Cormyr and the Dalelands

Something I've considered for a while is why ever bother taking some of the spell focus feats for schools have have very few, if any spells with DCs. The ones that immediately come to mind are Abjuration, Conjuration and Divination. What I think would be awesome is if these feats added something in addition to the DC increase that don't even matter. So here are a few ideas on what those bonuses could be, but what they are isn't really as important as that their actually beneficial for a character to take. Feats shouldn't be worthless.

Abjuration: Spells become harder to dispel (The more you know about dispelling the better able you are to counter act it), and the caster level for determining the amount of damage absorbed by skin and barrier spells is increase by X amount (Note: not CL for anything else about the spell)

Conjuration: This was brought up in the new summons thread, but perhaps making summons stronger and allowing multiple summons at once

Divination: This is a bit more tricky, but what about adding a skill bonus to Sense Motive

The other schools all have a sufficient amount of DC causing spells that the feats are good as they are.

I would note Illusion is a fairly weak focus potentially increase concealment % on displacement, invis and the like. That is mainly because the spells that force a saving throw require two saving throws - Phantasmal Killer and Weird. With mass blindness/deafness being the sole exception.

Divination is a tough one potentially allow it to raise the HP limit that the power word spells effect along with the increase in DC it would receive for its other spells that force a saving throw I mean there are tons of them there is feeblemind and uhhh feeblemind and did I mention feeblemind?

Otherwise the other suggestions are all neat. Be interesting to see what people think of the idea.

The only power word spell which is Divination is Power Word Kill. If Greater Ruin gets buffed anymore, it'll be better than this spell in every situation anyway, minus killing 20 level 1 goblins.

I like the concealment idea for illusion. Only if it were like 5% or something though. It would scale pretty extremely well with AC though, so a heavy armored bard who can still spell imp invis with 60 AC for 60% concealment ontop of wounding whispers/ curse song/ taunt would be pretty devastating. And still spell wizards with high AC as well. And even then, they could put it on -other- things like summoned dragons or summoned dragon blooded people(=p). Mass blindness/deafness is necromancy. They really need something combat related, but all I can think of is giving them the altar self widget ECLs get. You can't really take away their dual saving throws without it being either overpowered or underpowered in comparison to necromancy. You could raise the damage on the failed saving throw attempt, however. A practiced illusionist uses a more powerful version, and even if the person resists it, they'd be hit harder than if it were read from a scroll. x3 damage maybe.

We've been saying that for conjuration for years and years now.

And, I don't think Abjuration can work like that. Also, at higher levels, you are pretty much impossible to dispel anyway. Even Arcane Defense: Abjuration doesn't help you against dispels. The only spells for abjuration which have DCs are Banishment/ Dismissal/ Imprisonment. Maybe it could make those spells more powerful and work against constructs or something(which are usually spell immune anyway, but it would be -some- option to do something as a mage against them. Taking a feat or two or three to effect them with one spell seems fair...).

Feeblemind is garbage, and is only MAYBE useful in extremely situational, low level PvP against another wizard. I'd rather it give like +1 or +2 universal saving throws or something. Divination is and will always be a RP school focus. How it effects combat is through RP and foresight. So maybe increased saving throws is a way to implement that. Maybe DMs could give them a widget for true seeing 1/day or something. I'm not sure.

As far as functionality for the abjuration effects, it is certainly doable. It would just require almost trivial changes to the spell scripts that check if the character has the spell focus feats and changes the calculation for absorption amount. The same with dispelling the dispelling mechanics. We already have changes to dispel that check for shadow magic feats, this would just be a simple addition to that.

In my mind, the issue with Illusion, is that as a whole it is a very underrepresented school. A lot of this is due to the limitations of the game engine. Most illusion effects just can't be done without a DM.

Power Word Stun is also Divination and Mass Blindness/Deafness is illusion in NWN unless CD has modified that. In fairness I would also suggest moving power word sleep over to divination as well but that is more a matter of keeping the 'Power Words' in divination and giving it a minor boost.

I could argue I see Divination as a school that could be used in combat but your perception is based on personal taste of the school. I quite like the fluff of the power words being deep arcane secrets only the penetrating eye of divination can unlock - words buried for a reason by ancient beings and now brought forth to kill, stun or put your foe to sleep with a single utterance.

Yeah Feeblemind is hilarious (in a bad way) the only use I have ever seen for it was for Wizards to cast it on another PC then Maze them so they were stuck in the Maze for a very long time.

That's an interesting idea too. Maybe make their spell mantles absorb more/ last  longer or something.

It's not illusion here, at least my DC isn't being modified by the spell focus illusion feat currently.

