frankthedm
First Post
Yes.Emirikol said:
What's the weakest wizard specialty?
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
humble minion
Legend
Mistwell said:
Not entirely true (though False Life is much better than the other options, admittedly). Certain summoned creatures can heal or grant temporary hit points - lantern archon, deva, or the best of the lot is that Manual of the Planes yag-ya(?) critter from the Positive Material Plane, if your GM will let you get away with summoning it. There's also that Simbul's Somethingorother spell that lets you burn memorised spell slots in exchange for healing, though admittedly that one is 8th level or something equally ridiculous. Or with the new polymorph rules you could take the form of some critter with fast healing, and just sit down and wait...
Emirikol
Adventurer
Sejs said:
That's the wierd thing. In the 6 years in our lower-magic, humanocentric game, nobody's played an illusionist or enchanter. We've had the usual ho-hum druid, warlock, warmage, shadowdancer, and sorcerer.
I'm thinking it's time to put some mesmerism back into the campaign that brought us Arnold...
jh
Dougan Axehammer
First Post
But you won't be able to cast that spell until the Wizard class is 12th level, and by that point being a low level barbarian won't matter much anyway. At character level five, with four levels in Wizard, Barbarian would be the absolute worst to multiclass with.jmucchiello said:Cast Tensor's Transformation first.
Ltheb Silverfrond
Explorer
IMO the weaker schools are:
Divination - Trumped by numerous spells and heavy metal. Useful as a DM hint system, otherwise only as powerful as the DM allows it.
Enchantent - Oozes, undead, and constructs (generally) defeat the entire school, plus Mindblank stops the school.
Necromancy - Death ward trumps entire school. Some creatures (undead, constructs) make the usefulness vary.
Illusion - Trumped by Trueseeing (this spell is too easy to cast in 3.x) but can be useful if the foe doesn't have it and the illusion is used tactically. Great at low levels and when used creatively, but if the deception is revealed, you have wasted your actions. Shadow spells are neat, but are poor choices as a primary weapon.
This is not to say the other 4 schools are very powerful, but that they can generally be applied in more situations without worry of being rendered useless. Ideally, a wizard should prepare a few spells from each school, and his or her attack spells should vary in the saving throws they allow. IE transmutation spells almost always carry a fortitude save, but it may be wise for a transmuter to pack a few Suggestion spells just in case he or she fights Giants or other beefy creatures.
Granted, I am a fan of Evocation; When it comes down to it, everything has hitpoints. Everything. Monsters, buildings, traps, you name it, it has hitpoints. Take those hitpoints away - Problem solved. Not the safest bet for solving problems, but who doesn't enjoy a little collateral damage?
Divination - Trumped by numerous spells and heavy metal. Useful as a DM hint system, otherwise only as powerful as the DM allows it.
Enchantent - Oozes, undead, and constructs (generally) defeat the entire school, plus Mindblank stops the school.
Necromancy - Death ward trumps entire school. Some creatures (undead, constructs) make the usefulness vary.
Illusion - Trumped by Trueseeing (this spell is too easy to cast in 3.x) but can be useful if the foe doesn't have it and the illusion is used tactically. Great at low levels and when used creatively, but if the deception is revealed, you have wasted your actions. Shadow spells are neat, but are poor choices as a primary weapon.
This is not to say the other 4 schools are very powerful, but that they can generally be applied in more situations without worry of being rendered useless. Ideally, a wizard should prepare a few spells from each school, and his or her attack spells should vary in the saving throws they allow. IE transmutation spells almost always carry a fortitude save, but it may be wise for a transmuter to pack a few Suggestion spells just in case he or she fights Giants or other beefy creatures.
Granted, I am a fan of Evocation; When it comes down to it, everything has hitpoints. Everything. Monsters, buildings, traps, you name it, it has hitpoints. Take those hitpoints away - Problem solved. Not the safest bet for solving problems, but who doesn't enjoy a little collateral damage?
frankthedm
First Post
In concept that is great and arguably, D&D is built on "whoever hits hardest wins!". The problem is that most evocations are still doing 2e damage against monsters with 3E HP.Ltheb Silverfrond said:Granted, I am a fan of Evocation; When it comes down to it, everything has hitpoints. Everything. Monsters, buildings, traps, you name it, it has hitpoints. Take those hitpoints away - Problem solved. Not the safest bet for solving problems, but who doesn't enjoy a little collateral damage?
Hussar
Legend
Emirikol said:A little of both. It's fun to test out some of these theories against the PC's.
BTW, we play a game with mostly human opponents and essentially few SR monsters or undead. The campaign will end at 12th. Does that tip the tables?
jh
Yes, this would change things considerably. As was mentioned, enchantment becomes very, very strong in this. Although, the problem is, a first level spell (protection from alignment of choice) blocks pretty much the entire school. Fortunately, not that many things bother with it. Unless you are fighting a lot of clerics and/or wizards, it's generally not a problem.
Illusion also really comes to the fore when dealing with these types of creatures.
