Specialist Mages (Not wild mage)

Slytherz

The other day I was browsing the internet, (Shocker eh?) and came across a thread somewhere that mentioned specialist mages have I think +1 to rolls for their school and opponents have -1 when specialist casts said school on them... Is this A) true and if so how does that apply to a Conjurer, as they primarily summon creatures to do thy bidding?

elminster

Specialist mages (so not wild mages) get +2 to saves against schools from their spell school. In some cases this isn't going to be at all useful (conjurer would be a good example). When they cast spells from their school enemies get a -2 penalty when trying to save against them.

They do however have a 15% higher chance of learning a spell from their school and a 15% lower chance of learning a spell outside of their school. So if you have a 75% chance of learning a spell according to your character page then you'd have a 90% chance of learning a conjuration spell, but only a 60% chance of learning a non-conjuration spell.

Edited: Edited because I wrote this prior to learning the truth (and also prior to becoming a "developer")

Blackraven

A) Edit: ninja'd

It's true that some Mage schools benefit more from this than others. For example Illusionists only have Blindness as an offensive save or else spell. Conjurers actually have more such spells, but not the summons you mentioned. The schools that benefit most often here are probably Enchanters (charm, sleep, confusion etc), and Invokers (most damage dealing spells), and to a lesser extent Necromancers (Finger of Death, Abi Dalzim's at high levels!).

lunar

Wait I know this is a pnp rule but I never thought this rule was included in bg games. There is another rule for high wisdom giving save vs spels bonus but it was not included in the game.

dib

A) In PnP yes, but this was never implemented in BG or BGEE.

Conjurers have several high level spells that require making a saving throw against, namely the "Symbol" series of spells, like "Symbol, Fear". Can't recall if there are any others though.

JuliusBorisov

@lunar‌ and @dib‌

@elminster‌ is right: According to the official Facebook message from February, 6 (https://www.facebook.com/BaldursGateEnhanced) "Specialist mages in BG:EE and BGII:EE receive a +2 bonus on all saving throws against spells of their chosen school. They also get a 15% bonus to their chance to learn spells from their chosen school, and a 15% penalty to their chance to learn spells from any other school."

elminster

Dee also made a post in the forum about it here

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/466203/#Comment_466203