Specialist Wizards

[Xerah]

Please provide feedback/bugs/etc here.

I know there are a lot of changes with this update but keep in mind the goal is to make it so that there is less of an obvious option (i.e. Generalist or Illusionist).

[SkipiusEsq]

First, let me say that I love the work that the team put into this change. I am really excited to start making some specialist wizards.

As for feedback, I have a couple of thoughts but please do not take these as criticisms in any way:

Abjuration: Aside from the ESF bonus, the passive and GSF bonus seem lackluster. Getting +2 CL for resisting dispels for what is going to be a level 30 wizard who likely has abjuration defense is not a big boon. You already are only being dispeled by another epic abjurer. If this were changed to add +2 when attempting to dispel, that would be a significant boon. As for protection vs. spells, a high level INT toon is going to have a high spellcraft, so there is a decent chance with gear that you are already hitting the +20 save max without this extra help.

Conjuration: Love it!

Divination: Having a true seeing machine is going to be great. Probably one of my favorite changes.

Enchantment: Don't know enough about the components of the changes to opine intelligently.

Evocation: I also love this change. Giving more umph for a character that will not be able to conjure is nice. Not having to use spell components is also really great.

Illusion: ESF bonus doesn't seem to be on par with the other ESF perks for other specialists. I assume invisibility extended means that the level 2 spell is cast as if extended. For a wizard that is already taking 21 levels, extending invisibility when it is already extended by the feats normally doesn't add much, especially since you can just sacrifice a 3rd level spell for extended invis. I like the idea of added concealment, but only 5% more is not that significant. Perhaps allowing it to get up to 60%?

Necro: My other favorite. Losing divination is a serious hit, but having the type of undead summons you will get is a great way to accept that loss.

Trans: I like this change but for the changes to Tensor's, which I put in a different thread in the feedback. Being able to max zoo buffs without meta is fantastic. Getting to +8 is even nicer. I would like to be able to also empower the zoo spells, giving me a change to hit the +12 without gear, especially since you lose Conjuration.

[Xerah]

Abjuration - I think making it add to dispel is a bit too risky and powerful. The saves can save you from some gear choice.

Illusion - You're not wrong, but this is made fairly weak by design. Illusion is already good and I didn't want to not give it anything with the rework.

Trans: We're looking at changing tensors a bit but still working that out.

[Salasker]

Can I just say that, having taken a Specialist School long before I knew how terrible a choice that was, THANK YOU. Any cookie other than one extra spell slot is nearly infinitely better.

[Xerah]

Can I just say that, having taken a Specialist School long before I knew how terrible a choice that was, THANK YOU. Any cookie other than one extra spell slot is nearly infinitely better.

Can you confirm that it is working on existing one? I assume so, otherwise you would have said something, but just check to see if you have Arcane Defense. Thanks!

[Skarain]

While it is an old bug, Enchantment Specialists will be in for a world of sadness once they realize how bugged ESF: Enchantment double domination perk is.

The way it works (or used to work), 1st target dominated = All good. However, when you dominate a 2nd, the 1st one breaks free of control. You will need to re-cast dominate to get 1st one under your sway. This gets very expensive in terms of spell slots, especially if using Dominate Monster (9th level).

The 2nd dominate also do not respond to -fetch, nor to Player Tool 1's "control all associate" command and thus the Enchanter needs to use Player Tool 1 for one summon and the "attack nearest"/"guard me" etc. commands to control their 2nd.

Discussed in length in here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22759

[Salasker]

Confirmed, Xerah, for both the Arcane Defense (Enchantment) and the Good Hope spell/3 minute Cooldown, at least. As to the bugs mentioned for ESF: Enchantment, I don't think that was part of this update and I seem to recall the team is working on both fixing that and/or some other cookie for Enchantment. I'm sure it'll be done Soon(tm), but they've been a tad busy of late.

The Specialist stuff is awesome, though. I look forward to people taking that plunge now that it's, y'know, somewhat smart. (Unlike when I did it...)

[Hunter548]

I think the opposition schools could use some work, especially if there isn't willingness or ability to make it work a-la PnP (IE, you choose your school of opposition).

