Diviner Playthrough

JumboWheat01

I'm contemplating yet another new character to play through the series with, this time an Elf. I have no idea why, I almost avoid elvish characters religiously. Guess just something decided to click. At that not, I almost instantly decided my elf would be a Wizard, and am seriously considering making him a Diviner, rather than an Enchanter.

Has anyone gone through the series as a Diviner? Do you miss Conjuration spells that much? Anything in particular I should know about playing a Diviner over, say, just about any other specialization?

semiticgoddess

I've played many elven Diviners. It wasn't a powergaming decision back then; I just liked the character concept.

Losing Conjuration spells is bad, but it doesn't force a change in strategy, because Conjuration spells are easy to replace with other schools. BG2's best summoning spells, after all, are Mordenkainen's Sword (Evocation), Animate Dead (Necromancy), and Summon Planetar (schoolless).

The one Conjuration spell that can never be replaced is Find Familiar. Other losses include Maze, Power Word: Blind, and some cheap summoning spells that are mostly just useful for baiting enemy mages into wasting their stronger spells.

lunar

The thing about diviner is you lose the opportunity to use specialist bonus of difficult saves for your spells. In essential, only know alignment spell forces a save in divination school, and no one should ever bother to cast it. Such a waste of power. An enchanter's charm and confusion spells will have a bonus -2 to save, making him a really powerful caster! He will also have +2 bonus to his own save vs such spells. But then again an enchanter loses evocation, spell triggers and the like. Fireball, lightning and ice magics can be subbed by wands. (which incidentally, should be unusable by enchanters by the book.)

I will give it to the diviners this, though. They are very capable, perhaps the most capable of specialists. Losing conjuation is a laughable penalty. There is no essential conjuration spell. None. Zilch. A solo diviner can employ shield spell, monster summoning wands, and later animate dead and mordy swords. As a conjurer, you lose identify and all illusion removal spells, which hurts a lot if you go solo. A transmuter can't dispel or breach, an abjurer can't stoneskin or timestop, a necro can not use invisibility/mirror image, mislead, project image shenenigans, illusionist lose finger of death, horrid wilting, an evoker can not use charm, chaos, greater malison etc. All specialists lose something essential for a succesful powergamer mage, while diviners lose next to nothing. Losing the familiar means the loss of a few extra hit points, which can be substitued by good stats, items and vampiric touch, and in the long term, does not hurt as much as the loss of a whole another spell school.

JumboWheat01

Finally getting around to doing this Diviner playthrough, so far the only thing that I've felt like I've missed is choosing Find Familiar at the start, but I'm not doing too bad. Plus Wizards are already amazingly powerful characters, having the handicap of no Conjuration will help prevent me from feeling ridiculously overpowered.

Though I wonder why the game loves giving me AMAZING rolls for my Wizards. My Necromancer has a 99, thanks to an autoroller and an interesting TV show. My Diviner has a 98, and that was just a few clicks away, no autoroller needed.

sarevok57

damn a 98? I've made THOUSANDS of characters over almost 20 years and the highest I've ever rolled was a 97, I still have that screen shot buried somewhere in my vanilla bg1 screenshot folder

Abi_Dalzim

sarevok57 said:

damn a 98? I've made THOUSANDS of characters over almost 20 years and the highest I've ever rolled was a 97, I still have that screen shot buried somewhere in my vanilla bg1 screenshot folder

Try rolling up more Paladins or Rangers, those get high stat rolls more easily. I don't think I've beaten 99 or so myself, though.

sarevok57

I actually just recently made a paladin, and got a 96 then accidently pressed the reroll button,

ah I love doing that

luckily I got a 92 or 93 a few minutes afterwards and that was enough for a secondary character