overcoming banned schools

[questionmark693]

As a wizard, how can one overcome the fact that they banned a school? Any and all RAW methods are accepted.

[D4rkh0rus]

As a wizard, how can one overcome the fact that they banned a school? Any and all RAW methods are accepted.

There are Three simple methods (meaning no books will get thrown at you)

1 -> If you banned Evocation or (pelor forgive) conjuration, Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration let you cast a spell of their respective schoools.

as a matter of fact, always keep shadow evocation. its the entire school in 2 spells. lol.

2 -> Ultimate magus lets you advance both wizard and another class, choose sorcerer or beguiler (and ban beguiler schools like enchantment and evocation) for example a wizard 4/beguiler 1/ultimate magus 10 can end up wizard 14 beguiler 8 by 15th lvl with the right stuff (illumian with uurkrau and practiced spellcaster (beguiler) So You can ban Enchantment safely (since most of the good enchantment spells are low lvl)


3 -> a Little less cheesy, Mage of the arcane order gives you spell pool, you can effectively draw from the pool to cast any wizard spell (even if you dont know it) by paying twice its cost (2 slots i believe, unless im wrong.).

this can be used a few times a day depending on the spell's lvl. and it has no restriccion, so if you banned necromancy but want enervation, you can cast it once or twice a day.

[ryu]

Alternatively pay to be psychic reformationed. Because banned schools are meaningless if you just switch your choices of bans as it suits you. With the right methods you can do this for free repeatedly.

[eggynack]

PHB II style retraining can let you swap out or remove specializations, if you're interested in getting rid of the issue altogether.

[Kraken]

There are Three simple methods (meaning no books will get thrown at you)

1 -> If you banned Evocation or (pelor forgive) conjuration, Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration let you cast a spell of their respective schoools.

Shadow conjuration does NOT let you cast any conjuration spell, it only lets you cast spells within the school from the summoning and creation subschools. Conjuration is a school that should not really be considered for banning, ever. The only other schools I'd say should never be banned are transmutation and illusion. Though if you're unimaginative and/or your DM is unkind with regard to how illusions work, that school can make its way to the cutting board.

The mother cyst feat can help fill some gaps if you've banned enchantment, especially because necrotic dominate/tumor are not mind affecting, so they get around the all to common mind affecting immunity you'll find on so many monsters. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but it's helpful.

The arcane transfiguration feat (Lost Empires of Faerun) straight up gives you back a banned school, but it has two pre req feats, and also requires "specialist wizard level 10th."

[questionmark693]

I might consider the beguiler, ultimate magus with banned illusion, thats pretty easily doable I suppose. I wasn't very specific-I'm going incantatrix (3.5 version) and very much do not want to have a banned schools, and I will go to extreme lengths to avoid having a banned school. Losing CL isnt an issue, so UM is viable.

[TuggyNE]

1 -> If you banned Evocation or (pelor forgive) conjuration, Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration let you cast a spell of their respective schoools.

as a matter of fact, always keep shadow evocation. its the entire school in 2 spells. lol.

Shadow evocation has some unfortunate limitations; it works poorly on spells intended to affect objects, for one thing, and not at all if they don't do damage, and also on spells intended to affect yourself, like contingency, resilient sphere, and many of the other real gems of the school: you automatically disbelieve your own spells, so, since they're not attacks, you're completely unaffected.

[Skysaber]

Lost Empires of Faerun has three feats that, by the third feat, allows you to reclaim use of one banned school.

[questionmark693]

The problem with those three feats from LEoF is that I net one banned school at the end. Not helpful.

[Crake]

Alternatively pay to be psychic reformationed. Because banned schools are meaningless if you just switch your choices of bans as it suits you. With the right methods you can do this for free repeatedly.

Psychic reformation doesn't allow you to re-choose class decisions. It only works for skillpoints, feats and psionic powers known.

[Kennisiou]

Honestly, if you're going incantatrix and that's your only source of banned schools and are trying to avoid that... don't. Just don't.

Forreal.

Whatever resources you spend on gaining back the schools are honestly not worth the resources you get from having one of the two worst schools in the game (enchantment or evocation) at your disposal. Enchantment is a school that stops having good spells at roughly level three, and the spells that are good before then are mostly just good early. You lose nothing worthwhile by banning it.

If you really do want to go the beguiler/ultimate magus route, then I suggest that instead of banning illusion (which is one of the best schools of magic in the game) you ban enchantment. Beguiler's enchantment spell list is a lot stronger than the wizard's, and on par with illusion in number of spells (although it falls off hard in quality past the first few levels, it's worth noting that a beguiler misses several good illusion spells compared to wizard but basically no worthwhile enchantment spells).

[Kraken]

Also, have you considered having a custom runestaff (Magic Item Compendium has rules for making these in the back) or two made containing your favorite spells from a banned school? Given how few useful spells enchantment has, this shouldn't be hard, and enchantment is the smallest school altogether (in terms of number of spells) in the first place.

[6thEdition]

Domain Wizard is pretty good, although if that's too cheesy your only option is Shadow Evocation and Greater Shadow Evocation. Shadow Conj and Greater Shadow Conj is useless because there's no mechanical reason to ban Conjuration.

Instead of actually unbanning them, pretend unban them. Color Spray is a great Sleep, and Disintegrate is better than most Evocations (including Fireball.