What's a more useful Gale - Evocation or Adjuration?

[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

Not used to magic users, which path should I choose on level up - Evocation or Abjuration?

[IRMcG]

Evocation's great for the spell sculpt ability, stops AOE friendly fire. Abjuration's more defensive. Former works better IME.

[Gaius]

That's subjective.

I personally prefer Abjuration, because the shield sllows you to be a bit more carefree and, considering the game is turn based, you often can hit almost all of your intended targets with an AoE spell anyway without causing friendly fire.

There's a huge consideration tough, I know all encouters by heart, and that means I often start them in optimized conditions (and often with my most damaging AoE spells, like fireball).

If you are still new to the encounters and might find yourself in situations where both teams are entangled, sculpt spells might be really useful. It's also really nice for stationary continuous AoE spells, and specially Thunderwave, because if a melee enemy reched Gale, usually hes in your backline and you'll have a dificult time to not hit at least one ally, and throwing your teamates from deadly cliffs is less fun than it sounds.

TL:DR: in your first few runs, Evocation. If you know the encounters, Abjuration.

[IgnatiusJ.Reilly]

In my experience, as far as Early Access anyway:

Abjuration: It's implemented as Temporary HP and can't block the need to make a constitution saving to maintain concentration, so not ideal. So, it can be replaced by spells/abilities that give temporary HP. It can be the best source of temporary HP though, depending on Wizard level and Intelligence modifier.

Evocation: Really on useful for Fireball and Thunderwave, as the other spells it applies to aren't too useful, or are inferior to other spells of the same level. And Fireball and Thunderwave can generally be used in a way to exclude friendlies in the absence of Sculpt Spell. Keep in mind that Sculpt Spell does not exclude friendlies from the damage of surfaces created by Evocation spells.

[Indure]

I personally think both subclasses give very minor boons to the player. Sculpt spells seems like it will get more value at later levels. Temporary health is good as well, but if you are planning on getting the tadpole's power for Gale it is amazing for defense. He rarely gets targeted by melee and reflecting all range attacks is more defense then he needs.

[Meowella]

Neither.

Each has such a minor affect on gameplay that there's no answer you need to worry about. Abjuration forces specific gameplay while Evocation only matters if you're fireballing your own allies, which isn't necessary.

They're both fine picks so go with Abjuration as it's first alphbetically.

[BigAlzBub]

Abjurations is okay on tabletop, because you can ritually cast the alarm spell over and over during a short rest to refresh your arcane ward, this isn't a thing in BG3. When you reach 6th level (which again isn't a BG3 thing (yet)), you can use your reaction to shield someone else (which is nice), you also get a boost when dispelling or counter spelling but that isn't until 10th level (which we should get) but it will probably towards the end of the game, the final ability is spell resistance, which gives you advantage on saving throws vs spells and resistance vs the damage of spells, which is mega tasty, unfortunately you don't get this until 14th level, and it is highly debatable whether this will even be in the game or not.

Sculpt spell is murderously good (as long as you are playing a boom wizard). Potent Cantrip is a bit meh, it is better in table top where you have the full range of cantrips which have saves, if you are limited to basic books, then it only works with acid splash and poison spray, acid splash is okay, but poison spray is massively trash tier, sure it does a lot of damage, but it has a CON save (which monsters are often strong at) and a lot of monsters have either poison resistance or straight up immunity. Empowered Evocation is okay because adding your Int bonus to a single damage roll is fine (although by 10th level it is not as significant as it could be), and finally you get over channel which is monstrously good, maxing out the damage of a spell, well, what the heck is there to not like about that, sure you can only do it once per long rest without dealing massive damage to yourself, if you keep on using it, but sometimes you will just want to go "full ahead and damn the torpedoes". Unfortunately like spell resistance, there is a decent chance you won't see this ability.

TLDR, Evocation is better. (IMO)

[Alealexi]

Abjuration if you wanna be more carefree and just a wee bit more tanky for a mage.

Evocation if you want to go boom boom without worrying about your boom boom going ouchy on your allies face.