As it stands currently, three schools oppose conjuration, two oppose illusion, and no schools oppose abjuration, evocation, or necromancy. It seems like it would make the most sense for all eight to have an opposition school without repeats. You could even pair them off, and have a school that bans divination in turn be banned by divination (as an example).

my understanding is you can change this just by editting spellschool.2da

Additionally, I think the specific bonuses are off-kilter:

Abjuration: AD: Abjuration is fairly strong, and is also the only one of the AD feats that's worth anything. Sure, giving up conjuration is a big pain, but picking up +3CL against dispels is a pretty strong bonus. The bonus on spells breached is also extremely strong.

Conjuration: Seems very weak given that you're giving up transmutation (And thus haste, all stat buffs, timestop, GSanc, etc). Small stat bonuses of the same sort that i.e Necromancy focuses give aren't much of a bonus to encourage taking conjuration specialization, and I think transmutation is probably the most painful of the spells to ban.

Divination: Fairly useful, and banning illusion is painful but not cripplingly so. This one is largely fine?

Enchantment: I think the biggest thing holding enchantment back is the wonkiness inherent in dominating creatures as mentioned above. I'm also having a hard time parsing what that ESF bonus is meant to do.

Evocation: These are some pretty sizable bonuses, and I think with some severe creativity they could be made useful, but giving up cloudkill is still super painful.

Illusion: Still easily the best of them, largely because enchantment is easily the best school to ban. ESF bonus is actually extremely valuable speaking from experience: it lets even wizards basically be permanently invisible without much effort. Very good for spying , simply moving around, or even robbing inattentive people's quarters.

Necromancy: This is just... bad, honestly. Giving up divination is really painful, and necromancy focuses are kind of worthless to begin with. Circle of Death is a complete joke unless you have PM levels, and even then it's only okay. +2 UCL is useful for leveling but not super important after 17 (and probably makes the 7-11 stretch actually harder, because the Tyrantfog Zombies are inexplicably worse than the Zombie Warriors). Doubling the bonuses for GSF necromancy stats is nice-ish, but doesn't make up for the extreme vulnerability you acquire to both people with invisibility and stealthers (As well as losing premonition). The 25% chance to make Dread Mummy might actually be a downgrade in performance because of the peculiarities of the Dread Mummy's behavior with Word of Faith compared to the standard Mummy Dust mummies. Vampires, it'd be a slight DPS boost via the higher strength and AB, but not I think enough to change how they perform (IE, they exist to kill archers and other mages by and large). All of this is also secondary to ESF necromancy being the worst focus to take.

Transmutation: I think this is probably the worst specialization. No conjuration hurts. Auto-maximize saves you some slots, I guess, but is a pretty minor bonus. +1 to zoo buffs up to 8 is starting to get into the marginal area because most people don't need that much to cap their constitution or primary stat in a party situation. It's +1 universal save on your gear though, I guess. Still a very small bonus. The Tenser's bonuses still aren't enough to make tenser's usage something you would probably want to do on a "real" mage. There's definitely some sort of very bizarre and niche wizard-fighter build with fullplate and auto stills that could use tenser's, but it's very minimal value otherwise. You'll still struggle to get over 38ish ab (by my back-of-envelope-math) and your AC is still probably not enough that you want to be in melee.

[Gillesbreton]

In regards to(based on 100s of hours playing an enchantment wizard): Enchantment (opposed by Illusion)
+ Passive bonus: bonus to dominated creatures similar to summon scaling based on spell foci
+ Signature spell: Good Hope
+ GSF bonus: Dominate Person/Monster duration increases to hours per level
+ ESF bonus: Crushing despair gains 2+1 per 10L for a debuff; good hope gains 2+1 per 10 base leadership+Skill Foci ranks for skills/saves; and +1 per 15 base leadership ranks to AB/Damage

GSF Already gives hours per caster level. So specialising literally does nothing here, you can just get GSF as a generalist for the same thing.

Crushing despair on a level 30 wizard would only Affected creatures takes a -5 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and weapon damage rolls for the duration of the spell. This is super underwhelming, I would highly recommend that anyone wanting to run an enchanter just going generalist, the specialisations here are not worth the loss of illusion spells if you want to remain competitive.

Also, the main fix for the domination bug requires illusion casting (invisibility) so not having it screws you over quite a bit.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Glad specialist wizards are getting more flavour.

