use a subpar spell by using direct damage spells.
Now, I must take up the cudgel for the evocation school.
I have experienced so many campaigns and sessions where the wizard (and the party) really need the damage spells.
Here some examples (maybe you recognize your own gaming situations here and there):
- Hitting hard: If you as wizard deal damage along with all other damage dealers, the fight may end faster as if you would buff and BFC first.
Happens more often than you think.
- Party split. Yes, we know, you should not split the party. But as the OotS shows, it can happen. Sometimes it is forced by the circumstances, sometimes it is needed.
Therefore, we may not assume that a party is always on their full group strength. I bolded this line cause it fits on any argument here. Handbooks make the failure to assume the full-party-setup. If you relativize this assumption and compare it with real gaming situations, you may change your perspective.
If the party is indeed split, some of this situations can occur:
a) the wizard must act alone (like many high level wizards do in novels btw).
So, he must use his ressources wisely. party buffs lose in their effectiveness. Damage spells and debuffs increase heavily.
b) the wizard is with the group, by one or more party members cannot contribute (by being dead, cursed, blinded, diseased, poisoned, energy drained and so on). Or just one step simpler: the combat went bad and the meat shield/fighter went down.
A new situation which requires the wizard to apply other spells to contribute.
c) sudden effects:
just happened last gaming session. Our party cleric got hit by a fear effect (source could not be found) and ran off, out of the city. The dwarven fighter was still in the middle of the running fight while the flying wizard (me) had to decide what to do: the dwarf came along pretty good, so i had to watch for the cleric since he ran off into the outskirts of the city.
This is just another example to show that the general assumptions and handbook tips would not apply. The game has its own dynamics. And therefore, many tips would not work since they are made for the full-sized-setup of the party.

One special note to fireball:
No, fireball does not suck. Yes, fireball is a fairly strong spell which allows dealing mass damage even in non-confined areas with range: long.
No, the resistances don't apply that often as you would think. Most creatures fail their reflex save since in most times, reflex is their lowest save. Most creatures do NOT have fire resistance/immunity.
Even then, there is a substitute for fireball: scintillating sphere works exactly ike fireball but deals electricity damage.
Thus, yes, you will do full damage to 3 or more creatures.

Lastly, one topic is left: is conjuration still the best school to specialize in?
Take out the orb line and adjust the shadow evocation spells first.
Still, the school is very powerful with its focus on transport spells, summons and battlefield control.
Mechanically, it still may be true that it is easier to take this specialization. But this is only relevant if we talk about the specialist slots (and how to prepare them each day).
All other specialists (even the diviner) can make use of their specialty slots without any problems.
Therefore, the mechanical argument is non-existent after all.
Since no other rules support the specialized school, you should use that school which fits the character them at its best.
So, in my games, a necromancer would take necromancy, an oracle/sage-like build would take the diviner, the antimage would be an abjurer and so on.

Final conclusion:
general assumptions in wizard handbooks can be a good tool to show methods, ways and ideas how to build and play a wizard.
But they are not set in stone. You should reevaluate each absolute statement (like: "that not this spell/school") by comparing it with real gaming situations (instead of assuming a steril laboratory in which the full-sized-party would deal with challenges).

[limejuicepowder]

Pretty well reasoned, though it doesn't make the "assumptions" any less right: in particular, the orb changes in your game does make conjuration less of a complete package, thus it would hurt slightly to lose evocation....but that's a house rule. The handbooks obviously can't and shouldn't be written with house rules in mind.

In the most extreme of cases, a house rule could be "fighters can will someone to die at any range, with no save, though pure martial ferocity." This would obviously change how effective a fighter is, but clearly the handbooks for fighters can't change to include this rule cause it's only in the one game.

Handbooks are guidelines, nothing more. If due to your play style, group, or house rule something in the guide proves to be less good, then don't do it that way. Doesn't mean the guide book should change.

[Mithril Leaf]

You do mention several things that are houserules, so that's in and of itself a poor method of measuring the worth of a class in general. And I'm not sure what handbooks you're reading, but the only time I see specialization in a favorable light is when you are actually going to specialize in a school of magic, where the extra spell per day means more of your shtick. General wizards are usually recommended to be domain generalists, preferable elven. I personally only specialize when going for a shadowcraft mage. The rest of your points seemed at least fairly grounded, although I'm not in an analytic mood at the moment, so others will have to talk about those.

[ArcturusV]

Actually I usually say that the Generalist-Specialist split depends entirely on the campaign levels in question.

For example, if you're playing a level 1 campaign, and say, retiring at level 5... That specialization is (At level 1) an increase of 50-100% of your wizard's raw power. That can make a lot of difference between sitting on your thumbs and doing something at those low levels.

However if you start at level 5+ (like a lot of Play by Post games I see), then you're better off going Generalist. Even schools that you see as safe to axe generally have a few good gems in it, like Contingency, Wall of Force, etc, in Evocation. And you're no longer adding a 50-100% raw increase in your power, but closer to a 10% increase by specializing.

[ryu]

You also seem to lack understanding of a why a fight that ends with less resources spent and risks taken is more preferable than one which ends faster. I can spend two or three damage spells to end things by the second round. I'd much rather use a single spell to incapacitate everything and then let the party curbstomp it at no additional cost even if that takes it to round five or six.

[GreenETC]

First and foremost, you should always look at the situation of your game before deciding on what you do. However, most of your points, while valid, are about as helpful as the guides themselves, which are intended to show the general best options at any given level taking into account everything that will happen.

Take a level 1 Conjuration Wizard with Abrupt Jaunt. He's going to have a higher survivability than almost any other character, considering his get out of jail free card, and he's got awesome Conjuration spells to boot. Now sure, there will be places he'll be less effective, but in general, he's going to be much more powerful than any other option during a level 1 game, where everyone sucks.

The difference between a Conjurer or Transmuter and an Evoker or Enchanter is that he never gets worse. While Oozes and Vermin block the Enchanter's Charm, and an Evoker's Fireball fails on an Efreeti, a Conjurer will just Summon Monster or Solid Fog and a Transmuter will Flesh to Stone or Polymorph. To make an even bigger point, look at 9th level spells in Core for Conjuration/Transmutation vs Enchantment/Evocation. Dominate Monster fails on things immune to mind affecting, and Meteor Swarm is worthless against anything that resists it, which at high levels is everything, while Gate/Time Stop are literally bulletproof and cannot possibly be negated passively by the enemy without severe prep beforehand.

And you can't go claiming how house rules affect how the game is played on the forum, that's practically the number one rule. I mean sure, house rules will change the way you play, but you can't go around saying "But [School] is good when the other schools are nerfed severely, or in this specific campaign setting where everything is stagnantly set to be advantageous to [School]." That defeats the purpose of general help, since your modified game isn't the same as someone else's normal game, so it would skew what would be helpful to them.

[Deophaun]

- the adventure/campaign focus is around a city including thematics like intrigue, politics, investigation and all the other urban-related stuff.
Great. So take voice of the dragon (transmutation) instead of suggestion. And it's not like someone who has banned those three schools has nothing to do. They can scry. They can scout (invisibility, alter self). Low level access to teleportation effects like benign transposition can also be incredibly useful in an intrigue situation.

And the best part is, you don't have to worry about protection from evil completely shutting you down.

So, enchantment is no total waste of a school.
A waste? No. But a school that is easily done without? Yes. The two are different.

necromancy has the most effective debuff spells in each spell level.
Grease and glitterdust are actually part of the conjuration school, not necromancy.

c) evocation: main argument there is: you must not use damage spells and if you want to, use the orbs.
Do you know why you use orbs? It's because they're SR:No and they work in AMFs. So they're the fallback when magic is otherwise being told "no." They get both the SR:No and the immunity to AMFs by virtue of being conjuration spells, not evocation. So, your houserule either doesn't make sense by maintaining the SR:No even though they're now evocation spells, or it negates the very reason to use orb spells in the first place.

Oh, and conjuration also gets blast of flame, arc of lightning, mudslide, and a bunch of other AoE blasty spells with the same benefits as the orbs.

First of all, we use a house rule...Which has no bearing on the general desirability of schools.


- Hitting hard: If you as wizard deal damage along with all other damage dealers, the fight may end faster as if you would buff and BFC first.
Happens more often than you think.
I'm fairly certain glitterdust has ended more fights prematurely than fireball can ever dream.

- Party split. Yes, we know, you should not split the party. But as the OotS shows, it can happen. Sometimes it is forced by the circumstances, sometimes it is needed.
And the wizard can teleport.


a) the wizard must act alone...
Summon monster. Planar binding. What is this "alone" you speak of?

b) the wizard is with the group, by one or more party members cannot contribute (by being dead, cursed, blinded, diseased, poisoned, energy drained and so on)...
This, of course, assumes that the party's current situation would be no worse off if the wizard didn't bother to memorize battlefield control in favor of direct damage.

c) sudden effects...Dispel magic is an abjuration spell, and is the sole reason abjuration is no higher than #4 on the ban list.

No, fireball does not suck....Thus, yes, you will do full damage to 3 or more creatures.
Unless they have spell resistance.

Lastly, one topic is left: is conjuration still the best school to specialize in?
Yes. Removing the orb spells only really hurts the mailman build, which is a direct-damage build and so not really what you're arguing against.

As for your houserule of shadow evocation: you should just ban the spell instead of creating a rule that basically says only wizards get to play with it. Really, what did the lower tier casters ever do to you? And you're also negating another blast-based build (the gnomish beguiler shadowcraft mage), which just makes non-blasting builds all the more desirable.

[Greenish]

One of the reasons people recommend wizards to keep out of blasting is that, well, doing damage is pretty much everything a barbarian or a fighter can do. You can do a huge number of things, so why step on the toes of the poor guys who can't?

[Runestar]

One of the reasons people recommend wizards to keep out of blasting is that, well, doing damage is pretty much everything a barbarian or a fighter can do. You can do a huge number of things, so why step on the toes of the poor guys who can't?

Actually, the point is more that fighters and barbarians actually excel at doing damage, even moreso than the wizard, and for free as well (no slots needed). No point competing with them in this regard, when you are better off complementing them (either by disabling their foes or buffing them with spells like haste).

Anyways, there is no doubt that a DM can purposely carry out the campaign in a manner that negates all your spells prepared. But given what we know about how a typical adventure is played, we can safely assume there will be plenty of combat.

If anything, I would further encourage a player to take the focused specialist variant in complete mage if possible. Give up 3 schools of magic for an extra 2 slots per spell level? Yes, please!!! :smallcool:

[ArcturusV]

Well, I tend to think of the blasty versus other things discussion in terms of the low level adventures I tend to run a lot of. Take your level 1 wizard. Now, blasting. You don't have a lot of options. Spells like Magic Missile at 1d4+1, burning hands at 1d4, maybe a shocking grasp at 1d8 if you want to risk yourself or your familiar in melee.

Now... realize that with the exception of Shocking Grasp... even at level 1 you basically have no realistic chance to drop any enemy you hit with your Blasty Spell of Doom. Even lowly Kobolds and Goblins are realistically going to still be on their feet most of the times that you cast it at them. So you burned up anywhere from half to a third of your offensive firepower (Because lets face it, you're not using level 0 spells to fight generally), in order to lightly injure an enemy that your Fighter/Barbarian/Druid/Etc could probably reliably put down in one swing of the sword.

Now compare to say, Charm Person on a Kobold/Goblin at level 1. Worst case scenario is that they pass the saves. In which case you're worse off than if you tried to blast them. But not by much. Next worst case is you cast it, and your charmed target gets slaughtered by his former allies before he does anything useful for you. You just killed a target with a spell. That already put you ahead of the Blasty Spellcaster. Charmed one gets some attacks in then dies? You got a kill spell plus damage, which is about the same value as three "blasty" spells at this level. Charmed one gets some attacks in, survives the battle, and helps you out next battle? You're hitting the jackpot, and have accomplished what would have taken more than your possible allotment of spellslots in blasting to accomplish.

At least at low levels (Where I do most of my adventures), you see the standard of "Don't blast" actually is important. It's about knowing you're going to face 3-5 encounters a day, and only having 2-3 spell slots good for offensive work. So you have to make those slots count for as much as possible.

Why hit an enemy for 1d4 with a slot, when I can use something like Minor Image to help me bypass an entire encounter? Why hit an enemy for 1d8 and risk melee when I can charm an orc into being my bodyguard for a few hours?

[bekeleven]

No point competing with them in this regard, when you are better off complementing them (either by disabling their foes or buffing them with spells like haste).I'd just like to add that Haste does more damage than Fireball at every level, unless your party melees really, really suck.

Assume a level 6 barb (we'll ignore uberchargers right now... and ToB). 2 attacks. BAB +6, STR +5 depending on items, +1 greataxe, and probably one or two +1 bonuses from an aid spell or a misc. magic item. So low-op level 6 barb is swinging at +13/+8 and hitting for 1D12+8. Enraged, his hits go to +15/+10 and damage jumps to 1D12+11. That's an average of 35 damage per round if all of it hits, or half of that (17) if he misses his lower iterative attack. After all, he's not a shock trooper pouncer.

Now Haste him. If we still assume the same stats, his damage goes up to 52 per round (with the attacks now made at +16/+16/+11). That's 17 extra damage per round, for 6 rounds. And that's even assuming you only have one person in your party using attack actions! The more, the merrier. And him missing his lower iterative just means that your extra attack being at full BAB (and the boost to attacks) matters even more. Obviously, I didn't count criticals in these calculations.

Now look at a fireball. It deals 6D6, or an average of 21 damage. You would have to hit 5 enemies with its full damage to deal more damage than the haste did just by adding attacks to one player, and this is before you realize that haste buffed every member of your party and gave them bonuses to hit, AC, Reflex Saves, and movement. And that fireball damage? It's also Reflex half and SR:Yes.

...Sorry. I've seen a lot of wizards take fireball and go "I'm helping!" and I've had that on my chest for a while.


At least at low levels (Where I do most of my adventures), you see the standard of "Don't blast" actually is important.

And at every level after.

[gomipile]

The mechanical argument is invalid because you houseruled away some conjuration spells? I think that part of your argument undermines your entire position, since you are making a much bigger assumption(banning of the damage spells in Conjunction ration) than the "wrong assumptions" you point out in the rest of your post.

[atomicwaffle]

I'm a mystic theurge. when i took my first lvl of wizard i specialized in transmutation.

INSANELY useful bonus spells (for free)
lvl. 1
FEATHER FALL
ENLARGE PERSON
Expeditious Retreat

lvl. 2
KNOCK
Bull's Strength
Bear's Endurance
Cat's Grace
Eagle's Splendor
Owl's Wisdom
Fox's Cunning
Alter Self
Darkvision

lvl. 3
FLY
Blink
HASTE
Secret Page
Gaseous Form
SLOW
Water Breathing

lvl. 4
Enlarge Person, Mass
POLYMORPH
Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer

lvl. 5
BALEFUL POLYMORPH
Overland Flight
Passwall
Telekenisis

lvl. 6
Mass Buff Spells
DISINTEGRATE
FLESH TO STONE
STONE TO FLESH
Move Earth
TENSER'S TRANSFORMATION

lvl. 7
Control Weather
Reverse Gravity

lvl. 8
Iron Body
Polymorph any Object
Temporal Stasis

lvl. 9
Etherealness
Shapechange
Time Stop


and that's only the CORE RULEBOOK.

[awa]

Now compare to say, Charm Person on a Kobold/Goblin at level 1. Worst case scenario is that they pass the saves. In which case you're worse off than if you tried to blast them. But not by much. Next worst case is you cast it, and your charmed target gets slaughtered by his former allies before he does anything useful for you. You just killed a target with a spell. That already put you ahead of the Blasty Spellcaster. Charmed one gets some attacks in then dies? You got a kill spell plus damage, which is about the same value as three "blasty" spells at this level. Charmed one gets some attacks in, survives the battle, and helps you out next battle? You're hitting the jackpot, and have accomplished what would have taken more than your possible allotment of spellslots in blasting to accomplish.
I can charm an orc into being my bodyguard for a few hours?
Charm isn't dominate very few charmed creatures will turn against allies and you need to convince them to do anything dangerous

[Hecuba]

Long spoiler-ed response to OP.


But it is also true that you cannot make general guidelines and handbooks without regarding the specific application by looking at the adventure, campaign and group play-style.

Handbooks/guides are intended to provide general guidance based on the interactions of the rules. Assumptions should be noted, so that readers can judge cases when they do not apply. Where possible, handbooks should cover common known variations in assumptions. That, however, is not always possible (due to issues of scope and length).
If handbooks were written for each iteration of "adventure, campaign and group play-style," they would be so absurdly specific as to be useless. Moreover such a tool would not be a guide: rather, it would be closer to a decision tree.
The former helps you play you character more effectively. The later would give you the specific decisions you should make-- effectively playing the character for you.


[...]I cannot see how other schools produce a similiar effect and therefore making banning necromancy an easy cake.
Necromancy does indeed have powerful debuffs. It does, however, have its downsides.

It is unusually easy to shut down: death ward will counter most of the particularly powerful options in the school.
While Necromancy has a very large collection of powerful debuffs, there is usually an option in another school that presents a comparable option for a given tactical need.

Moreover, Necromancy (and Abjuration, which is often listed as the other 3rd banned school) isn't chosen because it's bad. It's chosen because it's the least lucrative good option.


[...]main argument there is: you must not use damage spells and if you want to, use the orbs.
While damage is rarely a dominant strategy in 3.5, that is not the primary reason evocation is banned.
Evocation does almost nothing except damage, and most aspects of the damage role can be done (at least to an acceptable degree) by other schools. If this were not the case, it would be much lower on the ban list despite the relatively low priority direct damage.

For example: Conjuration gets Acid Breath at the same level Evocation gets Fireball. It is not quite as good (short range, cone burst vs. long-range radius spread), but it covers a significant portion of Fireball's usage scenario well-enough to effectively substitute in many games.

The only element Evocation has an effective monopoly on is long-range AOE damage. As you point out, long range is one of the chief benefit of fireball (and certain other evocation) spells. That niche should probably be better highlighted, as it can matter (particularly in mass combat scenarios). But is it is very limited scope.

