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View Full Version : Which school would you rather drop?



Frosty
2008-03-22, 08:31 PM
I'm trying to decide between Necromancy and Illusion as schools to prohibit for specialization (already dropped evocation and enchantment). Both schools have such good spells. Necromancy has a lot of nice Rays, and Illusion has the Image spells (Major Image, Mirror Image, etc) and also invisiblity. Is it purely a question of wanting an offensive school or a defensive school? Or do people usually conside rone better than the other?

DementedFellow
2008-03-22, 08:33 PM
Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

That's what I would use to decide. If you are more negatively aligned, then keep necro. If you are more positive aligned, then keep illusion.

Collin152
2008-03-22, 08:35 PM
Drop necromancy like third period French.
That is, if you use illusions like a smart person.

Zincorium
2008-03-22, 08:37 PM
People usually drop necromancy before looking at it, so I'm betting you'll get a lot of those responses, but as you've pointed out, it has some very good spells.

I think the key here is that you've dropped evocation already, so as it stands your only access to those spells (contingency *cough*) is through shadow evocation or wish/limited wish, and the former isn't as costly.

Another thing to consider is that necromancy has a lot of 'mutually assured destruction' type of spells. I'm not sure if many other DMs think of it the way I do, but the first time you finger of death (to death?) the BBEG, a world of bad things that can happen to your character opens up, many with permanent consequences. Illusion, while it may confound DMs, isn't as disastrous to characters with poor fortitude saves.

Frosty
2008-03-22, 08:37 PM
Smart like how? :) I'm trying to learn how to play a batman (albeit not at level 20) I'm picking up Celerity, and plan on picking up Foresight and Time Stop.

Chronicled
2008-03-22, 08:39 PM
Tough choice, but I'd pick Illusion. The idea is, make a list of "must-have" spells from each school, and compare. The smaller list is the school you drop.

My list (mostly from memory and so mostly core) looks like:

Illusion
Shades - 9
Greater Shadow Evocation - 8
Greater Shadow Conjuration - 7
Mislead - 6
Greater Invisibility - 4
Greater Mirror Image (PH2) - 4
Major Image - 3
Invisibility - 2
Mirror Image - 2
Color Spray - 1

Necromancy
Energy Drain - 9
Finger of Death - 7
Enervation - 4
Ray of Exhaustion - 3
False Life - 2
Ray of Enfeeblement - 1

senrath
2008-03-22, 09:06 PM
I'd drop Necromancy, mostly because I prefer the flexibility that the Illusion school grants. Not to mention, since you dropped evocation, you can use Shadow Evocation and Greater Shadow Evocation if need be.

Chronicled
2008-03-22, 09:11 PM
Oh, I almost forgot. Most Necromancy and Evocation spells can be imitated by Conjuration and Transmutation spells. Illusion is hard for any school to replace.

Frosty
2008-03-22, 09:23 PM
huh? How do you imitate level drain, Ray of Exhaustion, and save or dies with conjuration and transmutation? I guess you can PaO an enemy into a kitten or something...

Collin152
2008-03-22, 09:29 PM
huh? How do you imitate level drain, Ray of Exhaustion, and save or dies with conjuration and transmutation? I guess you can PaO an enemy into a kitten or something...

Y'know, Baleful Polymorph exists for a reason...

Chronicled
2008-03-22, 09:31 PM
More like, you can cover all the enemy weak points with Conjuration+Transmutation. There's Fort save, Ref save, Will save, ranged touch, AoE, no save, save or suck, save or die, save & suck, etc. Whereas Illusion's defensive and utility spells are trickier to compensate for.

Speaking of Baleful Polymorph, Saph showed why polymorphing an enemy into a kitten isn't the best idea, in a great campaign journal. The kitten did a lot of damage to their party and was almost impossible to hit as it darted around. A tortise or salamander is probably the best option.

TempusCCK
2008-03-22, 11:00 PM
Lose Illusion, lose Invisibility, lose all the image spells and lose all the versatility of being able to create a image of anything you can imagine.

