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View Full Version : Redefining Spell Schools [3.5]



Baron Corm
2009-03-07, 08:58 PM
I think many people would agree with me that a lot of spells are in the wrong school. I would blame this on the schools themselves not being defined well enough. For example, "Abjurations are protective spells. They create physical or magical barriers, negate magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, or even banish the subject of the spell to another plane of existence." Need I say more? Let me know what you think.

Abjuration - Protection and warding spells. Includes any spells which give straight resistance or immunity to something, as well as spells such as spell turning and alarm. Now includes death ward and mage armor. Anything that would create a physical barrier, or changes physical properties to buff you goes under Transmutation. Anything that negates magic goes under Universal. Banishment spells go under Conjuration.

Conjuration - Conjuring things. This school deals with summoning existing creatures or objects to your side, as well as the reverse (teleportation, banishment). It no longer includes healing, resurrection, material creation, or damage spells.

Divination (perhaps change to Prophecy?) - Gathering information and delivering divine wrath. Includes any information gathering spell that doesn't alter physical properties, as well as alignment spells such as word of chaos and miracle.

Enchantment - Anything that alters a state of consciousness. This school now includes all mind-affecting spells, such as fear. Illusion spells are exempt.

Evocation - Manipulation of energy (other than positive and negative) and forces. This school now includes spells like telekinesis and fly which manipulate physical forces, but not actual matter. No longer includes contingency or alignment spells such as word of chaos and miracle.

Illusion - Creating illusory things. Now includes arcane mark, as well as all Conjuration (Creation) spells (including the orb of X line), which now offer spell resistance and a Will save to disbelieve if harmful, and have the (Shadow) subtype instead of (Creation).

Necromancy - The manipulation of positive and negative energy, as well as any effects related to "souls" or "life force". This school now includes healing and resurrection spells. It also includes spells such as animate objects which rely on life force. It no longer includes spells like death ward, ability damage spells or other physical debuff spells, though it still includes energy drain.

Transmutation - Altering the physical properties of existing things, and modifying ability scores. Includes any spells such as polymorph or darkvision which buff or alter physical properties. Now also includes spells such as ray of exhaustion and blindness/deafness which debuff physical properties.

Universal - Spells which modify other spells or don't fit anywhere else, such as wish. Now includes spells such as dispel magic, anti-magic field, and contingency. It no longer includes arcane mark.

If a spell would fall into more than one of these categories, consult the following list to decide which school it should belong to. Schools closer to the top of the list have higher priority.

1. Universal
2. Illusion
3. Enchantment
4. Abjuration
5. Necromancy
6. Evocation
7. Transmutation
8. Conjuration
9. Divination

Pronounceable
2009-03-08, 02:16 AM
But I like abjuration...
...

Don't everyone already do this (or similar) to some extent?

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 02:42 AM
I disagree with the idea of having healing coming under Necromancy based entirely on the fact that all of the spells (except Death Ward, which should be Abjuration) deal with negative energy. Based on the fact that Reiki involves channeling positive energy to help people to heal themselves, I'd put healing spells under Evocation (with the exception of Regeneration, which should be Conjuration, and the Raise Dead line, which I'm classing as Necromancy solely because they involve bringing people back from the dead. I tended to think Abjuration was fine as it was to be honest (the fix you suggested just seems overly complicated).

Neithan
2009-03-08, 07:59 AM
I think necromancy is not the power of death, but the power over life and death. And in older edition, healing was necromancy. And I totaly agree that raise dead or ressurrection are prime examples of necromancy. They bring the dead back to life!
Also, conjuration only makes sense, if there's a plane of positive energy, which many settings don't have.
Also, there are a spells tht draw negative energy from the plane of negative energy. Why are those not conjurations then?

I did the healing/necromancy fix long ago, and I think it also has a much richer flavour than conjuration.
The only reason mage armor is abjuration is for specialist wizards, who can't cast evocations.

I see the same problem, that I simply want to have an abjuration school. But except for dispel magic, forbiddance, and banishment, there arn't that many spells who really fit into the school by the way they work. Most abjurations are there because of what they do.

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 08:12 AM
In the 3.5 Edition, I don't see any connections between Necromancy and positive energy, which is why I'm in favour of all of the Inflict spells and most healing spells being Evocation (I tend to think that suits Reiki better then other schools, especially ince Conjuration tends to ignore SR while Cure and Inflict spells don't).

