APG: Minor and Major Spell Expertise with Specialist Wizard.

[Blackstorm]

Hi all. I've searched for that, finding nothing. The question is plain and simple:

Can a specialist wizards take Minor Spell Expertise (or Major Spell Expertise) to cast a spell of a prohibited scholl as spell-like ability, assuming he has wrote it in his spellbook?

RAW it seems silent on that, even if I think it isn't the RAI intent.

(I'll submit it as faq, if nobody has already asked that).

[Josh M Foster]

"Choose one 1st-level spell that you know"

If it's in your spellbook, it's legal by RAW. I don't see anything to indicate that it violates RAI, either. They could have mentioned prohibited schools if they desired.

[Greg Wasson]

By the RULES, I agree, it is legal. I don't think it is strangely silent. I think it is the rule.

I think of PFRG prohibited schools more like a learning block. You can still memorize and cast prohibited school spells, it is just takes more effort.

By taking Spell Expertise and choosing such a spell, you have just focused a lil' harder with that particular spell from a group of spells your character has troubles understanding.

longwinded real world annecdote that only marginally applies:

My uncle, after a Christmas party, was speaking with my grandfather. I was sitting near and listening. They were discussing a word problem that my uncle remembered from tenth grade. My uncle was 40+ at the time. It involved ladders, walls, and an alley and finding different measurements. He said this problem always presented problems with him. He had worried over it for years and felt he was finally getting close to the right answer.

He had the word problem memorized even if he didn't know the answer.

Incidently, my grandfather, came up with the same answer after about two minutes. I was in tenth grade at the time and didn't even understand the problem.

Greg

[Kalyth]

By the RAW you can take Minor or Major Spell Expertise with a spell from an opposed school.

However as a DM I would require a good explanation as to why that spell over say a spell from your specialty school. But if the spell did fit the characters "Magical Theme" I would have no problem with it.

Say an Envoker (focused on fire magic) wanted to take a fire spell from one of his opposed schools as a Spell Expertise I would allow it.

[Khuldar]

Greg Wasson wrote:

By the RULES, I agree, it is legal. I don't think it is strangely silent. I think it is the rule.

I think of PFRG prohibited schools more like a learning block. You can still memorize and cast prohibited school spells, it is just takes more effort.

By taking Spell Expertise and choosing such a spell, you have just focused a lil' harder with that particular spell from a group of spells your character has troubles understanding.

** spoiler omitted **

Greg

I like this idea. You know the party needs Haste, but transmutation is a prohibited school for you. So you buckle down and study (you're a wizard, it's what you do) It's hard, but after working on it a while, you master the arcane energies involved. Not in the normal way, but you made it work. You still have problems memorizing the spell and its school, but you have a little spot in your brain set aside for it.

Sorcerers work by bending reality to their whim, and now, so do you (just a little bit)