Except that the Dispel check does not really look at spell school.  It just checks the CL of the effect on you.  Not the spell, the effect, as in EFFECT_HASTE, EFFECT_AC_INCREASE etc.  So that kind of change would actually be somewhat difficult.

The summon thing... making them more powerful could be done easily enough with a change to their OnSpawn.   Allowing multiple means more templates with different AI scripts, as then they have to be brought in as Henchmen, not summons.  Not impossible, just more work and creature templates.

Illusion is tricky, not much here.   Not a fan of increases to concealment %, as 50% is already quite high.

One thing that would be really easy to do with summons is to alter the duration.  We could also alter the scripts to put special buffs on the conjured minions, maybe.

Summons are already pretty permanent on their duration.

Would it be also possible to potentially add damage reduction to displacement, Invisibilty and it's ilk for Spell Focus: Illusion? Fluff it that the illusion is so strong that even when someone sees through it they're still partially fooled?

Conjuration to work would need to either add another critter or make them stronger as the duration is already quite lengthy.

One thing that would really help the illusion school, is changing what spells were part of the shadow conjuration and shadow evocation spells. The selection available with them right now is pretty(absolutely) worthless. Some of the spells aren't even conjuration spells and shouldn't be part of it. As I recall from looking at it a few years ago. It would just require some 2DA editing as the spell scripts for the spells shadow conjuration would emulate are already in place

Displacement granting DR makes no sense. Illusion is a school that will mechanically always be inferior to its D&D counterpart purely because of the engine. Considering that Illusion has some of the most potent buffs in the game, meh. It's the best school to spec in really, as you lose Enchantment (Perhaps the most useless school). If anything, I could see maybe a 6th or 7th level  single target spell that is similar to Finger of Death, but with only a will save, now that alone would boost the school. In all honesty though, I am having little to no problems with my Illusionist, my Phantasmal Killers and Weird are still useful even in Gnolls.

It's funny that Illusion is also still stupidly good on Druids.

Because Nature's Beauty is amazing.

My opinion on spell focus and spell schools, from a mostly-arcane perspective.

Abjuration:  Never ban this or you lose most of your buffs.  Never specialize in it because it has no spells that benefit from it.  Spell Focus for abjuration is pretty much useless on everybody and should only be taken for fluff.  Given Abjuration's main offensive purpose is dispelling, one may repurpose this feat to have some mechanical value by swapping its useless +2/4/6 spell DC bonus to a +2/4/6 caster level bonus for dispelling purposes.  Epic abjurers then become really good at dispelling things.

Conjuration:  One of the best schools in the game due to the power of summons.  Makes leveling a mage so much easier at every point in the game.  Not as awesome for Evil characters because their summons are obviously evil and will get the character outed immediately, their summons tend to be weaker, and Gate has an extra hoop to jump through for CE or NE characters.  Not a good school to put Focuses into, though it does have some nifty spells like Web and Acid Arrow.  I worry that having the focus boost the summons would make them overwhelming, especially given the power that higher-level summons like Greater Planar Binding, Gate, and Dragon Knight already have.

Divination:  Sorry Priya, but Divination is a pretty useless school on CD despite being one of if not the best school for tabletop.  With Nondetection items available in an infinite quantity from a local store, good luck trying to scry anyone that doesn't want to be found, and even without it PCs will get a notice in the form of a save when you start spying on them so they can immediately stop what they're doing if they want to be like that.  Has a few spells of questionable value, and almost nothing with a save except Feeblemind (which is supposed to be Enchantment anyway) which is only good against improperly-warded mages.  For a school in this state, Spell Focus is obviously out of the question except for fluff.  Becomes a decent choice if you have DMs willing to work with you on it since you can learn a lot of information in a short time, but they won't look for a focus before doing this.

Enchantment:  The inverse of Divination, it's a meh school in tabletop but a good one on CD because of the prevalence of epic monsters with terrible Will saves.  Mass Hold Monster is an instant-win card in gnolls since it will reliably stop everything but the shamans who have Freedom of Movement.  Will is also the one save that is almost never buffed by DMs running quests, which means you can occasionally Dominate Monster their villain and have a good time.  Sadly, the whole school is shut down by Mind Blank which every mage should know.  If you're going Enchantment, it never hurts to go big and take the focus feats so you can try landing Dominate Monster on bosses.

