What's your favorite spell schools?

[triaddraykin]

Set it to get two, since some might have trouble choosing between one.

[gilescorey]

EVO BABY

Also Necromancy. Necromancy is tight.

I also like the concept of Abjuration -- both building up protection and tearing it down, all in one school. But the Bigby's line of spells is too fun to say "I like abjuration more" to.

[Iceborn]

DI-VI-NA-TI-ON.

[Lorkas]

In Arelith: abjuration and conjuration.

In tabletop games: illusion and transmutation.

Those two schools just allow so much creative potential when there is a DM overseeing things rather than everything being pre-coded.

[-XXX-]

DI-VI-NA-TI-ON.

I hear you! I SEE YOU!

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

In both table-top and in NWN; Enchantment and Evocation, as a paired focus. Evocation is usually the specialization field, and then I drop conjuration and necromancy. Illusion allows me to make up for a large chunk of what I give up with the shadow conjuration line of spells, and necromancy lends itself to moral complications that aren't wanted in some role-playing groups.

Good will and reflex is a pretty rare combination- usually if something resists one it will be vulnerable to the other.

Being able to blow things up when diplomacy fails is also pretty satisfying.

[Diilicious]

is it a meme that ive missed as to why divination is leading this poll?

[gilescorey]

is it a meme that ive missed as to why divination is leading this poll?

People really like Divination roleplay. It sucks mechanically, for sure, but I've seen a lot of inventive and interesting things done with it.

[Cortex]

Transmutation is my favorite school on the grounds of Haste and all ability boosts.

Illusion is the runner-up for all the trickery and non death "death" spells.

[-XXX-]

It sucks mechanically, for sure...

A well-timed -scry can pwn a character much more than any vorpal spork of epic mighty critical smiting ever could! One does not simply respawn all their secrets...

[Pavor Nocturnus]

[flower]

It sucks mechanically, for sure...

A well-timed -scry can pwn a character much more than any vorpal spork of epic mighty critical smiting ever could! One does not simply respawn all their secrets...

Play a character with no secrets! Then you do not care ha!

[Punished Hans]

Musclemancy was sorta implemented with spellswords, tbh

[BrilliantInsanity]

From a purely thematic standpoint I have to choose Enchantment and Illusion. Mastery over the mind directly or indirectly <3 So much fun to be had either completely dominating someone to your will, or all the fun ways you could screw with them with illusions. <3

[msterswrdsmn]

Mine is enchantment. Crowd control in pve was rather important, as well as finding ways to screw with low will save npcs/pcs.

Even if the offensive spells are worthless because of undead/constructs/buffs/high will saves, enchantment let me make tons of highly customized gear, so I was constantly able to get some benefit 24/7 from high end gear tailored to my characters build. Also, it was the best way to rp the creation of player-made artifacts and technology.

Illusion would be my second, simply because of the sheer versitility illusion rp provided.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

is it a meme that ive missed as to why divination is leading this poll?

I think Divination has the some of the most interesting philosophical questions of a wizard.

Necromancy is often over done, and plagued with lore battles, and generally always boils down to some animator trying to justify themselves about the "greater good" or "souless dead" blah blah yawn yawn.

Divination, on the other hand, is basically epistemology - the theory of knowledge. What is truth? What is known? What is the future? What do you believe? How is your belief founded? Can we look into the past? Can we understand the nature of humanity? Diviners "see" people - but what do they see? Is it their soul, or something else?

Ignoring the fortune-telling aspects of a diviner, divination (in my opinion) is like the high art of the arcane. Diviners aren't dealing with earthly matters, like evocation or illusion. It's just an interesting school to build a character around, and since it's so mechanically useless, you usually are gimped or build in a more interesting way or you default with IGMS.

[gilescorey]

You can say that any school has good rp and bad rp, Seven; it's not like tarot-card, "third eye" gypsy diviners aren't as common and devoid of soul as your "greater good" animator example.

Just as divination can be roleplayed as epistemology, you can rp necromancy as biology, or thanatology. Or both.

... plus, it's really not a good school mechanically. Better than divination sure, but divination's the worst one.

#nidf

[Diilicious]

my server character has been a diviner for as long as ive known what i was doing in this game, but what i dont understand is why diviner spells are more prevalent in arcane magic users than Divine magic users.

As a cleric it seems to make much much more sense to have such powers since you are closer to your god and could know things that other people could not, but there are no benefits at all to being a cleric diviner.. hm, i dunno it just seems like a completely useless school that unless you have a lot of ooc information you could have an excuse to weave that into RP via "diviner powers" otherwise ive never found a use for it.

[-XXX-]

Well, as you said... the SF, GSF and ESF in divination does not give you any mechanical power. In those terms those are essentially "wasted" feats. Arcanist builds (mostly wizards in particular) can afford to "waste" 3 feats much more easily than cleric builds. That's why you see more arcane diviners than cleric diviners IMO.

[Cortex]

If divination was made mechanically useful, I'd imagine majority of casters would take it. It's taken over Transmutation which is better mechanically already.

[Hexgoblin]

Necromancy and Conjuration for me. Always been a sucker for playing the minion master with summoned creatures, along with really digging necromantic and planar lore.

[Baron Saturday]

I'd love for transmutation to get more attention. Maybe with the golem rework...

[-XXX-]

If divination was made mechanically useful, I'd imagine majority of casters would take it.

That statement points toward some inconsistencies when taking the current state of conjuration into account.

[Dr_Hazard89]

Voted for evo, conj .. third option would have been enchantment. I love that combo on a wizzie. You got your pewpew, your call-a-friend, and your $$$.

[BegoneThoth]

Necromancy, mostly due to my favorite spell being necromancy, Magic Jar, and all the fun tricks that go along with it.