Evasion Vs Spell Focus

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in an exercise of possibility, I will point out that minor globe of invulnerability, an arcane spell of 4th tier, protect caster against spell from tier 3 downward.

So a fighter can use the Use Any Scroll exploit to activate that scroll for that absolute situation where you need to protect yourself against any incoming low level spells.

Not an ideal solution, I admit.

 

I see no one answered the actual question. Yes, picking Spell Focus will make the life of your tank trying to dodge the Fireballs miserable.

But you have an even bigger issue than that: wearing any armor heavier than studded leather disables Evasion ability altogether.

Considering that Fireball has at the very least DC 15, making the save on a regular basis requires a Reflex save bonus of at least +14. Ain't gonna happen until very high levels even if you're a Monk/rogue and/or use short term buffs liberally.

 

Most people who want to rely on evasion will choose high DEX characters, and unlike in 2E, heavy armor greatly reduces or negates DEX bonuses, so most people who are making such a build will choose light armor rather than medium or heavy.
I think the rest of us just assumed that the character in question was wearing light armor. One thing I've noticed is that through the ice fortress, if all characters have 18 DEX (yes, I was cheating, it was an experiment. I altered the .INI file to give enough points to give a human all 18s), the benefits of medium or even heavy armor over light are canceled out by the loss of the DEX bonus.
Of course, if you are flat-footed, heavy armor is better.

 

If you want a fodder to lure enemies into a big pack, Animate Dead is just right there. The undeads are tough and can survive a bit longer than your combatants.

Or if you really have to, summon Fire elemental to be one.

 

The real benefit of animate dead is that it has a long enough duration to clear the map, most other summons last too short a time.
This is true for all the IE games.
Some of the elementals are an exception.

That said, the idea with using a rogue with evasion is that you don't have to at least one spell every map, allowing you to clear multiple maps in areas where you change screen frequently.

 

Low flat resistance values only hold up on a character of high luck because luck does reduce the damage you take from spells but won't increase the damage they deal to enemies.

+5 luck makes fireball a 10 damage max spell so you only need fire res of ten to be totally safe, really this only helps in HOF where you can have save scummed for tymora's loop back in the regular severed hand and combined with the HOF Targos lucky knucky.
Although by this point fireball is a waste of time due to it's low damage.

Better to just give a decoy the shroud of banko (any build can wear it) and just be immune to skull trap instead, it even prevents the loss of mirror images which is an added bonus.

Acid storm is a good spell for the luck method as anyone can get 10 acid resistance just from the guardian fights so it's the easiest resistance to raise.