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What are the Eight Schools to you?

ZephyrTR

First Post
I'm trying to write out some archetypal wizards to be servants for some bigger evil, and I wanted to get outside opinions on them:

When you think ILLUSIONIST or ABJURER, what kind of powers does he have?

What about DIVINER? or TRANSMUTER? or NECROMANCER?

What powers make these guys archetypal? Some people will be more traditional and some more progressive. This is an opinions thread, so no wrong answers here.
 
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For clarification, are you asking what specific 4e powers would map well to these NPC wizards?

In my opinion, I would look in the monster builder for a pre-built creature that is close {there is a Necromancer that is pretty good} and adjust as needed.

Illusionists are redirection controllers
Abjurerers focus on pushes and zone control
Diviners are hard to do as a combat mode, but something with immediate interupts/shifts/leaderish
Transmuters could be striker focused on changing their own bodies into weapons
Evokers are striker focused.. lightning bolt, fireball, etc.
Conjurers.. well, thats already covered :)
Enchanters have the Sleep, Otto's irrestable dance, etc.. Very 'bard' feel to me.

[sblock]
School 1, Evocation: “Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, they create something out of nothing. Many of these spells produce spectacular effects, and evocation spells can deal large amounts of damage.”

School 2, Necromancy: “Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force. Spells involving undead creatures make up a large part of this school.”

School 3, Illusion: “Illusion spells deceive the senses or minds of others. They cause people to see things that are not there, not see things that are there, hear phantom noises, or remember things that never happened. Illusions come in five types: figments, glamers, patterns, phantasms, and shadows.”

School 4, Enchantment: “Enchantment spells affect the minds of others, influencing or controlling their behavior. All enchantments are mind-affecting spells. Two types of enchantment spells grant you influence over a subject creature.”

School 5, Conjuration: “Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you (the summoning subschool), actually transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling), heal (healing), transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation), or create objects or effects on the spot (creation). Creatures you conjure usually, but not always, obey your commands.”

School 6, Abjuration: “Abjurations are protective spells. They create physical or magical barriers, negate magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, or even banish the subject of the spell to another plane of existence.”

School 7, Divination: “Divination spells enable you to learn secrets long forgotten, to predict the future, to find hidden things, and to foil deceptive spells. Many divination spells have cone-shaped areas. These move with you and extend in the direction you look. The cone defines the area that you can sweep each round. If you study the same area for multiple rounds, you can often gain additional information, as noted in the descriptive text for the spell.”

School 8, Transmutation: “Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.”
[/sblock]
...
If you are looking for something more specific than that, hopefully someone else chimes in.
 

That's pretty interesting -- i like the idea of an abjurer that keeps blocking your way. I wonder what his bread and butter attacks would be? Magic Missile sometimes feel kinda lame once you're in the paragon tier.

I think the Illusionist redirecter is intriguing... Have to think up something interesting for that.
 

That's pretty interesting -- i like the idea of an abjurer that keeps blocking your way. I wonder what his bread and butter attacks would be?
Storm pillar, ray of frost (with a reflavouring so it's a binding spell), cloud of daggers (reflavoured to be a ward).

I must admit, I really like the idea of a diviner with tons of immediate interrupt powers: unfortunately I doubt it will ever be, because immediate actions pretty much translate into "do twice as much damage". However you might see powers that grant an interrupt, reaction or opportunity attack as a secondary effect.

Personally I think the 8 schools are only useful if you accept that almost any spell is going to be in more than one school. Almost any evocation could be a summon for instance. Most abjurations are divinations, enchantments, evocations, conjurations, illusions or necromancies, and often combine two. A lot of necromancy could be evocations, conjurations or divinations and so forth. Illusions are pretty awful if all they can do is make pretty pictures.

Given that, a school is a fairly broad theme.
 

I really liked the Elements of Magic: Revised edition {3.5 rules} way of handling schools of magic and spells.

Basically casters learned lists of Verb and Noun combinations, then could put those combinations together to build a spell.

This meant you could build a "Summon Flying, Flaming, Armored Skeletons from the Far Realm" spell that has elements of pretty much every school of magic :)

I really wish 4e could be tweaked to allow such a flexible spell system, but alas, I am not good enough at game mechanics to mesh the systems together.

[/digression]
 

Within the 4E framework I can definitely see Necromancers filling an Arcane Leader role. Partymembers could "sacrifice" their healing surges to the Necromancer, who could then redistribute them to the party within combat. (much like the Artificer)

I also see them being partial towards summons. You might summon a bat swarm to make an enemy grant combat advantage. Or you might reanimate and dominate an enemy that was killed earlier in the encounter.

I also see them with a lot of "life-sucking" powers. Basically powers that grant large amounts of temporary hit points. You might have a a power that does a rather weak 1d8+INT damage, but it would grant an equal number of temporary hitpoints to an ally of your choice.

Fear & Psychic powers should be there too. Push effects should be far more common than pull or slide. Especially "push the target a number of squares equal to its speed"
 

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