Frosty
2008-03-22, 11:07 PM
Well yeah. Losing any one of these two schools kinda suck. Damn you Incantatrix class for making me lose an extra school that's not divination!

AslanCross
2008-03-22, 11:09 PM
Unless you plan on making an undead horde (which clerics are better suited to than wizards), I'd drop necromancy. There are a couple of really good necro spells (Avasculate, Ray of Enfeeblement), but I think it's hardly enough to justify dropping Illusion's flexibility.

Granted, the Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration spells have nasty double save mitigation, but Necromancy can't top that. Illusion also has a couple of my favorite disabling and killing spells (Phantasmal Assailants and Phantasmal Killer). At low levels, there's also Legion of Sentinels, which looks like a whole lot of fun.

ShneekeyTheLost
2008-03-22, 11:16 PM
huh? How do you imitate level drain, Ray of Exhaustion, and save or dies with conjuration and transmutation? I guess you can PaO an enemy into a kitten or something...

How do you imitate save or die? It's called Disintegrate, and it comes a level sooner than Finger of Death. Even better, you don't have to get up close and personal to do it. Even earlier is Phantasmal Killer, although it does require a double-save (Will and Fort).

How do you imitate level drain? If he's a caster, it's called Feeblemind or Touch of Idiocy. Suddenly, he can't cast crap.

Ray of Exhaustion? Why bother with that when you can cast Evard's Black Tentacles to keep him occupied while you fire away at range. Or, if you MUST drop his attack rolls, Crushing Despair.

Also, with Greater Shadow Evocation, you get both Contingency *AND* Forcecage (and without the material cost!), so you can do Forcecage/Cloudkill combo on things it will work on (needs to be affected by poison, not collossal, and if it can use extra-dimensional travel, you need to toss in a Dimension Lock).

Chronos
2008-03-22, 11:19 PM
The reason everyone always drops Evocation and Enchantment in the first place is because they're not dropping Illusion. Most of the Will save-or-lose spells are in Enchantment and Illusion, so if you want those, you pretty much have to keep one of them, and Illusion (via Shadow Evocation) can duplicate the few must-have spells from Evocation (heck, a shadow Wall of Fire is almost as good as the real thing, for some purposes, even on a successful save).

Also, I've heard some debate on what exactly you lose with Incantatrix's super-specialization. There's apparently a school of debate that says that you can't learn any more spells from your dropped school, but you can still cast any you already know. Not having the book, I won't weigh in on this, but if your DM buys that interpretation, you could just make sure you already know Enervation and the other low-level goodies before you take the PrC, and lose almost nothing.

drengnikrafe
2008-03-22, 11:21 PM
Allow me to rattle off an anecdote. My first wizard.
I looked through the spells in the Player's Manual 3.5, and decided Necromancy would be very awesome, and that I could do away with Divination and Conjuration (I was going to be a blaster, though I didn't know it at the time).
Awhile later, I keep getting pinned to taking a Necromancy Spell at every new spell level, and it never really came in handy.
"Please {DM's Name}, please! I hate necromancy, please let me chance, I can't keep going on like this!"
He was a nice DM, and let me change. And while I don't constantly use Illusion Spells, I use them more often then I touch my necromancy spells. But again, Blaster Mage.

Chronicled
2008-03-22, 11:24 PM
The following assumes that you ban Necromancy.

You can nab the first few good Necromancy spells--at least False Life &
Ray of Enfeeblement, possibly Ray of Exhaustion if you're canny about it--before you do the Incantrix specialization (which I'm guessing you're doing at level 5). The Incantrix specifically says that any spells you knew in the banned school before specialization are still usable. If you delayed the Incantrix levels, you'd be able to pick up even more spells before specializing.

Here's the online excerpt with the Incantrix (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20010803). The relevant passage is spoilered below (emphasis mine).