As an aside, the orbs in particular are brought up because they fill specific and important niche better than evocation spells.

And while I agree that this situation makes evocation a desirable target for a house rule, you cannot reasonably expect guides and handbooks to reflect your house rules.



- Hitting hard: If you as wizard deal damage along with all other damage dealers, the fight may end faster as if you would buff and BFC first.
Happens more often than you think.
But unless you are dealing with a long-range AOE-friendly encounter, you do not need evocation to do this.


a) the wizard must act alone (like many high level wizards do in novels btw).
So, he must use his ressources wisely. party buffs lose in their effectiveness. Damage spells and debuffs increase heavily.
Even if damage is the solution here, which is not a given, that is not limited to evocation. Moreover, there are battlefield control options that also deal significant damage.

b) the wizard is with the group, by one or more party members cannot contribute (by being dead, cursed, blinded, diseased, poisoned, energy drained and so on). Or just one step simpler: the combat went bad and the meat shield/fighter went down.
A new situation which requires the wizard to apply other spells to contribute.
[...]
c) sudden effects:

These cases are largely overlapping: they deal with responses to situations outside of you general plan. Such cases make battlefield control and action denial options stronger, not weaker.
And while such situations may indeed force the Wizard to do damage more directly than normal, that option is (again) not limited to evocation.


Lastly, one topic is left: is conjuration still the best school to specialize in?
Take out the orb line and adjust the shadow evocation spells first.
Again, you cannot reasonably expect a guide to account for your houserules. The mere fact that you feel the need to houserule these elements is an indication the Conjuration is indeed an unusually strong choice.


Mechanically, it still may be true that it is easier to take this specialization. But this is only relevant if we talk about the specialist slots (and how to prepare them each day).
Which is precisely what we are talking about, as it is the chief benefit of specializing.

All other specialists (even the diviner) can make use of their specialty slots without any problems.
Therefore, the mechanical argument is non-existent after all.
The fact that non-conjurer specialists gain specialist slots does not change the fact that those slots are more mechanically valuable to specialists.



Final conclusion:
general assumptions in wizard handbooks can be a good tool to show methods, ways and ideas how to build and play a wizard.
But they are not set in stone. You should reevaluate each absolute statement (like: "that not this spell/school") by comparing it with real gaming situations (instead of assuming a sterile laboratory in which the full-sized-party would deal with challenges).


While I agree that you should always consider the realities of your table when building and adapting your character, most of the mechanical complaints you level against the recommendations of the guides are of severely limited mechanical validity.

Moreover, the goal of Handbooks/Guides is not to force you never to make a specific mechanical choice. The goal is to inform you of the mechanical impact of choices.

If you wish to play an enchanter, play an enchanter. Reading the guide won't prevent you from doing that. The guides don't make the choices for you. They merely help make your choice an informed one.

[Fosco the Swift]

Looking through the Pathfinder Core and Player's Handbook, I'd say tranmuters could be more powerful than even Conjurers. Each spell level has more choices from the Transmutation School than any other school on average. Each spell level (excluding 0-level) contains spells to cover about all areas of spellcasting. Use th same two buffs on yourself and you empower your spellcaster past his normal levels. Fox's Cunning boosts your Spell DC's by 2 and Cat's Grace gives you a +2 on hitting with a ray. As a 7th level Conjuerer I find that most of my rays miss by 1-2 points.

[GreenETC]

Looking through the Pathfinder Core and Player's Handbook, I'd say tranmuters could be more powerful than even Conjurers.
It is generally agreed that Transmuters ARE more powerful than Conjurers, simply because Conjuration trails off at higher levels. Excluding Gate, almost all Conjuration spells above 6th level are not good/duplicated by lower level Conjuration spells, while Transmutation gets heavy hitters such as Polymorph Any Object, Reverse Gravity, and Shapechange.

[Eldariel]

Eh, Enchantment is the worst school 'cause its abilities least often work on important characters. Yes, it varies, but most kings? They're gonna at least be protected from Mind Control. Other schools can give you Will SoSs too (starting with Cause Fear, Glitterdust, Pyrotechnics, Slow, etc.) so Enchantment doesn't really give you anything unique beyond Charms and Heroisms up until level 15 where you get Irresistible Dance. It's nice. Very useful in fact. But that doesn't make Enchantment any less easy to drop.

Heroisms are replicable too, and Charms can be gained through Summon Monster-line, Planar Binding or such with relative ease (it's a common Outsider Spell-Like and it's easy enough to act through an intermediary). Also, other classes can give you Morale Bonuses greater than those of Heroism.


Yeah, Evo/Necro have great spells and it's not automatic to specialize but it's still okay. Nobody ever said Wizards shouldn't have any damage spells, just that it's generally less efficient for a Wizard to do damage than a martial class and you're stepping on their toes more. Fireball vs. a horde of weak enemies can seem nice but chances are those enemies didn't pose a threat anyways. There are very few circumstances where it's the optimal solution. And when it is, you'll have to ask if the opportunity cost of having the spell prepared was worth it.

The other half is, Wizards can be optimized for damage and that's quite powerful, actually, but also a great way to make non-casters feel useless if they don't even get to do damage. If you start Planar Binding warriors or doing all the damage yourself, how fun is the game for the warriors? The assumption of "let others do damage" is in part just to enable everyone to play the game and shine in their own job in less experienced groups. If you're split, sure, hire some extra muscle but damage spells are rarely slot-effective without heavy optimization.

Also, Necro debuffs aren't that much better to Trans/Conju debuffs much of the time.

[HunterOfJello]

Looking through the Pathfinder Core and Player's Handbook, I'd say tranmuters could be more powerful than even Conjurers.

The general consensus isn't that Conjuration is the strongest school. The general consensus is that Conjuration and Transmutation are almost equal in strength, but that Conjuration is the strongest school at lower levels and Transmutation is the strongest school at higher levels.

At lower levels, a Conjurer with Abrupt Jaunt has significant advantages over a Transmuter. Later on, transmutation really hits it into high gear and becomes the dominant school with conjuration in a close second. Overall it turns into what level you're playing at and what your preferred playstyle is. Both are amazing choices and Focused Specialists in those schools even moreso.

[erikun]

There are a few common assumptions that bother me about the Wizard class in particular. Just off the top of my head:

1.) Simply choosing the wizard class is an auto-win. Playing a wizard successfully involves not just picking the correct spells, but using those spells at the right time. Especially low-level wizards have a very limited number of spells known, and so unless they want to spend all their time using a crossbow should know when to throw them around. Even a mid-level wizard won't be tossing around spells every round, except in unusual situations.

Even taking a look at the class with best default spell options - the Psion - it's hard to say that the Psion is clearly better than what a Barbarian or Crusader or Druid with Entangle can do. Playing a wizard and managing spells is a bit tricky to do correctly.

2.) A wizard can take out any encounter with a single spell, even at low levels. This is commonly referred to as the "Cast sleep, coup-de-grace" concept, and it does have some major problems. First is that not every opponent will be vulnerable to sleep, and good luck fighting off a skeleton while wielding that non-proficient scythe. Second is that not all combats, not even CR 1 fights, involve a single creature. Four kobolds compromise a CR 1 fight, and it is less likely that all four will fail their will saves.

A lot of comments for this position mention "there is a 75% chance that they will fail their save!" but 75% chance of success means 25% chance of failure. A 25% chance of failing and likely winding up dead as a result doesn't sound like very smart odds to me. Even bringing along a Fighter - yes, a T5 Fighter! - will drastically increase the odds of survivability for the wizard, even against groups twice as large and still gaining the same benefits.


3.) Banning Evocation and Enchantment costs you nothing. Evocation has spells like Wall of Force, Forcecage, Contingency, and the ever popular Magic Missile - a spell that is frequently useful when dealing with enemies you didn't plan for. Enchantment has not only the popular low-level choise of Sleep, but also Charm Person, Hold Monster, and Dominate. They may not work against constructs or undead, but if you're a high enough level wizard to cast them, you can probably find a use for the spells.

4.) Every option is always on the table for every group. Why yes, you venerable Sun Elf [template] point-buy 18 INT Elven Generalist Domain Wizard with the Collegiate Wizard feat does in fact get five spell slots at first level and seven spells known. That doesn't mean that every game will allow all that material, especially games that are not specifically high powered. The idea that a DM "should" grant access to all those benefits unrestricted, when they are also (clearly) unbalancing compared to the standard wizard, is also worrying.

[Augmental]

4.) Every option is always on the table for every group. Why yes, you venerable Sun Elf [template] point-buy 18 INT Elven Generalist Domain Wizard with the Collegiate Wizard feat does in fact get five spell slots at first level and seven spells known. That doesn't mean that every game will allow all that material, especially games that are not specifically high powered. The idea that a DM "should" grant access to all those benefits unrestricted, when they are also (clearly) unbalancing compared to the standard wizard, is also worrying.

And handbooks don't know what your DM's banned or allowed. He could ban entire schools of magic, for all they know.

[Eldariel]

This begins to sound like people think Handbook tells you how to build your character. That's not the point! A Handbook exists just to list you all the relevant options you have in the vastness that is 3.5 and give you an idea of how good each is in comparison to each other, in a game that has a huge variety of power levels in the same shell. What's allowed and what isn't has nothing to do with a handbook.

All the options are evaluated and then you pick what's allowed. It suggests something that's not allowed? Well, don't pick that one, pick something else! I mean, yeah, I know that's obvious but how can that be a problem? I have yet to see a handbook that somehow forces you to play any particular style or build or whatever; they're "how-to" kinda by definition and when they focus on some specific style, that's 'cause they're a handbook of that one thing and thus if you want something else you should be reading another handbook.

[Lactantius]

Lots of replies. I try to handle them one-by-one or bundle then imto one response, as it fits.

First: I know, telling of our house rule would cause a full retaliation of counter-arguments. We could go step-by-step, winding thorugh the magic system of D&D (to be more precisely, magic schools and their balance issue), but that would reach too far.
Just one reminder: the schools themselves are not balanced to each other if our premise is the whole issue of preparing slots as specialist.
That's proven if we look at the number of spells per school per spell level.
Without any doubt, a diviner must pull some more tricks to use his divination specialty slots as effective as a conjurer could do so.
I would go so far to soften up the specialist restrictions around preparing specialty spell in specialty slots to even the diviner and abjurer with the transmuter and conjurer.
But that's just me.

And well, thats the only reason why people keep on recommending conjurers over diviners (though I mention the icy cake of diviners with one school less to ban).
So, if we would not have the whole isse of specialty slots, we could work much easier around the topic of building effective specialist wizards.

That's why I am open minded to new apporaches and house rules. If you think about it, it is nothing other than using two dozen splatbooks to get each and every feat, PrC and spell.

Unfortunately, most answers did not appreciate the approach of putting a staple damage spell like the orb line into evocation.
It is just a win-win-situation: conjurers are still awesome, but not so stupidly awesome that they outshine other specialists. evokers shine more because they can do the whole damage stuff better than others (who banned evoc).
Oh, and one thing to reminder if we talk about house rule vs printed rules:
The 3.0-predesseor of Complete Arcane, Tome & Blood published the orb line at first. And lo! They were evocation spell. All of them! Evoc, Save as ususal and SR: Yes.
It is no secret that WotC totally failed in this aspect as they updated the T&B 3.0 to the CA 3.5 supplement concenring the orb line.
So, my approach is not so much a house rule, it is more a way back to the official rules of 3.0 (where the orbs were handled as they should have).

erikun wrote:

1.) Simply choosing the wizard class is an auto-win. Playing a wizard successfully involves not just picking the correct spells, but using those spells at the right time. Especially low-level wizards have a very limited number of spells known, and so unless they want to spend all their time using a crossbow should know when to throw them around. Even a mid-level wizard won't be tossing around spells every round, except in unusual situations.
Agree to a certain point. We face the problem a wizard faces all the time: the more supplement, the more complex (and powerful) a wizard can get.
The wizard in your example could just have picked up a nice reserve feat and keep spell lobbying all the day.
I just picked up this example to show that you cannot make general assumptions, again.

Eldariel wrote:

Also, Necro debuffs aren't that much better to Trans/Conju debuffs much of the time.
I take this quote as example for some other replies which said that you can swap necro debuffs easily with glitterdust and the like.
Well, in my books, necromancy debuffs are unique at all. If i try to lockdown a fighter or powerful monster, I have ray of enfeeblement. No other spell can reach this effectiveness wich such a low spell level investment (and it scales all the levels).
Enervation is the real king here. If there is one spell for which I would invest in empower spell, split ray and/or arcane thesis, it would be enervation.
This spell just says "boss killer." save debuff, hp debuff, caster level debuff, maybe even death, all in one spell? Show me please which other non-necro-debuff can do that.
Same for fatigue and exhaustion effects. Losing STR and DEX is a staple debuff of Attack, Damage, grapple checks, initiative, ref save, AC and skills. How can conjuration-debuffs do that, I wonder?

ArcturusV wrote:

Well, I tend to think of the blasty versus other things discussion in terms of the low level adventures I tend to run a lot of. Take your level 1 wizard. Now, blasting. You don't have a lot of options. Spells like Magic Missile at 1d4+1, burning hands at 1d4, maybe a shocking grasp at 1d8 if you want to risk yourself or your familiar in melee.

Now... realize that with the exception of Shocking Grasp... even at level 1 you basically have no realistic chance to drop any enemy you hit with your Blasty Spell of Doom. Even lowly Kobolds and Goblins are realistically going to still be on their feet most of the times that you cast it at them. So you burned up anywhere from half to a third of your offensive firepower (Because lets face it, you're not using level 0 spells to fight generally), in order to lightly injure an enemy that your Fighter/Barbarian/Druid/Etc could probably reliably put down in one swing of the sword.

Now compare to say, Charm Person on a Kobold/Goblin at level 1. Worst case scenario is that they pass the saves. In which case you're worse off than if you tried to blast them. But not by much. Next worst case is you cast it, and your charmed target gets slaughtered by his former allies before he does anything useful for you. You just killed a target with a spell. That already put you ahead of the Blasty Spellcaster. Charmed one gets some attacks in then dies? You got a kill spell plus damage, which is about the same value as three "blasty" spells at this level. Charmed one gets some attacks in, survives the battle, and helps you out next battle? You're hitting the jackpot, and have accomplished what would have taken more than your possible allotment of spellslots in blasting to accomplish.

At least at low levels (Where I do most of my adventures), you see the standard of "Don't blast" actually is important. It's about knowing you're going to face 3-5 encounters a day, and only having 2-3 spell slots good for offensive work. So you have to make those slots count for as much as possible.

Well, first of all: if we compare fairly, we should make milestones at the career path. Something like benchmarks at level 1, 5, 10 and 15 (I keep 20 out since most games I know end around lvl 15-17 max).

Then, at your level-1-example, you should work open minded. An enchanter would not use magic missile spells or the like to deal with the problems. It gets better: a enchanter gets the most powerful mass disablers at level 1: color spray.
Heck, this even turns the favor to my side and just shows how good an enchanter could contribute and be effective.

Furthermore, if we talk about this enchantment yes/no-issue, we must trade this enchanter still as a wizard in the first place.
So, he can deal with the typical problem in the same way a conjurer or abjurer would do. He could also make use of glitterdust or grease (why not?).
But because he took enchantment as his specialty it doesn't mean he cannot solve the problems as good as the other no-brainer-specialists can do.

Deophaun wrote:

...Well, you wrote in a very unproductive way by snipping my topics and answering with out-of-context one-liners...
But I try to figure it out:


Originally Posted by Lactantius View Post
- the adventure/campaign focus is around a city including thematics like intrigue, politics, investigation and all the other urban-related stuff.

Deophaun:
Great. So take voice of the dragon (transmutation) instead of suggestion. And it's not like someone who has banned those three schools has nothing to do. They can scry. They can scout (invisibility, alter self). Low level access to teleportation effects like benign transposition can also be incredibly useful in an intrigue situation.

voice of the dragon is ac ool spell, but comes from an non-standard-supplement So, its no typical available spell (even more since if comes in a book which emphasized dragon magic, a DM could rule that these spell are for dragons only, and he could be right).
Plus, you don't follow my tracks, unfortunately. The whole point is that enchantment spells get much more effective if the targets are
qualified (so, no mind protecting stuff).
And besides really, really, really important figures like nobles, guild masters, high priests of a temple and so on, no on has a continous mind immunity effect available.
It is unfair to stretch this in unfavor of the enchantments.
charms and dominates are just very powerful in city adventures because they just work.
Even the counter-argument with will saves is moot. Why? Any other save-based-spell faces the same problem, so it is not a unique enchanment problem. Even then we could go farther: if you specialize into enchantment, it is pretty safe to foresee that such an enchanter would optimize his save DCs. Besides spell focus, the splatbooks offer pretty cool abilites to make charms and compulsions work way better. Check out the ACFs and the master specialist!


- Hitting hard: If you as wizard deal damage along with all other damage dealers, the fight may end faster as if you would buff and BFC first.
Happens more often than you think.

Deophaun:
I'm fairly certain glitterdust has ended more fights prematurely than fireball can ever dream.

I think its too difficult to simplify it that easy. I ran and played encounters where glitterdust turned the favor in the same degree as i have played games where a wizard 6 just blasted with a fireball 22 fire damage.
Remember how high the hp, ref save and fire resistance probability for enemies at ECL 6-7 is.
Oh, and if we allow cherrypicking around with splatbooks (like you did with the teleport answer, which is just level based and therefore no solid answer), I drop the sudden maximize feat at the mentioned fireball.
Now we talk about 36 fire damage at level 6 against 3+ opponents. There are many combat situations I can imagine where this trumps glitterdust (and even haste).


a) the wizard must act alone...
Deophaun:
Summon monster. Planar binding. What is this "alone" you speak of?

Oh, paleez. Stretch it more in your favor, but do it properly. If we talk about a hectic, dynamic situation that caused the wizard to act alone, then we should not rely on a spell with 10 minutes casting time.
Geeez..
And still then,you didn't catch the point. The point was that this wizard cannot use his spells as effective as if his party mates would be around.
haste just for him and his (maybe conjured) summons?
glitterdust, web and other lockdowns if there is still no damage-dealer around who would gaine profit?
That's the issue. There CAN occur situations in which he must use his spells for his own action (to kill/shutdown his opponents).
It's like we play another game now. Party was around? The wizard's spell selection were "Chess." Now he is alone? The game is not chess anymore, it is "Backgammon" now. Get the point?

