Necromancy

[cbaidchris]

I'm playing a wizard in an upcoming campaign and looking at a school to ban. Being that I'm good, necromancy comes to mind. Are there any good necromancy spells that make it worth not banning since I can't use the evil tagged spells? Complete books, spell compendium, forgotten realms stuff allowed

[CockroachTeaParty]

Necromancy is one of the more ban-able schools. If you're not going to be animating undead minions (which is an Evil act), that leaves you with a number of debuff spells and a handful of other things. Plenty of other spells target Fortitude, and Enchantment and Illusion cover Will saves (which the necromantic Feat-based spells target).

Depending on how high level you expect to go, you'll lose out on some nice things like Astral Projection, Clone, and Magic Jar. All of these spells produce pretty potent effects that are difficult to emulate otherwise. However, some well-worded Contingencies can provide the safety of Astral Projection or Clone, and Magic Jar is prone to produce some serious headaches; unless you carefully plan on using it, it's also got its fair share of risks.

I wouldn't worry too much about banning necromancy.

[eggynack]

Good wizards can cast evil spells just fine. Such is their nature. Anyways, necromancy gets a solid pile of debuffs, and they also have some high level gems like magic jar and astral projection. It's one of the narrower schools, being around the third easiest to ban school after enchantment and evocation, so the loss won't be particularly crippling.

[lsfreak]

This (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1169811) lists some of the better spells Necromancy has to offer. It's one of the ones that hurts the least to ban, though I am rather fond of some of the low-level debuffs they have (ray of enfeeblement, Kelgore's grave mist, mass curse of impending blades, enervation).

[Lactantius]

Ususally, you weaken opponents by hitting their saves (enervation), AC (curse of impending blades) or their ability score (fatigue/exhaustion spells, enfeeblement).

My observation is that though such debuffers can be nice and effective, you can use your action to make your allies better or change the battlefield (or even deal direct damage, seriously). Both variants are as good as debuffing.

There are rare instances where debuffing would be your primary tool, like dealing with a BBEG.

Besides crunch, I always include fluff-wise thought into my banning decision.
If I play a good-aligned wizard, I tend to neglect necromancy (although this school is not evil per se, but it was a dark touch).

Lastly, some spells can deal direct debuff, too.
For example, there is shadow spray, an illusion spell which hits STR.
Ray of clumsiness hits DEX.
Slow hits attacks/rounds, speed and so on.

Most of the time, you have alternative debuffs. But not always.

[Psyren]

You can ban necromancy just fine and not lose much power, but don't feel like you have to just because you're good. Not only can you cast Evil spells just fine (you're not a cleric), but Necromancy has plenty of useful unaligned spells you could use instead - stuff like Ray of Enfeeblement, False Life, Waves of Fatigue, and Enervation.