Necromancer Help

[OOTS_Rules.]

I need to know what a necromancer's banned schools should be. Can somebody give assistance?

[Dhavaer]

Enchantment and Evocation.

[OOTS_Rules.]

K. I'll keep tally of the results in order to make the descision.

Enchantment: 1
Evocation: 1

[martyboy74]

I second that; they're the normal schools to ban anyways.

[Epiphanis]

Most necromancy spells have a Fortitude save, excepting the mind-affecting fear effects, which are opposed by Will saves.

I would suggest Transmutation, which is also opposed by Fortitude, and Enchantment, which is mind-affecting Will-based. This leaves you with Necromancy itself for Fort-weak opponents, Necromancy and Illusions for Will-weak opponents, and Evocations and Conjurations for Reflex-weak opponents.

[OOTS_Rules.]

Enchantment: 3
Evocation: 2
Transmutation: 1

It appears that Enchantment is a shoe-in so far, but I think that I should wait for more results.

[ocato]

I dunno... enchant them, murder them, raise them. Might be worth rethinking.

[Seatbelt]

Evocation is almost always worth banning.

[Merlin the Tuna]

Evocation, and enchantment.

[Variable Arcana]

Good God, don't ban transmutation.

Remember Dawn of the Dead?

Q: What's better than a ravenous horde of zombies?
A: A ravenous horde of hasted zombies.

I'd go along with enchantment and evocation.

(You've got illusions to force Will saves.)

((For better advice, though, it might help to indicate what level you'll be playing at, and how you'd like to play your necromancer -- toting around animated minions and charmed wights, or primarily a debuffer?))

[Caledonian]

Enchantment can be very useful to a Necromancer. Cast Magic Jar with Mind Cloud, and you have a very potent combination that's very difficult to work against.

I vote for Conjuration. With the exception of Teleportation, Conjuration can do very little that Necromancy can't do just as well, or better.

Divination is nifty, but it can be dispensed with in many cases.

[Merlin the Tuna]

Divination is nifty, but it can be dispensed with in many cases.

Divination can't be dispensed with under any circumstances, per the rules.

[Foeofthelance]

Do not, under any circumstances, get rid of evocation. Granted, you will have plenty of kill spells using necromancy, but you won't have anything to deal with larger crowds very often, nor will you be able to hit creatures with heavy fort and will saves. Plus there is a feat, whose name that I cannot remember, that allows you to instantly reanimate a creature killed by one of your spells, for only a +1, maybe +2 adjustment to spell level. Fell Animate I believe? something like that.

Personally, dump Conjuration and Abjuration. I prefer necromancer casters for my own PCs, and I find I rarely miss those two.

[Assassinfox]

Play a Dread Necromancer instead.

[MeklorIlavator]

Have you read The logical ninga's giude? Thats always good.
Personally, I would ban evocation and illusion, because enchantment has interesting possiblities for a necromancer. Charm the gaurd, make them fight to the death, and Raise. The perfect controller. I would defenatly keep abjuration, so you could drop cojoration or transmutation, but not both and think long and hard before you do. Conjuration especially overlaps with alot of schools, and has the best direct damage(the orbs).

[kpenguin]

As the above have said, evocation and enchantment. Necromancy already takes care of the offensive damage anyway.

[Gralamin]

Do not, under any circumstances, get rid of evocation. Granted, you will have plenty of kill spells using necromancy, but you won't have anything to deal with larger crowds very often, nor will you be able to hit creatures with heavy fort and will saves. Plus there is a feat, whose name that I cannot remember, that allows you to instantly reanimate a creature killed by one of your spells, for only a +1, maybe +2 adjustment to spell level. Fell Animate I believe? something like that.

Personally, dump Conjuration and Abjuration. I prefer necromancer casters for my own PCs, and I find I rarely miss those two.

I'm sorry Foeofthelance has no idea what he is talking about.
Evocation is useless. If you need the spells from it, get it from Shadow Evocation from Illusion. DO NOT EVER DROP CONJURATION OR ABJURATION.
Abjuration gives you dispel magic. Without that you'd be SOOO Screwed. And Conjuration gives you good spells EVERY level.

