NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1040140" data-attributes="member: 3146">Actually it's not so much of a bad idea as an inevitable consequence of the way the D&D magic system works.Let's say an enchanter went out of his way to mitigate his vulnerabilities by adding a few spells that work on mindless and undead critters. So at 1st level, he has magic missile, at 2nd level, he has Blindness/Deafness, at 4th level he has Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, and at 5th level, he has Summon Monster V.Now, when he's a first level character with spell focus: enchantment and improved initiative, odds are his spell selection looks like this:Lvl 0: Daze Person x2, Dancing Lights, Detect MagicLvl 1: Sleep x2, Magic MissileSo, if his party runs into a tough combat with creatures that have good will saves, he casts his one magic missile spell and then his options are:1. Cower and fire his crossbow inefectually--contributing very little to a combat that looks like it could end in death for all the PCs.2. Cast will save spells at anything that isn't immune to them and hope that the DM rolls a 5 or below on the saves.When he hits 9th level, he'll have a little more versatility but not much. He'll have a few magic missiles, a blindness, and a Resilient Sphere. His intelligence is only 19 (pity the iconic spread wizard limited to a +2 headband at 9th level) so he only has two 5th level spells. He chose dominate Person twice (not unreasonable--it is his biggest gun).Now, let's say this wizard runs into a terrifying group of foes with good will saves. He can contribute his magic missiles but he doesn't have an infinite number--and while helpful, 5d4+5 damage isn't a huge effect on combat. He can try blinding one. However, it's a low low level spell (with a DC 5 points lower than his Dominate Person DC), so even if he knows the critter has a weak fort save, he might have just as good a shot at success with Dominate Person. He could also try using the Resilient Sphere but plenty of creatures have two good saves (and lots are too large for the sphere to work too).So event thought the Enchanter prepared a variety of spells, he will still often end up casting spells at creatures' favored saves. The same is true of evokers, necromancers, illusionists, and other specialists. Unless they really split their feats and have multiple GSFs (and prepare a 50/50 split of spells), they'll spend a lot of time casting spells at strong saves.Spontaneous casters like sorcerors can avoid that somewhat but with very few feats to work with, they have trouble mustering the 4 feats necessary to have GSF in even two schools (a human sorceror could pull it off by lvl 6 but he'd have no other feats). Sorcerors are also very limited by their spells known. An enchantment focussed 10th level sorceror might know Charm Monster, Confusion, Hold Person, and Dominate Person--if he did, any other spells he knew would be 3rd level or lower. Thus he's in the same position as the wizard when faced with a strong will save monster. All of his non-will save spells have DCs at least 4 points lower than his Dominate Person spell so in a lot of cases, he might as well just cast Dominate. At least it could end combat if it works. (The same can't be said of his Scorching Ray).</blockquote>

Verification