Choosing spells by school and saving throw

Which saves do spells target? Which school rules the list? How often is spell resistance checked? Nobody prints these numbers, so we counted. Scope: the 1,100 player-facing spell blueprints (paths under Spells/) — cutscene magic and class abilities excluded.

Schools: transmutation quietly wins

Transmutation outnumbers Evocation nearly two to one. The blasty school players remember is actually mid-table; the buff-and-debuff school owns the game.

Saves: Will is the wall

700 of the 1,100 spells have no saving-throw line at all — rays, touch attacks, buffs, and summons don't negotiate. Among the 400 that do:

• Will 171, Reflex 127, Fortitude 94 — mind spells make Will the most-targeted save by a wide margin.
• The single most common named line is "Reflex half" (99 spells) — area damage that punishes bad positioning, not bad luck.
• "Will negates" leads the hard-disable category (84). One spell says just "Fort negates"; four shrug "see text"; three literally read "None".

Spell resistance: checked by a third

356 of 1,100 spells (32%) carry the spell-resistance flag — almost exactly the debuff-and-banishment layer. Your caster's SR-piercing gear matters for a third of the list, not all of it.

What the descriptors say

Polymorph (139) and Summoning (118) are the biggest tagged families, then Mind-Affecting (83), Fire (53), Compulsion (48), Evil (40), Cold (37), Acid (32). Elemental tags are rarer than players expect — most fire damage doesn't bother declaring itself.

Metamagic availability

Every spell advertises which metamagic it accepts. Heighten and Quicken are near-universal (1,060 / 981), Extend 682, Reach 620 — but the most available tag in the file is CompletelyNormal (1,064), the Azata mythic metamagic. Selective (296) and Persistent (291) are the scarcest of the staples; when a build hinges on Selective, check the spell's page first.

Levels peak in the middle

Casting levels from the class join bottom out exactly where tabletop puts them: the distribution peaks at levels 3–4 (85 spells each), thins to 36 at level 9, and only 11 spells exist exclusively at mythic level 10.

Per-spell detail lives in our Spells section.