If you get the point, you will see that there are no blueprints for spell selections. And if there are no such blueprints, then the scaling of specialists changes since you must spread your powers.
And if you spread your powers, we can assume that you would have a spell in every important spell school per spell level (other than banned schools).
And thus, we could go with any specialist since we prepare all other spells, whatever comes.

[koeldflare]

Then, at your level-1-example, you should work open minded. An enchanter would not use magic missile spells or the like to deal with the problems. It gets better: a enchanter gets the most powerful mass disablers at level 1: color spray.
Heck, this even turns the favor to my side and just shows how good an enchanter could contribute and be effective.


I don't post on here very often, but ust an FYI, Color Spray is actually an Illusion spell, which is why the Illusion school is seldom, if ever, recommended for a banning.

[Venusaur]

Enchanters, Necromancers, and Evocators are also less popular specializations because all have fixed-list casters that use those schools. Someone wanting to play an Enchanter might play a Beguiler instead, and Dread Necro and Warmage can fill in for the other two.

[Vaz]

A Conjuror Bans Evocation, so can't Fireball.

It Summons a Monster who can Fireball instead.

It is a bit like 'Why play a fighter, when you can summon a Dire Bear'.

[Fosco the Swift]

Excluding alignment and DM issues with it, I'm surprised how looked over necromancy is for wizards. For 4th level debuff spells, Conjuration gets 1 that is completely worthless- Black Tentacles, and all the enchantment spells are widely agreed to be worthless.
Necromancy Options: Enervation- NO SAVE and 1d4 negative levels, possble kill. Enchantment: Charm monster- will save and your enemy dislikes just a little bit less.
Necromancy: Bestow Curse- Will save vs. -4 att rolls and saves or -6 ability score or etc. Enchantment- will save vs -2 att and saves.
Necromancy: Fear- make your enemies run screaming to a corner. Enchantment- will save and even with a fail 25% chance he'll still attack, and 100% chance if you attack him.

... do I need continue?

[ryu]

Someone isn't familiar with what conjuration says to your pitiful enervation. Enervation gets kicked to the curb by death wards or any natural resistance to such shenanigans. Solid fog, stinking cloud, and tentacles laugh at your petty death wards. Freedom of movment? By the time that's anything but rare I have gate. Conjuration wins.

[eggynack]

That's why I am open minded to new apporaches and house rules. If you think about it, it is nothing other than using two dozen splatbooks to get each and every feat, PrC and spell.

Unfortunately, most answers did not appreciate the approach of putting a staple damage spell like the orb line into evocation.
It is just a win-win-situation: conjurers are still awesome, but not so stupidly awesome that they outshine other specialists. evokers shine more because they can do the whole damage stuff better than others (who banned evoc).
Oh, and one thing to reminder if we talk about house rule vs printed rules:
The 3.0-predesseor of Complete Arcane, Tome & Blood published the orb line at first. And lo! They were evocation spell. All of them! Evoc, Save as ususal and SR: Yes.
It is no secret that WotC totally failed in this aspect as they updated the T&B 3.0 to the CA 3.5 supplement concenring the orb line.
So, my approach is not so much a house rule, it is more a way back to the official rules of 3.0 (where the orbs were handled as they should have).
You seem to be missing the point here. It doesn't matter that moving the orb spells to evocation would be a valid house rule. It absolutely is. What matters is, the orb spells are not evocation. According to the rules, the handbooks are correct in their evaluation. In a theoretical game that is not the game we're playing, evocation would gain a slight edge that it doesn't currently have. However, we're playing the game we're playing, not the game we're not playing. It'd be similarly absurd for me to claim that good clerics make the best necromancers, because I personally believe that the animate dead line of spells should not be evil. You can make claims about how things should be, or you can make claims based on how things are. You can't make claims based on how things are, using the rules as they should be.



I take this quote as example for some other replies which said that you can swap necro debuffs easily with glitterdust and the like.
Well, in my books, necromancy debuffs are unique at all. If i try to lockdown a fighter or powerful monster, I have ray of enfeeblement. No other spell can reach this effectiveness wich such a low spell level investment (and it scales all the levels).
Ray of enfeeblement is nice, but it's not irreplaceable. There's not that big a difference between using that, and using something like color spray or grease. Honestly, I'd probably rather cast the latter two spells.



Enervation is the real king here. If there is one spell for which I would invest in empower spell, split ray and/or arcane thesis, it would be enervation.
This spell just says "boss killer." save debuff, hp debuff, caster level debuff, maybe even death, all in one spell? Show me please which other non-necro-debuff can do that.
Well, if I'm tossing a whole pile of metamagic onto something, I might as well toss it on an orb of fire, and kill the thing I'm hurting. You lose the whole weakness to SR and AMF's, and gain a weakness to fire resistance, which can be bypassed by searing spell. Also, you maintain the ability to hit enemies that can't be enervated, like zombies.



Same for fatigue and exhaustion effects. Losing STR and DEX is a staple debuff of Attack, Damage, grapple checks, initiative, ref save, AC and skills. How can conjuration-debuffs do that, I wonder?
Solid fog? Can't be attacked, damaged, out-acted, reflexed, AC'd, or skillified if your opponents are all wrapped in a velvety fog. You can run the same deal with black tentacles. Ideally, you run both at the same time,or maybe use a stinking cloud.


It gets better: a enchanter gets the most powerful mass disablers at level 1: color spray.
Heck, this even turns the favor to my side and just shows how good an enchanter could contribute and be effective.
You're thinking of illusions here. Illusions are sweet. No one has a problem with those.



Furthermore, if we talk about this enchantment yes/no-issue, we must trade this enchanter still as a wizard in the first place.
So, he can deal with the typical problem in the same way a conjurer or abjurer would do. He could also make use of glitterdust or grease (why not?).
But because he took enchantment as his specialty it doesn't mean he cannot solve the problems as good as the other no-brainer-specialists can do.
The problem with making an enchanter, is that it makes one spell of every level an enchantment spell. If enchantment did more than one thing, this wouldn't be a problem. However, nearly every enchantment spell dies to the exact same stuff, so you massively cut down on your versatility by going enchanter. By contrast, conjurations do a whole bunch of different stuff, and they target a whole pile of weaknesses, so you're not hitting your versatility by going conjurer. If your main plan as an enchanter is to rely on your non-enchantment spells, you should probably avoid enchantment.





voice of the dragon is ac ool spell, but comes from an non-standard-supplement So, its no typical available spell (even more since if comes in a book which emphasized dragon magic, a DM could rule that these spell are for dragons only, and he could be right).
No, he couldn't be right. The spell is on the wizard list, so wizards can cast it. If you want to actually find me a page where it says that you need some dragonness to cast this spell, do so. If you can't do so, stop trying to use your house rules to call other people wrong.




Plus, you don't follow my tracks, unfortunately. The whole point is that enchantment spells get much more effective if the targets are
qualified (so, no mind protecting stuff).
And besides really, really, really important figures like nobles, guild masters, high priests of a temple and so on, no on has a continous mind immunity effect available.
It is unfair to stretch this in unfavor of the enchantments.
charms and dominates are just very powerful in city adventures because they just work.
Even the counter-argument with will saves is moot. Why? Any other save-based-spell faces the same problem, so it is not a unique enchanment problem. Even then we could go farther: if you specialize into enchantment, it is pretty safe to foresee that such an enchanter would optimize his save DCs. Besides spell focus, the splatbooks offer pretty cool abilites to make charms and compulsions work way better. Check out the ACFs and the master specialist!
I'd prefer to not cast spells that have tons of perfect defenses, under the assumption that some people won't have them. Enchantment spells have some of the most defenses of any school of magic, so it sees much less love. Also, only spells with saves have saves. Nearly every enchantment spell has a save, while there's a massive amount of spells from other schools that don't have saves. You're constructing a comparison between enchantment spells with saves, and other spells with saves, when you should be comparing enchantment spells with non-enchantment spells.




I think its too difficult to simplify it that easy. I ran and played encounters where glitterdust turned the favor in the same degree as i have played games where a wizard 6 just blasted with a fireball 22 fire damage.
Remember how high the hp, ref save and fire resistance probability for enemies at ECL 6-7 is.
Oh, and if we allow cherrypicking around with splatbooks (like you did with the teleport answer, which is just level based and therefore no solid answer), I drop the sudden maximize feat at the mentioned fireball.
Now we talk about 36 fire damage at level 6 against 3+ opponents. There are many combat situations I can imagine where this trumps glitterdust (and even haste).
See, the thing about fireball is that it's basically only good against groups of enemies, and isn't even that great then. If you're fighting enemies that aren't in piles and stacks, you'd be better off using something else, and when you're fighting enemies that are in piles and stacks, I'd prefer to cast something like stinking cloud. Actually, I'd pretty much always prefer to cast stinking cloud. I'd also pretty much always rather cast glitterdust, and that's of a lower spell level. Also, sudden maximize is kinda mediocre. Just get a rod of lesser maximize, and enjoy not spending a feat.




Oh, paleez. Stretch it more in your favor, but do it properly. If we talk about a hectic, dynamic situation that caused the wizard to act alone, then we should not rely on a spell with 10 minutes casting time.
Geeez..
And still then,you didn't catch the point. The point was that this wizard cannot use his spells as effective as if his party mates would be around.
haste just for him and his (maybe conjured) summons?
glitterdust, web and other lockdowns if there is still no damage-dealer around who would gaine profit?
That's the issue. There CAN occur situations in which he must use his spells for his own action (to kill/shutdown his opponents).
It's like we play another game now. Party was around? The wizard's spell selection were "Chess." Now he is alone? The game is not chess anymore, it is "Backgammon" now. Get the point?

If you get the point, you will see that there are no blueprints for spell selections. And if there are no such blueprints, then the scaling of specialists changes since you must spread your powers.
And if you spread your powers, we can assume that you would have a spell in every important spell school per spell level (other than banned schools).
And thus, we could go with any specialist since we prepare all other spells, whatever comes.
Planar binding lasts for days. Who cares that it has a 10 minute casting time? Also, summon monster does not have a 10 minute casting time. Thus, on the basis of both of those premises, your argument is rather invalid.

[eggynack]

Conjuration gets 1 that is completely worthless- Black Tentacles, and all the enchantment spells are widely agreed to be worthless. May you please substantiate the claim that black tentacles is worthless? It seems to just kinda trap and kill enemies, and is very hard to defend against. It appears to be rather frigging amazing to me.

[Eldariel]

I take this quote as example for some other replies which said that you can swap necro debuffs easily with glitterdust and the like.
Well, in my books, necromancy debuffs are unique at all. If i try to lockdown a fighter or powerful monster, I have ray of enfeeblement. No other spell can reach this effectiveness wich such a low spell level investment (and it scales all the levels).
Enervation is the real king here. If there is one spell for which I would invest in empower spell, split ray and/or arcane thesis, it would be enervation.
This spell just says "boss killer." save debuff, hp debuff, caster level debuff, maybe even death, all in one spell? Show me please which other non-necro-debuff can do that.
Same for fatigue and exhaustion effects. Losing STR and DEX is a staple debuff of Attack, Damage, grapple checks, initiative, ref save, AC and skills. How can conjuration-debuffs do that, I wonder?

Enervation is nice as a kill spell, not so much as a debuff. As a debuff you need to roll high or metamagic it to high heavens at which point it's more action-efficient to actually go for the kill. You can do that with Orbs too though it's certainly easier with Enervation; on the flipside, Orbs are harder to be immune to.

As a debuff tho, yeah, it debuffs everything but -1 to all rolls isn't worth an action and a 4th level slot. You need 3-4 for it to really pay off and even then it's a 4th level single target spell. That's the curse of most of the Necro debuffs; they're single-target. That's rarely efficient. Sure, when you face one big opponent they're nice to have access to but when you face multiple opponents they're less useful.

Optimally you'd want to have access to both, of course, but far as preparing spells when you don't know exactly what you'll face, you'll definitely prefer the multitarget-useful-vs-single-target spell over the single-target-useless-vs-multiple-enemies spell.

Enervation is also only a good boss killer spell vs. enemies without immunity (negative level immunity isn't that rare), ray immunity (available as a spell), death ward (available as a spell), high Touch AC/concealment, and enemies with relatively low HD; it's nice vs. a Hydra, not very useful vs. a Dragon (though it does at least nuke some of a Dragon's spellslots). It's of course also subject to SR (and thus AMFs, Magic Immunity and company).

That's substantially worse as a chassis than e.g. Orb of Fire which is not a ray (still touch attack tho), can penetrate energy immunity with Searing Spell, no SR, and can nuke down even high HD targets relatively efficiently and has a brutal carrier-effect (save-or-daze; full damage either way).

Now, I'm not saying Enervation is never the optimal spell, but that those cases are rare enough that you shouldn't keep Necromancy just on the strength of that one spell. Enervation is a great Wand for UMD familiar or whatever tho.


Conjuration can actually approximate those effects for what you need. Just because Conjuration debuffs are different doesn't mean they're worse. Need someone flat-footed? Grease. Need someone blinded? Glitterdust. Need someone nauseated? Stinking Cloud. Need someone ensnared? Web. Need someone plain immobile? Wall of Stone.

Yeah, they have saves but they're also multitargeting and mostly have powerful effects even on successful saves or modes that don't offer saves. Usually you want to mostly prepare the most versatile spell in each slot and Necro rates rather poorly on that scale so it's easier to justify losing it. Really, the debuffs aren't that special (whatever you're going for with them you can usually approximate with other schools) and Enervation as a kill spell is eminently replaceable.

What I most miss from Necromancy is actually False Life early on, and later on Animate Dead (if I'm playing that kind of a Wizard, it's an insane spell), Command/Control Undead (great both as an answer and as a way to get thralls; you can deal with them through Conju/Trans of course but this can give you underlings instead), Magic Jar, Avasculate & Astral Projection. Though most of these can be replicated through intermediaries as desired and aren't relevant for immediate combat use, which makes it somewhat easier to give up. I still do like my Magic Jar for body abuse tho. In combat, you can mostly make do with Conjuration and Transmutation once you hit level 3 spells (level 1 and 2 you do want illusion/enchantment).

[Lanaya]

May you please substantiate the claim that black tentacles is worthless? It seems to just kinda trap and kill enemies, and is very hard to defend against. It appears to be rather frigging amazing to me.

Indeed, black tentacles is absurd. Not that great if you're playing against Large or bigger monsters with massive Strength and BAB, but against anything other than a big front-line bruiser it's effectively a SoL without the save, in a massive area.

[Beleron]

To me, focused specialist is simply better than normal specialist, which is simply better than non-specialist. More spells is just the way. At which point, you have to drop 3 schools, so necro, although a good school for sure, has to get the boot. Its just the price of power.

Meanwhile, one of the best things about the conjuration school, as other posters have alluded to, is that its much harder to shut down than other schools. It attacks from so many angles and also has outs to AMF.

[Fosco the Swift]

As a pathfinder player I find that Black Tentacles is even worse than the 3.5 version. The only exception to this rule I find is when mosters cast this on my characters. Typical.

[Hiro Protagonest]

As a pathfinder player I find that Black Tentacles is even worse than the 3.5 version. The only exception to this rule I find is when mosters cast this on my characters. Typical.

Pathfinder nerfed battlefield control, hard.

[eggynack]

As a pathfinder player I find that Black Tentacles is even worse than the 3.5 version. The only exception to this rule I find is when mosters cast this on my characters. Typical.
Was there some sort of consortium where a group of players decided that the 3.5 version of black tentacles is bad in any sense? I don't know if PF black tentacles is good or bad, particularly because it seems to rely on that system's different combat mechanics, but there's no "even worse" about it. Black tentacles is a fantastic spell, so I'm not entirely sure why people keep talking about it as if it's not one.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You listed 'useful' necro spells, but the only one I saw as actually relevant to any combat is 'Enervation'. Everything else either is horribly underpowered for the level it is at, simply doesn't work the way it should, or is such a marginal case that you'd only ever be able to use it if the GM specifically set up the scenario for the specific purpose of making it useful.

Ray of Enfeeblement is a single target spell which applies a penalty to Strength. Unlike ability damage, penalties don't stack with itself, which means the actual effect on combat is lackluster at best since it is single-target.

Also, another concept for you is the concept of 'hazard negation'. Basically it boils down to this: I could a) do damage, which would have zero effect on an opponent's ability to harm me unless it actually killed him, or b) negate his ability to do anything with one of several battlefield control and/or SoL effects.

Doing damage and not killing an opponent means you've effectively wasted your action that turn. You've done nothing to further the end of combat.

Applying a Save or Lose effect, or simply a no-save-just-lose effect means your opponent is effectively neutralized. This is equivalent to doing an arbitrary amount of damage sufficient to kill him. If you stack your DC's, then your opponent will only have a 5% chance of making his save. In some cases, this just means he is hit by secondary effects, however even if a save means a free pass, it isn't likely that more than one in a group is likely to make that save. The odds are 20*x:x against it, where x is the number of opponents affected by your spell. Which means you went from dealing with several opponents to dealing with a single opponent, a much better tactical situation.

The reason why Save or Lose effects are so effective is that it is so easy to stack DC's (simply stat-stacking can achieve numbers which generate 5% odds of success for your opponent's saves). That is the true power behind the Batman Wizard.

[Fosco the Swift]

That makes since. Still it never hurts for a boss fight to have some single target spells.
Except for the PC exception, I've found that black tentacles is terrible compared to other spells you can choose at that level. While everything depends on the situation and setting, black tentacles is to Entangle the way burning hands is to fireball. Unless you get some really lucky rolls, actually grappling most opponets is around a 50%, unless they're large, then it drops to about a 25% and lower. Same thing for escape if you're lucky to succede on that check.

