Make Spell Focus Worth Taking

[trylobyte]

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.

[modronlove]

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.

[trylobyte]

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.

[Nova]

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.

[Masque]

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.

[aazonis]

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

[The Red Mage]

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

[Fire Wraith]

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.

[trylobyte]

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.

[Not Batman]

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.

[Masque]

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.

[The Red Mage]

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.

[Masque]

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.  

[The Red Mage]

I think we need to consider other classes as well.

[Masque]

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