I would put Necro at the bottom of the pile as well. Since you are dealing with mostly classed humans, evocation spells work extremely well - classed humans don't have the massive Con scores to skyrocket their hp's and the levels you are talking about are pretty much sweet spot for evokers.
Quite possibly Conjurers hurt a lot at these levels too. They'd be pretty fine towards the higher end, but, up to about 5th level (half the campaign) conjurers aren't exactly winning any power races. It usually takes around 7th level before conjurers really start to get going because their level allows their summonings to last long enough to matter and they can start summoning multiple monsters that are strong enough to fight.
Arkhandus
First Post
Enchantment.
Too many things either immune to it, resistant to it, or able to squirm out of it somehow. Including most PC classes. Many have high Will saves; Monks have SR and Still Mind as well; Rogues can get Slippery Mind; Bards can boost everyone's saves or use Countersong against language-dependant enchantments; most spellcasters have access to some spell that can remove enchantments; etc.
Illusions can at least be used for a wide variety of things and don't always involve a saving throw (under the right circumstances, opponents may not even notice or suspect your Mirage/Hallucinatory Terrain/whatever). They also have some decent defensive and offensive applications. While Enchantments can make an opponent do various stuff for you, they're significantly more limited in how often they'll be useful/effective. So Illusion is at least a kinda-decent specialty by comparison.
Divination can be a very useful school sometimes, though it's not a great one to specialize in. Not often you'll need those extra Divination spell slots. Still, it's less likely to be neutralized in effectiveness than Enchantment is, and there are some important Divination spells.
That said, a Necromancy specialist wizard is generally worse than an evil cleric when it comes to necromantic stuff, unfortunately, which makes it a poor specialization just by that fact, though at least it's still useful much of the time in one way or another.
Transmutation kinda sucks in 3.5, but still has enough really useful spells to be a reasonable or good specialty. After all, it still has Polymorph spells and whatnot.
In 3.5, Evocation could be considered a weak specialty simply because some idiots decided to change several Conjurations into no-save spells (the Orbs, frex, weren't originally that way, in 3.0) and then pile on a lot of destructive Conjurations in 3.5 books that obviate most uses for Evocation. Still, it's not an ineffective specialty, just kinda subpar compared to Conjuration's greater variety of spell effects and preponderance of new, no-save spells.
Conjuration is of course an awesome school to specialize in.
Abjuration is of course a very decent specialty, though less useful than Conjuration.
Too many things either immune to it, resistant to it, or able to squirm out of it somehow. Including most PC classes. Many have high Will saves; Monks have SR and Still Mind as well; Rogues can get Slippery Mind; Bards can boost everyone's saves or use Countersong against language-dependant enchantments; most spellcasters have access to some spell that can remove enchantments; etc.
Illusions can at least be used for a wide variety of things and don't always involve a saving throw (under the right circumstances, opponents may not even notice or suspect your Mirage/Hallucinatory Terrain/whatever). They also have some decent defensive and offensive applications. While Enchantments can make an opponent do various stuff for you, they're significantly more limited in how often they'll be useful/effective. So Illusion is at least a kinda-decent specialty by comparison.
Divination can be a very useful school sometimes, though it's not a great one to specialize in. Not often you'll need those extra Divination spell slots. Still, it's less likely to be neutralized in effectiveness than Enchantment is, and there are some important Divination spells.
That said, a Necromancy specialist wizard is generally worse than an evil cleric when it comes to necromantic stuff, unfortunately, which makes it a poor specialization just by that fact, though at least it's still useful much of the time in one way or another.
Transmutation kinda sucks in 3.5, but still has enough really useful spells to be a reasonable or good specialty. After all, it still has Polymorph spells and whatnot.
In 3.5, Evocation could be considered a weak specialty simply because some idiots decided to change several Conjurations into no-save spells (the Orbs, frex, weren't originally that way, in 3.0) and then pile on a lot of destructive Conjurations in 3.5 books that obviate most uses for Evocation. Still, it's not an ineffective specialty, just kinda subpar compared to Conjuration's greater variety of spell effects and preponderance of new, no-save spells.
Conjuration is of course an awesome school to specialize in.
Abjuration is of course a very decent specialty, though less useful than Conjuration.
Hussar
Legend
Really, the big problem with most enchantment spells is they are save or die. Even with the nerfed Hold Person, it's not unlikely that someone who fails their save will die in the next round to a coup de gras. Charms likewise. Fail your save and the encounter is over.
It's an all or nothing school with very little in between. At least with evocation, you usually do half damage. With enchantment you are either waving your arms inneffectively or you have dropped the opposition.
Personally, I like sorcs specializing in enchantment for exactly this reason. Being able to blast away with the same spell after spell for save or die effects is not a bad way to go.
It's an all or nothing school with very little in between. At least with evocation, you usually do half damage. With enchantment you are either waving your arms inneffectively or you have dropped the opposition.
Personally, I like sorcs specializing in enchantment for exactly this reason. Being able to blast away with the same spell after spell for save or die effects is not a bad way to go.
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