Let's put it to the numbers:
Caster level+4+1 according to the PF guide (let's say +12 at 7th level)
That means anything with a CMD of 22 is a 50% chance of successful grapple

Now a Girallon (CR 6) has a CMD of 27, maning you have to roll at least a 15: 25% chance.

Now of course its rare to fight only one creature so if you're facing let's say 6 dire wolves, all with CMD of 20. That's a 60% chance you could grapple them all. 60% chance of dealing 1d6+4 damage (7)
But as a 3rd level spell you could instead shoot a fireball with a 20ft radius spread and deals instead 7d6 damage (21) with a 60% chance of doing only 10 damage.
So in summary: black tentacles is an all or nothing spell (enemies can stay out of the threatened area) that can even damage allies because you can't control it. On the other hand for one level lower you can use a fireball with a higher damage field and does damage even if the odds aren't in your favor.

Any disagreements with this analysis?

[ryu]

That makes since. Still it never hurts for a boss fight to have some single target spells.
Except for the PC exception, I've found that black tentacles is terrible compared to other spells you can choose at that level. While everything depends on the situation and setting, black tentacles is to Entangle the way burning hands is to fireball. Unless you get some really lucky rolls, actually grappling most opponets is around a 50%, unless they're large, then it drops to about a 25% and lower. Same thing for escape if you're lucky to succede on that check.

Let's put it to the numbers:
Caster level+4+1 according to the PF guide (let's say +12 at 7th level)
That means anything with a CMD of 22 is a 50% chance of successful grapple

Now a Girallon (CR 6) has a CMD of 27, maning you have to roll at least a 15: 25% chance.

Now of course its rare to fight only one creature so if you're facing let's say 6 dire wolves, all with CMD of 20. That's a 60% chance you could grapple them all. 60% chance of dealing 1d6+4 damage (7)
But as a 3rd level spell you could instead shoot a fireball with a 20ft radius spread and deals instead 7d6 damage (21) with a 60% chance of doing only 10 damage.
So in summary: black tentacles is an all or nothing spell (enemies can stay out of the threatened area) that can even damage allies because you can't control it. On the other hand for one level lower you can use a fireball with a higher damage field and does damage even if the odds aren't in your favor.

Any disagreements with this analysis?

The most basic disagreement that anyone who knows wizards will chime in with immediately is that stopping enemies from doing things is infinitely more valuable than straight up damage unless you're very likely to kill the target or targets that round via damage. I'd much rather see two or three wolves caught on a bad day than having them alive mildly angry and lunging at my face.

[TuggyNE]

Any disagreements with this analysis?

Yes. For starters, black tentacles is not a damage spell, but a battlefield control spell; as such, "enemies can stay out of it" is not a bug, but a feature, when properly used (the next best thing to controlling where your enemies are is controlling where they aren't, and sometimes, especially if you have freedom of movement, it's not just the next best thing, but actually better). What's more, if any creature gets grappled, there's a much higher chance of maintaining that grapple in future rounds, and grappled is a pretty strong debuff: can't move, lose Dex to AC (and can thus be sneak attacked, even at range), Concentration to cast, and so on and so forth. The fact that you get damage on top of that is just the icing on the cake.

Now, I do have one gripe in particular with PF's implementation, and that's the "one roll to rule them all" that they seem to use in a number of places; to my mind, that makes things a little swingier than I'd like, since if you have a pack of dire wolves or whatever, you either hit ALL OF THEM or you hit NOT EVEN ONE; the only way to get just a few is to debuff them or something.

[eggynack]

That makes since. Still it never hurts for a boss fight to have some single target spells.
Except for the PC exception, I've found that black tentacles is terrible compared to other spells you can choose at that level. While everything depends on the situation and setting, black tentacles is to Entangle the way burning hands is to fireball. Unless you get some really lucky rolls, actually grappling most opponets is around a 50%, unless they're large, then it drops to about a 25% and lower. Same thing for escape if you're lucky to succede on that check.

Let's put it to the numbers:
Caster level+4+1 according to the PF guide (let's say +12 at 7th level)
That means anything with a CMD of 22 is a 50% chance of successful grapple

Now a Girallon (CR 6) has a CMD of 27, maning you have to roll at least a 15: 25% chance.

Now of course its rare to fight only one creature so if you're facing let's say 6 dire wolves, all with CMD of 20. That's a 60% chance you could grapple them all. 60% chance of dealing 1d6+4 damage (7)
But as a 3rd level spell you could instead shoot a fireball with a 20ft radius spread and deals instead 7d6 damage (21) with a 60% chance of doing only 10 damage.
So in summary: black tentacles is an all or nothing spell (enemies can stay out of the threatened area) that can even damage allies because you can't control it. On the other hand for one level lower you can use a fireball with a higher damage field and does damage even if the odds aren't in your favor.

Any disagreements with this analysis?
First of all, you mentioned the 3.5 black tentacles being bad the first time, and the 3.5 version has a grapple mod of caster level+8, which is better. Second of all, how is that situation you cited all or nothing at all? If you're facing 6 dire wolves, and you keep 60% of them out of combat for an entire round, that's a round in which you can bring your team's offensive might against the enemies. You've traded away a single action for a whole pile of actions, and that's an amazing deal by any definition.

Now fireball, that's an all or nothing spell. You hit the enemies, but what have you gained? If you kill them, that's amazing, but if you don't, you've just got a bunch of damaged enemies, and damaged enemies are rather alike to undamaged enemies. You've done nothing to change the situation at all. Meanwhile, even if black tentacles is slightly worse against dire wolves, do you know who it's great against? Other wizards. Do you know who you really want to defeat, more than anyone else? If you guessed other wizards, you get a free cookie. Also, if enemies are staying out of the area of the black tentacles, well that's the whole point right there. That's an entire region of the battlefield, completely closed off, and since you're casting the spell, the closed off region is a region you'd like to be closed off. Even if you're casting the spell in an empty field, the enemy's best case scenario is running all the way around the black tentacles, and that takes awhile. Meanwhile, you get to run away, or prepare yourselves for combat. It's a great deal.

[MeiLeTeng]

That makes since. Still it never hurts for a boss fight to have some single target spells.
Except for the PC exception, I've found that black tentacles is terrible compared to other spells you can choose at that level. While everything depends on the situation and setting, black tentacles is to Entangle the way burning hands is to fireball. Unless you get some really lucky rolls, actually grappling most opponets is around a 50%, unless they're large, then it drops to about a 25% and lower. Same thing for escape if you're lucky to succede on that check.

Let's put it to the numbers:
Caster level+4+1 according to the PF guide (let's say +12 at 7th level)
That means anything with a CMD of 22 is a 50% chance of successful grapple

Now a Girallon (CR 6) has a CMD of 27, maning you have to roll at least a 15: 25% chance.

Now of course its rare to fight only one creature so if you're facing let's say 6 dire wolves, all with CMD of 20. That's a 60% chance you could grapple them all. 60% chance of dealing 1d6+4 damage (7)
But as a 3rd level spell you could instead shoot a fireball with a 20ft radius spread and deals instead 7d6 damage (21) with a 60% chance of doing only 10 damage.
So in summary: black tentacles is an all or nothing spell (enemies can stay out of the threatened area) that can even damage allies because you can't control it. On the other hand for one level lower you can use a fireball with a higher damage field and does damage even if the odds aren't in your favor.

Any disagreements with this analysis?

A few, Girallon's have a CMD of 25 not 27, by the way (I'll ignore how trivial it is to increase caster level, also.)

Girallon's being a high strength large sized creature is not really the target you would use Black Tentacles on, so that's not a very good comparison.

Hell, being large sized and high strength I wouldn't really use them against Dire Wolves either, however, lets do the math on this one.

We'll assume that they're all inexplicably standing in a 20ft radius for some reason since you made that assumption with the fireball.

The probability of at least one of the Wolves being grappled (which then causes it to be a +27 vs DC 20 scenario to maintain the grapple) is equal to 1 - the probability of none of them being grappled.

The probability of none of them being grappled is equal to:

0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 or 0.4^6 or 0.004096. So there's a 99.5% chance of at least one being grappled.

Now let's look at Fireball.

A CL 7 fireball is likely to be cast by a character with 22-24 main casting stat (I'd say at this point), So a DC 19-20, we'll err on you being right and say 20. Dire Wolves have a reflex save of +6, so a 30% chance of saving, so you have a 99.9% chance of at least one Wolf failing its save.

CL 7 Fireball does 7d6 damage, so an average of 24.5 damage to each Wolf, which doesn't kill any of them. To reach 37 or higher you have a 13% chance.

To rephrase, in your scenario with Black Tentacles you have a 99.5% chance of taking at least one Wolf out of the fight, and with Fireball you have an 87% chance of taking no wolves out of the fight.

*edit* Ninja'd because math is hard.

[Fosco the Swift]

This actually mosltly proving how much a difference there is between Pathfinder and 3.5 (personally 3.5 has MUCH better spells), because black tentacles IS an all or nothing spell in PF. One roll per round and apply that to all subjects- thus the 60% chance to have it do anything. Plus, fireball is one spell level lower and I'd rather use a 3rd level spell and let my party finsh off the wolves without trouble than use a 4th level spell that could have better spells for a 7th level wizard than Black Tentacles. (Excluding the material Componet Cost)
Stoneskin literally saved my Wizards life when Black tentacles would have been worse than useless. My wizard had been bull rushed into a room with a invisable stalker. At the time my spellbook was lacking so I had nothing to see invisable creatures with. Black tentacles would have been a waste of a spell in that encounter because I had no idea where the Stalker was and it was a fairly large room. Instead I cast a different 4th level spell- Stoneskin. Yes it has a 250gp material coponet cost but instead of 12+11 points of damage from the slams I took 2+1. I could have done Dimension Door and easily returned to my group, but if I instead had cast black tentacles I would be guessing where the Stalker was ans hoping I would roll high enough to grapple it in the first place.

ninja'd becasue PF sucks

[ben-zayb]

I don't quite get what the continued arguments are all about. The Handbooks are there just to provide information (what does what, and how optimal particular choices are).

If you think you can roll a really great Enchanter that contributes to the group really well, then go ahead (I know I once did). It's a matter of preference, really.

Take helping/complementing the BSF example. Different people might interpret it differently, such as: dealing direct damage; making sure the BSF deals boatloads of damage; trapping enemies to their death at the BSF's hands; making one of your enemies the BSF. At the end of the day, there will still be optimal choices. In some occasions, optimal choice will change depending on the situation. But then that would be the exception, not the hard and fast rule.

The Handbooks can't specifically point out each and every situation where a less optimal spell will outshine the more optimal spell. And indeed it shouldn't, as that would be a practice in futility.

And anyway, while most handbooks might have general guidelines with general assumptions that are statistically optimal generally, there actually exists at least one (could be more) that offer some insights specifically per school(Treantmonk's Guide).

Analogy:

If we were to have a DC Superhero handbook (I dunno, maybe some guy decided to make a DC D20 modern?), you can bet your bank account that the Green Lantern, Batman, the Flash, and Captain Marvel, among others would be considered as optimally better than, say, Aquaman. That doesn't mean Aquaman is worthless. Indeed, in certain situations (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotTailoredToTheParty), he will far outclass and mop the floor with a lot of them (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman) (assuming they are of "equal level" of course; e.g. the Flash is not Wally West at his prime / best showing).

But in general, the assumption is that the plot is not restricted to being underwater only; that the plot involved could happen anywhere--a farm, a desert, a city, etc. That's where the general data of the Handbook is gathered and presented.

[Eldariel]

This actually mosltly proving how much a difference there is between Pathfinder and 3.5 (personally 3.5 has MUCH better spells), because black tentacles IS an all or nothing spell in PF. One roll per round and apply that to all subjects- thus the 60% chance to have it do anything. Plus, fireball is one spell level lower and I'd rather use a 3rd level spell and let my party finsh off the wolves without trouble than use a 4th level spell that could have better spells for a 7th level wizard than Black Tentacles. (Excluding the material Componet Cost)
Stoneskin literally saved my Wizards life when Black tentacles would have been worse than useless. My wizard had been bull rushed into a room with a invisable stalker. At the time my spellbook was lacking so I had nothing to see invisable creatures with. Black tentacles would have been a waste of a spell in that encounter because I had no idea where the Stalker was and it was a fairly large room. Instead I cast a different 4th level spell- Stoneskin. Yes it has a 250gp material coponet cost but instead of 12+11 points of damage from the slams I took 2+1. I could have done Dimension Door and easily returned to my group, but if I instead had cast black tentacles I would be guessing where the Stalker was ans hoping I would roll high enough to grapple it in the first place.

You could almost certainly just let it attack you, move away from the location and cast Tentacles centered on that location. Or Glitterdust preferably. Though a level 7+ Wizard without a Scroll of See Invisibility is kinda unforgivable.

[Fosco the Swift]

Yes just let it attack me...
DC 27 concentration check to cast a 4th level spell because I let it attack me... or DC 0 concentration for a 5 ft slide and Dimension Door back to my group. Which option sounds better?
Plus my character been stuck in one of those dungeons you can't leave without screwing up the plot, meaning no equiptment or time for making scrolls and larning new spells, and I used my only See Invisablility scroll on the Kuo- Toa assassin that tried Death Attacking the Group's fighter. And before anyone says that would have been a good time for Black Tentacles: 5ft wide corridor and group in marching order. Plus the Kuo-Toa was a rogue and Kuo-Toa get a +5 on escape artist. Not so much.

[Eldariel]

Yes just let it attack me...
DC 27 concentration check to cast a 4th level spell because I let it attack me... or DC 0 concentration for a 5 ft slide and Dimension Door back to my group. Which option sounds better?

There's no Concentration if you move/5' step away on your turn. This is why you wait for it to move and attack you, then move far enough that you're clear and then nuke the area with Black Tentacles/whatever.

It can't take an attack of opportunity unless you just stand there while casting spells for some reason but that seems dumb so don't do that. It's just Medium either way. Now, if you want to escape that's fine but if you want to kill it, Glitterdusting it or Black Tentacling it abusing the AOE those spells have is probably your best bet.

[Fosco the Swift]

But i still have to do the concentration check for any damage I take, not just from AoO. And being a Elf Wizard with a -2 racial constitution really makes me not want to get hit at all.

[Eldariel]

But i still have to do the concentration check for any damage I take, not just from AoO. And being a Elf Wizard with a -2 racial constitution really makes me not want to get hit at all.

Concentration is only rolled for damage you take during casting (or damage overtime), so none required here. Also, PF Concentration is Casting Stat-based. If we're talking about 3.5 here it could be a prob if you had to roll Concentration, but again, there's no scenario here where you have to roll Concentration or take an AoO while casting (before then, sure, but whatever, it's worth it if you wanna kill the Stalker).

[Captnq]

- the group meets oozes/undead etc: then, the group will handle the situation as they would handle if as if there was no arcane caster around on the first place. Even if we include the wizard to contribute in such fights, he would still be useful by casting some of his non-enchantments (like haste, battlefiled control and so on).


Ooze puppet is a transmutation and makes any ooze your bitch for 1 day/level. Saw a PC feed an elder brain to a Mustard Jelly using ooze puppet. Funny thing, the list of immunities doesn't cover disease or digestion.

Just felt like pointing that out.

[Captnq]

I finished reading the rest of this thread and the problem is I think the OP is reading the wrong handbooks. You should go check out a handbook on Spells as a whole, not just wizards. It'll put things in perspective.

Here. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5044.msg72093#msg72093)
Start with SSI, and skip down to COMPARING SPELL DAMAGE.

Then check out SSII for the metamagic feats and SSIIIa for the complete list of spells. Seriously, how can you not think being a wizard is awesome with that huge list of available spells? It dwarfs everyone else. And so you can compare, SSIIIa does indeed have every spell list.

[Deadline]

The following conclusions are therefore made:

1.) You can forego the schools enchantment, necromancy and evocation.

2.) The best school to specialize in is conjuration (and transmutation on rank #2).

3.) Using damage spells is suboptimal since other party members can do that already and a wizard can do so many other "godlike things."

Handbooks are written with the assumption that you will be using the rules as written, and that they all options are available. Arguments that don't take that into account are pointless.

As has been pointed out already, handbooks give general guidelines and advice based on this central principle. Houserules, campaign worlds, system mastery of the GM, and character level can all modify the general assumptions wildly. One thing that I don't see terribly often (but it does get mentioned) is that all of the "Wizards are the win button" references usually refer to wizards capable of casting 4th level spells and higher. Most people have a tremendous amount of experience with levels 1-6 (because campaigns frequently start at low level), but not with higher levels. The wizard shutdown, while present and less reliable at low levels, really doesn't shine until higher levels. Keep all this in mind, because it will likely be the primary reason for the disconnect you have with others on this board.

In the RAW, if you specialize, Enchantment, Necromancy and Evocation are the least painful schools to lose. The reasons have been listed, but I'll do it again for completeness sake.

The entire school of Enchantment can be shut down at higher levels by Mind Blank, and drastically interfered with at lower levels by spells like Protection From Evil (not to mention it doesn't generally work on Undead or Constructs). In the RAW, it is difficult to justify higher level opponents not having defenses in place against Enchantment. This doesn't mean there are no awesome spells in Enchantment. It's loaded with great spells, and if the GM, houserules, or campaign world allow it, Enchantment can be used to great effect.
Necromancy is a painful school to lose, but not as much as the other schools (although personally I sometimes ditch Illusion instead, in the rare situation where I'm making a specialist wizard). Ray of Enfeeblement isn't good unless you metamagic it, thus making it a higher level spell (barring shenanigans). And it is only a reasonable choice against single foe encounters. If it could drop Str to 0 or less, it would be a better choice. Enervation is awesome, but by the time you are casting it, there are other options that are quite nice, and by this point you run into Enchantment's problem - there are quite a few foes that are immune to most of what you can do with this school, and there are spells of a similar level that provide immunities to most of what you can do with this school. This doesn't mean there are no awesome spells in Necromancy.
Evocation is also a painful school to lose, but only because of Contingency, Wall of Force, and Forcecage. Blasting can be done similarly by Conjuration (better, when dealing with foes with SR, Good saves, or Resistances - all very common at higher levels). Craft Contingent spell mitigates the pain from losing Contingency. That leaves Wall of Force/Forcecage. There's no way around it, losing those two spells hurts. But it's only two spells, and there are several conjuration spells that can work in a similar (if less effective) manner. This doesn't mean that there are no awesome spells in Evocation.