Really, really think they need to be able to pick their opposed schools. I know this makes it harder to balance, but the biggest OOC deterrent is still the 1-then-2 forced selection.

I want to play an evoker with no necromancy, for example. An illusionist with no conjuration.

I understand it might be difficult. This incentivizes to be a specialist more, and I appreciate it-

But the best part of wizards, always, is the give-and-take. This just makes the "give" better. Doesn't expand on the fundamental choice as meaningfully.

[Gouge Away]

There's a bit of a good/evil problem with summons. Evil can give up conjuration and use undead, they're just as good and mummy dust is great. Good gives up conjuration and what do they have? Mordenkeinen's sword, basically. Or henchmen and golems.

So yeah, having so many specialist schools give up conjuration really favors the evil IMO. It would be nice to have more options. Though letting us pick any school would be cheesy too (good would drop necro without a thought and never notice it was gone) and need some restriction.

[AstralUniverse]

I cant shake up the feeling that if we could choose opposing school we would all just ban enchantment no matter what school we specialize in.

Gouge Away beat me to it - I totally agree that there's clear favourism to evil wizards who have no moral obligations not to summon undead because a mage needs their summons and our options are really at the end of it, down to Ancient Elemental or Mummy Dust and so many schools currently ban Conjuration and I think it's a problem.

Overall tho, I think this rework is a grand success because nothing there imo is too strong and I'm 100% sure we'll see some specialists around very soon. But we will likely see either evil stuff or illusionists.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I think the opposition schools could use some work, especially if there isn't willingness or ability to make it work a-la PnP (IE, you choose your school of opposition).

As it stands currently, three schools oppose conjuration, two oppose illusion, and no schools oppose abjuration, evocation, or necromancy. It seems like it would make the most sense for all eight to have an opposition school without repeats. You could even pair them off, and have a school that bans divination in turn be banned by divination (as an example).

my understanding is you can change this just by editting spellschool.2da

Additionally, I think the specific bonuses are off-kilter:

Abjuration: AD: Abjuration is fairly strong, and is also the only one of the AD feats that's worth anything. Sure, giving up conjuration is a big pain, but picking up +3CL against dispels is a pretty strong bonus. The bonus on spells breached is also extremely strong.

Conjuration: Seems very weak given that you're giving up transmutation (And thus haste, all stat buffs, timestop, GSanc, etc). Small stat bonuses of the same sort that i.e Necromancy focuses give aren't much of a bonus to encourage taking conjuration specialization, and I think transmutation is probably the most painful of the spells to ban.

Divination: Fairly useful, and banning illusion is painful but not cripplingly so. This one is largely fine?

Enchantment: I think the biggest thing holding enchantment back is the wonkiness inherent in dominating creatures as mentioned above. I'm also having a hard time parsing what that ESF bonus is meant to do.

Evocation: These are some pretty sizable bonuses, and I think with some severe creativity they could be made useful, but giving up cloudkill is still super painful.

Illusion: Still easily the best of them, largely because enchantment is easily the best school to ban. ESF bonus is actually extremely valuable speaking from experience: it lets even wizards basically be permanently invisible without much effort. Very good for spying , simply moving around, or even robbing inattentive people's quarters.

Necromancy: This is just... bad, honestly. Giving up divination is really painful, and necromancy focuses are kind of worthless to begin with. Circle of Death is a complete joke unless you have PM levels, and even then it's only okay. +2 UCL is useful for leveling but not super important after 17 (and probably makes the 7-11 stretch actually harder, because the Tyrantfog Zombies are inexplicably worse than the Zombie Warriors). Doubling the bonuses for GSF necromancy stats is nice-ish, but doesn't make up for the extreme vulnerability you acquire to both people with invisibility and stealthers (As well as losing premonition). The 25% chance to make Dread Mummy might actually be a downgrade in performance because of the peculiarities of the Dread Mummy's behavior with Word of Faith compared to the standard Mummy Dust mummies. Vampires, it'd be a slight DPS boost via the higher strength and AB, but not I think enough to change how they perform (IE, they exist to kill archers and other mages by and large). All of this is also secondary to ESF necromancy being the worst focus to take.

