Wizard powers compiled by school

[Klaus]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Wiz-Bang!)

Free article with the current schools of magic, each with all spells listed by level, with name and source. Some spells gained a school keyword in this document.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

This is a handy little chart. I like that some old spells now have a school. If every spell does not already have one, it should.

My favourite part of this was the text blurb promising expansion of this list when Heroes of the Feywild and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos come out.

Cue the "but Wizards already have tons of support" crowd.

 

[Kzach]

Winged Horde regains illusion school keyword! W00000000T!

Still not enough keyword spells to fully devote mages to their primary specialisation, unless you're an evoker. Yes, technically you could fill a spellbook with each level of spell selection in your primary school, but many of those options are awful, and even with your school bonuses, you're still better off choosing outside your school.

But that winged horde change makes me a very happy illusionist

EDIT: Also, I can't help but point out that evocation is by far the largest school and yet the wizard's role is supposed to be that of controller, not blaster. I get that they came to the conclusion that the controller role wasn't really about aoe damage late in the game, but still, you'd expect more... well... control spells.

 

[Incenjucar]

Cue the "but Wizards already have tons of support" crowd.

We all already knew that every book forever would be filled with Wizard material. Don't try to make it into some sort of faction thing.

It's really nice of them to list all the powers for the folks who use the appropriate builds. Hopefully we can get more lists, like lists of magic items and so forth that all follow similar themes.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

We all already knew that every book forever would be filled with Wizard material. Don't try to make it into some sort of faction thing.

It's already a faction thing. I put that there to hopefully cow them into silence, because, as you pointed out, we already know this is going to happen, so there's no point in whining about it.

But this is a D&D discussion board, so fat chance of that.

 

[tuxgeo]

Winged Horde regains illusion school keyword! W00000000T!
< snip >

Wouldn't that be gains instead of regains? "Winged Horde" didn't have the Illusion keyword in the original Dragon 381 article; it cannot "regain" what it never had before, right?

But I agree that it needed it. I also thought that the Fear keyword would be a good idea, and give the Fear damage type to all damage it deals; but that's for flavor only, and apparently not likely to ever happen.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As someone who only dipped his toe into 4E, are illusions just reskinned wizard powers in 4E -- i.e. they apply a bonus or a penalty, just with an illusionist flavor -- or do they function more like pre-4E illusions now, with lots of possible uses for each spell? (My suspicion is that they're standard powers, but I gather things may have loosened up some over time.)

 

[Incenjucar]

Most illusions are simply flavor - but that has been true with past editions as well (Phantasmal Killer, Shadow Monsters, etc). I'm fairly sure there are still true illusions, but I believe they're rituals as often as not.

Keep in mind that illusions will always break down to rules just as fire or fear will, no matter the edition. That it seems to have been otherwise is because they made DMs make things up on the spot in the past.

 

[Moorcrys]

There are some Whizbang - disguise self, illusory wall, spectral image, spectral vision, for instance. They dont last very long but replicate older illusionist spells pretty faithfully. There are also spells for paragon illusionists that let you cast shadow versions of spells from your spellbook that are like the shadow conjuration/evocations spells. If you want to play an old school illusionist in 4e I'd pick the essentials Mage with illusion as his primary school and nethermancy as his secondary so he gets a few shadow effects.

Most of the more complex and longer-lasting illusions are actually rituals.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Spectral Image + Ghost Sound can do some pretty nifty, creative things, much like they could in previous incarnations.

The thing about illusions in AD&D, was that, while neat and flavourful and fun, in the hands of a clever player, and a lenient DM, they could potentially be used to basically game your way around nearly any problem. Out of combat, this is still probably true to an extent with the current versions.

I can both see why things were codified a little more and also why some players miss the power and flexibility those spells had.