Studious Scholars Should School Stupid Sorcerous Savants

[hollyfant]

Do sorcerers know what spell school their spells belong to? Or even that there is such a thing as spell schools?

[Riotnrrd]

Among educated arcanists (of which some sorcerers are a part), schools are a common way of grouping spells with similar functions into general categories.

However, if a given sorcerer has never formally studied magic (books, classes, speaking with others, etc), I would assume they wouldn't know much about spell schools.

[kmj2587]

My understanding is that things like spell schools and names are a function of the Knowledge(Arcana) skill, which is a class skill for sorcerers. So where spellcraft might tell you that the incantation some guy is reciting will fire several bursts of magic energy in your general direction, Knowledge(arcana) will tell you that the magic burst firing spell is called magic missile and it's a 1st level evocation. Obviously this falls under the umbrella of Lore in NwN.

[Brokenbone]

Spellcraft lets you ID a spell by name, goes into decent depth whether in the SRD or otherwise as to what DCs ought be, though I think in NWN1&2 it just applies a DC15+ check for that. And when you pass, a term like "Hollyfant casts Magic Missile" as oppoed to "Hollyfant casts an unknown spell" pops up.

The only relatedness between Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft is normally the +5 K(A) = +2 synergy bonus type of thing.

...

Anyhow, aside from skills, can't sorcerers take Feats relating to various spell schools anyhow? Spell Focus (Evocation) and whatnot? Again, not going to take rocket science to realize spells to do with dead stuff generally get the name necromancy, or spells to do with conjuring stuff tend to be called conjurations, or spells about finding and seeing stuff might be divination.