Transmutation: I think this is probably the worst specialization. No conjuration hurts. Auto-maximize saves you some slots, I guess, but is a pretty minor bonus. +1 to zoo buffs up to 8 is starting to get into the marginal area because most people don't need that much to cap their constitution or primary stat in a party situation. It's +1 universal save on your gear though, I guess. Still a very small bonus. The Tenser's bonuses still aren't enough to make tenser's usage something you would probably want to do on a "real" mage. There's definitely some sort of very bizarre and niche wizard-fighter build with fullplate and auto stills that could use tenser's, but it's very minimal value otherwise. You'll still struggle to get over 38ish ab (by my back-of-envelope-math) and your AC is still probably not enough that you want to be in melee.

Yes, its odd how specialists encourage more necromancy.

[mjones3]

I'd just like to point out that the opposing schools seems to be the nwn default so nothing's changed there. I don't think the changes are encouraging necromancy at all but rather enhancing the current limitations.

Necromancy has always been better than normal summons, the cost of it is the stigma you can gain if caught with undead minions.

On another note is the auto maximize of the transmutation like the healer clerics auto empower? Do wands auto maximize? Because with the time change to hours spells that would be amazing, 5 irl hours of +8 to a stat from wands.

[Skarain]

The problem with everyone being able to pick their Banned School is.... that 50% people will ban Necromancy in a way akin why most Specialist wizards in the past took Illusion, and every Spellsword in existence bans Enchantment (as their choosen school to ban, to not lose Necromantic Imbues). You loose the least with it. The remaining 50% (Necromancers) in turn will ban Enchantment. Look up yourself how little you lose, especially with Mass Haste and Protection from Spells moved away from Enchantment.

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Spell_schoo ... er/wizard)
http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Spell_changes#Added_Spells

I used to play on a NWN2 RP server where Specialist Wizards were a thing. While it uses 3.5e instead of 3e, spell school lists have not changed that much. The wizard meta was to always ban Necromancy (unless you wanted to RP a Necromancer). And JUST for the extra row of spell slots. There was no RP involved.

The one exception was with Red Wizard of Thay PRC, who got hefty bonuses to their choosen 1 school of magic, but had to ban 2-3 schools entirely.

So.... while Tabletop might allows you to choose your banned school, Tabletop also does not get school-specific cookies we get on Arelith for specialization. If we allows Wizards to freely pick their banned schools, there will be NO reason to NOT go Specialist Wizard as you will get so much more than Generalist. Every Wizard will ban Necromancy or Enchantment and take the cookie of their choise while loosing practically nothing.

What COULD be relooked is which spell school is opposed to what.

This is a diagram of Arcane Spell Schools found from the internet.


If we draw some arrows to represent "opposed" schools, this is what we get.


And below we have "Neverwinter Nights" logic. A far less geometric pattern!


Something to consider. Isn't Abjuration the opposed to Evocation? Protection vs. Harm? Same with Divination opposed to Illusion. Deceiving vs. the Truth.

Obviously either method of defining Banned Schools makes someone to lose something, but aren't the perks specifically there to offset the loss? You have to sacrifice something in order to achieve mastery in another field.

Nevertheless, If the system is made free-to-pick, everyone will ban Enchantment and Necromancy. Then the power of the perks will need to be toned down, which waters down the flavour. Do we really want that?

[Skibbles]

Many people, especially with a greater understanding of mechanics, have dissected the individual changes pretty well. Lots of them look really cool, and I'd certain leap at the chance to select one post-creation.

However I am left wondering that, in an effort to increase the number of specialists, the pendulum may swing very far in the opposite direction: in that the general wizard who is not a wildmage is going to become an extreme minority.

The generalist wizard, already suffering under the weight of wildmage, seems to be taking some collateral damage with the update.

Wildmage has tons of power with some slot refreshing properties and pretty potent and vaguely controllable powers, and Specialists have both extra spell slots and pretty potent cookies on top for some of these schools.

Is there some middle ground for a generalist that might be considered? Maybe just a single extra slot in a few circles or some watered down derivative of a specialization of choice to keep them relevent?

[Skarain]

Is there some middle ground for a generalist that might be considered? Maybe just a single extra slot in a few circles or some watered down derivative of a specialization of choice to keep them relevent?

