Wizard Specialization in a 'Sane' Core-Only Environment

[Endarire]

Let's assume you can only use core material; PHB, MM, DMG.  (No Circle Magic, by the way.  That's just nuts!)  You start at ECL1 and end at an unknown level.

How important is specialization?  How beneficial is it?  How detrimental is it?  What changes if you aren't the only Wizard in the party?

[sirpercival]

Specialization is much less important when you don't have PrCs or ACFs which are based on your specialization.  In core-only, I'd probably just generalize.

[Unbeliever]

+1

I've never found it to matter much either way.  There are enough good spells among whatever schools you have left to be awesome. 

Two semi-related notes.  First, I tend to build my spellcasters with a theme.  That's the way I've approached it for the last several years as it tends to give them more character and, frankly, makes it easier for me to build as it gives me a heuristic for pruning the massive number of spells in D&D.  Specialization is one way to do this, though it usually doesn't work out great.  Illusion, Transmutation, and Enchantment are pretty thematically linked, but the other schools less so.  And, Enchantment mostly consists of a bunch of spells that do essentially the same thing. 

Second, in a lot of ways the conceptual space taken up by the specialist Wizard overlaps with the Sorcerer and other, more recent spellcasters (Dread Necromancer, Beguiler, etc.). 

[Rebel7284]

In core, it's a real tradeoff at least until high levels.  Without specialization, you need to rest significantly more which may not always be possible.  However, there are less quality spells so wider access to schools can be nice.

Regardless, wizards stop being sane eventually