Baron Corm
2009-03-08, 10:55 AM
In the 3.5 Edition, I don't see any connections between Necromancy and positive energy, which is why I'm in favour of all of the Inflict spells and most healing spells being Evocation (I tend to think that suits Reiki better then other schools, especially ince Conjuration tends to ignore SR while Cure and Inflict spells don't).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you think healing should be Evocation because you think Necromancy is Evil and Reiki is not Evil? Schools don't kill people, spells kill people. Making Necromancy take care of positive energy keeps Evocation from being bloated and also provides balance to the Necromancy school itself. If Evocation gets positive energy, why wouldn't it get negative?

Since everyone seems to miss Abjuration, I threw some spells into it. I am not going to put all of those "negate magic" and "banishment" spells back in. Schools cannot cover three completely different things! If the school lacks spells, homebrew some random spells which give an amount of resistance based on spell level, not too hard.

The Mentalist
2009-03-08, 11:09 AM
I'm going to have my little rant here, sorry. Healing is necromancy, healing has always been necromancy, that is until some 3.5 hotshot said "Ohhh we don't like the boney things we can't have clerics using that." let's face it for a moment necromancy is the magic of life and death. Evocation could work but it's just shunning the poor little redheaded stepchild that is necromancy.

Baron Corm
2009-03-08, 12:35 PM
I would like thoughts on what I did with Divination, and also whether or not it would be appropriate to move buffing spells like eagle's splendor to Necromancy, saying that they are powered by positive energy. If ability damage is powered by negative, why aren't ability bonuses powered by positive? Transmutation seems kind of weak here... you're transmuting their Charisma? And why are there no ability damage Transmutation spells?

Moved Conjuration (Creation) to Illusion as well, would like thoughts. Game balance wasn't the main concern here, but as a side-effect, this does reduce the power of the significantly overpowered fog spells.

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 01:01 PM
It's more about Necromancy containing a lot of save-or-die spells. My idea is that including positive and energy in Evocation on the grounds that it would be classifying them as neutral rather then associating them with good or evil (Reiki can't be used to cause harm under any circumstances). That is logical about buffs to a degree, but it doesn't work for me due to Necromancy being concerned with negative energy, which, to me, makes more sense as far as de-buffs go (I know they change the target as much as de-buffs, but that would case that spell school to become bloated due to how many varieties of spell would be included in it).

Baron Corm
2009-03-08, 01:22 PM
You do know that most Evocation spells cause harm? That the most iconic Evocation spell will melt your face off and blow up your house? If a spell school doesn't contain spells which cause harm, then I would complain. This is a war game. You can easily choose pacifism just by the spells you pick within that school, but it is not the norm for characters in general.

About Necromancy becoming bloated, I'm thinking of making a separate school for positive energy healing, buffs, and life-giving. To decide that though, I would need to make a list of the number of spells in each school and see how many there are, but I'm too lazy to do that, so Necromancy will remain as it is for now :smalltongue:

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 01:31 PM
I was thinking about Evocation as being about energy manipulation (I know most Evocations are blasty spells, pretty much any school can be used to harm people as well). Woudln;t it be easier to keep most of the spells where they are while just moving the few which don't make sense where they are? (Eg: Deathward to Abjuration and Banishment to Conjuration would make sense for me.)

ericgrau
2009-03-08, 01:51 PM
I think most of them make sense as-is, you just have a different definition. I never understood healing as conjuration though.

Abjuration - The line's hazy here. Your way could be just as good as the core way, since there is a lot of heavy overlap between abjuration and other schools.

Conjuration - dimensional magic: summoning, teleporting, and creating, since the materials for creating actually come from another dimension. I agree that it was completely screwed up to make the orb of X spells conjuration, except for acid. The whole thing was just a pre-4e exercise to apply special effects to damage spells but no one talks about that. People only talk about it as a way to bypass SR and a reason to not need evocation. Thanks, WotC, for royally screwing with 3e just so you could experiment with 4e ideas. Though a lot of splatbooks did that.

Divination - finding out stuff

Enchantment - mind affecting stuff

Illusion - fake stuff or quasi real "shadow" or shadow-plane related stuff.

Necromancy - death and negative energy

Transmutation - changing stuff and people. That's why the buff spells are here.

Universal - broad effects, necessary for all casters, or not fitting in any school.

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 02:05 PM
Why would you say acid is the only element which makes sense for Conjuration? I know what you mean about the blasty spells not fitting in that school. (Were they really experimenting for the 4th Edition at that point? I assumed they just carried that sort of "damage+status for 1 round" thing over due to deciding more perminant negative statuses were too crippling.)

