Spell Selection guides?

[harpy]

I've been hunting around, but I haven't been able to find, any exhaustive resource on spell selection, particularly for clerics and wizards.

Just something that grinds through the whole corpus of spells and shakes out all them which are worthwhile to take, how you can combine spells, chain effects, and goes over various spell selection strategies, from highly specialized to general strategies.

I'd assume after a decade there is something like this now, any suggestions?

 

[Starbuck_II]

I've been hunting around, but I haven't been able to find, any exhaustive resource on spell selection, particularly for clerics and wizards.

Just something that grinds through the whole corpus of spells and shakes out all them which are worthwhile to take, how you can combine spells, chain effects, and goes over various spell selection strategies, from highly specialized to general strategies.

I'd assume after a decade there is something like this now, any suggestions?

How to be Batman. was one for Wizards.
[3.5e] The Logic Ninja's Guide to Wizards: Being Batman - Page 2 - Giant in the Playground Forums
Batman is the buffer, the debuffer, and the go to guy: he is what makes a part great.
There is lots of good information on spells on that thread.

Playing God is another for Wizards.
A guide to Wizards: Playing a GOD
It has extra spell info.

 

[tomm]

is the batman out of his mind?

The being batman post is interesting....not sure if I agree with some of the stuff. He is really tough on evocations spells like fireball. He makes a point that an average fireball does 17 points of damage on a 5d6 but if you buff up the fighter or haste the rest of the party you could do a lot more damage by buffing up the rest of the party who should be dealing the damage. The key to fireball is getting a lot of the BBEGs in one casting. If you get 5 BBEGs in one casting then maybe youve done 85 hp of damage, leaving the rest of the party to deal with greatly weakened opponents. True, a good number might make a successful saving throw, meaning you do less damage or a lot less damage. Even doing 8 pts of damage to 5 opponents is not all that bad. Fireball has its place for softening up a large group and becomes unusable when the party is dispersed in melee. I guess I have to say that I enjoyed reading the "batman" but wouldn't consider it the bible. I'm curious what a broader cross section of wizards would think of the batman's distaste for blasting type evocation spell.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think damage spells get a little unfairly bashed on the optimization boards. They are a little underpowered, granted, but it's hardly character suicide to focus on them. One key thing is the synergy: you deal hp damage, the Fighter deals hp damage, together you take down the enemy faster. If the wizard's tossing save or dies, then the rest of the party is basically working on a different mechanic. If the enemy makes 5 of those saves in a row, the wizard just spent the combat doing nothing while the others slowly killed the guy. If he had been blasting, they might have finished in 3 rounds or whatever. If the save is failed at some point...anything else the party did doesn't matter any more.

This isn't to say damage is the only way to synergy with the party to do better in combat...I love battlefield control and debuffing to help the other people in the party dispatch them. If the party's mostly ranged and the enemy is not, then laying down tons of effects that halve movement to entrap the enemy in a mire is totally a good way to synergize, for example.

Anyway...I think the main "problem" with direct damage is two-fold. One, everyone else can do it anyway, so shouldn't you cover something else? And two, other folks do it better. A raging barb or well built fighter will simply do more damage than a caster. Or at worse, barely less damage, but with the nifty "I can do this all day long" class feature. Blasters CAN do more damage against groups with area spells in terms of total hp dealt, but...3E tends to have small groups of enemies in combats, often spread out or mixed into melee with friendly units. More importantly, there's an absurd amount of reward in focused fire tactics. If you can do 10 damage to 3 enemies but Bob the Fighter can do 15 to 1 enemy, unless that 10's enough to kill them all, Bob's being more efficient. The sooner an enemy drops, the sooner the enemy has one fewer action per round to hurt you. So ummm...I guess the "action economy" would be reason #3...

Anyway, Id say that's the main problems with direct damage casters in 3E. Perhaps honorable mention for the quickly inflating hp as level increases (the fact that for every +2 con means you gain an extra +HD hp on top of the normal level up amount means hp does not climb linearly, while most evocations remain a piddly d6/CL).

