Red Wizard - Optimal Schools of Magic

[Lockonnow]

but some spells you can cast from umd so tehre you go

[Sun Wukong]

Wiki lists:

Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the Wizard, and he cannot cast such spells from scrolls. He can use wands with prohibited school spells though. He may not change his specialization later.

[Cenerae]

I feel like Enchantment is a fairly easy school to drop. If you're not focusing on mind affecting spells, then the only spell of particular significance you're giving up is Greater Heroism (sure you give up some good AoE crowd control tools, but Necromancy can AoE 'crowd control' with save or die effects anyway). You still retain access to Solipsism from the Illusion school to use as a nonlethal crowd control tool if you need something like that.

If you plan to make heavy use of summoned minions to do your fighting, you might want to reconsider, since giving your summons +4 AB is fairly significant, but otherwise, you can probably live without most of the rest of it.

I'm not an expert on wizards, however, so take this with a pinch of salt.

[Incarnate]

Wiki lists:

Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the Wizard, and he cannot cast such spells from scrolls. He can use wands with prohibited school spells though. He may not change his specialization later.

Yes I know about that, but I've heard that it actually works different from what it noted in the wiki - hence why I said that someone should correct me, and using the wiki isn't really enough as it could be incorrect in that regard. Plus I have this info from one who plays a Red Wizard here on the server, hence why I'm taking his word over the wiki's, it might be supposed to work like that but according to that player it does.

[Sun Wukong]

In the stock NWN2, with the stock prohibited schools, it was possible to delay Red Wizard levels so late that you had already picked up all the spells from your second prohibited schools and suffer no actual penalties.

With the custom prohibited school system on this server, I just remember people making complaints of not being able to cast spells that they have on their spellbooks. (By default the prohibited school was something else than what the player wanted, etc.)

But I have no first hand experience on that.

[Incarnate]

In the stock NWN2, with the stock prohibited schools, it was possible to delay Red Wizard levels so late that you had already picked up all the spells from your second prohibited schools and suffer no actual penalties.

With the custom prohibited school system on this server, I just remember people making complaints of not being able to cast spells that they have on their spellbooks. (By default the prohibited school was something else than what the player wanted, etc.)

But I have no first hand experience on that.

If its the same as with when you select the specialist wizard prohibited school, then it works as you described, that it can be delayed, hence why it could be possible to get those spells. It would be great if a dev or dm would clarify this matter - as it actually can affect people's decision quite a bit.

[Deathgrowl]

Based on the bonus caster levels Abjuration seems an unlikely choice but beastly in PVP.

So you're saying a Necromancer who also have an equal spell focus in Abjuration could be an absolute beast in PvP? I agree, I think it would be quite dangerous to fight such a necromancer. However this would come at cost though, because this would mean that either of the others didn't get this focus which at least means that the necromancer has lost something else instead.

I don't personally care much for PvP, but from what I understand, DC spells are generally a bad idea in PvP anyways.

Also, note that Spell Focus only increases DCs. Abjuration has practically no DC spells except the one my character recently made (Laitae's Second Chance) and two summon/outsider-specific spells. Spell Focus does nothing for dispel and disjunction.

As such, what MrPsion is referring to - I think - is the bonus Caster Levels that Red Wizard gets for its chosen school. Because Caster Levels do affect dispel and disjunction (and particularly disjunction, as it is uncapped). I had an idea once of making an Abjurer/Red Wizard/Archmage with all the counterspell feats and just superpwn anything that cast a spell by preparing mostly dispels and disjunctions.

I wonder if transmutation would be worth to ban as the second school? Because as far as I'm aware, prohibiting it here on BG:TSCC it will still allow one to learn and use spells from level 3 and below - someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I would definitely not prohibit both Divination and Transmutation, as transmutation is mechanically only alternative for a See Invisibility effect (through Blindsight). Other than that, if you keep Divination, you can probably get away with prohibiting Transmutation. You do lose all of the +4 Ability buffs (bear's endurance, bull's strength, etc), but they're not super important for a wizard, and you can already get a +4 Intelligence hat. Admittedly relatively expensive, but it's there for anyone to buy.

