Advice on wizard specializations

[Zaeron]

For a homebrew world I'm coming up with, I'd like to create different 'orders' of wizard, rather than having a generic wizard class. In my world, there would be no unspecialized wizards - every wizard must choose an order.

The thing is, I want each order to have their forbidden schools already chosen, and here's where I need some advice. A few months reading this board have shown me I clearly can't build a wizard for crud. What I need to do is choose two forbidden schools for each of the different schools of magic - I'd like to pick 'opposed' schools, and I'd like to keep the really powerful spells from being all available to one order or another.

Anybody have any suggestions? I've been thinking about it for a while, but I don't have a PHB with me so I don't have anything to reference. Plus, even if I did, I was one of those people who thought throwing around fireballs was actually effective for a wizard. So I'm not sure I'd trust myself to pick which schools of magic have lots of 'powerful' spells anyway. ;)

[Leon]

schools of magic have lots of 'powerful' spells anyway. ;)

Depends what you consider powerful, im a fan of the Abjuration and Enchantment schools so i'd rate them higher than the others - proably Evocation at the bottom followed by Necromancy


or as follows

Abjuration
Enchantment
Conjuration
Transmutaion
Illusion
Necromancy
Evocation

[Enlong]

Oy, Leon, you forgot Divination.

[Morty]

Divination can't be banned, so It's a bit off the record. I don't really know how optimized it is to specialize in it.
I personally ban Conjuration with all wizards I play, but it's the matter of style, not the power- Conjuration is at the peak of spell schools list, along with Transmutation.

[Saph]

Complete Mage had a nice section on this - it gave each school an opposite, and had suggestions for what schools a each kind of specialist wizard would ban from a personality and attitude point of view. I can't remember them, but some suggestions for opposite/banned schools, off the top of my head:

Enchantment - Evocation and Necromancy. Enchantment's about subtlety, not blowing things up or killing them.
Abjuration - Evocation and Enchantment. These are the two schools that abjuration magic specifically goes in for countering.
Illusion - Conjuration. Illusion goes in for fake things, not real ones.
Conjuration - Illusion. Conjuration goes in for real things, not fake ones.
Evocation - Transmutation and Enchantment.
Necromancy - Enchantment and Illusion.
Divination - Illusion and Evocation.
Transmutation - Conjuration.

Can't think of what Transmutation would be opposed to. For symmetry, you'd probably want each school banned an equal number of times, so you'd have to fiddle with it. Maybe draw it out in a circle, like the five colours in Magic: The Gathering.

- Saph

[ALOR]

I have often thought of doing something like this for my home brew world. however i was thinking of making the specialists presitge class's that you could qualify for at 3rd level or so. basicly give them special abilities based on thier schools general effects. Such as giving the diviner uncanny dodge or other things that one could gain from studying divination.
another thought i had on this would be to make other base class's similar to the war mage and dread necromancer. this however is alot of work but it would be incredibly intresting to see a conjuer base class imho.

i know this isn't really what you were looking for so i'll suggest that if you can find an old 2e phb and blow off the dust the old forbidden shools for specialzation should at least give you a starting point to go from

hope this was helpful

[Jimp]

2nd edition featured banned opposed schools, though some spells were in different magic schools and there were different sub schools. Also, I don't know if it is legal to give those banned schools or not.
Come to think of it, the Complete Mage variant may be an update of this, though I heavn't read it so I can't be sure.

[RTGoodman]

I have often thought of doing something like this for my home brew world. however i was thinking of making the specialists presitge class's that you could qualify for at 3rd level or so. basicly give them special abilities based on thier schools general effects. Such as giving the diviner uncanny dodge or other things that one could gain from studying divination.

I don't know about getting abilities like Uncanny Dodge, but Complete Mage also has a PrC called "Master Specialist" that any specialist wizard can take starting at 4th level (I think). It gives full casting, extra spells, bonus CL to your specialty school, and special abilities dependent on school. I can't imagine playing a specialist wizard and not taking this as soon as possible (but probably not for a full 10 levels).

[JadedDM]

Actually, Divination can be banned. You just have to break it up into two separate schools again, like in 2E. There is Lesser Divination (levels 1-4) and Greater Divination (levels 5-9). Greater is the one that gets banned, so that way you don't wind up with a mage who can't use such essentials as Identify, Detect Magic, and Read Magic.

In 2E, the opposed schools were:

Abjuration - Alteration and Illusion
Conjuration/Summoning - Greater Divination and Invocation
Greater Divination - Conjuration/Summoning
Enchantment/Charm - Invocation/Evocation and Necromancy
Illusion - Necromancy, Invocation/Evocation, and Abjuration
Invocation/Evocation - Enchantment/Charm and Conjuration/Summoning
Necromancy - Illusion and Enchantment/Charm
Alteration - Abjuration and Necromancy

[Smiley_]

Rich Burlew has some nice divination fixes that make Divination a good school. You can find them in "Gaming".
He also has a variant rule making Diviners drop the standard 2 schools rather than one to remove Diviners with spell focus (necromancy), effectively making a necromancer with only one banned spell school or something.

The circle idea is a decent one. Draw a circle and fiddle around with it a bit.