Pronounceable
2009-03-08, 03:11 PM
Stuff that'd seem fine to me:

Abjuration All kinds of resistance/immunity spells, protections and wards, dispels and antimagics.

Conjuration Summoning, teleportation, creation, banishments and planar bindings. No damage.

Divination Scries, clairvoyance/audiances, antiillusions, sensory buffs, extraplanar communications, all detect spells.

Enchantment Every spell that effects mind. Mental buffs and debuffs.

Evocation Energy blasts, force effects, telekinesis, power words.

Illusion Illusions (duh), shadow evocations.

Necromancy Death spells, heals and inflicts, resurrections, soul manipulating spells, ability drain/damage, all restorations.

Transmutation Transmutations, polymorphs, physical buffs and debuffs.

Universal Contingencies, alignment spells, wishes.

ericgrau
2009-03-08, 03:53 PM
Why would you say acid is the only element which makes sense for Conjuration? I know what you mean about the blasty spells not fitting in that school. (Were they really experimenting for the 4th Edition at that point? I assumed they just carried that sort of "damage+status for 1 round" thing over due to deciding more perminant negative statuses were too crippling.)

Mostly by precedent: core acid spells are already conjuration. But also because acid is a physical substance whereas all the other energy types are just energy and thus should be in evocation.

Yes, I am certain they were experimenting. There's a podcast on the WotC website where they explain all sorts of things that were tests for 4e material. This was one of them. Reserve feats were experiments for at wills. ToB was an experiment for martial powers (though I hear 4e is simpler than ToB), the SAGA defenses were a test for 4e defenses, etc. They explain that the intended effect of the orb of X spells was to do damage + effect, just like 4e. But munchkins find another use that they don't talk about. There reason for experimenting with them in the first place was exactly what you said: to avoid SoD's. But they were thinking of that when they first made them, not just when they carried them over.

Baron Corm
2009-03-08, 04:02 PM
Brought buffs back to Transmutation and gave them Necromancy's debuffs. Makes much more sense that way, and unloads Necromancy somewhat.

I'm not so sure about leaving creation with Conjuration. You say the things come from another dimension... care to explain? I like the idea much better that magic cannot create actual things, only manipulate existing things. That's why they can't make a bunch of iron and make huge sums of gold depending on their spells per day. Heck, there might as well be a spell that just creates gp. Not to mention the fact that Conjuration (Creation) has a lot of no-save no-SR spells, which, when brought Illusion, become balanced.

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-08, 04:02 PM
What are the other uses of those spells? I knew ToB and ToM were experiments but I never knew the others were (thanks for telling me this; I'm interrested in how things develope and change as they are being developed :smallsmile:). That is a good point about acid spells always being Conjuration as well.

I think Conjuration is better for creation spells due to how Illusion spells typically just pretend to make things happen (or at least partially pretend) while Conjuration is mainly about real things being brought to the caster.

Devils_Advocate
2009-03-10, 03:52 AM
You put mage armor in Evocation, still leaving it out of Abjuration where it belongs? This suggest to me that you've missed the problem with the spell schools as they stand: Spells are classified based on how they do things, instead of what they do. And that means e.g. that a Conjuration spell can do anything, so long as you say that conjured energy is responsible for the spell effect. Similarly, Transmutation can do whatever the hell it wants because any event at all can be described as a change to the properties of things. So these schools aren't limited in what they can do, just in what fluff their spell descriptions have to contain.

If you wanna divide spells up based on what they do, some schools are simple to formulate:

Abjuration spells prevent. And they do this directly. So making a lock harder to open is fine, but traps aren't. A trap spell falls into the school of whatever effect it produces, probably Evocation.

Divination spells inform. I'm pretty sure that all of the core Divination spells, at least, genuinely are Divination. Prying eyes is borderline, I guess, since it actually creates something. Darkvision and the like also fit here.

Illusion spells create false sensations. Ideally, these are made of real sounds, sights, and/or odors, and have no additional effect on anyone's mind, or vice versa.

Enchantment spells effect the mind in ways not covered by Illusion or Divination. This includes buff spells like fox's cunning and glibness.