Keep in mind that there is also Sorcerers. Any buff to the "Base" Wizard offsets the balance between Wizard <--> Sorcerer. This is already happening to a lesser extent with the addition of new spells into the game, as Sorcerers can usually not take those without sacrificing something near-mandatory from their limited spells.

[Nitro]

This is a good thing though. Sorcerers are currently more mechanically powerful than baseline wizards, the strength of a wizard is supposed to be that they can swap out to all these different spells while the sorcerer is locked in. So with every spell we introduce we get closer to the P&P balance of sorcerers being the specialized blastmaster always ready to go and excel in their chosen field, while the wizard can swap out for any number of utility solutions.

[ReverentBlade]

The opposed school weirdness pointed out by the diagrams above has BOTHERED MY OCD SO MUCH FOR YEARS. That is all.

[Kalopsia]

If you’re interested in my original considerations regarding this update, feel free to have a look at the suggestion it’s based on. The quick summary is that these bonuses should not be compared to each other, but rather to the spells lost in order to obtain them. Something to keep in mind is that while the suggestion was published in September 2020, I came up with it about a year ago in a forum thread, and several spell changes shifted the balance since then.

That said, here’s my thoughts about the current implementation:

• Abjuration seems to be in a good spot. These characters trade summon spells (notably: Gate), Cloudkill and other potent spells for better defense against spells, a spare feat (Arcane Defense: Abjuration) and the ability to fight other casters more effectively with their superior breaches and extra spell slots.
• Conjuration might need an additional cookie since losing Transmutation also implies losing (Mass) Haste except for wands or bardic instruments. I already have a few ideas which I’ll discuss with Xerah.
• Divination seems in a good spot as well. These characters trade valuable spells like Shadow Shield and long-lasting Improved Invisibility for better detect skills and RP-related benefits (scrying).
• Enchantment is an interesting choice. I’m expecting the go to build to be 27/3 with Specialist to maximize Leadership (with Skill Focus and Epic Skill focus for a total of 46 “hard” ranks). These characters can dominate powerful creatures and increase their stats significantly using Good Hope, Epic Spell Focus and Leadership bonuses (+7AB, +6 damage, +4AC, +12 universal saves, +3HD, +9 to all skills and +1 attack per round). Crushing Despair can further shift the balance in the enchanter’s favor. All of this seems like a fair tradeoff considering they, too, lose Shadow Shield and long-lasting Improved Invisibility. The GSF bonus is one of the things that changed after the suggestion was made. An option would be automatically extending the spell, same as Invisibility for Illusion specialists.
• Evocation seems to be in a good spot as well, getting 24 additional damage per round on their maximized IGMS spam as well as more spell slots and higher DC Icebergs that no longer require spell components. Losing conjuration is painful, but the sacrifice seems worth it.
• Illusion is basically unchanged, with all the perks intentionally being RP cookies or bonuses with very minor mechanical impact. The reason is that it was the only school people already specialized in, just for the extra spell slots. Losing Enchantment is not painful if you’re not planning to be an enchanter.
• Necromancy specialists lose True Seeing and Premonition, but gearing for detect skills is not impossible, Greater Stoneskin exists, and death spells like Wail of the Banshee still affect hidden characters. The extra spell slots and second Vampire Count should be a good tradeoff. Specialist necromancers with a PM dip also get an area of effect death spell on cooldown that affects creatures up to level 30.
• Transmutation is another interesting one. Able to buff themselves and others to +10 with empowered zoo spells and another +2 via skleen, they can choose between a fairly effective melee presence and casting spells offensively like a dedicated caster. We’re currently looking into a Tenser’s rework to make this approach more interesting.

[Skibbles]

Is there some middle ground for a generalist that might be considered? Maybe just a single extra slot in a few circles or some watered down derivative of a specialization of choice to keep them relevent?

Keep in mind that there is also Sorcerers. Any buff to the "Base" Wizard offsets the balance between Wizard <--> Sorcerer. This is already happening to a lesser extent with the addition of new spells into the game, as Sorcerers can usually not take those without sacrificing something near-mandatory from their limited spells.

Yeah that's true. The only appropriate counter argument I can imagine is that, mostly in just observing mechanical superiority, few of the new spells are relevent when it is generally assumed that nearly all magic has a 0-5% chance of success, has no business in PVE compared to buffing fighters and, especially after the return of Time Stop - Missile Storm and (Mass)Haste yet remains eternally supreme. Both spells of which the Sorcerer does not need prepare, and has tons of castings of.

