Postby Ragorn » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:19 am
Evocation or not, Wizards generally have better things to do with their combat rounds than dealing damage. The Orb spells, which you are alluding to, top out at 4th level. For your 4th level spell you could do some guaranteed (no saving throw) spell damage... or you could Polymorph yourself, grapple half the battlefield with Evard's Black Tentacles, make a new friend with Charm Monster, send someone on a Lesser Geas, throw an area-effect Fear, or any number of other things. And that's just core material.
So the big "problem" is that damage dealing in general is vaguely underpowered compared to Wizards' other options. The corollary problem is that Evocation is mostly damage, with very few critical utility spells mixed in. The only two Evocation spells in core that I consider really painful to lose are Contingency and Wall of Force... and you can duplicate Contingency with Shadow Conjuration, and there are plenty of other walls to use.
By contrast, you can say "I don't ever want to summon monsters, I'll take Conjuration as a prohibited school." Well that's great, but all of the Teleport spells are Conjuration... so if you ever want to teleport, dimension door, or relocate, you can't drop Conjuration.
Abjuration? Dispel Magic is Abjuration, as is stoneskin (and presumably dragonscales). So are all the elemental resistance spells, and several dozen other awesome defensive spells.
Enchantment? Pshaw, Enchantment has some of the best save-or-suffer spells in the game, such as dominate monster. You can do without it certainly, but why deal damage when a failed saving throw can mean instant death (or worse)?
Transmutation? You lose Time Stop... nuff said. Also Disintegrate, all of the stat booster spells, and Polymorph.
Illusion and Necromancy are the other two schools I would consider dropping, but they both have their winners. Illusion has invisibility and a lot of psuedo-enchantment spells, and Necromancy has energy drain, the best debuff in the game bar none (also, lots of save-or-die).
You can make a good living being an Evocation blaster, I suppose. Damage is certainly worth doing, and if all else fails, it never hurts to be able to put 100 points of fire damage in a mob's face. But my fear is that a lot of Toril players, who have spent a decade around Invokers, are going to automatically assume that Evocation is the "correct" spec choice for Wizards who want to play an offensive game.
- Ragorn
Shar: Leave the moaning to the people who have real issues to moan about like rangers or newbies.
Corth: Go ask out a chick that doesn't wiggle her poon in people's faces for a living.