[Incarnate]

I wonder if transmutation would be worth to ban as the second school? Because as far as I'm aware, prohibiting it here on BG:TSCC it will still allow one to learn and use spells from level 3 and below - someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I would definitely not prohibit both Divination and Transmutation, as transmutation is mechanically only alternative for a See Invisibility effect (through Blindsight). Other than that, if you keep Divination, you can probably get away with prohibiting Transmutation. You do lose all of the +4 Ability buffs (bear's endurance, bull's strength, etc), but they're not super important for a wizard, and you can already get a +4 Intelligence hat. Admittedly relatively expensive, but it's there for anyone to buy.

Blindsight is a level 2 spell, so if what I wrote is correct then it would be among the spells that could be retained and still be possible to cast even if the school was prohibited.

[Deathgrowl]

Blindsight is a level 2 spell, so if what I wrote is correct then it would be among the spells that could be retained and still be possible to cast even if the school was prohibited.

That's not how it works on BGTSCC, no. If you prohibit a school, the entire school is prohibited. Just like in PnP.

[Incarnate]

Blindsight is a level 2 spell, so if what I wrote is correct then it would be among the spells that could be retained and still be possible to cast even if the school was prohibited.

That's not how it works on BGTSCC, no. If you prohibit a school, the entire school is prohibited. Just like in PnP.

Yeah I know... HOWEVER, as I pointed out above, apparently its possible to still be delay banning the school, and its only once its banned that the spells from the school cannot be learned any longer, but those that has been learned is still retained and can be cast. This I heard from someone who's playing a Red Wizard on the server, it might be its not supposed to be possible, but apparently it seems to be.

[chad878262]

that's how it used to be before allowing players to select their banned schools. If i get a chance I'll test later after in out of meetings.

[Rhifox]

Blindsight is a level 2 spell, so if what I wrote is correct then it would be among the spells that could be retained and still be possible to cast even if the school was prohibited.

That's not how it works on BGTSCC, no. If you prohibit a school, the entire school is prohibited. Just like in PnP.

That's not just like in PnP.

"[The Red Wizard] can still use the prohibited spells he knew prior to becoming a Red Wizard, including using items that are activated by spell completion or spell trigger." - Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide

Normal wizards don't have access to earlier spells because normal wizards have to choose their specialization at 1 and can't change it later. If they could, then they'd reasonably have access to earlier spells, too.

I've always viewed prohibited schools as a conscious choice of focus by the wizard, not, as BG presents it, as some mystically-enforced denial of access to spells of these schools. Schools are just labels invented by mortal magic users for spells of similar effect, afterall, not some cosmological definition. The wizard just decides, "I'm choosing to focus my attention on this one school, so I don't have the time to study spells of another school." Ergo stuff you've already learned you'd still have, but you wouldn't learn new stuff because you just don't have the time to.

Spell Focus does nothing for dispel and disjunction.

As such, what MrPsion is referring to - I think - is the bonus Caster Levels that Red Wizard gets for its chosen school. Because Caster Levels do affect dispel and disjunction (and particularly disjunction, as it is uncapped). I had an idea once of making an Abjurer/Red Wizard/Archmage with all the counterspell feats and just superpwn anything that cast a spell by preparing mostly dispels and disjunctions.

Yeah. Spell Focus does nothing for those, but Spell Power does, so a Red Wizard/Archmage would indeed be very powerful with dispels and disjunctions. RW abjurers do get something for their choice. It's just putting all your eggs in one basket. With super disjunctions and with feating for counterspelling they can make incredibly spell deniers, though when I was building my abjurer counterspelling was not working right. If that's been fixed then it'd be a nice build.

[Valefort]

You have to distinguish between prohibited and restricted school. Prohibited school is the school you can't cast a spell of, your "opposition school" in nwn2 terms (but here you can choose it), then there is the restricted school, ie the school of magic that you stopped studying once becoming a red wizard (here too you can choose which). In this one you'll still be able to cast up to level 3 spells.

[Rhifox]

Heh, that's a BG distinction though. In PnP they're both just called prohibited schools. So it can be a bit confusing.

[Incarnate]

You have to distinguish between prohibited and restricted school. Prohibited school is the school you can't cast a spell of, your "opposition school" in nwn2 terms (but here you can choose it), then there is the restricted school, ie the school of magic that you stopped studying once becoming a red wizard (here too you can choose which). In this one you'll still be able to cast up to level 3 spells.

Thank you Valefort for pointing this out - its basically like I said though despite the servers distinction. So you can basically still cast the known spells from level 3 and below from it but not learn new spells once you select it - the restricted that is?