Wizards yet remain unmatched in utility with the extra feats though - but again these are just as easily acquired with a specialization, wildmage, and/or loremaster on top of either so Generalist still falls behind.

(Come to think of it - is it possible to sacrifice Conjuration for a specialization and simply retain the ability to Conjure PCs via Loremaster? This may need to be examined.)

As Nitro noted above - Sorcerer is typically viewed as superior. This is in line with my observations in the game, over a few years, where I've been playing one of the only wizards in a magical keep where by and large most of the others tend towards Sorcerers, Bards, Warlocks, Clerics, and Palemasters amongst plenty of melee/mundane (everyone is allowed, so this may not be an accurate assessment). I believe the numbers appear to back my observations up, though.

The numbers as of end of 2020: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5956&p=251203#p251203

It says there was 121 wizards active, but this seems deceptive as over half are Palemasters which I'd argue are certainly not Generalists and a mere twenty seem to be using the almost exclusively accepted wizard builds of wizard/bard and wizard/Ranger. I don't know how many shadow mages there are, but presumably those are the wizard/rogue and wizard/shadow dancer.

Comparing this to every other Arcane Class, including a staggering 73 true flames and 51 sorcerers, and... 12 Weave masters?! (a brand of sorcerer deleted like, four years ago, is nearly a match in numbers for the meta wizard?!) shows that the main Wizard suffers savagely if I'm reading these numbers right.

Wild mage accounting for almost triple the average wizard too. Even if we're generous on the numbers of general wizards (such as taking wizard/cleric seriously) and double up to 40 being presumed to be in play, it still doesn't seem to compete.

I expect, and hope very much, that the update brings more wizards into the game. However few of them, if any, are going to be Generalists and therin lies my concern and prediction.

(Edit: I want to add that my suggestion of a bonus spell slot doesn't need to be the balancing factor for consideration. I'd take a plain boring spellcraft bonus, or lore bonus, or anything to make them compete for all the classes and options that have buried them in their impotence for years)

[SkipiusEsq]

The opposed school weirdness pointed out by the diagrams above has BOTHERED MY OCD SO MUCH FOR YEARS. That is all.

100%. It never made sense to me how one spell school was “opposed” to so many others and why the arrow didn’t go in both directions.

[Skibbles]

To add, on a different note, that it might be time to examine the faerie dragon (oops, I guess it was the psuedodragon!) familiar's permanent true seeing and remove it in observance of keeping the loss of divination actually as a loss (and divination's boon as a boon!)

It could become swiftly and conspicuously odd at how many necromancers and palemasters, presumably greatly evil or at least with dubious inclinations, are going to be toting around their goodly glitter pets.

[Nitro]

To add, on a different note, that it might be time to examine the faerie dragon familiar's permanent true seeing and remove it in observance of keeping the loss of divination actually as a loss (and divination's boon as a boon!)

It could become swiftly and conspicuously odd at how many necromancers and palemasters, presumably greatly evil or at least with dubious inclinations, are going to be toting around their goodly glitter pets.

It's pseudodragons that get permanent TS. Faerie dragons have their niche with an ability to cast improved invisibility and a confusion bolt.

[Skibbles]

To add, on a different note, that it might be time to examine the faerie dragon familiar's permanent true seeing and remove it in observance of keeping the loss of divination actually as a loss (and divination's boon as a boon!)

It could become swiftly and conspicuously odd at how many necromancers and palemasters, presumably greatly evil or at least with dubious inclinations, are going to be toting around their goodly glitter pets.

It's pseudodragons that get permanent TS. Faerie dragons have their niche with an ability to cast improved invisibility and a confusion bolt.

Aha, you're right. I'd forgotten there were both, but the potentially silliness wasn't my concern.

It should still be removed for the same reason, if not just to maintain consistency keeping in line with the TS removal from both the Umber Hulk polymorph and Shapechange: Dragon. If not now, when anyone can subvert your cool new Signature Spell with a toggle, then I really don't know when.

Oddly those two spells were far more of a punishment to use, as they both blasted away all your bonus spells and INT bonus spells, compared to a cheap familiar you can literally toggle on and off at will.