Seeking advice on banned schools for a Nidalese Shadowcaster


Advice


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Good evening to all on the forums! I'm putting together an Illusionist with the Shadow subschool and the Shadowcaster archetype for my brother's impending RotR campaign. Enchantment and divination were the schools I'd originally planned to drop, but I hit kind of a snag. Divination seems like a lousy choice for it's obvious benefits and the roleplaying potential of this particular character. Giving up Abjuration or Necromancy seems rough for pretty much the same reasons. What's a former Kuthite to do?


Remember that in Pathfinder, schools are not actually banned, you just need to use two slots to prepare the spell.

Divination's actually a pretty good choice. You're down to 3 cantrips since you'll still want to prepare Detect Magic every day, but most of the other spells aren't common preparations. Most of the time you'll be casting them off scrolls or during downtime/travel when you can spare the extra slot.


Abjuration, Conjuration, and Transmutation are the 3 most useful schools. Any specialist would be pretty foolish to drop any of them.

That said, it all comes down to personal preference.

  • Enchantment is by far the weakest school, but it has a lot of flavor you won't get from other schools. Keep it if you want the flavor, give it up if you don't care about the flavor.
  • Necromancy has a lot of powerful spells that most people hate to see go, but the majority of them are SoS/SoD spells, which makes them powerful but unreliable. As with Enchantment, if you want it for flavor keep it, if not, it's a good one to give up.
  • Evocation is more useful than people give it credit for. Contingency is one of the most useful spells in the game and there are plenty of "battlefield control" spells, such as the Wall spells and the Hand spells. It's also where your staple blasting spells are, but to be fair, there's more than necessary - the school is bloated with them. If you keep Conjuration, you can live without it, but there will inevitably be some spells you'll likely miss.
  • Divination is a powerful school in some ways, and a weak school in others. There are several "staple" spells here, but at the same time, the majority of your options are usually unimpressive. It's a bad school to specialize in (based on spell selection alone) but a bad school to drop as well. You can live without it, but life is much easier with it. (Take Boat makes a good point though, in that you can get by on Div scrolls for the most part.)

Hope this helps. :)


Depending on what level you are starting at, the arcane discovery Opposition Research could help if you can't make up your mind. It requires level 9, but it essentially removes all the negatives you take from one of your opposition schools.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Neo2151 wrote:

Abjuration, Conjuration, and Transmutation are the 3 most useful schools. Any specialist would be pretty foolish to drop any of them.

That said, it all comes down to personal preference.

  • Enchantment is by far the weakest school, but it has a lot of flavor you won't get from other schools. Keep it if you want the flavor, give it up if you don't care about the flavor.
  • Necromancy has a lot of powerful spells that most people hate to see go, but the majority of them are SoS/SoD spells, which makes them powerful but unreliable. As with Enchantment, if you want it for flavor keep it, if not, it's a good one to give up.
  • Evocation is more useful than people give it credit for. Contingency is one of the most useful spells in the game and there are plenty of "battlefield control" spells, such as the Wall spells and the Hand spells. It's also where your staple blasting spells are, but to be fair, there's more than necessary - the school is bloated with them. If you keep Conjuration, you can live without it, but there will inevitably be some spells you'll likely miss.
  • Divination is a powerful school in some ways, and a weak school in others. There are several "staple" spells here, but at the same time, the majority of your options are usually unimpressive. It's a bad school to specialize in (based on spell selection alone) but a bad school to drop as well. You can live without it, but life is much easier with it. (Take Boat makes a good point though, in that you can get by on Div scrolls for the most part.)

Hope this helps. :)

Transmutation and abjuration I definitely agree about, it's really hard to duplicate these effects in any case. For a while I was kind of on the fence about Conjuration with this character just because Shadow spells can be used to duplicate tons of the really important effects of this school, but summoning sucks this way. I'm excited to use Evocations this time around (always dumped it in 3.5), and Necromancy just seems to fit with some of the more grisly aspects of Nidal in his background.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far!

The Exchange

As an illusionist you can replicate just about every Evocation spell to various degrees as well as many of the Conjuration spells. You do not want give up your buffs, debuffs and combat control. Enchantment will get your through the lower levels.

Dark Archive

Many light and darkness spells are going to be evocation, and a shadowcaster thematically might want to be casting the darkness spells, at the very least.

Abjuration has dispel magic, but a cleric can cast that, and, as the old wizards messageboard god-wizard guide suggested, in any round a wizard does something that the cleric could have done, he's a chump.


Assuming there is a Cleric in the group.

As for the argument for Shadow Conjuration replacing the school, consider Black Tentacles:
The spell requires no save, which makes it awesome. If you opt to forego it and use Greater Shadow Conjuration to cast it, you're waiting for 7th level spells to cast a 4th level spell, and you're suddenly giving the opponent a saving throw when he normally wouldn't be allowed one. (Not to mention, what exactly is 20% of the Grappled condition? lol)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Weaponbreaker wrote:
As an illusionist you can replicate just about every Evocation spell to various degrees as well as many of the Conjuration spells. You do not want give up your buffs, debuffs and combat control. Enchantment will get your through the lower levels.

Enchantment can be nice, but I feel that Illusion generally can overlap with some of these effects while filling a broader support role for whoever else joins the party. If I weren't already focused as a Illusionist I'd probably keep it but I've already planned on a lot of feats being dedicated to being a Shadowcaster. I do have a Bard planned if this character dies though...

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