Evocation:  Next!  No, really.  Evocation is good at lower levels but becomes less useful as time goes on until it eventually becomes almost completely useless at epic levels because things just take forever to die.  Why would you want to spend your valuable time and more valuable spell slots doing 90 damage to a group (which tends to include your own party members) one time when your fighter can easily put out twice that damage in one round with a few buffs that last hours?  Would be useful against bosses, but most of them have mountains of HP and a few full heals thrown in too.  On top of all this, the best Evocation spells don't even have saves because they're some variant of Magic Missile (or are Hellball).  Occasionally useful for cleaning up a spawn if the rest of the party is dead, but buffed summons usually work better.  Still has a few spells that are good, and definitely benefits from a focus since almost all its spells have DCs, but it's still a poor choice of specialty.  Can lead to hilarity, though, if you make an Evocation-specced cleric/heirophant, max out your DCs, and start dropping DC50+ Implosions that kill everything through death immunity.

Illusion:  Great fluff abilities that can give a DM headaches if you know what you're doing and amazing on the tabletop, but Illusion on CD tends to be a combination of Enchantment and Necromancy that isn't as good as either of them alone.  Weird and Phantasmal Killer are fine if you focus on maxing out their DC through Shadow Adept, but they're essentially Wail of the Banshee and Finger of Death that have two saves instead of one.  Because of this, Illusion is a 'go big or go home' school where you should either maximize your potential DC so the double-save is less of a hindrance.  Because of this, any Illusion-focused mage will want their spell focuses.  Just remember anything with BioWare true sight (dragons) is immune to everything you do.  Despite this, never give up this school - Improved Invisibility lives here and that's one of the game's best spells.

Necromancy:  One of the best schools on CD to max out since it does a little bit of everything and eventually scales up to 'everything dies when I tell it to.'  RedMage can go on about exactly how powerful Necromancy can be far better than I could, but as a summary, necromancers get crowd control from Fear, multiple decent summons from Undead Army, and have a battery of save-or-die spells that can ruin the days of mooks and, later, can even catch bosses.  The only place necromancers are lacking in is decent buffs.  Specialist necromancers have Divination as their banned school, which can hurt their ability to see invisible stuff, but when you can kill everything in a 40' radius with one spell who needs to see your enemy?  Potions also exist to counter this.  If you go Necromancer, go big or go home though - Fortitude is the highest save on almost every monster, so you'll need huge DCs to stay relevant later.

Transmutation:  A combination of Illusion's ability to make DMs cry and Necromancy's ability to instant-win fights.  Sadly, it sounds more awesome than it is.  While it's -the- school of magic for tabletop games, Transmutation isn't as awesome on CD due to its overreliance on single-target Fortitude save spells, and Fortitude tends to be the highest save on everything.  Additionally, most bosses past level 12 have specific immunity to Polymorphing effects, a problem necromancers don't have to deal with, and you don't get good area-effect hard crowd control until epic levels.  The upside to this is that nothing short of high SR or spell mantles will block your spells while necromancers and illusionists need to worry about Death Ward and Mind Blank.  Has a few overlooked gems like Slow and Reverse Gravity.  Never give up this school - This is where your animal buffs come from, not to mention the all-powerful Haste. Be wary of specializing if you're a wizard though - You lose Conjuration, which stings. If you're specializing in this for Aelie-style shenanigans, though, go big or go home - The high Fort saves will shut you down otherwise.

Having some single save illusion spells would be nice.  While Weird and phantasmal killer are useful, I cannot fathom why weird is a ninth level spell.  Wail is 9th level and allows only one save.  Weird just seems like a weaker version to me.  Should have been 8th level.

I forgot the important part of the post I made above.  Spell focus suggestions!

Abjuration:  Change the DC increase to a bonus to Dispel checks.
Conjuration:  Unsure.  May potentially overpower summons if you boost them.
Divination:  Doesn't really have good spells to boost. Should be used by DMs to give diviners more accurate and reliable information in quests.
Enchantment: Fine as-is.
Evocation:  Perhaps add a further damage bonus to Evocation spells cast by those with the focus.
Illusion:  The feat is fine, but the school needs more spells to take advantage of it.
Necromancy:  Fine as-is.
Transmutation:  Fine as-is.

Just a FYI: I do, in fact, as a DM, check for spell focus feats if a character wants to do something exceptional with the school in RP. If you don't take the feats, don't RP as being a master of the school or anything. I don't speak for the other DMs, but this should be common sense IMO. It's not always about mechanical power.

I'm not sure displacement and it's ilk granting DR makes no sense when you consider premonition grants DR and that isnt creating a physical barrier like stoneskin does. DR is a reduction of damage and it makes as much sense in the abstract of granting a reduction in damage due to a grazing blow due to an illusion as does a missed hit all together. Other systems fluff it as the former while DnD as the latter. Although I would likewise favour either more illusion spells or even existing spells having their double saving throw removed (on Wierd at least).