 

[Jhaelen]

I think the OP boards completely fail when someone is asking for advice for anything involving a real, normal game group. In their goal of optimizing the hell out of everything, they lose sight of the real goal of the game: Having fun with your friends!

OP builds aren't fun. They are theoretical exercises which can make for a fun read (if you're into that kind of thing). They can also be useful to learn something about (too) effective game elements. And that's about it, IMHO.

I'm sure someone will soon chime in to tell everyone, that I'm completely wrong and don't have a clue about the OP boards. That's fine, though

I used to visit that place years ago and decided I didn't like it _at all_. But, please, form your own opinion!

 

[Dandu]

I think the OP boards completely fail when someone is asking for advice for anything involving a real, normal game group. In their goal of optimizing the hell out of everything, they lose sight of the real goal of the game: Having fun with your friends!!

Telling someone who asks for spell selection advice for a level 5 core wizard to go have fun with his friends strikes me as an inappropriate response given the question.

A more pertinent response would seem to be a recommendation of Dispel Magic and Haste because they are good spells.

I don't understand where you're coming from, as most of the advice I have given out, and have seen given out, has been helpful and constructive. Barring anything said by certain jerks who will go unnamed.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

From my experience, the char op boards have gotten better in the past few years. They tend to take into account what could and could not be done in a normal game, even if it's legal by the rules. They once even had a seperate forum for "theoretical builds" versus ones you could probably use in a game without the DM wanting to strangle you. On the spell threads, they're usually quick to point out which spells, while powerful, they won't cover simply because they're so broken no sane DM would allow them anyway. I don't think anyone on those boards actually thinks Pun-Pun or the like could actually be played, or even should be even if you had a willing DM (unless the game was meant to just be that crazy). A lot of the spell suggestions on the optimization threads are pretty sound with those restrictions, as the above poster said, dispel magic and haste really are good picks. I don't agree with them on everything (in particular, I love using Mindless Rage with flight as a level 2 save-or-lose, but they typically pan the spell as useless ), direct damage usefulness being one of those cases.

And they tend to be pretty cool with "pointless optimization" just for fun. Such as someone who really wants to play a CW Samurai but yet not suck (the pointless part being that they could just play something else instead of the effort), or purely mental exercises, like making the greatest basket weaver to ever live.

 

[Delandel]

I don't think they're overly harsh on damage spells. This is coming from a person who's favorite archetype is blaster caster.

As others have said, there's two big problems with blasting: 1) melee hit harder and indefinitely 2) you could be doing better things 99% of the time (an exception being Wings of Flurry for example)

It's not all that bad though if you're a team player. As someone else mentioned, they like blasting because it stays in line with the party's goal of disposing enemies -- dropping the hp. Obviously it would be silly if a wizard is draining enemy's INT's to 0 while the fighter was chopping away at hp. Well, there's alot of great spells out there that not only deal damage (not alot) but also debuff to help your melee kill things faster. The Orb spells, ray of ice, frost breath, and others.

In the end though, it depends on the optimization of the rest of the group. If your buddies are playing core-only melee and "power attack" is the peak of their optimization, your fireballs will do just fine. If they know how to optimize, then you can still keep up with raw damage, but only with Arcane Thesis (aka all your feats = one spell).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Eh, you don't need Arcane Thesis. With Easy Metamagic + Empower Spell, you can get pretty good damage for the spell level. Then you just need a means to never worry about resistances*, and a reliable way to punch through SR**.

*My favorite being Searing Spell or the cold version. My group houseruled acid and lightning versions, too, but otherwise just get Energy Sub (fire or cold) and make ~50% of your damage spells of that element, to deal with high res monsters. The other half to cover other bases, in case the DM's a jerk and throws things with natural immunity (fire or cold) at you multiple times, since the metamagic feats can't pierce that. Converting Acid Sheath into your preferred energy type via Energy Sub. is also a great buff to increase your damage, too.

**Orb spells; Assay Spell Resistance; Greater Spell Pen + Arcane Mastery. Or, if you're poor and feat starved...wand of True Casting.

Once you hit level 15+, the Avasculate spells greatly reduce the time it takes you to vaporize the enemy. There's no shame in using them to help later evocation castings. Just...alignment issues.