Considering that I was speaking specifically in regards to Wizard school specialization, no. Because I wasn't talking about not-Wizards. For Wizards, whether Transmutation or Conjuration is 'best' pretty much depends on what your level is, with the loser being second or possibly third. Abjuration gets excellent high-level debuffs and Divination (beyond the obvious bit about being undroppable) is what makes you Batman. Of the remainder, Illusion is pretty good up until things start having immunities everywhere (unless your DM gimps it), Necromancy is great until everything starts having resistances and Death Ward, Evocation is mediocre and gets worse at higher levels, and Enchantment, while good at lower levels (and potentially broken depending on your interpretation of Charm Person), has too many things which can ignore it and too much risk of the enemy making their saves.
So yes, for a Wizard looking for schools to drop, those all come up. You can't drop Divination, and Conj/Trans are way too good to pass up. Illusion is pretty binary, as is Necromancy (if you're going to end the campaign still at relatively low levels, they're great choices to keep). . Evocation is, again, sorta crappy. Again, low-level Enchantment has some really nasty stuff -- Charm Person, Sleep, &c., but when plenty of enemies can shrug off Ench effects and they're competing with things like Teleport and Baleful Polymorph?
I'm not trying to be mean about it or whatever, but it's like saying, "Hey, choose between this club and this Swiss Army knife. Thing is, six levels from now, the club is still going to be a club, but the other is going to be more like a transforming gun-sword meshed with a three-dozen-attachment multitool."
Put another way, once you're at Wizard 10, what do you really want to have, spells that can let you ruin one guy's day, or spells that let you play god and ruin the dude's day? Granted, missing out on Irresistible Dance is regrettable for multiple reasons, but on the other hand you don't have to deal with the fact that one of your 9th level spells that sounds superficially awesome can be negated for the cost of a +1 armor enchantment.
As far as Necro goes, I like it -- Clone, Energy Drain, and such? Fuck yes. Playing a caster with a large foot in Necro in any campaign involving Good authorities/deities? AHAHAHA, good thing we don't have that here. Illusion is great as well, with a DM that won't kill its usefulness, for Invisibility and Greater Invis even if you use nothing else from it. But Evoc is snoresville blastertown with mediocre damage, considering that any worthwhile melee type at the same level is going to be doing as much or more damage every turn, and Ench (with a handful of fun exceptions) is worthless against anything with a halfway decent Will save.
Evocation is pretty pointless unless you want to be thoroughly overshadowed by the melee attackers at
stage of the campaign rather than the first few levels. Enchantment is too vulnerable to Will saves at higher levels. Illusion and Necromancy have great stuff but can be gimped by certain meta-conditions. Everything else is too superb to drop unless you're deliberately building a weaker wizard.
Also, funny thing, considering that we were just talking about Aiel, Sirius' druid uses a short spear. I swear, this is drifting further from DF towards WoT every minute. xD
Author
Topic: Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition: Explorers of the Angaeron Ocean OOC (Read 67324 times)