From all the Schools:
Abjuration - A school of Defense and goodies such as Dispel magic. Do not Drop. Also has one of the two defense spells at this level, Shield.
Conjuration - Good spells every level. From Grease to Gate. Also Gives you the other low level defense Spell Mage Armor
Divination - Sooo Good, and you can't drop it anyway
Enchantment - You enchant people. This is one of the 2 schools to maybe drop.
Evocation - Damage is Useless. Thats what your fighter is for. You can get its goodies such as Wind Wall using Shadow Evocation spells. DROP THIS.
Illusion - If you drop Evocation, keep this for sure, so you can get those goodies as well.
Necromancy - A cool school. Cheese with Ray of Enfeeblement. One of the two schools to maybe drop, and since your specializing as it, DROP ENCHANTMENT.
Transmutation - NEVER CONSIDER DROPING. Enlarge Person to Time Stop, To the almighty cheese of polymorph, alter-self and shapechange. This school is dropped by fools.

So Drop Enchantment and Evocation. Also Do not keep a tally. Look at the arguments.

Read this guide for more information

Have you read The logical ninga's giude? Thats always good.
Personally, I would ban evocation and illusion, because enchantment has interesting possiblities for a necromancer. Charm the gaurd, make them fight to the death, and Raise. The perfect controller. I would defenatly keep abjuration, so you could drop cojoration or transmutation, but not both and think long and hard before you do. Conjuration especially overlaps with alot of schools, and has the best direct damage(the orbs).

Meklor, If you've seen the guide why do you have this opinion?
Illusion is way too useful to ban, especially as it gives you access to your other banned school if its Evocation. And Droping Conjuration and Transmutation is retarded (Shadow Conjuration only gives access to some of the Conjuration subschools, Shadow Evocation lets you use all the good spells).

[Jack Mann]

Evocation isn't useless. Shatter, contingency, forcecage... It has a few good spells. It just has fewer good spells than any other school, and a lot of the good spells can be faked with shadow evocation, though you're using a higher level slot for them.

Fireball, lightning bolt, and the rest are not good spells. Nor is magic missile. They don't do much damage.

As for illusion, it can be banned, even if you are getting rid of evocation. It has a lot of overlap with enchantment. Generally, you want to keep it for shadow evocation, but you can live without it, if you really love charm, dominate, etc.

It's not optimal, but you're hardly crippling yourself by banning illusion instead of enchantment.

[MeklorIlavator]

Meklor, If you've seen the guide why do you have this opinion?
Illusion is way too useful to ban, especially as it gives you access to your other banned school if its Evocation. And Droping Conjuration and Transmutation is retarded (Shadow Conjuration only gives access to some of the Conjuration subschools, Shadow Evocation lets you use all the good spells).

I was giving a non completly optimized opninon, based more on fluff than crunch, an I personally like enchanment better than illusion, but thats mainly because of the character type I prefer.

Yes, dropping Tranmutation or conjuration is a bad idea, but it means that he is suboptimal, and some people are okay with being somewhat unoptimal.

[Kultrum]

from a purely roleplaying standpoint you can drop evocation (necro= not want to draw attention) and conjuration (why summon when you can make?)

[Jack Mann]

The problem with transmutation and conjuration is that they have so many good utility and battlefield control spells, and that's where the wizard's main strengths come from. I can just about see dropping conjuration, if you're not worried about optimization, but transmutation? Even banning the polymorph spells, this school just has far too many spells to give up. Giving up transmutation is crippling the caster.

[Gralamin]

I was giving a non completly optimized opninon, based more on fluff than crunch, an I personally like enchanment better than illusion, but thats mainly because of the character type I prefer.

Yes, dropping Tranmutation or conjuration is a bad idea, but it means that he is suboptimal, and some people are okay with being somewhat unoptimal.

While from a fluff point I see what you mean, but at the same time, you switch ideas in mid paragraph. Separate your ideas with paragraphs man.

I also like Illusion more then enchantment personally so I'm sorry if I overreacted on that regard.

People are okay like that yes, buy make sure they know the potential problems with that choice. It makes more sense to be given all the information before making a decision.
And I'm way to tired to be on right now, oh well.

from a purely roleplaying standpoint you can drop evocation (necro= not want to draw attention) and conjuration (why summon when you can make?)