Conjuration could potentially add a buff to the summoned creature. I have seen that done without messing with templates +2 to all stats for focus, + 4 for greater and + 6 for Epic. I don't think this would overpower it the summons would remain pretty good and retain current weaknesses.

Also as a defense of evocation the Bigby hands spells save the entire school from irrelevance at the higher levels.

At the very least not having phantasmal killer and weird classified as death magic would help. In PnP they aren't.

They aren't in NWN either. They are mind spells.

Abjuration might also do with a duration enhancement.  It's relatively minor in the scheme of things, but having your buffs expire early is never a good thing.  Dispel checks are also a good idea there.

I'll think about something more for Illusion and Divination, there's probably something useful we can come up with.

I also like adding damage to the Evocation spells.  I think we already have them coded so that's easier to do than just editing them all by hand.

Damage spells already get a boost from being higher level, a nice feature Vincent added, but having Evocation spells get a second, additional boost from Evocation focuses would help keep them relevant in the late-game where even mooks have hundreds of hitpoints.  A duration enhancement on Abjuration would be good at lower levels, but at higher ones most buffs are pretty much permanent anyway, especially with Extend Spell which every mage should have.  This would mostly be a boon to classes that rely heavily on short-term buffs, like battle-clerics.

Illusion and Divination both have the problem where they don't really have a lot of spells that can take advantage of the focus feats.  Illusion is a small school that relies heavily on its Shadow versions of other schools' spells to get what it needs (and most of the ones in NWN aren't great) but otherwise has very few good spells of its own while Divination, the smallest school in straight D&D and even further compressed in NWN, just doesn't have any spells to focus on and will likely need to stay a roleplay-focused feat.

Spell damage could use a boost overall. The DPS of a melee fighter compared to a mage is a pretty huge difference here. Mages don't have the OOMPH they need to compete in a lot of the higher level dungeons. A lot of the time in places like gnolls or frost giants, the mages basically sit there until the hit a boss room and then they purge themselves of all offensive spells.

That is fairly traditional of how dnd works. Mages are much more competitive in inflicting status effects. Gnolls fall very easily to a decent fear DC and the boss battle to a few mass holds. Naturally coupled with a timestop.

I would much rather evocation damage increase be tied to specializing in the school instead of spell focus. An evocation specialized mage does not get summons and could use more damage to make up for it. Otherwise, it'll probably be a little over kill. Evocation is already the most versatile spell school of all on CD.


Whoops, I forgot people play things other than wizards.

In fairness we are going a little off topic I think the point of the thread was not to make one of the most powerful classes in the game more powerful but to add a little more versatility to the underpowered options to create greater build diversity.


These are: Abjuration, Divination and Conjuration. With illusion a debatable fourth school.

Abjuration: Potentially add greater boosts to current spells - Spell Mantle now blocks an additional 1d4 spells for focus, 1d6 for greater and 1d8 for Epic and so on and so forth.

Divination boosts the power words.

Conjuration boosts the critter summoned

The goal being to give a niche to these builds rather than making them super strong.  

I think we need to consider other classes as well.

I would say so - Fighter, Barbarian and Monk could all use an upgrade with fighter and barbarian being in the most need.

Death Ward blocks it, I just tested it, so at least on CD it is counted as Death Magic. It is also counted as a mind spell, so anything that gives immunity to that also stops it.

Fighter is great, if you know what you're doing with it. Barbarian has needed a boost since bloody 3.X was in beta (And it's not doing much better in 5.0).

Fighter is a concern because to be honest with you there simply are not enough decent feats for it to take. Ranger gets enough bonus feats to cover what you need free fighting styles, HiPS, Tumble, spells and full BAB.

Fighter is very good for entry into PRCs and dips but a poor class on its own merit.

Edit: Also as an aside it really suffers in terms of plot utility it has no useful utility skills to use in plots to solve problems that don't involve hitting something. It has intimidate but rarely has the skill points or the charisma synergy for it to be useful. 

The elemental resists feats aren't too bad on this server as it opens more gear slots for saving throw stuff. Not to mention they can afford to specialize in more than one weapon.

But I think we're off topic.

They are mind spells, but the effect applied is a death effect, thus death immunity stops it.  That's just a mechanic of NWN

Nah, this is just another weird CD quirk like many other spell things. It goes through death ward on every other server. You can check by booting up campaign. You just need immunity to mind sells or immunity to fear to stop them.

I wonder when that got changed then.  I can make it bypass death ward.  Death is the only effect that can be made to bypass immunity. (wish the others could)