Yes, by the RAW, Conjuration is awesome. It got even more awesome with the addition of the Orb line of spells, as now it can do most of Evocations job too. By the RAW, it's just better than the other schools. So naturally, it is listed as #1. Given that the Tier system ranks Wizards as Tier 1 not because of their blasting capability, but because of their versatility, it should come as no surprise that Transmutation is listed as the second best school. It is loaded with tons of useful spells.

Important point of clarification: Sub-optimal is not the same thing as ineffective. Hurling fireballs is fun, and effective against low Reflex save creatures that don't have SR or Fire Resistance. Doing damage is a useful thing. It's just that 5 damaged foes do just as much damage and take just as many actions as 5 undamaged foes. Sure, you've made a contribution towards killing your foes, and that's helpful. But taking one or more of those foes out of the fight (temporarily or otherwise) reduces the number of enemy actions, and the amount of enemy damage. Action economy is king when discussing optimal strategies. Again, at lower levels (where Fireball does it's best work) this is less of an obvious choice. However, at lower levels, a single well placed battlefield control spell can turn the tide way faster than direct damage spells. As an anecdote I offer this: I played in an all-kobold game, and we had the misfortune of being caught in open plains by knights on horseback while we were still level 5. Fortunately, we had a druid with Entangle. Engaging them piecemeal in melee as they worked their way out after being pelted with slingstones took that encounter from an almost certain TPK (I don't think we were supposed to fight them) into a cakewalk. A fireball would have maybe killed one or two before they ran us down.

[Jerthanis]

Evocation is also a painful school to lose, but only because of Contingency, Wall of Force, and Forcecage. Blasting can be done similarly by Conjuration (better, when dealing with foes with SR, Good saves, or Resistances - all very common at higher levels). Craft Contingent spell mitigates the pain from losing Contingency. That leaves Wall of Force/Forcecage. There's no way around it, losing those two spells hurts. But it's only two spells, and there are several conjuration spells that can work in a similar (if less effective) manner. This doesn't mean that there are no awesome spells in Evocation.
[/LIST]

I see this sentiment all the time, and I respectively disagree with the popular opinion of Evocation as easily forsakable due to a lack of utility, or the idea that Conjuration damage spells are true or superior replacements to Evocation damage options.

I find Evocation to be an insanely useful school in almost every respect, and find it baffling that it's so widely dismissed.

Light, Dancing Lights, and Daylight are unexpectedly useful in any game where lighting conditions are tracked. Floating Disk is a method for pretty much perfect ground-avoidance, evading floor hazards and traps. Tiny Hut is awesome. Resilient Sphere is the lowest level single save-or-lose, also targets Reflex, which is often the weakest save of those targets least capable of overcoming the entrapment, and doubles as a perfect emergency personal safety button. Contingency, Wall of Force, Sending, Hand spells...

It is so replete with utility that I sometimes wonder at the fact it's conceived of as ONLY capable of damage.

I also have to assume people tend to have fights primarily with 1-3 very powerful monsters, and tend to play at very high levels to not find the multiple target, level 1-3 damage spells of Evocation incredibly more impressive than the level 4 single target Conjuration spells.

From my perspective, Evocation isn't a top tier school like Transmutation or Conjuration, but it's clearly in the middle with Abjuration, Illusion and Divination, and Necromancy and Enchantment are undoubtably the bottom two.

[ryu]

All of evocations best tricks are easy to replicate with any number of simple methods. You want light to see with? Even at low levels why don't you use torches instead? They're cheaper and don't waste spell slots. All of the movement utility? Conjuration simply does it better. All of about three or four spells worthwhile in mid level? Shadow evocation says hi. The three or four good spells don't actually suffer for only being semi real if saves happen.

[Jerthanis]

All of evocations best tricks are easy to replicate with any number of simple methods. You want light to see with? Even at low levels why don't you use torches instead? They're cheaper and don't waste spell slots. All of the movement utility? Conjuration simply does it better. All of about three or four spells worthwhile in mid level? Shadow evocation says hi. The three or four good spells don't actually suffer for only being semi real if saves happen.

Shadow Evocation can't recreate Wall of Wind or Tiny Hut effectively, since objects ignore the effect, meaning rain or arrows pass through the illusionary barrier, making the effect more or less worthless. Every other good Evocation spell at 1-4 allows a save (doubling the chances of the spell being ineffective) or is good because it is low level and can be metamagic'd more easily, is accessible at lower levels before more powerful spells recreate their effects, or represents trivial resource use, advantages which Shadow Evocation does not have.

The really great Evocation spells that CAN be recreated with Shadow Evocation without losing anything are level 5 and 6, Shadow Contingency and Shadow Sending, which means you're waiting until level 15 to recreate effects a rival mage has had since level 9, and which is now a trivial resource for them while it has become your highest level spell.

Really, Shadow Evocation is less "Evocation is now worthless" and more, "If you made the horrendous mistake of banning Evocation, you can sometimes get by with a drastically weaker version at higher cost."

You may as well be arguing that because Limited Wish exists, you could ban ANY school at trivial cost.

[eggynack]

Shadow Evocation can't recreate Wall of Wind or Tiny Hut effectively, since objects ignore the effect, meaning rain or arrows pass through the illusionary barrier, making the effect more or less worthless. Every other good Evocation spell at 1-4 allows a save (doubling the chances of the spell being ineffective) or is good because it is low level and can be metamagic'd more easily, is accessible at lower levels before more powerful spells recreate their effects, or represents trivial resource use, advantages which Shadow Evocation does not have.
Rope trick is rather similar to tiny hut, and of a lower spell level. Also, shadow wind wall would still have some effectiveness, because passing the will save doesn't make the spell stop existing completely. I'm not sure if the spell would block one fifth of arrows, or if it would just block arrows completely, but it certainly wouldn't block zero arrows.

[Jerthanis]

Rope trick is rather similar to tiny hut, and of a lower spell level. Also, shadow wind wall would still have some effectiveness, because passing the will save doesn't make the spell stop existing completely. I'm not sure if the spell would block one fifth of arrows, or if it would just block arrows completely, but it certainly wouldn't block zero arrows.

Nope, nondamaging effects don't have 20% effectiveness... they have 0% effectiveness.

The 20% reality is ONLY for damaging effects. 0% of arrows are blocked by Shadow Wind Wall with no roll. It literally only is capable of stopping small and smaller flying creatures, and THEY get a save.

And Tiny Hut is less good than I remember it being on rereading it now. I seemed to remember it was a really good tactical spell in addition to being an incredibly effective sleeping space, but it's not really. The way I remembered it, it created an intangible barrier to your selected targets, and a tangible barrier to anyone else. I don't know why I had that impression.

[ryu]

Craft contingent spell laughs at your petty contingency. Further I was stating those three or four spells as the only things relevant in the entire school. That doesn't mean I care about them in comparison to what I could be getting from conjuration or transmutation. Three or four second rate spells that become obsolete with time amongst a sea of generic garbage does not a worthwhile school make.

Also your knowledge of the limits of the shadow plane is laughable.

[Karnith]

Nope, nondamaging effects don't have 20% effectiveness... they have 0% effectiveness.
Not true, though a Shadow Evocation'd Wind Wall is pretty useless. Per the SRD: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowEvocation.htm)
Nondamaging effects have normal effects except against those who disbelieve them. Against disbelievers, they have no effect.

Objects automatically succeed on their Will saves against this spell.

[Jerthanis]

Craft contingent spell laughs at your petty contingency.

I laugh at the DM that allows Craft Contingent Spell into their game. Are they trying to make Wizards unstoppable?


Not true, though a Shadow Evocation'd Wind Wall is pretty useless. Per the SRD: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowEvocation.htm)

Yes, that's what I meant, thanks for the correction.

[ryu]

Wizards naturally ARE unstoppable until the DM does something about it. Do you want me to get the thread where the only method of even remotely hindering simple wizard power was coating the entire world in antimagic field and unleashing a dragon two CR higher based on entire party dynamics than the single wizard. The dragon STILL had to use ambush tactics to even be relevant.

[Deadline]

I see this sentiment all the time, and I respectively disagree with the popular opinion of Evocation as easily forsakable due to a lack of utility, or the idea that Conjuration damage spells are true or superior replacements to Evocation damage options.

Given that you are calling out my post, I feel compelled to ask which sentiment is it that you are disagreeing with, exactly? (I made several in that quoted block)


Evocation is a painful school to lose. But only because of a few spells.
That Conjuration allows you to do blasting in a similar manner.
There are Conjuration spells that are similar in effect or result to the highly regarded Evocation utility spells.
Craft Contingent spell mitigates the loss of Contingency.


It should be clear from what I wrote (what with the bold text and all), but none of the above items mean that there aren't any awesome spells in Evocation. It hurts to lose any school of magic. It's just that there are some schools that hurt to lose more than others. Conjuration and Transmutation are the kings of utility and battlefield control, and Conjuration also does some blasting (albeit not quite as good as Evocation in several situations). Those three categories mostly encompass Evocation's schtick, so it is less painful to lose, as long as you have Conjuration and Transmutation. If you toss the Illusion into the mix for the hat-trick, you've got access to most of the Evocation utility spells, and lose remarkably little for banning Evocation. Once more, with feeling, you lose versatility when you ban schools of magic, it is painful. That's generally why I prefer be a generalist wizard if I've got the choice. But saying that Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy are indispensable with regards to what they can do RAW isn't accurate.

[Lactantius]

Wow, this thread explodes and new sub-topics grow.

Well, I try to respond in a more generic way, this makes the discussion better to overview:

1.) Concerning certain spells:
if we talk about damage spells, battlefield control spells and so on, we talk mostly about the spells themselves, less about the correspondent spell school.
So, I try to review some of those staple spells mentioned. In some times, I don't see the absolute advantage, but I would be happy to get some tips there.

- control spells like solid fog, tentacles and glitterdust:
First, don't get me wrong. I like those spells and I use them.
But I fail to see how they are THAT powerful (as they are advertised).
Especially since those spells can be negated as easy as resistances can negate evocation damage, death ward vs. enervation effects, mind blank vs. enchantment and so on.
Correct me if I am wrong, but a staple defense spell like freedom of movement negates those BFCs wholly, or not?
Any dimension travel spell (dimension hop at lower levels, later on dimension door, teleport, shadow walk, planeshift and so on) circumvents those BFC's too, right?
Second: I wonder what the party will do after the enemy is entangled/fogged/grappled/proned and so on?
The fighter cannot just walk in and deal the damage since he is affected, too. Shutting the enemies down from beyond the area effect can talk a while and is suboptimal. It can get difficult if we talk about fog spells which makes ranged attacks a difficult task.
In my book, a followed up area damage spell is the ideal thing to do vs held/blocked enemies.
Do I miss a master strategy (besides very special tactics like extraord. spell aim that would exclude the fighter form the area effect)?

Then, some special notes to:
a) stinking cloud. I find the line which says that the cloud moves each round a problem. The "Control" in "BFC" isn't guaranteed anymore since the cloud effect could endanger the party itself or at least getting ineffective if it moves away from the initial targets.
Did I oversee something important?
b) black tentacles: at the beginning, I liked this spell. After many gaming sessions to test the spell wholly, I'm skeptical. Against very STR-heavy enemies (and D&D has alot of those!), the wizard's grapple modifier wont be enough (or leads to a 50:50 bet). Not impressive, if you ask me since the spell will fail in its main job to lockdown the opponents.
c) contingency vs craft contrigency spell. After my calculations, CCS is a very expensive crafting tool. To make effective use of it, you must pay a pretty high XP value - too high, IMHO.
d) fireball vs. ECL-equivalent targets: in my experience, a fireball at level 5-8 will instant kill many opponents, or, at least, deal 50 - 75% hp damage.
And yes, those enemies are still 100% combat ready since D&D does not know a wounding system, but this helps the other party members so much, I just can repeat that.
e) shadow evocation spells: I find the opportunity costs way too high. The spell slot is way too expensive too emulate some lower level spell effects. Wasting the wizard's most valuable ressources - spell slots - ist just wrong, IMHO. Do I miss something?


some other issues mentioned:
- sudden maximize outshines the metamagic rod in most ways.
At level 5-8, you cannot afford the rod. At mid levels, the rod is better (but still, IMHO, I would invest thast gold into better things like a lesser rod of quicken, more pearls of power, rods of extend and so on). At higher levels, sudden maximize gets stronger, again, albeit its use of 1/day.
Look at those level 7-9 spells with variables to maximize. the golden demon goes to time stop, but maw of chaos and many other spells get insanely strong, too.
- color spray was my fault, yep. I've been in AD&D baldurs gate - mode where color spray as an enchantment effect :>


Lastly, some words around the whole handbooks vs house rules (formerly known as RAW, fyi). Maybe we cannot find a consensus since we have different gaming philosophies: I follow the philosophy that the rules should not dominate the game (and therefore, being always scrutinized).
BTW, that's an official recommendation by the game designers, after all (I think it is somewhere in the foreword of the DMG, not sure).
Therefore, the whole term "RAW" is not set-in-stone, IMHO. I would appreciate handbooks and tutorials which include such an approach (instead of just including all available splatbooks, printed materials, magazines just to show some maximum effectiveness).
For example, a handbook could show that the enchantment school got some drawbacks and problems, but it could also show alternatives, suggestions and "what-if's" (including possible house-rules, why not). In this case, you could even refer to and older, official rule which placed the orb line into the evocation school and reflect that circumstance.
This would generate a dynamic way of thinking at the reader instead of just telling him what to pick and what not.
Another example for this approach?
Tell the player that banning enchantment could be easy, if the school can get shut down completey. But then, think foreward. Mention that the all-might protection form evil spell won't be a problem for a Lawful Neutral enchanter. Mention that mind blank is a superexpensive 8th-level spell which will not a) appear in campaigns around low-/mid-level-style and b) even then, can only be used scarce by some wizard 15 or a few cleric 15 with access to the protection domain.
If we just run off with more approaches, here another idea:
delete the whole subschool [Teleportation] within conjuration. Make all those teleportation spell universal instead. That way, conjuration gets one point less dominating and telportation spells are 100% available to all wizard specialists (the way it should be like). Think about Vaarsuvius, even he banned conjuration. Universal teleport would have give him an edge as ypical wizard. :)

Ah, well. Mayhap it was my fault to presume such an open-minded approach. If we wanna stick rigidly to RAW, then be it so. But that does not change the fact that there are other approaches, too. A handbook would show many ways to master a wizard, not merely a few.
But I'm also a wizard player how prefers to play immersive instead of 100% effective. That's why my wizards (a focused diviner, btw) dont rest each day within a rope trick. Sleeping beneath camp fire in tents, smelling the wood and feeling the nature is some quality of living compared to a steril, extradimensional locker :)
Sometimes, immersion should go that far that it would lead to not taking all rule advantages deliberately..... ;)

[ryu]

On craft contingent spell being the most hilarious thing ever: You're limited to one Contingency at a time. This does not hold true for crafted contingent spells. Also XP is a river and crafting costs can easily be mitigated if you actually want to craft enough that the CR system wouldn't quickly catch you up.

As for ''openmindedness'' you don't get to call out assumptions and their being wrong when as the game is actually designed from the start they're totally totally right before your houserules. That's like claiming small dog is more dangerous than a fully grown tiger... After all small dogs are regularly filled with plastic explosive that goes off on contact when they lick things.

[Karnith]

On craft contingent spell being the most hilarious thing ever: You're limited to one Contingency at a time. This does not hold true for crafted contingent spells.
You can also use Craft Contingent Spell with spells that you can't use with Contingency, and with Craft Contingent Spell you don't need to deal with that pesky duration problem that Contingency has.

[ryu]

True. i was trying to start gentle and save that point for later though.

[Augmental]

Correct me if I am wrong, but a staple defense spell like freedom of movement negates those BFCs wholly, or not?

Solid fog, I'm not sure. Black tentacles, yes. Glitterdust, no.


Any dimension travel spell (dimension hop at lower levels, later on dimension door, teleport, shadow walk, planeshift and so on) circumvents those BFC's too, right?

With solid fog, all of those work. With black tentacles, shadow walk and plane shift don't work since being grappled prevents you from using somatic components; dimension door, dimension hop and teleport work, though. Glitterdust, no; it's not a cloud spell, it's basically Fireball with blindness instead of damage.

Also, please note that every spell you mentioned is a spell; many of them wizard spells. What if the enemy side has no spellcasters?

[Hecuba]

Ah, well. Mayhap it was my fault to presume such an open-minded approach. If we wanna stick rigidly to RAW, then be it so. But that does not change the fact that there are other approaches, too. A handbook would show many ways to master a wizard, not merely a few.
But I'm also a wizard player how prefers to play immersive instead of 100% effective. That's why my wizards (a focused diviner, btw) dont rest each day within a rope trick. Sleeping beneath camp fire in tents, smelling the wood and feeling the nature is some quality of living compared to a steril, extradimensional locker :)
Sometimes, immersion should go that far that it would lead to not taking all rule advantages deliberately..... ;)

That's a wonderful approach to building characters (and, as point of fact, is also my general preference). But the point of handbooks is largely to explain the mechanical interactions of the rules as they relate to the handbook topic.

Think of handbooks as your car's owner's manual. They give you guidance on the mechanical operation and upkeep of your car. To follow the metaphor, the topics you are discussing are better suited to a travel guide.


Also, please note that every spell you mentioned is a spell; many of them wizard spells. What if the enemy side has no spellcasters?

To be fair, there's no particular reason why non-spellcasting enemies would necessarily invest in these to a lesser degree than in Mind Blank, True Seeing, and Death Ward. (At least, under the correct circumstances.)

Some minimal capacity for tactical teleportation, in particular, is very desirable for non-casting characters.

[eggynack]

Correct me if I am wrong, but a staple defense spell like freedom of movement negates those BFCs wholly, or not?
It negates some of them, but not all of them, and the 10 minutes/level duration means that you can't keep it up full time. I generally prefer a ring, or heart of water instead. In any case, you don't negate the visibility restriction of solid fog, and you don't negate the extra effects of stinking cloud. You don't stop wall spells at all. It's a very good spell, but it's not a perfect spell.