Hmm I might also like to get around as well (Conjuration has the movement spells)

[Caledonian]

Divination can't be dispensed with under any circumstances, per the rules.

They only wrote those rules to keep people from always ditching Divination... which shows how weak the school really is.

[Caledonian]

Fireball, lightning bolt, and the rest are not good spells. Nor is magic missile. They don't do much damage.

Magic Missile is probably the best spell in the game. It's crazy: it takes up only a first-level slot, it has good range, it can be focused on one creature or distributed among several, it always hits its target, and it's made of force energy, which few things have immunity to and can affect incorporeal things or things on the Ethereal Plane.

There's no other first-level spell equal to it in power - most second-level spells aren't that powerful. The only reason it exists is because it's a legacy spell.

[martyboy74]

They only wrote those rules to keep people from always ditching Divination... which shows how weak the school really is.

You go drop Foresight, True Sight, See Invisibility, Arcane Sight, Scrying, Contact Other Plane, True Strike, Detect Magic/Evil/Good/Law/Chaos/Scrying/Thoughts, Tongues, etc.

Tell me how that goes for you.

Magic Missile is probably the best spell in the game. It's crazy: it takes up only a first-level slot, it has good range, it can be focused on one creature or distributed among several, it always hits its target, and it's made of force energy, which few things have immunity to and can affect incorporeal things or things on the Ethereal Plane.

There's no other first-level spell equal to it in power - most second-level spells aren't that powerful. The only reason it exists is because it's a legacy spell.

You're joking, right? Grease, Sleep, Color Spray are all far better than Magic Missile.

[Variable Arcana]

A Necromancer dropping Conjuration or Transmutation? Bah!

Picture a bunch of orcs fighting it out with your zombies.

Now picture them fighting Hasted zombies in a Stinking Cloud.

[Galdor Miriel]

Maybe I am old fashioned, but I reckon you should drop schools based on flavour alone. Also from a statistical point of view all of these arguments about which spells are best and which schools are best do not mean much. Your character will only have so many encounters and in some it might be the magic missile that saves the day, or even the shatter spell. Who knows. I play a wizard and I personally always have a few evocation spells, and so far they have saved the party on more than occaison because of the particular situations that came up. IN those same situations the supposedly superior spells would not have worked because I needed damage at a distance. The real key to a wizard is to have a good balance of spells and some quips ready to amuse the other party members.

If I had to ban schools for a necromancer, I would ban illusion and enchantment, because who needs something incorporeal that cannot do real damage when you have spectres, something incorporeal that you can command to do real damage AND as a necromancer I do not need people to like me, I want them to hurry up and die already so I can raise heir sorry asses.

[martyboy74]

If I had to ban schools for a necromancer, I would ban illusion and enchantment, because who needs something incorporeal that cannot do real damage when you have spectres, something incorporeal that you can command to do real damage AND as a necromancer I do not need people to like me, I want them to hurry up and die already so I can raise heir sorry asses.

On the other hand, with illusion, you had hide the piles of bodies until you're ready to animate them. Besides, what's better than Hasted Zombies in a Stinking Cloud? Invisible Haster Zombies in a Stinking Cloud!

[kpenguin]

You're joking, right? Grease, Sleep, Color Spray are all far better than Magic Missile.

Grease -Oh no! A big bunch of oil on the ground! I think I'll fly/jump/walk around it. Seriously, grease is good, but not SUPER good.
Sleep - Doesn't scale. AT ALL. Good at low levels, waste of a spellbook page at medium to high level
Color Spray - Not as bad as Sleep, but still fails to be incredibly useful at higher level

Magic Missile - Not as bad as it sounds. Auto-damage. Weak auto-damage, but auto-damage nonetheless. Okay, still not as good as the three mentioned above, but one of (I think) the best core damage spells.

The real good lvl 1 spells are ray of enfeeblement and charm person

[OOTS_Rules.]

Enchantment: 9
Evocation: 11
Illusion: 3
Transmutation: 1
Conjuration: 3
Abjuration: 1
Divination: 1

(For further refrence, this Necro is an NPC. He is in a team with a Barbarian Construct, a Dwarven Paladin of Tyrrany, a Flame Elven Monk, a Hobgoblin Wizard, and a character that has yet to be determined, but is definately a cleric.)