Specialist mage

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Why would you choose any other speciality other than conjurer? It isn't about the school you specialise in; it's more about the spells you lose. Divination has the least amount of spells.

And why does an invoker lose two schools: conjuration and enchantment if I remember?

Does anybody else think specialist mages are a little odd in that some are better than others because they have more spells in their arsenal? The extra spell you can memorise doesn't have to come from your speciality school so it makes no difference what school you pick other than the school you lose.

 

The Invoker your thinking of is the from the original BGI game as far as I can recall.

Also Divination happens to be a very good specialty AFAIK, but I don't use specialist mages very often, so I'm not sure. Divination just has the least amount of spell picks, you seem to be confused, you are not restricted to the specialty you decide to go with, you just can't use the spells of the opposition school. But most of the spells happen to be very useful ones like:

Mirror Image: VERY good low level area damage spell, does wonders to protect you from Dragon Breath and Abi Dalzims.

Blur: great choice for a Mage with some sort of fighting ability, gives a +3 to AC and +1 to saves.

Invisibility spells in general: these spells can be used for scouting or early on when you need to hide or else be over powered by some monsters or stuff, and can use for ambushes.

True Sight: A great anti-mage/theif spell

And there are others but two of the best spells in the school, and generally a great choice for all mages is Project Image, which lets you walk around as a copy of the caster and cast whatever you want, but it doesent drain your actual characters spells, and if you get hit your image dissappears so you re-gain control of the caster.

The other is Simulacrum which is like Project image but it's only at 60% of your levels ability, and you can still control your casters moves and fight with him.

So pretty much all of the specialties can potentially be very useful in their own way, it's just a matter of using the right spells for the right occasion

 

What I mean is that being an illusionist has next to nothing to do with illusion spells and everything to do with not being able to cast necromancy. Therefore, you'd want to choose a school of speciality that has the least loss in spells; because divining magic is the most limited, being a conjurer is better. All specialists get an extra spell anyway. I guess the one advantage is that each speciality has a prerequisite that is automatically rolled high (eg. constitution for conjurers).

PS. I think a wild mage is the best specialist because they seem NOT to lose any spells plus gain an extra spell in addition is their specialty (being able to cast wild magic)

PSS. If you cast simacrulum and then restoration on the copy, they level up to the original caster's level

 

In PnP D&D, being a specialist would make it far easier to learn spells from your speciality school plus you get the extra spell.

It is about the spells you lose in BG1 (and PnP) and in PnP it is about learning the spells you use most easier.

Also, if you play a non-Human specialist mage then the spell restrictions are more severe - Elf can only be Diviner or Enchanter (and Wild Mage in TOB).

The reason Invoker and Transmuter have two schools of oppositions is because the spells are so powerful. In PnP an Invoker would be able to learn invocation spells much easier and cast more of them, so they just set a limititation to even things out.

The mechanics are a bit archaic now, compare to a lot of other games and 3rd-Ed rules. But 2nd-Ed D&D was written about 15yrs ago and BG1/BG2 has been written very well to these rules.

I have copies of the 2nd AD&D rules that I use sometimes to double-check how some of the mechanics work.

 

I just discovered something. There is a mistake in the manuals of BGI and BGII. It says there are two opposing schools for invokers: conjuration and enchantment. That is not true; the only opposing school is enchantment. I did an invoker in the game and found the manual has been printed incorrectly for both I and II (obviously overlookd).

And the wild mage's disadvantage (even though he can cast from any school plus some) is that there is a 5% chance for any spell to fail or misfunction to everyone's demise.

 

Well for one thing, illusionist goes good with a thief. A thief that is going to act as a thief has little use for necromancy spells because he probably isn't going to have the right stats to succeed very often with the useful spells in that school. The illusion spells like Invisibility are a boon to him. He may however want to use the Divination spells because a thief is mostly used for backstabbing and utility stuff, making thief/illusionist a very cool class combination.

It depends on class combinations. While Conjurer is generally the best for most situations, the others can better depending on how you plan to use a character.

 

Does being invisible allow you to backstab or is it just hiding in the shadows that allows it? If that's the case, wouldn't you be able to continuously backstab in "improved invisibility" mode?

 

Being invisible does allow you to backstab, but invisibility can be detected by true sight whereas hide in shadows can't (with cloak of non-detection that is).

@RangerFox: Illusionist/Thief is cool, but you need to be a Gnome. While they have some good bonuses, who wants to be a gnome?

In BG terms, there is no better specialist than Conjurer. The Divination spells can generally be left out without problems, so there is no real drawback. PnP it makes a big difference and for role-playing or if you choose non-Human.

Personally, I like Elven Diviners.

 

Yeah, but can't Simulacrum (illusion spell) produce a duplicate that can hide+backstab?

 

Yes, it can, but any mage (and specialist) that doesn't have Illusion as oppostion (Necromancy) can cast this as well.

Doesn't mislead do a similar thing?

Can't you get a helm or something with this on as well?

 

Vhailor's Helm, but thieves and mages can't wear that.

And like I said, what use does a thief have for necromancy spells? Might as well be illusionist so you can use divination.

 

A thief can later in the game, and are there any Divination spells that are really worth having as opposed to the Necromacy spells? You'd miss out on Horrid Writing!! Most of the lower level ones aren't that good though.

I can appreciate what you say though, as Illusionist fits better. The only way to have one is to be a Gnome or dual-class (which is why i always choose standard mage/thief). Gnomes have an Int bonus don't they which makes them pretty cool mages? plus they allow you to be a specialist multi-class (ill/thief, fighter/ill, cleric/ill).

 

I hate specialist mages. They are poorly thought out, poorly designed, etc. In the good old days (1st edition), they actually were special -- illusionists had a completely different set of spells available to them than regular magic-users (you had to earn the title "mage"!) had.

In later editions, being a specialist made a mage much more powerful by greatly increasing the number of spells he/she could memorize, with the almost insignificant restriction of not being able to cast one class of spells.

If they really wanted to do something special with specialist mages, they should have created kits that gave them no extra spells but allowed them to cast spells of their preferred school at level+X, and spells of all other schools at level-X (or perhaps level-Y).

[ June 24, 2004, 17:43: Message edited by: Bombur ]

 

I like that idea in principle bombur. However, it is a little unbalancing as most of the spells that are level-dependent in terms of their effects are invocations. And many spells aren't level dependent at all.

 

Agreed.
The Level-X to casting opposition-school spells is nice though (and more practical).

 

Bombur, I thought exactly the same thing: that your specialist school should receive bonuses and your restricted school should receive penalties; rather than your restricted school not existing and the speciality school meaning nothing.

 

If you're referring to the Use Any Item HLA, then that is irrelevant, because that is TOB only and this is the SoA board.

For a thief that is primarily a thief and not a mage, these are all good spells:

Identify
Detect Invisibility
Farsight
Wizard Eye
Oracle
True Sight

Why would a thief be casting ADHW unless the thief is doubling as the party's primary mage? The character I am talking about is not created for that purpose. His purpose is to hide, backstab, and do utility things. Not to cast crowd control spells. That's what other mage types are for.

 

I am not sure if Thief/Mage is a good combo for backstabbing. THAC0 plays a part, and a Thief/Mage's best possible THAC0 is 10. This means that when you are fighting with good tougher monsters (with good armor class) and people with Plate mail armor, your backstab will fail.

 

There's always Tenser's Transformation, and the 4 bonus THAC0 to a hidden character.

 

I thought when you used Tenser's you became a fighter, so couldn't use your stealth/backstab. I know you can't cast spells during this period.