Second: I wonder what the party will do after the enemy is entangled/fogged/grappled/proned and so on?
The fighter cannot just walk in and deal the damage since he is affected, too. Shutting the enemies down from beyond the area effect can talk a while and is suboptimal. It can get difficult if we talk about fog spells which makes ranged attacks a difficult task.
In my book, a followed up area damage spell is the ideal thing to do vs held/blocked enemies.
Do I miss a master strategy (besides very special tactics like extraord. spell aim that would exclude the fighter form the area effect)?
There are a few good strategies. One of the big benefits of something like solid fog is that it's selective. You can turn an encounter against two enemies into an encounter against one enemy, and then by the time the trapped enemy becomes untrapped, the untrapped enemy is dead. Divide and conquer. There are some spells that don't really stop your ability to engage the enemy at range, like black tentacles, glitterdust, or grease. Moreover, even if hitting the enemy with a bow through a solid fog is inefficient, the enemy is still dying at some rate of speed. I'd rather just kill the enemy slowly while they're useless than kill the enemy quickly by spending a slot.



a) stinking cloud. I find the line which says that the cloud moves each round a problem. The "Control" in "BFC" isn't guaranteed anymore since the cloud effect could endanger the party itself or at least getting ineffective if it moves away from the initial targets.
Did I oversee something important?
I think you're thinking of cloudkill. Stinking cloud stays still.


b) black tentacles: at the beginning, I liked this spell. After many gaming sessions to test the spell wholly, I'm skeptical. Against very STR-heavy enemies (and D&D has alot of those!), the wizard's grapple modifier wont be enough (or leads to a 50:50 bet). Not impressive, if you ask me since the spell will fail in its main job to lockdown the opponents.
That's why you prepare more than one type of spell. When you're facing a high strength melee opponent who'd likely be screwed in a solid fog, that's when you use a solid fog. When you're facing a wizard who'd utterly die in a black tentacles, that's when you use black tentacles. You can still use black tentacles against high strength opponents, especially when they're in groups, but you have to use tactical spells tactically.



- sudden maximize outshines the metamagic rod in most ways.
At level 5-8, you cannot afford the rod. At mid levels, the rod is better (but still, IMHO, I would invest thast gold into better things like a lesser rod of quicken, more pearls of power, rods of extend and so on). At higher levels, sudden maximize gets stronger, again, albeit its use of 1/day.
Once per day is a little limited for my liking, and spending a feat on such an effect is crazy expensive. I'd rather skip the rod, and also separately skip the feat, and not touch maximize at all. It's a very viable option.



Lastly, some words around the whole handbooks vs house rules (formerly known as RAW, fyi). Maybe we cannot find a consensus since we have different gaming philosophies: I follow the philosophy that the rules should not dominate the game (and therefore, being always scrutinized).
BTW, that's an official recommendation by the game designers, after all (I think it is somewhere in the foreword of the DMG, not sure).
Therefore, the whole term "RAW" is not set-in-stone, IMHO. I would appreciate handbooks and tutorials which include such an approach (instead of just including all available splatbooks, printed materials, magazines just to show some maximum effectiveness).
For example, a handbook could show that the enchantment school got some drawbacks and problems, but it could also show alternatives, suggestions and "what-if's" (including possible house-rules, why not). In this case, you could even refer to and older, official rule which placed the orb line into the evocation school and reflect that circumstance.
This would generate a dynamic way of thinking at the reader instead of just telling him what to pick and what not.
Another example for this approach?
Tell the player that banning enchantment could be easy, if the school can get shut down completey. But then, think foreward. Mention that the all-might protection form evil spell won't be a problem for a Lawful Neutral enchanter. Mention that mind blank is a superexpensive 8th-level spell which will not a) appear in campaigns around low-/mid-level-style and b) even then, can only be used scarce by some wizard 15 or a few cleric 15 with access to the protection domain.
If we just run off with more approaches, here another idea:
delete the whole subschool [Teleportation] within conjuration. Make all those teleportation spell universal instead. That way, conjuration gets one point less dominating and telportation spells are 100% available to all wizard specialists (the way it should be like). Think about Vaarsuvius, even he banned conjuration. Universal teleport would have give him an edge as ypical wizard. :)

Ah, well. Mayhap it was my fault to presume such an open-minded approach. If we wanna stick rigidly to RAW, then be it so. But that does not change the fact that there are other approaches, too. A handbook would show many ways to master a wizard, not merely a few.
But I'm also a wizard player how prefers to play immersive instead of 100% effective. That's why my wizards (a focused diviner, btw) dont rest each day within a rope trick. Sleeping beneath camp fire in tents, smelling the wood and feeling the nature is some quality of living compared to a steril, extradimensional locker :)
Sometimes, immersion should go that far that it would lead to not taking all rule advantages deliberately..... ;)
Look, talking about houserules is fine. It's perfectly fine, actually, and we do it all the time. Talking about optimization, and how people are mistaken in their beliefs about a given class, is also fine. We do that all the time too. You can't, however, do both at the same time. Calling a handbook wrong because it doesn't take your personal houserules into account is utterly ridiculous on every level. A handbook should ideally show every way possible to optimize a wizard, but there's absolutely no onus to take non-rule elements into account. It doesn't help out a majority of tables, and it essentially goes on infinitely.

An assessment of fireball would look like, "This spell does 1d6 damage/caster level, and is rather ineffective unless you're dealing with groups of enemies. If it deals 2d6/caster level, it's a significantly better choice, because it can generally kill enemies in one shot. If it deals 1d4 damage/caster level, it's not even good against groups. If it gets a cool explosive effect that destroys stone in its radius, this becomes a high pick, because controlling it can control a battlefield. If it satiates everyone in its radius as if they had eaten an entire cake the day before, you shouldn't touch this spell with a 10 foot pole, because those cakes are yours, dammit." It has nothing to do with being open minded. It has to do with optimization advice requiring some basis to work off of. If we're just optimizing for all theoretical games, instead of this one game this one time, it becomes actually impossible to give any kind of useful advice.

[Deadline]

Ah, well. Mayhap it was my fault to presume such an open-minded approach.

@Lactantius: I do want to make something very clear, because you seem to be confused. No one here is unimaginative or close-minded. Not you, not me, not anyone else.This sub-forum is generally devoted to discussing the rules, and people usually take that to mean the 3.5 rules as written. That's why you'll sometimes see threads with tags in their title to indicate when that assumption should be shelved. There is an entire sub-forum devoted to homebrew and houserules, if you are looking for evaluation on either of them. And correct me if I'm wrong, but no one here has said that you are wrong with your argument if you account for your house rules, just that it is silly for you to expect a handbook writer who doesn't even know your houserules to somehow be prescient enough to include them.

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway to be clear: I'm not calling you names, or mocking you for your houserules (several of which I find to be entirely sensible). The reason houserules aren't generally put forth in a discussion in this sub-forum is that they are rarely useful to someone who doesn't play in your group. And discussing them without calling them out as such just causes confusion. So they are generally avoided.


- control spells like solid fog, tentacles and glitterdust:

Correct me if I am wrong, but a staple defense spell like freedom of movement negates those BFCs wholly, or not?

It is partially helpful against most of them. Glitterdust and Stinking Cloud are unaffected, solid fog still limits visibility, and tentacles is effectively negated. Again, the idea isn't that there is One Spell to Rule Them All, it's to deny action economy and free reign of the battlefield to your foes.


Any dimension travel spell (dimension hop at lower levels, later on dimension door, teleport, shadow walk, planeshift and so on) circumvents those BFC's too, right?

Glitterdust is still unaffected, and Stinking Cloud is mostly unaffected. I'd have to go dig in the rules to see if Solid Fog had any effect (some of those spells require line of sight, I think), and casting while grappled by the tentacles would be difficult but not impossible.


Second: I wonder what the party will do after the enemy is entangled/fogged/grappled/proned and so on?

The goal is usually to engage the foes outside the BFC area, attack the ones inside with ranged attacks, or attack foes that are either emerging from the BFC or stuck on the edge of it. It's essentially the same principle of engaging the enemy at a choke point. You fight there to limit the enemy options and ability to fight back.


In my book, a followed up area damage spell is the ideal thing to do vs held/blocked enemies.

It isn't a bad option. The idea behind not doing it goes into resource conservation, and GOD-wizarding (i.e. making your party members effective and central to the combat rather than sidelining them. Being a pure blaster achieves a similar goal, but steps on the toes of those party members who only really do damage.)


Do I miss a master strategy (besides very special tactics like extraord. spell aim that would exclude the fighter form the area effect)?

I'm far from the best optimizer here, so I'm sure there are a few folks who could cover that. It's worth noting you'll have the same problems with area blasting spells. There are a handful of ways to synergize your party with your spell selection though, either way.


Then, some special notes to:
a) stinking cloud. I find the line which says that the cloud moves each round a problem. The "Control" in "BFC" isn't guaranteed anymore since the cloud effect could endanger the party itself or at least getting ineffective if it moves away from the initial targets.
Did I oversee something important?

Where are you getting the movement bit? I'm not seeing it in the Stinking Cloud or Fog Cloud description in the PHB.


b) black tentacles: at the beginning, I liked this spell. After many gaming sessions to test the spell wholly, I'm skeptical. Against very STR-heavy enemies (and D&D has alot of those!), the wizard's grapple modifier wont be enough (or leads to a 50:50 bet). Not impressive, if you ask me since the spell will fail in its main job to lockdown the opponents.

Actually, it won't, unless you are talking about a single, high strength opponent. Pick the right tool for the right job. Was the climactic encounter a fight between the Melee Brute Boss and his crew? *BAM, Black Tentacles* Now, it's just against the Melee Brute Boss, and the few members of his crew that eventually break free to join the fray. If the fight is just against a single strong opponent, then that is when you bring in your potent single target debuffs.


c) contingency vs craft contrigency spell. After my calculations, CCS is a very expensive crafting tool. To make effective use of it, you must pay a pretty high XP value - too high, IMHO.

Indeed, it is more expensive than Contingency. I noted that taking it mitigated the loss, not that it replaced Contingency entirely. The cost can be painful if you find yourself crafting lots of them. One would hope, however, that you aren't repeatedly having to fall back to your emergency plan. It's not really an emergency plan at that point, it's just a ... plan. :smallbiggrin:


d) fireball vs. ECL-equivalent targets: in my experience, a fireball at level 5-8 will instant kill many opponents, or, at least, deal 50 - 75% hp damage.
And yes, those enemies are still 100% combat ready since D&D does not know a wounding system, but this helps the other party members so much, I just can repeat that.

Blasting is not ineffective. Blasting is sub-optimal in most situations. Ineffective is not the same thing as sub-optimal.

Do you disagree with blasting being a sub-optimal strategy? Because at higher levels it almost always is sub-optimal. The key reasoning for that point, by the way, is that at higher levels, hitpoint damage is less useful than removing an enemy's ability to fight back. Also, it sounds very much like you are used to playing low-mid level games. This is the main place where blasting is still reasonably useful (although what creatures are you looking at in the 5-8 range that would be instantly killed or even damage 50% by an average damage fireball?)


e) shadow evocation spells: I find the opportunity costs way too high. The spell slot is way too expensive too emulate some lower level spell effects. Wasting the wizard's most valuable ressources - spell slots - ist just wrong, IMHO. Do I miss something?

There are two primary reasons to take Shadow Evocation spells:

1. Versatility - You are a spontaneous caster, or you are a specialist wizard who banned Evocation and have come down with a case of buyers remorse.

2. Shadowcraft Shenanigans - Through RAW wizardry (and GM approval), you have abused the various techniques to make your shadow spells 110% real.


some other issues mentioned:
- sudden maximize outshines the metamagic rod in most ways.
At level 5-8, you cannot afford the rod. At mid levels, the rod is better (but still, IMHO, I would invest thast gold into better things like a lesser rod of quicken, more pearls of power, rods of extend and so on). At higher levels, sudden maximize gets stronger, again, albeit its use of 1/day.
Look at those level 7-9 spells with variables to maximize. the golden demon goes to time stop, but maw of chaos and many other spells get insanely strong, too.

Greater Metamagic Rods are a thing. I don't have my DMG handy, but do Greater Metamagic Rods of Maximize not exist?


Lastly, some words around the whole handbooks vs house rules (formerly known as RAW, fyi). Maybe we cannot find a consensus since we have different gaming philosophies: I follow the philosophy that the rules should not dominate the game (and therefore, being always scrutinized).

No one is saying that the rules should dominate the game. As I stated above, rules advice that is built off of your house rules is rarely useful for other people. Sometimes it can be useful, but usually the people who are asking rules queries here are asking about the RAW.


This would generate a dynamic way of thinking at the reader instead of just telling him what to pick and what not.

Seriously, what handbooks have you been reading?


But I'm also a wizard player how prefers to play immersive instead of 100% effective. That's why my wizards (a focused diviner, btw) dont rest each day within a rope trick. Sleeping beneath camp fire in tents, smelling the wood and feeling the nature is some quality of living compared to a steril, extradimensional locker :)

Enjoy sleeping in the dirt, good sir. I prefer the lightly perfumed overstuffed lounge chair in my Magnificent Mansion. :smallbiggrin:

[eggynack]

Tell the player that banning enchantment could be easy, if the school can get shut down completey. But then, think foreward. Mention that the all-might protection form evil spell won't be a problem for a Lawful Neutral enchanter. Mention that mind blank is a superexpensive 8th-level spell which will not a) appear in campaigns around low-/mid-level-style and b) even then, can only be used scarce by some wizard 15 or a few cleric 15 with access to the protection domain.
Actually, the enchantment blocking capability of protection from evil just works. The deflection and save bonuses only work against evil, the summons stopping ability only works against non-good, and the mental control blocking doesn't have any alignment restriction at all. Protection from evil is a reasonably good spell like that.

[TuggyNE]

- control spells like solid fog, tentacles and glitterdust:
First, don't get me wrong. I like those spells and I use them.
But I fail to see how they are THAT powerful (as they are advertised).
Especially since those spells can be negated as easy as resistances can negate evocation damage, death ward vs. enervation effects, mind blank vs. enchantment and so on.
Correct me if I am wrong, but a staple defense spell like freedom of movement negates those BFCs wholly, or not?
Any dimension travel spell (dimension hop at lower levels, later on dimension door, teleport, shadow walk, planeshift and so on) circumvents those BFC's too, right?

There are spells (as usual) to make these less effective, yes, but you won't see common creature types that are natively immune to them, like Undead, Constructs, Vermin, Plants, and Oozes are immune to Enchantment, and like Undead and Constructs are immune to enervation, and so on. Black tentacles does have to deal with effective resistance (in the form of high grapple checks), but very few creatures have Ex or Su freedom of movement. Very few.

In other words, it's a matter of reliability and ease of enforcing your will: if all that's blocking you from slamming an awesome spell out there is an enemy buff, well, that's why (greater) dispel magic is a thing. But you can't dispel a type trait.

[ryu]

But you can't dispel a type trait.

You actually can. It's pretty epic level effects shenanigans, but there do exist ways of outright taking traits away from things.

[Story]

There's an exception to pretty much every rule. But that doesn't necessarily come up in practice.

[ryu]

I know but it's the principle of the thing. It's the same reason people go out of their way to turn antimagic field into a total farce of a spell.

[Pickford]

On craft contingent spell being the most hilarious thing ever: You're limited to one Contingency at a time. This does not hold true for crafted contingent spells. Also XP is a river and crafting costs can easily be mitigated if you actually want to craft enough that the CR system wouldn't quickly catch you up.

As for ''openmindedness'' you don't get to call out assumptions and their being wrong when as the game is actually designed from the start they're totally totally right before your houserules. That's like claiming small dog is more dangerous than a fully grown tiger... After all small dogs are regularly filled with plastic explosive that goes off on contact when they lick things.

How do you mitigate this formula at all?

Paraphrased:
"Base cost: (Spell level x caster level x 100 gp)
GP cost: 1/2 of Base cost
XP: 1/25 of Base cost

Extra costs incurred in spells 'must' be paid when the contingent spell is created."

Edit: Incidentally, I'd say Divination can easily be more powerful at low levels:

Elite array: 15 str (+2), 14 int (+2
True Strike (+20)+ a Large Greatsword (-6) + str (+2) + charge (+2) = +18 to hit and 3d6 + 2 damage. (i.e. auto-hit on basically anything for 5-20 damage (17.5 median)/19-20x2 (10-40 (25 median crit))

Not bad.

[TuggyNE]

You actually can. It's pretty epic level effects shenanigans, but there do exist ways of outright taking traits away from things.

I knew someone was going to say that. Still, I left it the way I wrote it because a) it's a whole lot harder and b) it's not actually a dispel in any sense.

[bekeleven]

Edit: Incidentally, I'd say Divination can easily be more powerful at low levels:

Elite array: 15 str (+2), 14 int (+2
True Strike (+20)+ a Large Greatsword (-6) + str (+2) + charge (+2) = +18 to hit and 3d6 + 2 damage. (i.e. auto-hit on basically anything for 5-20 damage (17.5 median)/19-20x2 (10-40 (25 median crit))

Not bad.

If you spend 100 of your starting gold (wizards start with 75) on a large greatsword, godspeed to you, it means that you can take two rounds to deal 11.5 damage to an enemy with which you are now in melee.

As a wizard, you should be ending combat with sleep/color spray/grease, not entering them by dealing 11 damage to people.

[ahenobarbi]

How do you mitigate this formula at all?

Paraphrased:
"Base cost: (Spell level x caster level x 100 gp)
GP cost: 1/2 of Base cost
XP: 1/25 of Base cost

Extra costs incurred in spells 'must' be paid when the contingent spell is created."

Edit: Incidentally, I'd say Divination can easily be more powerful at low levels:

Elite array: 15 str (+2), 14 int (+2
True Strike (+20)+ a Large Greatsword (-6) + str (+2) + charge (+2) = +18 to hit and 3d6 + 2 damage. (i.e. auto-hit on basically anything for 5-20 damage (17.5 median)/19-20x2 (10-40 (25 median crit))

Not bad.