School Specialization: Upon becoming an incantatrix, the character chooses to focus her studies on protective and metamagic, forsaking other types of spells. In effect, the incantatrix is a specialist in the school of Abjuration (gaining all the benefits of specializing in a school), and the incantatrix must choose an additional prohibited school or schools using the rules on page 54 of the Player's Handbook (although an incantatrix can never choose Transmutation as an opposed school). The incantatrix can never again learn spells from that prohibited school or schools. She can still use the prohibited spells she knew prior to becoming an incantatrix, including using items that are activated by spell completion or spell trigger. If the incantatrix already is a wizard specialized in Abjuration, she does not need to choose another prohibited school. A bard or sorcerer who becomes an incantatrix must still choose a prohibited school to gain the benefits of specialization.

Solo
2008-03-22, 11:26 PM
The following assumes that you ban Necromancy.

You can nab the first few good Necromancy spells--at least False Life &
Ray of Enfeeblement, possibly Ray of Exhaustion if you're canny about it--before you do the Incantrix specialization (which I'm guessing you're doing at level 5). The Incantrix specifically says that any spells you knew in the banned school before specialization are still usable. If you delayed the Incantrix levels, you'd be able to pick up even more spells before specializing.

One could argue that if you scribed Necromancy spells that you couldn't cast, ie, high level ones, into your spellbook, you "knew" them before specializing further, and would be still able to cast them.

The DM will most likely smack you upside the head if you did this, however.

ShneekeyTheLost
2008-03-22, 11:27 PM
Then delay to 7th level and get Enervation. That's about the last 'must have' Necro spell out there. Replace Finger of Death with Disentegrate. Metamagic'd Enervation mimics Energy Drain. Nothing else in Necromancy really worth it.

Maerok
2008-03-22, 11:28 PM
@ necromancy anecdote: You can't give up divination, I thought.

Aquillion
2008-03-22, 11:32 PM
Necromancy has several powerful effects, but I'd say that illusion (especially with shadow evocation) has many more things you just won't be able to do without it. Necromancy mainly just has powerful ways of killing / weakening things, which you have other options for. So I'd say drop necromancy.

Obviously, grab enervation if you can.

Frosty
2008-03-22, 11:34 PM
I don't see anywhere in the Incantatrix that says you can still cast spells from before you entered the school. Can you give me a page numbe rin PgtF for that?

Chronicled
2008-03-22, 11:35 PM
I don't see anywhere in the Incantatrix that says you can still cast spells from before you entered the school. Can you give me a page numbe rin PgtF for that?

See my above post, with helpful link and passage edited in. :smallsmile:


One could argue that if you scribed Necromancy spells that you couldn't cast, ie, high level ones, into your spellbook, you "knew" them before specializing further, and would be still able to cast them.

The DM will most likely smack you upside the head if you did this, however.


This would also be pretty expensive, unless you were quite clever about it. Getting Enervate, though? Worth it.

drengnikrafe
2008-03-22, 11:35 PM
@ necromancy anecdote: You can't give up divination, I thought.

My DM loves house rules. It's possible that RAW don't allow you to, but my DM suggests that Divination was not allowed to be barred in 3.0, but it became allowed to be disallowed in 3.5. I'll go look it up through.

EDIT:
I was wrong. Divination is still considered too weak (or maybe something else) to give up, and if you pick it as your specialty, you only have to give up one other school. It doesn't really make sense on a intra-game level to me, but it makes a lot of sense on a meta-game level.
I guess I'll have to thank my DM for allowing that with his House Rules, then.

Aquillion
2008-03-22, 11:38 PM
My DM loves house rules. It's possible that RAW don't allow you to, but my DM suggests that Divination was not allowed to be barred in 3.0, but it became allowed to be disallowed in 3.5. I'll go look it up through.


The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic (unless she chooses to specialize in divination; see below), which become her prohibited schools.

A wizard can never give up divination to fulfill this requirement.That's from d20srd, which is, I think, quite up-to-date. As others have noted, this is fairly stupid, as divination hurts more to give up than at least one or two other options.

(Of course, the exact effect making you ban the school might say otherwise -- I don't have Incantrix in front of me, maybe that lets you ban divination.)

Frosty
2008-03-22, 11:45 PM
That's the 3.0 Incantatrix, Chonicled. I'm using the 3.5 version, which has no such text AFAIK.