Evocation spells create, impart, or reduce energy. This includes spells like fireball, cone of cold, shout, haste, slow, and fly. It shouldn't include force effects, because it shouldn't get to do Conjuration's job by B.S.ing that it's not really using matter but energy that behaves just as though it were matter (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PureEnergy), no, really! (And if you let it make impenetrable, unmovable walls, that's like letting Conjuration produce fire that's not subject to spell resistance -- it makes a school better at another school's job than the other school is! NO. BAD. :smallyuk:)

Conjuration spells instantaneously transport things. The main problem with this is that if you allow them to call in anything from anywhere in the infinite planes, you can legitimately call in something that allows you to do something in one of the other schools. Heck, even if you can only transport yourself anywhere in the multiverse, you still only need one other school (Divination) to find out exactly where the precise doohicky you need is, and then you can zap there, get it, zap back, and save the day. So Conjuration either needs to be eliminated, or you need to allow it to indirectly do anything but not nearly so well as other schools can do them directly. Or arbitrarily prohibit it from indirectly doing specific things, but that seems like it would be a fairly half-assed solution even if you could make it workable.

Necromancy spells... are currently whichever spells are fluffed as working by manipulating the life force. So, basically any spell that only works on a creature (and not an object), and that you want to be Necromancy. In order to be consistent, you could include all such spells that don't fall into any of the above schools, and also don't change the subject's shape, size, or what it's made of.

Transmutation spells have the same potential as Conjuration spells to indirectly do anything, in this case by endowing you with the ability to do whatever it is you want to do. Therefore they should only do stuff not covered by any of the other schools. Of course, there's no sense in having Transmuation as the miscellaneous school and also having Universal, so you either eliminate Universal, or narrow down Transumation even more.

Hmm... Transmutation, Necromancy, and Universal are the hardest to sort out, but I think it works pretty well if you treat them as changes to physical properties that objects have (but which creatures also have), changes to physical properties that only creatures have, and changes to / replication of magic, respectively, with the caveat that they only cover things not covered by the other schools.

LibraryOgre
2012-05-29, 02:10 PM
The Mod Wonder: Reopened at creator request.

JKTrickster
2012-05-29, 04:55 PM
Interesting. I actually have a similar project going on...

Which reminds me. I have to start compiling those spell lists :smallsigh:

Zarrgon
2012-05-29, 06:33 PM
Why would you say acid is the only element which makes sense for Conjuration? I know what you mean about the blasty spells not fitting in that school. (Were they really experimenting for the 4th Edition at that point? I assumed they just carried that sort of "damage+status for 1 round" thing over due to deciding more perminant negative statuses were too crippling.)

In my game it works like this:

Evocation is all types of short duration energies that mostly are raw and powerful and do damage. This includes things like fire and lightning, but also things like kinetic energy and gravity. Evocation can even make short duration matter(as in converting energy into matter). This puts all the acid spells under evocation, as well as any spell that makes something that zips at a target at great speed.

Also, I have four elemental energy damage types, Air, Earth, Fire and Water.

Necromancy is both positive and negative energy and anything that effects life, life force or undead.

toapat
2012-05-29, 08:00 PM
I think the most major problem people look over when dealing with magic classification is that Evocation, Conjuration, and Illusion are all categories of magic, not schools themselves.

Evocation itself covers magic that creates effects that mimic natural form. Transmutation and Abjuration are both subschools of evocation. Force spells typically fall into this area, as do spells that animate undead. Wish is technically an Evocation.

Conjuration is the magic of summoning. teleportation and most combat spells are conjuration, and conjuration, necromancy, and evocation form the basis of the school. Miracle is within this category

Illusion (Technically the category name is Figments) is the school of magic that affects the mind, be it knowledge or perception. Figments cover the schools of Illusion, enchantment, and divination

Potpourri: magic that is simply not distinct enough to form a category of their own, these spells do what can simply not be considered to be doing things which cant be defined as replication, conjuration, or mentally effecting

Drolyt
2012-05-29, 08:44 PM
I think many people would agree with me that a lot of spells are in the wrong school. I would blame this on the schools themselves not being defined well enough. For example, "Abjurations are protective spells. They create physical or magical barriers, negate magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, or even banish the subject of the spell to another plane of existence." Need I say more? Let me know what you think.
Sounds like a good idea.

Abjuration - Protection and warding spells. Includes any spells which give straight resistance or immunity to something, as well as spells such as spell turning and alarm which do not rely on energy to ward. Now includes death ward. Any force or prismatic spells go under Evocation. Anything that would create a physical barrier goes under Transmutation. Anything that negates magic goes under Universal. Banishment spells go under Conjuration.
I think I agree with this one.

Conjuration - Conjuring things. This school deals with summoning existing creatures or objects to your side, as well as the reverse (teleportation, banishment). It no longer includes healing, resurrection, material creation, or damage spells.

Definitely agree here.

