Make Spell Focus Worth Taking

[aazonis]

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.

[Masque]

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 Red Mage]

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.

[aazonis]

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.

[aazonis]

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.

[Masque]

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.

[The Red Mage]

May 5, 2014 13:43:26 GMT -5 aazonis said:

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.

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

[aazonis]

May 5, 2014 14:09:42 GMT -5 Masque said:

Power Word Stun is also Divination and Mass Blindness/Deafness is illusion in NWN unless CD has modified that.

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

[Vincent07]

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.

[Fire Wraith]

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.

[The Red Mage]

Summons are already pretty permanent on their duration.

[Masque]

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.

[aazonis]

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

[Not Batman]

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.

[Garage Trashcan]

May 7, 2014 2:07:20 GMT -5 Not Batman said:

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.