[Cruiser1]

The star image above shows how each D&D school of magic relates to the others. Each school has two "friend" schools similar to it, represented by blue lines between adjacent schools. Each school also has two "enemy" schools opposed to it, represented by red lines crossing the star. This is similar to the colors in "Magic: The Gathering", except each school also has two other "neutral" schools that it neither supports nor opposes. If you specialize in a school, consider barring the two opposing schools.

Divination, since it can't be barred, is in the middle of the star. It's neutral with all other schools, with no friends nor enemies. For example, one could say Divination (revealing things) and Illusion (hiding things) are opposites, but that same logic could say they're similar because they both deal with knowledge.

Evocation & Conjuration are similar because they both create things with matter (e.g. Wall of Ice vs. Wall of Stone) or attack with energy (e.g. Fireball vs. Orb of Fire).
Conjuration & Abjuration are similar because they both protect (Healing is a subschool of Conjuration) and both transport things (e.g. Teleport vs. Banishment)
Abjuration & Transmutation are similar because they both buff (e.g. Circle of Protection vs. the various stat enhancers)
Transmutation & Enchantment are similar because they both internally change things.
Enchantment & Necromancy are similar because they both manipulate life.
Necromancy & Illusion are similar because they both deal with shadow energies.
Illusion & Evocation are similar because they both create things with energy (e.g. Minor Image vs. Dancing Lights)

Evocation (forcefulness) is opposed by Transmutation & Enchantment (subtlety)
Conjuration (positive energy, healing) is opposed by Enchantment & Necromancy (negative energy, manipulation)
Abjuration (protection) is opposed by Necromancy & Illusion (debuffs & nightmares)
Transmutation (changing matter) is opposed by Illusion & Evocation (creating energy)
Enchantment (subtle tweaking) is opposed by Evocation & Conjuration (active creation)
Necromancy (using death) is opposed by Conjuration & Abjuration (serving life)
Illusion (confusion from outside) is opposed by Abjuration & Transmutation (strength from inside i.e. buffs)

The star is arranged with Evocation (the most active/external/yang school) at the top, and Enchantment & Transmutation (the most subtle/internal/yin schools) at the bottom.

Note also the left half of the star shows what might be considered "good" schools: Conjuration that covers healing, Abjuration that covers protection, and Transmutation that covers buffs. The right half of the star shows "evil" schools: Illusion that covers lies, Necromancy that covers death, and Enchantment that covers manipulation. Evocation (pure force) and Divination (knowledge), are neither "good" nor "evil", so are on the middle line.

An easy way to remember this star is when you read down the left half "good" schools and look at the abbreviations you get a purring "CAT", and when you read down the right half "evil" schools you get an entrapping "VINE". Anyway, these relationships are all just something I made up. I think they're sound, but feel free to disagree or come up with your own relationships between the schools.

[Conjurer]

Following on Saph's idea... You might want to look into the Master Specialist prestige class in the Complete Mage. You might get something out of it to make each Wizard Specialist more unique.

Cruiser1... as a Conjurer I'd be banning both Necromancy and Enchantment? ouch.. that hurts.

[Zaeron]

Cruiser1, thank you! That's absolutely perfect, exactly what I needed. A quick look over shows that everybody loses a 'powerful' school, some lose two. I like that, and I wanted choosing a school to be a difficult, game defining decision for the Wizard.

Everyone else, thanks as well. You've all had really good ideas. I was planning on adding a few class features to each of the different specialists. Perhaps INT to damage for Evokers, for example. I haven't decided exactly what they'll be yet though. I wish I had access to the complete mage. I might have to borrow it from a friend to look up some of the PRCs and special rules you guys have mentioned.

[Cybren]

Following on Saph's idea... You might want to look into the Master Specialist prestige class in the Complete Mage. You might get something out of it to make each Wizard Specialist more unique.

Cruiser1... as a Conjurer I'd be banning both Necromancy and Enchantment? ouch.. that hurts.

I think you make out better than Necromancers.
But anyway, that is a really cool chart.

[TheAlmightyOne]

I didnt specialize in a school. It made it easier as there were a selection of cross school spells that I wanted.

[Cruiser1]

Cruiser1... as a Conjurer I'd be banning both Necromancy and Enchantment? ouch.. that hurts.

I should clarify my statement of "if you specialize in a school, consider barring the two opposing schools". That's good if you want to follow the roleplaying of "orders of Wizards" as requested by the original poster, where specializing means completely avoiding the magical areas opposite it. However as you point out it indeed hurts, where most every school is forced to drop one or even two "good" schools.

From a generic "powerful build" standpoint, you want to do the opposite, and never bar two adjacent schools. That's because when a school is barred, you can usually still cover its functionality with the two adjacent schools. For example, if Evocation is dropped (a popular choice) you can cover direct damage with Conjuration, and you can cover other Evocation abilities with Illusion (e.g. Shadow Evocation). If however you drop Evocation and one of the schools next to it, that means completely doing without certain aspects of magic, which may be just the thing if you want to enforce a bit of "flavor", or could even be used as a way to "balance" a Wizard to ensure it's not too much of a Batman jack-of-all-trades, master-of-all.

Note the Wizard Vaarsuvius from OOTS is an Evoker (a school I classify as neither "good" nor "evil"), which nicely fits his/her Neutral alignment and ambiguous gender.

[PlatinumJester]

Just specialise in devination and ban Evocation which sucks.