Bad. It costed you two rounds and moved your 1d4 (with small Con because you had to put that 14 in Str) next to other enemies.

You're probably better of firing light crossbow (and when fighting multiple enemies you might want to color spray them).

[Yuki Akuma]

If my casting of Black Tentacles forces you to cast Freedom of Movement, I've made you waste a standard action, so I've still won that round.

Battlefield control and action economy control go hand in hand. Forcing someone to do nothing is great either way.

[ArcturusV]

Actually you'd have both wasted an action at that point. Well, no, guess you'd have done the 1d6+1 damage. But you'd have been better off crossbowing him, most likely if you're looking at it from the strict personal rewards. I mean "I made you use a standard action" isn't a victory when "I used a standard action to make you use a standard action" is the truth of the matter.

If your big concern is "Well he wasted his standard action so my teammate got a free shot in"... you might as well have accomplished the same goal with anything from haste, to even just a fear spell, illusion, or even a direct damage spell (I kicked him to half, my teammate finished him off, he never got a turn).

[Yuki Akuma]

Actually you'd have both wasted an action at that point. Well, no, guess you'd have done the 1d6+1 damage. But you'd have been better off crossbowing him, most likely if you're looking at it from the strict personal rewards. I mean "I made you use a standard action" isn't a victory when "I used a standard action to make you use a standard action" is the truth of the matter.

If your big concern is "Well he wasted his standard action so my teammate got a free shot in"... you might as well have accomplished the same goal with anything from haste, to even just a fear spell, illusion, or even a direct damage spell (I kicked him to half, my teammate finished him off, he never got a turn).

See, the thing is...

One enemy got a buff to ignore the Black Tentacles. The rest didn't. So the Black Tentacles still accomplished something.

[ahenobarbi]

See, the thing is...

One enemy got a buff to ignore the Black Tentacles. The rest didn't. So the Black Tentacles still accomplished something.

Also you and your enemie(s) lost a standard action each. But rest of your team (and part of enemies?) got their actions, so outcome might be positive.

[Deadline]

Edit: Incidentally, I'd say Divination can easily be more powerful at low levels:

Elite array: 15 str (+2), 14 int (+2
True Strike (+20)+ a Large Greatsword (-6) + str (+2) + charge (+2) = +18 to hit and 3d6 + 2 damage. (i.e. auto-hit on basically anything for 5-20 damage (17.5 median)/19-20x2 (10-40 (25 median crit))

Not bad.

There are issues with it, as others have pointed out, but it is an avenue for doing damage that the gish types might consider.

If you really want to blow peoples minds with a melee wizard, you should look into building a grapplemancer. With a human and the Spell Compendium, you are out grappling any ECL appropriate encounter at Wizard 1, and by Wizard 3, you are grappling them while you are on fire, thus also killing them. By level 7, you get Polymorph and ...

[ryu]

How do you mitigate this formula at all?

Paraphrased:
"Base cost: (Spell level x caster level x 100 gp)
GP cost: 1/2 of Base cost
XP: 1/25 of Base cost

Extra costs incurred in spells 'must' be paid when the contingent spell is created."

Edit: Incidentally, I'd say Divination can easily be more powerful at low levels:

Elite array: 15 str (+2), 14 int (+2
True Strike (+20)+ a Large Greatsword (-6) + str (+2) + charge (+2) = +18 to hit and 3d6 + 2 damage. (i.e. auto-hit on basically anything for 5-20 damage (17.5 median)/19-20x2 (10-40 (25 median crit))

Not bad.

Simple spells used to farm ambrosia which can sub for any and all Xperia in crafting. Go far enough and you just obviate the cost entirety.

[Pickford]

Simple spells used to farm ambrosia which can sub for any and all Xperia in crafting. Go far enough and you just obviate the cost entirety.

Don't be absurd. Ambrosia, or essence of joy only obviates '2' xp per dose.

Each dose takes a 1 day casting time to acquire (assuming you can actually find someone experiencing the joy requirement at the exact moment the spell finishes of course). For a level '1' spell at caster level 1 that's 2 days added on to pay off just the xp component of the crafted contingency.

A level 9 spell at 20th? 360 days! That's just not a realistic method.


ahenobarbi: No, it's more damage on average than can be dealt until you have CL 3+ damage spells. That's awesome one on one.

[ArcturusV]

You don't even have to mitigate it. Though evil characters have a better deal out of ritual sacrifice than Agony/Ambrosia. You don't even need thought bottle shenanigans. Anyone who ever tells you crafting XP is a problem has never really used it. Worst condition you'll ever be at is on a level break. e.g.: Your party is just barely level 8 and you're level 7 and a couple dozen XP shy of level 8. Which is just one encounter away from leveling. Most of the time it won't even happen, you'll both have enough XP to level up.

[ryu]

Don't be absurd. Ambrosia, or essence of joy only obviates '2' xp per dose.

Each dose takes a 1 day casting time to acquire (assuming you can actually find someone experiencing the joy requirement at the exact moment the spell finishes of course). For a level '1' spell at caster level 1 that's 2 days added on to pay off just the xp component of the crafted contingency.

A level 9 spell at 20th? 360 days! That's just not a realistic method.


ahenobarbi: No, it's more damage on average than can be dealt until you have CL 3+ damage spells. That's awesome one on one.

Clearly you've never used a combination of resetting traps you payed to have installed in the local brothel so that the collected ambrosia would be collected and given to you. Do not mess with wizards. If things are to be crafted we normally just do with no problems. Costs high enough to actually warrant mitigating? There's an app for that and an easily made setup. Don't even get me started on the mitigation available if I'm evil, free to get liquid pain, and teach the necessary spell to a bunch of caster ready summoned demons for fun and profit.

[Pickford]

Clearly you've never used a combination of resetting traps you payed to have installed in the local brothel so that the collected ambrosia would be collected and given to you. Do not mess with wizards. If things are to be crafted we normally just do with no problems. Costs high enough to actually warrant mitigating? There's an app for that and an easily made setup. Don't even get me started on the mitigation available if I'm evil, free to get liquid pain, and teach the necessary spell to a bunch of caster ready summoned demons for fun and profit.

That still takes 1 day per casting, resetting or not. Also the local brothel doesn't cut the mustard from the BoED spell description. It has to be undiluted, brothels don't count. Furthermore 'how' exactly is the trap getting triggered at 'exactly' the correct time? As described this is not a feasible trap.

But again, it's 1 day casting time which means you would still have to 'wait' 360 days per level 9 spell you want to mitigate the xp on. (Plus you're increasing the total cost by the GP from said trap...assuming you even get it to go off 'every' day for 360 days...the probability of this occurring is remote.)

[eggynack]

That still takes 1 day per casting, resetting or not. Also the local brothel doesn't cut the mustard from the BoED spell description. It has to be undiluted, brothels don't count. Furthermore 'how' exactly is the trap getting triggered at 'exactly' the correct time? As described this is not a feasible trap.

But again, it's 1 day casting time which means you would still have to 'wait' 360 days per level 9 spell you want to mitigate the xp on. (Plus you're increasing the total cost by the GP from said trap...assuming you even get it to go off 'every' day for 360 days...the probability of this occurring is remote.)
If I'm not missing something here, and I don't think I am, the idea is to have more than one trap. You have one trap going off every day for 360 days, which gives you parity with just casting the spell, and then you have a billion other traps doing the same thing, and you get a billion times parity. So, y'know, maybe you'd just have to wait for one day, or maybe for a week. I don't know the exact plan, mechanics, or business model here.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also you and your enemie(s) lost a standard action each. But rest of your team (and part of enemies?) got their actions, so outcome might be positive.

Here's the thing:

You casted Black Tentacles. This hit the main target as well as probably some secondary targets.

Your main target casted Freedom of Movement to get out. FIRST off, he's going to have troubles casting it, because he's being grappled.


Cast a Spell

You can attempt to cast a spell while grappling or even while pinned (see below), provided its casting time is no more than 1 standard action, it has no somatic component, and you have in hand any material components or focuses you might need. Any spell that requires precise and careful action is impossible to cast while grappling or being pinned. If the spell is one that you can cast while grappling, you must make a Concentration check (DC 20 + spell level) or lose the spell. You don’t have to make a successful grapple check to cast the spell.

You see, Freedom of Movement has a Somatic component. So he's going to need a Still Spell Freedom of Movement. Which is a lot more difficult to explain away.

IN ADDITION, assuming he dealt with the Somatic component somehow, he'll need to make a Concentration Check DC 24 (actually, if it is Still Spell, DC 25) or flub the spell anyways.

THEN, assuming that he manages both of these feats... you've just forced a caster to blow his turn casting Freedom of Movement on himself, instead of tossing around actually breaking the game this turn. From my perspective, this is a Win.

Of course, this doesn't really do anything for the minions which are still being grappled (in a hopefully platonic way). Meaning instead of Caster + Minions, you've got just the Caster to deal with, who just blew his action trying to mitigate what you did, giving your beatstick enough time to close and proceed to apply sharp pointy object to soft squishy caster.

[ryu]

How better to get undiluted happiness than exploiting pretty much the most powerful of about ten pleasure activities that don't actually serve a utilitarian purpose?

Further even assuming a one day casting time several traps activating repeatedly throughout the weak add up significantly over even relatively short adventuring periods.

Further still this all assumes I'm not also using exalted spells to sanctify the clamps of exquisite pain and handing them out for free at all the medicinal centers of large cities in exchange for collect the ambrosia from people who don't have to spend their lives wracked with horrifically painful diseases anymore.

[eggynack]

Thingamajogs.
Yeah, that stuff is why I prefer heart of water. I wouldn't expect a ten minute/level duration to carry you over through the given iteration of black tentacles, but heart of water's hour/level duration probably will. The place where I could really see freedom of movement being better is where you're the one constructing situations where it's being used. Thus, you cast freedom of movement, and then you run around shooting black tentacles and solid fogs everywhere. That way, you don't have to make predictions about when you're going to face a situations where it's useful in order to not become the action economy's bitch.

[ArcturusV]

Yes, but generally when I see something like Black Tentacles or something talked about it's presumed A) You used it to the optimal situation. B) Your enemies know nothing about your usual tactics no matter how often you've used them. C) They are in the worst possible position. D) Your allies somehow are all not effected it by.

A I can see as a common enough value to respect. B, C, and D, a bit less so. Particularly in a campaign where your BBEG probably has had tabs on you for a while. And D just because most optimal combat styles are melee based so AoE obstacles kinda hose a team with a bigger eye to optimization.

I mean they've been useful in my games, sure. Players have used them well. But also any player who counts on the same tricks over and over (Particularly spellcasters who should have a wide variety of tricks) usually find smarter enemies/organizations coping with it in such a way that suddenly you're not catching 90% of the enemies in a black tentacles and shutting down every encounter pretty hard with one spell. You're catching 1, maybe 2. And if you went for 2 it's almost guaranteed that your own teammates aren't going to have a clear shot at them. And if you're catching only 1? Well it's not much of an advantage.

[Pickford]

If I'm not missing something here, and I don't think I am, the idea is to have more than one trap. You have one trap going off every day for 360 days, which gives you parity with just casting the spell, and then you have a billion other traps doing the same thing, and you get a billion times parity. So, y'know, maybe you'd just have to wait for one day, or maybe for a week. I don't know the exact plan, mechanics, or business model here.

If you have a billion traps you've spent well over a trillion gold (seeing as each trap is going to be at 'least' 1000 gold. You'd also need a billion distinct events, which you aren't guaranteed to have occur at the time the trap is triggered (nor does the brothel even qualify!)

Again, this simply does not work out mechanically as each trap must have a distinct event.

edit: Ryu, the prostitution taints the joy, diluting it.

[ryu]

Yes, but generally when I see something like Black Tentacles or something talked about it's presumed A) You used it to the optimal situation. B) Your enemies know nothing about your usual tactics no matter how often you've used them. C) They are in the worst possible position. D) Your allies somehow are all not effected it by.

A I can see as a common enough value to respect. B, C, and D, a bit less so. Particularly in a campaign where your BBEG probably has had tabs on you for a while. And D just because most optimal combat styles are melee based so AoE obstacles kinda hose a team with a bigger eye to optimization.

I mean they've been useful in my games, sure. Players have used them well. But also any player who counts on the same tricks over and over (Particularly spellcasters who should have a wide variety of tricks) usually find smarter enemies/organizations coping with it in such a way that suddenly you're not catching 90% of the enemies in a black tentacles and shutting down every encounter pretty hard with one spell. You're catching 1, maybe 2. And if you went for 2 it's almost guaranteed that your own teammates aren't going to have a clear shot at them. And if you're catching only 1? Well it's not much of an advantage.

Except no one was arguing that any one spell could entirely shatter entire campaigns with no effort put into being creative or efficient at all. Furthermore if the enemy is forced to have serious thoughts abouts my low to mid level spells I've already won. I also rather doubt you'd have to specifically plan contingencies for say... fireball. Most of the things that shut down fireball are things people just HAVE. Black Tentacles is demonstrably way more powerful.

Trap discussion: If you were aware of basic logic picky you'd know eggy was using a common tactic called hyperbole to get the point across. Fifty traps stationed to be activated at specific times of day directly in the middle of working hours will finish casting while the act is occurring. It's almost like simple organization is simple and the traps don't need hundred percent efficiency to obviate crafting costs. As for money I'll gladly pay 100,000 gold ONCE to get a permanent fire sale discount on ALL items needed.

[eggynack]

If you have a billion traps you've spent well over a trillion gold (seeing as each trap is going to be at 'least' 1000 gold. You'd also need a billion distinct events, which you aren't guaranteed to have occur at the time the trap is triggered (nor does the brothel even qualify!)

Again, this simply does not work out mechanically as each trap must have a distinct event.

edit: Ryu, the prostitution taints the joy, diluting it.
I was just using a billion as a shorthand for more than one. I should have gone with gazillion or infinity. Anyways, the idea is more than one. With two, it take 180 days instead of 360, and I don't need to be a super math god to come up with the amount of time it would take for other trap quantities. The point is, traps make it take less time, because casting a spell requires you and the happiness, while the trap presumably just requires the happiness.

[ryu]

There is no taint in the human body nor the simple pleasure of a good days work picky.

[137beth]

On the issue of house rules in handbooks:

Very, very few people play completely RAW, with no house rules. For beginners, the rules are very complex, and people who haven't spent years studying them are likely to use house rules without realizing it.
For people who have devoted a lot of time to studying the intricacies of the rules, they are likely to have strong opinions about certain rules, and be confident in their ability to alter the rules appropriately.

The issue is, handbooks cannot possibly take every possible house rule into account, so they use RAW as the default, and assume that you will modify suggestions based on your house rules.
In fact, many handbooks already do take into account very common house rules. For example, some handbooks critisize the Destined Sorcerer Bloodline's selection of bonus feats, based partly on the fact that the only good option for a bonus feat that that bloodline gives is Leadership, and that Leadership is likely to be banned/nerfed.
More generally, few wizard handbooks suggest infinite-combos/cheese tricks that grant unlimited actions per round, because any sane DM would nerf those. Many handbooks also list, say, two options, one of which is inherently better but less likely to be allowed, with a note that option A is worse than option B, but that option A is core and so you can still consider using it if the book option B is in is banned.

The issue, OP, is that the house rules you are using are not so widely used as to be worth putting in a handbook. Lots of people have house rules that not everyone else uses, but a handbook cannot realistically be written to take every house rule into account. If you are concerned that handbook writers are 'closed-minded' because they want to avoid house rules, then you are mistaken: handbooks do take expected house rules into account. But they can't account for unexpected house rules, or house rules that you made up yesterday and so no one else could even know about. They can only write with the assumption of rules that are likely to be used by a lot of different groups. Nerfs to leadership are really common. Making FoM negate Glitterdust or Solid Fog is not--you are the only person I've heard of using such a house rule.

[Pickford]

I was just using a billion as a shorthand for more than one. I should have gone with gazillion or infinity. Anyways, the idea is more than one. With two, it take 180 days instead of 360, and I don't need to be a super math god to come up with the amount of time it would take for other trap quantities. The point is, traps make it take less time, because casting a spell requires you and the happiness, while the trap presumably just requires the happiness.

Not just happiness, but pure undiluted joy. This is a matter of degree, I'm saying that paying for sex is not undiluted joy. Plus...how exactly is this trap getting triggered?

You would need to pick a trigger that only occurs when conditions are exactly right, and observationally it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to accurately predict that conditions were right.

Also, the 360 number was if, somehow, the traps were triggered with 0 time in between castings/resetting...which isn't actually possible. It's like in economics when assumptions are made that people purchase optimally, that doesn't actually happen, it's just to set the minimum conceivable threshold of an idealized, non-existent, world.

[ryu]

Have it to recast at a precise time of day directly in the middle of that rooms busiest hours. If that's still not getting full efficiency allow the brothel to use roughly five percent of ambrosia collected as powerful incentive to attract more people at from the richer brackets.

The thing about economics is that while you'll never have 100% efficiency in real life that isn't necessary to actually achieve desired goals.

[Hecuba]

Trap discussion: If you were aware of basic logic picky you'd know eggy was using a common tactic called hyperbole to get the point across.
Nit pick: Hyperbole is a rhetorical element of discourse rather than a logical element.

[Pickford]

Have it to recast at a precise time of day directly in the middle of that rooms busiest hours. If that's still not getting full efficiency allow the brothel to use roughly five percent of ambrosia collected as powerful incentive to attract more people at from the richer brackets.

The thing about economics is that while you'll never have 100% efficiency in real life that isn't necessary to actually achieve desired goals.

It has to have a 'target'. And traps have to have triggers, they don't 'just go off'. Whoever triggers a trap is the defacto target. Thus you would have to design the trap such that the target (whoever is experiencing pure joy) actually triggers the trap. (At the moment of, if it happens before the trap is wasted!)

Actually, wait it's worse than that. The target would have to trigger the trap a whole day in advance. How would that ever work?

[ryu]

Targets need not be picked until the spell is finished casting,. For goodness sake you silly person it's a basic rule of the game.

