I feel your pain. I consistently when rolling the d20 get between 2 and 6. In 20 recorded swings, I rolled 14 or higher twice. And this has been my curse for years, and with 6 different d20s.
So what I did was stop playing characters that need to hit full ACs, and consistently play spell casters. My DM has even allowed me to roll the d20 for the enemies savings against my spells, so we have turned my curse into a positive.
As for what spells are worth the trouble of rolling a d20 to hit... other than enervation, bestow cure, blindness and a few other necromancy spells that don't come to mind, I never bother. There are too many great spells that don't require it.
lets just say my luck is the worst. if i need to make a roll that needs to be high then it will be low. if i need a roll that needs to be low like rolling for how many rounds till the bomb goes off i will roll high and then i am stuck playing hot potato with my DM with a live grenade. its at the point that even though my friends know of my bad luck that the think i am doing it on purpose. even though i am rolling in full view of them and not hiding my rolls.
so does magic dmg double on crit hits? maybe i will find out some day.
so is the divination school (Foresight) as good as i think it is at combating my bad luck?
i will be take second chance (trait) and measured response(feat). will be taking no less then 14s in all stats but str which will be a light dump. may even take a human luck feat or two.
if i take divination as my school what opposing school should i chose? i am wanting to focus on attack spells that force my target/targets to roll instead of myself rolling. and what spells do you think are worth the risk of rolling to hit?
If you want to blast, I like using Shocking Grasp with the reach metamagic feat for lower levels. You get a ranged touch attack with a +4 to hit if the opponent has a metal weapon or metal armor. Yes, you do double damage on a critical hit on it.
I tend to not like the spells where you allow the enemy to roll instead (usually saving throws) because they scale quickly and you need to really focus on boosting your DCs.
If you want to go with ranged touch attacks, I'd highly recommend a higher dexterity. If you're focusing on saves, you MUST max your intelligence.
Diviners are awesome. If you want to blast, take a single level as a cross-blooded sorcerer (Orc / Dragon) to dramatically increase your blasting damage.
If you're doing the "make the enemy roll saves" thing then you need necromancy (fort saves), enchantment (will saves), and conjuration (reflex saves).
You'll want to maximize your intelligence to boost your save DCs and your knowledge skills. You'll want a nice, wide base of knowledge skills so that you can identify what the lowest save of an enemy is and attack it. I'd also suggest boosting Intimidate because it's a very nice debuff to saving throws.
Spells you'll want to look at:
0th level spells: Daze (ench), Touch of Fatigue (necro),
1st level spells: Grease (conj), Hypnotism/Sleep/Charm Person (ench), Ray of Sickening/Ray of Enfeeblement (necro)
2nd level spells: Create Pit (conj), Hideous Laughter (ench), Blindness/Deafness (necro)
3rd level spells: Spiked Pit (conj), Hold Person (ench), Ray of Exhaustion (necro)
And so on. You can see that at each spell level there's usually at least one save-or-suck spell which attacks each of the save categories. Some of them are amazingly powerful, particularly if you build for it.
well i am trying to decide which schools i need to take that big negative in i am thinking illusion and necromancy. if not necromancy then what?Evocation and Enchantment are the other school that are often recommended to drop - blasting's just not as effective as it was in AD&D due to hitpoint bloat, and mind-control is stopped by the many enemy types immune to it.
Enchantment spells do have an issues with creatures immune to mind-affecting spells but the ones which do work are insanely powerful. Hold Person can reduce an encounter with a single big bad guy to one spell and one coup de grace from your team's bruiser. They are, though, quite situational.