Wizard specialized as conjuration

[Morris Chan]

I am human conjuration wizard.

What two schools should I take out... its so hard to do. I looked at most of the wizard spells and I want to use a few of each school of spells.

[Sangalor]

Remember you can still learn and memorize spells of your opposition school, they just cost you more spell slots.
Also, there is a wizard arcane discovery allowing you to make one of your opposition schools non-opposed :-)

[Blave]

It's hard to recommend anything without knowing what exactly you want your Wizard to do.

My Conjurer has Enchantment and Necromancy as opposed schools. Enchantment is ineffective against way too many enemies (anything immune to mind-affecting and most things with a high will save) and Necromancy is too focused on undead. Let the cleric handle the walking dead.

I'm missing a few god spells from both schools (heroism, confusion, enervation) but as Sangalor already said I can still cast them if I must and overall those are spells I could live without.

[Morris Chan]

thanks for the advice

[Alitan]

I often run Conjurors; always dump evocation (personal bias), and often dump enchantment for the reasons Blave gave.

But I think necromancy is far too valuable; while all the undead-focused spells are necromantic, it really shines at making living things into dead ones. Just without all the noise of evocations.

[Egoish]

i'm running an elf conjurer at the moment and i decided to dump evocation and illusion, i like the enchantment options in town and i like the utility necromancy provides.

i was also delighted to discover when inner sea magic came out that i had already selected the opposition schools for thassilonian sin magic and took that up straight away.

your experience may vary but i find that other players and my gm don't really understand the subtleties of illusion magic and so it leaves it feeling a little underpowered and conjuration gets some ok blasts at higher levels, the only things i miss from evocation are daylight, contingency and sending.

[Blave]

On a side note: Whatever you do, do NOT dump Transmutation. It's the school with the highest number of spells, among them many many use- and powerful ones, most notably Haste.

[Alitan]

@Egoish

Yeah, that. The not getting the subtleties bit. :(

Though I did have a GM who got it once. I escaped from a cell by using silent image.

Poor guards:

I threw an illusion of an empty cell over me and my rogue buddy. They failed their save, and unlocked the cell to inspect it; left the key in the lock, poor bastards. We slipped out behind them, and locked them in, taking the key away with us. Since lots of people were screaming to be let out (it was a very unpleasant cell block somewhere in Ravenloft) nobody came to let them out while we were still in the building

But I can't give up illusion; too many crucial spells for my wicked plans...

[GnomePaladin]

Enchantment: reasons Blave gave

Necromancy: also reasons Blave gave, and both school focus on creating some kind of minion thus they have a lot of overlap

Illusion: similar to my reason for Necromancy, why create fake monsters when you can make real ones?

Honestly I wouldn't drop evocation, not because of blast spells (ugh) but it has a lot of really useful control spells such as Wall of Stone.

[Egoish]

wall of stone is a conjuration spell...

[ZomB]

My conjuration wizard has enchantment and necromancy as opposition schools. I did consider evocation.

[Jen the GM]

I always find that using two spell slots for a spell is terrible, so just go Sin magic and just prohibit those schools completely for two spell slots extra each level.

The Sin magic tells you what schools that you need to drop.

[Robespierre]

The teleportation subschool is beastly bro.

[Amedeo Lanatus]

Sorry to Necro this thread.

Blave wrote:

It's hard to recommend anything without knowing what exactly you want your Wizard to do.

Okay. This is for a PFS character, and I am looking for a Good alignment.

What I would like to focus on is summoning creatures, i.e., how one did a "summoner" before the Summoner class.

[Dasrak]

You know, you can just create a new thread :-P

If we're talking before the Summoner, then we're talking core-only. There really aren't many options. That doesn't make Summoning bad, there's just not a whole lot you can do to specialize in it. Play as a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Cleric, and take the Augmented Summons feat. You're done. Maybe specialize in Conjuration or take a Sorcerer bloodline that boosts summoning (abyssal is particularly nice; and yes, you can be good-aligned with an abyssal bloodline), but that's about the limit of what you can do.

[Amedeo Lanatus]

Dasrak wrote:

You know, you can just create a new thread :-P

If we're talking before the Summoner, then we're talking core-only. There really aren't many options. That doesn't make Summoning bad, there's just not a whole lot you can do to specialize in it. Play as a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Cleric, and take the Augmented Summons feat. You're done. Maybe specialize in Conjuration or take a Sorcerer bloodline that boosts summoning (abyssal is particularly nice; and yes, you can be good-aligned with an abyssal bloodline), but that's about the limit of what you can do.

I wasn't saying "Core only." I'm current on supplements, but my "feeling" is that Wizard > Summoner.

[Create Mr. Pitt]

Enchantment and Necromancy. Get Necromancy back at 9 with opposition research. A ton of creatures in the bestiary are immune to mind-affecting spells.

Necromancy doesn't have a ton of great spells below fourth level, save false life.

Evocation is the other standard choice and although conjuration has some good damage spells, some of which even ignore spell resistance, but it's always nice to be able to drop a fireball (and later daze with it and some of your conjuration spells like acid arrow and pellet blast).

But ear-piercing scream, magic missile, and flaming sphere are all useful lower level spells that you'll probably find yourself using before anything in necromancy, until you get enervation and other decent offensive options.

(As for the remainder abjuration and transmutation have too many spells (and too many useful spells) to work. Divination gives you detect magic and some other interesting options; but can be dropped if you plan ahead.

Illusion is another drop possibility, but giving up (or wasting two slots on) mirror image, blur, invisibility, displacement, and at early levels color spray is almost definitely not worth it. Miss chances and evasion through flight and invisibility are a wizard's best defense (especially if you are going to summon; you can summon as much as you want while invisible).

I assume you also intend to take teleportation subschool, shift is probably the best defensive school power in the game.

Early feats to consider: Improved Initiative, Spell Focus (conjuration), Augment Summons, Craft Wondrous Items, after that it depends if you want to focus mostly on summoning or mix it up. I recommend taking Persistent Spell or at least grabbing a persistent rod at some point.

If you have any more specific questions feel free to ask.

[Dasrak]

Amedeo Lanatus wrote:

I wasn't saying "Core only." I'm current on supplements, but my "feeling" is that Wizard > Summoner.

Sorry if I misunderstood you earlier.

If we're counting the Master Summoner archetype, then I would have to disagree. The Master Summoner is the best summoner in the game. It gets an obscenely long duration, a faster casting time, no limit on the number of summoned creatures it can have at once, and lots of daily uses that are completely separate from its spell slots. There are ways for other classes to get some of these advantages, but not all of them. If you're a bit too brazen you can blow through your daily resources a bit quickly, but there really is nothing else that does summoning quite like this.

If we're talking vanilla summoner, then I'd agree. The inability to use the Summon Monster SLA when your Eidolon is active on top of the 1-at-a-time restriction really keeps him from utilizing this ability to its fullest. It's still an amazing ability, but the restrictions it has keep it from snowballing like repeated castings from regular spell slots can. In that context I'd agree that the Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Oracle can do better just by throwing their plentiful higher level spell slots at the problem.

[Potato disciple]

Yeah guys don't ban necromancy so you can FREAKING RAISE THIS 5 YEAR OLD THREAD