Further unless the target only just got started when the spell completed he'll be plenty happy during the entirety of his half to full hour experience.

[Pickford]

Targets need not be picked until the spell is finished casting,. For goodness sake you silly person it's a basic rule of the game.

Further unless the target only just got started when the spell completed he'll be plenty happy during the entirety of his half to full hour experience.


Some spells, such as charm person, have a target or targets. You cast these spells on creatures or objects, as defined by the spell itself. You must be able to see or touch the target, and you must specifically choose that target.

So while you don't have to 'select' them till it ends (i.e. check to see if they are valid), you have to have them available or you can't even really start.

[ryu]

There is no rule about not being able to cast a spell if a target isn't available at the start. It's perfectly reasonable to say that without a target available at the time of picking targets that casting is wasted, but there is no rule further limiting the process.

[eggynack]

Well, this topic has gone somewhat off track, or at least the craft contingent spell portion has. Seriously, you don't need ambrosia to make the feat worthwhile. You also don't need to prepare 9th level spells, and I'm not even sure you want to. I'd probably rather set up contingencies that lead to spells like celerity, so that the ultimate effect of the contingency is personalized. Sticking a celerity in a contingency has several benefits. It doesn't cost an action, so you can use it while flat footed, and you can presumably use third eye clarity to remove the dazing, because you haven't used the immediate action necessary to activate it. That's a fourth level spell, and it basically lets you act whenever you want.

In other words, you can be somewhat thrifty with these things, using small effects that get you where you need to be. Dimension door and resilient sphere are another two spells with low cost and high benefit. Also, I'm pretty sure that you can use other people's spells in the crafting, because that's how crafting works. That should give you access to some raise dead type magic, along with stuff from schools you don't have. These spells, all of these spells, let a wizard do what he wants to do the most: not die. Just having them around at all times is incredibly powerful, and that would remain true at twice the cost. There are some things, like essentially perfect safety, that are worth pretty much anything.

Also,
Not just happiness, but pure undiluted joy. This is a matter of degree, I'm saying that paying for sex is not undiluted joy.
this is a really hard claim to substantiate by any metric. What qualifies as undiluted joy, and does it not differ from being to being? Perhaps your diluted joy is the undiluted joy of many others, and as long as some percentage of our patrons are experiencing the latter, we're getting a higher efficiency. The premise of the argument, that you need undiluted joy, isn't even accurate. You merely need undiluted sexual pleasure, which seems far easier to obtain with prostitutes.

[ryu]

Oh I know you don't NEED ambrosia to make craft contingent spell pretty much one of the tastiest things in existence. I still get my ambrosia though. Why? I think of my wizards as stupid paranoid, but pragmatic enough to have answers to literally anything. Will most of my four hundred separate contingency effects PER PARTY MEMBER come into effect? Goodness I hope not. There still must be that amount of contingencies available as often as possible because that's how my wizards tend to think.

[ArcturusV]

And of course the obvious plus side that if you are running the Ambrosia Brothel yourself it can help foot the bill for your research on top of paying for itself.

[eggynack]

And of course the obvious plus side that if you are running the Ambrosia Brothel yourself it can help foot the bill for your research on top of paying for itself.
That sounds amazing. You'd be paying for the experience and GP cost of craft contingent spell at the same time. Life is good sometimes.

[Lactantius]

My thread feels so hijacked off to other discussions... :smallannoyed:

[eggynack]

My thread feels so hijacked off to other discussions... :smallannoyed:
Eh, a little bit. I feel like we've entered asked and answered territory, so I don't feel that bad about thinking about weird and pointless ambrosia topics while I wait for more pertinent topics to pop up.

[Pickford]

Oh I know you don't NEED ambrosia to make craft contingent spell pretty much one of the tastiest things in existence. I still get my ambrosia though. Why? I think of my wizards as stupid paranoid, but pragmatic enough to have answers to literally anything. Will most of my four hundred separate contingency effects PER PARTY MEMBER come into effect? Goodness I hope not. There still must be that amount of contingencies available as often as possible because that's how my wizards tend to think.

you're 400th level?

edit: and the target thing is from the spell section on targeting in the PHB, so yeah there's a rule for that.

[eggynack]

And the target thing is from the spell section on targeting in the PHB, so yeah there's a rule for that.
What're you talking about, in particular? The relevant quote I can find is, "You do not have to select your target until you finish casting the spell." (PHB, 175)

[ryu]

No not 400th level. As levels get into the high teens I start franchising to multiple major cities. All shall fear us for we control the McDonald's of sexual entertainment.

[eggynack]

No not 400th level. As levels get into the high teens I start franchising to multiple major cities. All shall fear us for we control the McDonald's of sexual entertainment.
I believe that Pickford is responding to the idea of putting 400 contingent spells on party members. You can only put as many contingent spells on someone as they have HD. To quote Complete Arcane, page 139, "At any one time, a creature can bear a number of contingent spells equal to its Hit Dice. Attempts to apply additional contingent spells beyond this limit simply fail."

[ryu]

Clearly the solution is for people to hide the rest of the spells on trained insects hidden upon their person that still operate based upon the intended target. The real question is how to get something fine sized, intelligent enough to be trained, and long lived enough to not be wasted in large numbers. monster manual diving HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[eggynack]

Clearly the solution is for people to hide the rest of the spells on trained insects hidden upon their person that still operate based upon the intended target. The real question is how to get something fine sized, intelligent enough to be trained, and long lived enough to not be wasted in large numbers. monster manual diving HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Why do they need to be intelligent? I think that contingencies are based on the theoretical knowledge of the spell, rather than on the actual knowledge of the being who it's on. Thus, you would only need the creature to be smart enough to not run off.

[ryu]

This is why I used incredibly relative terms when describing the intelligence. Mindless things that have move speeds are a bit of a risk.

[Emperor Tippy]

I believe that Pickford is responding to the idea of putting 400 contingent spells on party members. You can only put as many contingent spells on someone as they have HD. To quote Complete Arcane, page 139, "At any one time, a creature can bear a number of contingent spells equal to its Hit Dice. Attempts to apply additional contingent spells beyond this limit simply fail."

That is why you take Great Wyrm Red Dragons and shrink them down to fine size before making a ton of Ice Assassins of them, make sure that the dragon has Shapechange as one of its sorcerer spells known. Each one can hold 40 Craft Contingent spells and thanks to Shapechange they can each become Zodar's and use Wish to regain the Craft Contingent's once they are expended. Just set the triggering conditions to apply to you and not the dragon.

[ryu]

Wouldn't a dragon from an evil alignment with high intelligence and its own casting risk various... complications? I was thinking shrunken giants int drained low enough to be handle animaled tame. Although I SUPPOSE if we were going this far anyway mind rape is a thing.

[Karnith]

Although I SUPPOSE if we were going this far anyway mind rape is a thing.
You're talking about Emperor Tippy. Of course Mindrape is involved.

[Emperor Tippy]

Ice Assassins can't be disloyal. It is impossible for them to disobey your orders.

[ryu]

Oh okay I wasn't entirely sure you weren't silly enough to keep the originals out of the equation past creation. Although I'd still want them mind raped and ready to teleport in on command if their clones die. It is possible for caster order to override the clones inherent imperative to kill the original right?

[Karnith]

It is possible for caster order to override the clones inherent imperative to kill the original right?
Yes. Per the Ice Assassin spell description: (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20030124a)
At all times, the ice assassin remains under your absolute command.
It has a need to kill whatever it's copying, but it's under your "absolute command," so you can tell it to do whatever and it has no choice but to obey.

[ryu]

So that's why I was repeatedly threatened with a cheese grater for even bringing the spell up last session.... It all makes sense now.

[Lactantius]

Some feedback and inputs:

1) Contingency:
the first time i saw the craft contingent spell feat, I want to have it for my arcane casters. Then, I calculated through the stuff and gave up.
Mayhap you guys saw something I did not see?

Let's try:
If we want to make maximum use of this feat, we would contigent spells equal to our HD.
As soon as we can apply this feat (caster level 11, so mostly at level 12, where we get a new feat), we can contingent up to 12 spells.
That's impressive, but let's calculate.
I will just add some usual contingency spells, sure, there maybe more powerful and high-op-tools (like contingency celerity, which I won't apply).

Fore the sake of simplicity, I will set the caster level on minumum casting default, though, sometimes you may wanna have the maximum CL (for example, teleporting home).

So let's take these spells:
- Teleport (panic button)
- Otiluke's resilient sphere
- Greater Invisibility
- Globe of Invulnerability

...
A good startup, there is indeed room for more.
Now, lets calculate (spell level x caster level x 100); 1/25 of that sum in XP, half of this sum in Gold:
Teleport: 5 x 9 x 100 = 4500; 180xp, 2250 gp
Otilukes resilient sphere: 4 x 7 x 100 = 2800; 112xp, 1400 gp
Greater Invisibility: 4 x 7 x 100 = 2800; 112xp, 1400 gp
Globe of Invulnerability: 6 x 11 x 100 = 6600; 264xp, 3300 gp.

Okay, lets break it up here.
We have used four spells within the spell level range 4-6, which are typical for contingencies.
We have "only" used 4 of 12 possible spells and have already spent 668 xp and 8350 gp.
If I imagine what stuff - permanent magic item stuff - I could get with that money (which is only the starter, remember), I wonder why I should waste it into one-time-spell-effects.
If we keep the contingency specialty besides, its just like you would scribe 7-9th level spell scrolls all day long - burn xp and gold for one-shot-effects.

So, I can deal with the basic contingency spell. Honestly, the waiting is okay since greater contingency will follow up as 9th level spell. Long road to go for, but it perfectly fits where stronger cont. should be allocated: class level 17+.
And yes, the spell source is 3.0 (T&B). I know that this could be half-baken since some players just dont allow 3.0-materials. But then again, its an officially printed WotC-sourcebook which never got updated.

And its another "+1" for keeping the evocation school :)

[ahenobarbi]

Some feedback and inputs:

1) Contingency:
the first time i saw the craft contingent spell feat, I want to have it for my arcane casters. Then, I calculated through the stuff and gave up.
Mayhap you guys saw something I did not see?

Let's try:
If we want to make maximum use of this feat, we would contigent spells equal to our HD.
As soon as we can apply this feat (caster level 11, so mostly at level 12, where we get a new feat), we can contingent up to 12 spells.
That's impressive, but let's calculate.
I will just add some usual contingency spells, sure, there maybe more powerful and high-op-tools (like contingency celerity, which I won't apply).

Fore the sake of simplicity, I will set the caster level on minumum casting default, though, sometimes you may wanna have the maximum CL (for example, teleporting home).

So let's take these spells:
- Teleport (panic button)
- Otiluke's resilient sphere
- Greater Invisibility
- Globe of Invulnerability

...
A good startup, there is indeed room for more.
Now, lets calculate (spell level x caster level x 100); 1/25 of that sum in XP, half of this sum in Gold:
Teleport: 5 x 9 x 100 = 4500; 180xp, 2250 gp
Otilukes resilient sphere: 4 x 7 x 100 = 2800; 112xp, 1400 gp
Greater Invisibility: 4 x 7 x 100 = 2800; 112xp, 1400 gp
Globe of Invulnerability: 6 x 11 x 100 = 6600; 264xp, 3300 gp.

Okay, lets break it up here.
We have used four spells within the spell level range 4-6, which are typical for contingencies.
We have "only" used 4 of 12 possible spells and have already spent 668 xp and 8350 gp.

Small price for your life I say.

[eggynack]

Small price for your life I say.
Agreed. If each of these things is allowing you to not die, which is a bit unreasonable, but not unreasonably unreasonable, then every one of those spells might as well have the true value of 5,000 GP and a level, for a raise dead. In fact, let's make it literal and set up a contingent revivify. That's 5,500 GP, which is more than a raise dead, but it's also 220 XP which is significantly less than a raise dead. There is certainly a time for long lasting items, but there's also a time for one use save your ass items.

[Abaddona]

Not to mention that gold and xp are not set in stone and if you lose some to such one-time life saving effects you will simply regain them some time later. And if your DM doesn't follow WBL guidelines it's even better - now you can organize various side businesess (basically invest some spare change and few spells and find yourself a market for all those materials coming from Wall of X line of spells) to get more money and potential plot hooks (simple goal: create few summon monster self resetting traps and make few NPCs quickly into mercenaries, after few months you will have capable squad of mercenaries or even an army and there is basically infinite demand on capable guards or soldiers... and if there is not claim some country for yourself with them).

[ryu]

Not to mention that gold and xp are not set in stone and if you lose some to such one-time life saving effects you will simply regain them some time later. And if your DM doesn't follow WBL guidelines it's even better - now you can organize various side businesess (basically invest some spare change and few spells and find yourself a market for all those materials coming from Wall of X line of spells) to get more money and potential plot hooks (simple goal: create few summon monster self resetting traps and make few NPCs quickly into mercenaries, after few months you will have capable squad of mercenaries or even an army and there is basically infinite demand on capable guards or soldiers... and if there is not claim some country for yourself with them).

Better still you can abuse the power of glorious ambrosia collected from your side business brothel. Why? ALL of the free crafting!

[Abaddona]

Also your loot is worth half it's price only if you are selling it to a merchant, not if you are a merchant. Who will buy it? Well, you just leveled an army of NPCs and they all will need some equipment so you will have a market for all those dragon parts from dragons you killed. From where will they get money? Well, you certainly didn't cleared all low level dungeons on the world when you were leveling and now you don't exactly have time for such things (and if you for some strange reason did cleared all dungeons then for gods sake - you are a wizard, create incognito some undeads let them bother some villagers and make your mercenaries into heroes... also if they become famous it will be simpler for you to make them into royal guards or something like that). And guess who will be the clients of ambrosia making enterprise proposed by ryu?

[ryu]

The same mercenaries, random city-folk with money, and entire schools of priests who are forced by tradition to avoid such places that can now justify their innate urges by claiming to further good magic in the universe of course. Probably also the odd group of adventurers not directly on the payroll who have absurd amounts of downtime and the need to relax.:smallamused:

[Pickford]

Yes. Per the Ice Assassin spell description: (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20030124a)
It has a need to kill whatever it's copying, but it's under your "absolute command," so you can tell it to do whatever and it has no choice but to obey.

Unless of course you fall asleep/look the wrong way, at which point it does whatever it wants.

Also: An ice assassin has no ability to become more powerful; it cannot increase its level or abilities.

So no making it any better after it's built.

[eggynack]

If it's under your absolute command, it feels like you can just say, "Do not ever attack me for any reason," and that'd be the end of that. Absolute command commands absolutely, or something of that nature.

[Gemini476]

If it's under your absolute command, it feels like you can just say, "Do not ever attack me for any reason," and that'd be the end of that. Absolute command commands absolutely, or something of that nature.

That's not quite enough - it could still kill you indirectly. Go for a modified version of Asimov's Laws of Robotics instead. Hopefully you won't run into the issues with the zeroth law and/or the question of "human" if you make it focused on you. Oh, and make sure that it can't justify it as it being "you" and you therefore not being "you".

[eggynack]

That's not quite enough - it could still kill you indirectly. Go for a modified version of Asimov's Laws of Robotics instead. Hopefully you won't run into the issues with the zeroth law and/or the question of "human" if you make it focused on you. Oh, and make sure that it can't justify it as it being "you" and you therefore not being "you".
Yeah, adding a caveat about not allowing me to come to harm through inaction is probably a good idea, especially considering that this guy ostensibly hates my guts.

[Gemini476]

Yeah, adding a caveat about not allowing me to come to harm through inaction is probably a good idea, especially considering that this guy ostensibly hates my guts.

More importantly you need to make sure that it both always considers you to be "you", but never considers itself as "you". Or else your just asking for it to kill and replace you, justifying it as it not technically killing "you" because it's still alive, right?

The Three Laws are pretty decent, but they break down under pressure. That was kind of Asimov's point, really. So to avoid that you need to make them more limiting.

Perhaps "Never even think of harming me" could work? Except that could lead to inadvertent harm as it is unable to think of it's own actions as possibly harming you...
It's like making a risky Wish, complete with contract.

[eggynack]

Also yeah. Those were some pretty sweet stories. Anyways, what do ya think of some kind of off switch? Presumably, the issues only arise when you're asleep, because you're conscious the rest of the time, and can therefore command the ice assassin telepathically. You still technically have absolute command when you're asleep, but I don't know if that helps. Perhaps you could just jury rig a workaround like, "Do not take any actions, save for natural functions necessary for your continued life, until I say foombybottom." Alternatively, you could just chuck the thing somewhere away while you sleep. Maybe you can set up an extradimensional space based arrangement, or you can make a demi-plane of some kind. I dunno, something as simple as possible while remaining effective.

[Threadnaught]

If it's under your absolute command, it feels like you can just say, "Do not ever attack me for any reason," and that'd be the end of that. Absolute command commands absolutely, or something of that nature.

I'm just gonna play Pickford's advocate and bring up the next "problem".


What if it fails it's Listen check for "Do not", but succeeds on "Attack me for any reason"?


Punch your DM if he does this Pickford, or if you are the DM who does this, punch yourself. Hard.
Anyone who limits a Wizard by turning the world into a massive dead magic zone, or perverting every single spell cast into something that'd kill the caster and then uses their own house ruled, killer DMed game as evidence to prove this as fact. Has nothing worthwhile to add to a discussion on how powerful Wizards are.

Order it to never act on it's impulse to kill you. You can do whatever you want and it won't kill you... As long as you don't decide you want to dare it to kill you.

[Abaddona]

Well, if DM really really wants to go full-on-monkey-paw-mode on wizard, then there is simple solution for that: put some skill points (it's not like you have something better to do with all of them) into proffesion: lawyer or something similiar and simply make skill checks when giving orders - DC30 should be enough to not make stupid mistakes which may result in giving DM unhealthy urges to be creative with differentiantig between players intentions and player's words (also it stops this unfun spiral when every command is two pages long and takes a whole hour to prepare).

[eggynack]

What if it fails it's Listen check for "Do not", but succeeds on "Attack me for any reason"?
You can just use your telepathic link with the ice assassin to deliver the orders instead. No listen check necessary.