More Wizard Build Help please- school specialization

[Tekill]

I have been working on a creating a wizard build for awhile now, and I am almost done. Thanks for your help so far, for those of you that have responded to my recent posts.

All I need to do now is to deal with the School Specialization. In the past I would always roll up an Illusionist. This time I was just going to roll a Generalist. But I then I started thinking about passing up on those nine spells.
I guess these days its more about picking what your opposite school is more than picking your specialization.

This time I was toying with picking Evocation as my opposition school. Has anyone picked Evocation as their opposite school and if so what has been your experience?

My build is a summoner, buffer and potion and wand maker. I was not planning on being a blaster wizy and was just thinking, maybe I can live without Firebrand, Bigbys Missle Storms and Polar Ray....and I can buy a sending wand if necessary.

For pvp I can use debuffs, pets and save or die spells.
For pve I can use buffed pets and pals.

Is Evocation opposition viable?

[Tsidkenu]

You may miss IGMS, but any wizard worth their salt doesn't need that spell to kill someone. You may also miss the control granted by the Bigby Spells, but as a Conjurer with (presumably) high DCs you can more than make up for it with Conjuration control spells: Grease, Web, Evards, Acid Fog. And then you have all the orbs for single target DPS which, when metamagicked, can be better than IGMS anyway.

Most folks will naturally pick between Divination & Necromancy as their prohibited school, and that choice usually boils down to alignment. Evil will choose Div & Good will choose Necro, so take that into consideration. If you're actually making a goodie, Necro is a decent spell school to dump as you won't be losing terribly much that your alignment would prevent you from using anyway.

There's nothing significant you'll lose from dropping Evo that your conjuration focus won't more than make up for. It's a good choice.

[Invoker]

You may miss IGMS, but any wizard worth their salt doesn't need that spell to kill someone.

[niapet]

Evocation is the best opposition school in PnP. Conjugation says "anything you can do I can do better!"

However in NWN there is Isaacs Greater Missile storm to consider.

[Tekill]

Evocation is the best opposition school in PnP. Conjugation says "anything you can do I can do better!"

However in NWN there is Isaacs Greater Missile storm to consider.

Conjugation = Conjuration, right?

You had me looking for this Conjugation spell, it sounded amazballs!

The build I created is more of a RP build, so not really min/max'd. It is a bit unique so I think I would be doing it a disfavour by picking one of the generic oposition choices (div or nec).
The build will have some decent DC's and no room for maximize/empower feats, so that makes the decision easier as well.

I think the decision has been made - so why am I so anxious?! - I think I'm already feeling 'fireball withdrawal'!

[chad878262]

I had a level 30 illusionist with evocation as opposition school and I'm not very good at DC wizards. If I can do it anyone assuming to put a bit of effort in to coming up with strategies can.

Any school can be lived without, after all non casters don't have any spells...

[Tekill]

So got my Evocation as opposition school Conjurer up to caster level 15 so far. And the lack of Evocation does not even resgister-I do not miss Evocation spells at all.
BTW, I was suprised how many damaging spells there are that are not Evocation.

And I found that neckless with Sending on it so thats the cherry.

So unless your rolling a Blaster I would recommed Evocation as a very viable opposition school.

Just throwing it out there.

[Invoker]

So got my Evocation as opposition school Conjurer up to caster level 15 so far. And the lack of Evocation does not even resgister-I do not miss Evocation spells at all.
BTW, I was suprised how many damaging spells there are that are not Evocation.

And I found that neckless with Sending on it so thats the cherry.

So unless your rolling a Blaster I would recommed Evocation as a very viable opposition school.

Just throwing it out there.

To be fair, you need to wait for mid-epics and specific fights to really evaluate whether you miss the school or not. But if you are playing mage well enough, then you'll be able to say exactly the same for every school, aside from Illusion.

Losing Illusion has almost always catastrophic long-term consequences. Doing such a thing requires to build the character all around this loss (as in: forget playing paper wizard, like those Wizard/Thaumaturge/Archmage types that are quite popular these days, because it's asking for deletion), which is never a pleasant thing to do, unless it's a very specific RP choice (armored & auto-stilled Wizard/Paladin, or some such, if one is a wild hipster...).

[metaquad4]

I usually choose to lose either divination, or enchantment. Reason being for enchantment, is because it really only offers two spells to most of my spelllists: Dominate Monster (which I rarely use anyway) and Greater Heroism (which is very handy, for skills and not just the AB).

In order to determine what school I don't value, I usually look at my spell lists and pick the one I use the least. Divination comes up first, and enchantment second for me. I usually lose divination, though.

[aaron22]

my nephew is running a wiz without the envo list. he hasnt run into too much trouble that isnt normal for a newb wiz player. his issues are not as much spell selections as much as he is always "saving" all his spells.

when he unleashes one would not feel anything is missing from his book.

it is more a matter of knowing what to use and when. envo will always be my second out if i run a wiz. after divination.