I seems a little odd to me that specialist wizards should be able to cast spells from their opposition schools from spell trigger or spell completion items without any penalty. Given enough downtime, a wizard with say, Evocation as an opposed school will be able to create say a Wand of Fireballs, and basically ignore the penalty on casting spells from his opposed schools.
To counter this, I'm proposing a simple set of house rules:
1. When casting a spell from an opposition school using a scroll, a specialist wizard must have double the minimum caster level of the spell to automatically cast the spell. Otherwise, he must roll to avoid a mishap as per the rules.
2. When casting a spell from an opposition school using a spell trigger item, such as a wand or staff, the specialist wizard must expend double the listed number of charges.
3. When creating an item containing one or more spells from opposition schools, the cost of making the item is 50% more than the listed price (with creation times increasing accordingly).
This hasn't been play tested, and some tweaking may be necessary, especially for rule 3. But it limits specialists in what I feel to be a logical fashion, one which is consistent with the new rules. And it's still a better deal than specialist wizards got in 3.5.
Thoughts?
Personally I would stick with just Rule 1 and not allow the specialist to craft items from the dropped schools as they haven't "learned" the nesscessary to make them as they were too focused on their specialisation.
If you have a player moaning that this isn't fair, I will learn what I need to know, etc. Either tell them to put up with it thats what you get when you specialise and you can't have your cake and eat it or do a cop-out and the player needs to take the feat Create Magic Items Which I Don't Specialise In.
:)
Spells from items aren't as good as real spells most of the time.
In the case of wands, you can cast a spell from a wand even if you can't cast it yourself.
I don't have a problem with specialists casting from items. Even if they rely heavily on items of opposed schools (and are thus never caught without access to such magic), the fact that they have to do so rather than casting them themselves for free is drawback enough.
I was thinking that a reasonable penalty would be to make wizards roll UMD checks for scrolls and wands as if the spells weren't on their class lists. I probably won't implement it in play unless my party's wizard starts abusing spells in his opposition schools.
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I seems a little odd to me that specialist wizards should be able to cast spells from their opposition schools from spell trigger or spell completion items without any penalty. Given enough downtime, a wizard with say, Evocation as an opposed school will be able to create say a Wand of Fireballs, and basically ignore the penalty on casting spells from his opposed schools.
To counter this, I'm proposing a simple set of house rules:
1. When casting a spell from an opposition school using a scroll, a specialist wizard must have double the minimum caster level of the spell to automatically cast the spell. Otherwise, he must roll to avoid a mishap as per the rules.
2. When casting a spell from an opposition school using a spell trigger item, such as a wand or staff, the specialist wizard must expend double the listed number of charges.
3. When creating an item containing one or more spells from opposition schools, the cost of making the item is 50% more than the listed price (with creation times increasing accordingly).
This hasn't been play tested, and some tweaking may be necessary, especially for rule 3. But it limits specialists in what I feel to be a logical fashion, one which is consistent with the new rules. And it's still a better deal than specialist wizards got in 3.5.
Thoughts?
I like these rules. The spell completion items are more difficult, as they should be, spell trigger items are easier to use, but still have a penalty, and it makes a lot of sense to have an even greater penalty for the creation of items that the wizard is not trained in.
I may keep these rules in consideration for my campaign.
I still don't think that a 1st level wizard without a barred school should be better at using wands than a 10th level wizard with.
Also, the "double caster level" rule is kind of wonky. A 2nd level wizard can use a 1st level (prohibited) scroll no problem, but a 20th level wizard can't use a 6th level scroll. And "rolling for scroll misshap" (in the case of a wizard whose level is high enough to cast the spell in question) is basically just a "check for 1", since he can't fail numerically.
I would treat him as being 2 levels lower. Or more, if you feel that's appropriate.
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I still don't think that a 1st level wizard without a barred school should be better at using wands than a 10th level wizard with.
Also, the "double caster level" rule is kind of wonky. A 2nd level wizard can use a 1st level (prohibited) scroll no problem, but a 20th level wizard can't use a 6th level scroll. And "rolling for scroll misshap" (in the case of a wizard whose level is high enough to cast the spell in question) is basically just a "check for 1", since he can't fail numerically.
I would treat him as being 2 levels lower. Or more, if you feel that's appropriate.
Yeah. Double mught be too high. One or two levels is probably more appropriate.
So what is the reasoning behind this? A wizard with a bared school can already cast it by using an extra spell slot. He can even make a wand with that spell.
Are wizards with wands and scrolls becoming a menace to the population?
I still don't think that a 1st level wizard without a barred school should be better at using wands than a 10th level wizard with.
Also, the "double caster level" rule is kind of wonky. A 2nd level wizard can use a 1st level (prohibited) scroll no problem, but a 20th level wizard can't use a 6th level scroll. And "rolling for scroll misshap" (in the case of a wizard whose level is high enough to cast the spell in question) is basically just a "check for 1", since he can't fail numerically.
I would treat him as being 2 levels lower. Or more, if you feel that's appropriate.
Good point, maybe 2 levels higher would work better
So what is the reasoning behind this? A wizard with a bared school can already cast it by using an extra spell slot. He can even make a wand with that spell.
Right, and if he crafts or buys an item with an opposition school spell on it, he can effectively circumvent the inconvenience of having to use that extra spell slot. While this is not a perfect solution, it does take the edge off what is supposed to be a restriction on his spellcasting. Hence my houserule suggestion to counter the problem.
Are wizards with wands and scrolls becoming a menace to the population?
Yes, hadn't you heard? It's in all the papers. ;)