Best prohibited schools

[Thanee]

There are four schools I'd never give up...

Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Transmutation.

From the other four, it depends on the concept...

Evocation and Necromancy are my personal favorites to drop, altho Enchantment and Illusion also really don't add any absolutely necessary spells to your repertoire. Sure Invisibility is nice, and some enchantments are really good, but they are not necessary, unlike some spells in the other schools, which you can hardly live without. Dropping Enchantment and Illusion does work fine, if you want to retain the more aggressive schools of Evocation and Necromancy. But again, that completely depends on the concept.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

In your case, I'd never give up Illusion, as it complements conjuration nicely.

Evocation is an obvious choice, but since you need another, you can either drop Necromancy (tho dropping False Life is a loss, but that's about the only spell there) or Enchantment (you don't really need those spells), probably the latter, unless you play an elf, in that case, I'd drop Necromancy.

Bye
Thanee

 

[welby]

In the past I've dropped necromancy, conjuration, and enchantment with different wizards. I've gotta say, I missed necromancy spells more than conjuration, but that's just me.

Figure out which schools have "must have" spells for you and your build your wizard accordingly. And of course, you don't really *need* to specialize, do you?

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I start dropping schools in the following order:
1 Illsuion
2 Enchantment
3 Necromancy
4 Evocation

Divination: can't be dropped in 3.5 and I wouldn't drop it.
Abjuration: Dispel Magic, is alone enough to keep it
Transmutation: lot of buffs and polymorphing is really nice
Conjuration: the various teleportation spells, and calling friends via gate is nice indeed

 

[Shadowdweller]

One CAN survive without Dispel magic- especially if there are clerics, druids, and/or psions also in the party. Of course, giving up abjurations ALSO means giving up your Endure Energy spells and eventually Mind Blank, so...

What you give up really depends on what you wish to do. Both Necromancy and Enchantment have some good, albeit limited (that is, whole classes of creature types tend to be immune) attacks spells. So if you're ALSO giving Evocation you've sacrificed quite a bit of offensive potential. Enchantment, however, does not have many spells altogether...and so might make a good choice even so.

Illusion might be another good choice, on the other hand: It has some very powerful utility and defensive spells, including invisibility, and can be a lot of fun...but the overall power of many illusions is highly dependant upon DM interpretation. So this may be a relatively weak school in some campaigns.

 

[argo]

I find that Enchantment and Illusion are both mostly "tricksy" spells and you rarely need both. In a RP heavy setting you may find Enchantment's mind affecting spells more usefull. In a dungeoncrawl you may find invisibility and the ability to make the dungeon enviornment appear different more usefull.

For you I would probably suggest dropping illusion. You can use walls and summoned creatures to control the hordes, undead and high-will save types and then focus mind attacks against single big but dumb opponents. If the rogue glares at you tell him to buy a ring of invisibility like everybody else

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I find that Enchantment and Illusion are both mostly "tricksy" spells and you rarely need both. In a RP heavy setting you may find Enchantment's mind affecting spells more usefull. In a dungeoncrawl you may find invisibility and the ability to make the dungeon enviornment appear different more usefull.

For you I would probably suggest dropping illusion. You can use walls and summoned creatures to control the hordes, undead and high-will save types and then focus mind attacks against single big but dumb opponents. If the rogue glares at you tell him to buy a ring of invisibility like everybody else

I generally agree with argo's line of thinking. You only need so many tricks up your sleeve. Enchantment is usually better for RPing. Illusions are better for dungeoncrawling. You only need both is being a trickster is part of your schtick.

Consider the size of the party you are in. If your party is small, you will need to have the Mage Armor + Shield to fend off harassing attacks. If the party is large, you can do fine with just Mirror Image and nothing else.

Keep in mind that you can always buy a potion of Invis in case of emergencies.

 

[Li Shenron]

There are several spells in each school that you are going to miss whatever your choice...

If you have a clue about what your campaign is going to be about (and you don't mind a little metagaming ) consider that Enchantment is very creature-dependent, since many monsters are immune to mind-affecting spells, for example undead. Most of the spells allow ST of the Will type, so if you have a low spell DC, your Enchantments will have a low success rate and you may better drop the school entirely.
There are also several Enc spells which you cast on your friends, some sort of morale-based buffs, but there are plenty of buffs in other schools too.

Another choice is to ditch Illusion, for similar reasons. However, this school has some very good defensive spells (including the invisibilities) that may substitute for Abjuration if you ban this other one.

Necromancy is VERY offensive, beside a few true necromancies (to create/control undead) and a couple of spells which give temp hp. If you have enough offensive spells from other schools, give up Nec. In any case, I'd prefer to keep Nec instead of Evo, because necromancies offend in a more diverse way (damage-dealing, save-or-die, weakening, fear) while evocations almost always just deal damage.

I wouldn't mind even banning Transmutation, althought it is generally too versatile not to learn any spell, and if your treaseures are full of scrolls and wands, more than 20% are probably transmutation spells...