Chronicled
2008-03-23, 12:02 AM
:smalleek: Today's just not my day... that's not the first mistake I've made. Yeesh.

Yeah, the PGtF Incantrix isn't very clear about that sort of thing. I'd show your DM the MoF version along with it, and try convincing him that was what they meant.

horseboy
2008-03-23, 12:06 AM
Hmm, does it still have the abjuration clause? What are you specializing in already?

Chronos
2008-03-23, 12:30 AM
I was wrong. Divination is still considered too weak (or maybe something else) to give upI think the main thing is that they don't want it to be possible to ban Detect Magic and Read Magic, since those two spells are considered essential for wizards (see also the free Spell Mastery for Read Magic). In 3.0, they got around this by putting those two spells in "Universal", but I guess they decided in 3.5 that they had to be Divination, so they had to make the whole school off-limits for prohibition. Even back in 2nd edition, there was a distinction between "Lesser Divination" and "Greater Divination", and even those specialists who gave up Greater Divination could still cast Lesser Divinations.

Frosty
2008-03-23, 12:31 AM
Yeah I can't drop abjuration. Not that I'd want to. It's got Dispel Magic ands tuff, and I also want to leave the possibility of going into Iot7v after Incantatrix.

horseboy: I like damage spells, so I am specializing in Conjuration and banning Evocation, Enchantment, and probably Necromancy.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2008-03-23, 12:48 AM
I guess I'll be the lone man to defend the greatness of Necromancy. Granted, at low-to-mid levels, Illusion is just wonderful; it gives you tools that the other schools just plain can't. But, if you take a few steps outside core (which you are doing if you're rolling a damn Incantatrix), Necromancy has really good spells at every level. Baleful Polymorph is a good Fort save spell, but Necromancy has better Fort save spells at that level. Burning Blood for continual save or lose that round, and Fleshshiver for automatic stun and then Fort save or lose (Chain it, Mr. Incantatrix!) come to mind. Banned Enchantment already? Show me the Conjuration or Transmutation spell that replicates the win button called Confusion, because Necromancy has Fear. I won't even get into the litany of no save debuffs, utility, and buffs you're giving up. Actually, yes, I will.

An incomplete list off the top of my head:
1st: Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Clumsiness
2nd: False Life, Blindness/Deafness, Command Undead, Spectral Hand
3rd: Ray of Exhaustion, Vampiric Touch
4th: Burning Blood, Fear, Contagion (very useful for... certain characters), Animate Dead (same), ENERVATION
All right, I'm tired of this.
Granted, like everyone has said, many of Necromancy's great spells are lower level and, therefore, are less relevant for a high level caster, but part of what makes the Incantatrix so powerful is its ability to super-metamagic Enervation and other powerful no-save ray spells. Choose wisely.

Frosty
2008-03-23, 12:57 AM
See, I already agree with you. This is why this is such a *hard* choice. However, I already have offense. I can kill a lot of things with a highly metamagic'ed Orb of Acid that has been changed to deal Force damage (Elven Spell Lore for the WIN. And I get +2 to dispel checks too). So, offense seems to not be my primary concern.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2008-03-23, 01:07 AM
Unless you plan on OHKing all your opponents, I wouldn't rely on those (albeit powerful and reliable) damage spells as the end all be all of your offense. You're still taking a hit to your offensive versatility (and, for Incantatrix, offensive superpower) when you ban Necromancy.

Edit: Also, damage spells? Say hello to regeneration: [energy type you don't have, and trust me, it's not Force]. Regeneration? Say hello to Graymantle. Depending on the DM, it's a must-have at high levels.

Frosty
2008-03-23, 01:32 AM
Where is Graymantle spell found?

And yes, there will of course be creatures that can resist my attack. That is why I have spells like Wierd or Plane Shift. Also, they can say hello to 3 to 5 of my buddies, who may have the right tools to do the job :) And if the enemy has buddies, then I will kill their buddies, unless they are all immune to force/have regeneration, in which case I start spamming things like Solid Fog.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2008-03-23, 02:15 AM
It's in Spell Compendium, originally from one of the Faerun books, and it'll let your buddies kill regenerating foes with ease.