Divination (perhaps change to Prophecy?) - Gathering information and delivering divine wrath. Now includes buffing spells such as darkvision, and alignment spells such as word of chaos and miracle.
I'm not sure. I definitely agree that darkvision should be divination, not sure about alignment spells.

Enchantment - Anything that alters a state of consciousness. This school now includes all mind-affecting spells, such as fear. Illusion spells are exempt.

Agreed.

Evocation - Manipulation of energy (other than positive and negative) and forces. This school now includes the conjuration damage spells, but they offer spell resistance. It also includes any force effects such as mage armor, as well as spells like telekinesis. No longer includes contingency or alignment spells such as word of chaos and miracle.

Definitely agree here.

Illusion - Creating illusory things. Now includes arcane mark, as well as all Conjuration (Creation) spells, which now offer spell resistance and a Will save to disbelieve if harmful.

Okay, this is where I start to get confused. Why should Creation spells be Illusions? I can't think of any Conjuration (Creation) spells off the top of my head, are they that badly named?

Necromancy - The manipulation of positive and negative energy, as well as any effects related to "souls" or "life force". This school now includes healing and resurrection spells. It also includes spells such as animate objects which rely on life force. It no longer includes spells like fear, death ward, ability damage spells or other debuff spells (such as bestow curse and blindness/deafness).

I'm not sure I agree with all of this. I agree about positive/negative energy, souls, life force, resurrection, healing, fear, and death ward. Animate Objects is tricky, it depends on whether you consider animated objects to be actually living or just automatons. Some debuff spells/ability damage spells might still fit in my mind, but not all of them.

Transmutation - Altering the physical properties of existing things. No longer includes spells such as darkvision which heighten your senses, or animate objects, but still includes spells such as magic weapon which alter physical properties. Now includes debuff spells such as ray of exhaustion and blindness/deafness.

See above about Necromancy. Otherwise I agree.

Universal - Spells which either modify other spells or have open-ended effects. Now includes spells such as dispel magic, anti-magic field, bestow curse, and contingency. It no longer includes arcane mark.
Except for bestow curse (maybe, I'm not sure) I agree.

Yitzi
2012-05-29, 08:59 PM
Here's my idea (if you don't want to completely redo the school list, but do want to redefine things):
Abjuration: Magic that affects magic. So it includes dispel, antimagic, various protections (including death ward), but not force effects or repulsion effects.
Conjuration: Magic that affects position and movement. So it includes all planar magic (including Shadow effects, currently under illusion, and also possibly including Inflict spells, as well as the usual calling and summoning), telekinesis, teleportation, and non-mind-affecting repulsion effects.
Divination: Stays how it is.
Enchantment: Stays how it is, but also gets any mind-affecting repulsion affects that abjuration loses.
Evocation: Magic that creates something from nothing. So it includes all energy effects, all force effects, and all creation effects.
Illusion: Stays how it is.
Necromancy: Stays how it is, but it either loses Inflict spells to Conjuration, or gets Cure spells.
Transmutation: Stays how it is, except for losing telekinesis to conjuration.

Baron Corm
2012-05-29, 11:08 PM
Ruh roh, didn't know these were going to the top when they were reopened, heh. Well I did plan on editing this thread in particular quite a bit. I agree now that mage armor goes in Abjuration, and I think I'm putting the orb of X spells into Evocation, instead of Illusion. Spells like major creation and wall of iron would be kept Illusion because it's broken (to me) to be able to create money.

Yitzi: I like your definition for Evocation, I'll have to think about that one.

It's so hard to not have overlap that I have a list of "priorities" written up... like Enchantment comes first, so if it's a mind-affecting energy spell, it would definitely go in Enchantment because of that list to fall back on. Making schools not requiring that list would be ideal, but I'm not sure if it's possible while keeping the flavor of the schools.

In particular, this is the current priority list, as well as some notes I had about changed definitions:

1. Universal
2. Illusion
3. Enchantment
4. Necromancy
5. Evocation
6. Transmutation - any offensive buff or debuff, or modifcation to an ability score.
7. Abjuration - any defensive buff.
8. Conjuration
9. Divination - information gathering spells that don't change physical properties. not darkvision.

Drolyt
2012-05-29, 11:48 PM
Spells like major creation and wall of iron would be kept Illusion because it's broken (to me) to be able to create money.
I feel like there are better ways around this.

lunar2
2012-05-30, 11:37 AM
what about:

move the Healing subschool to necromancy.

move the creation subschool to evocation. don't change whether or not individual spells bypass SR. blasting is subpar as it is, there's no reason to make it weaker.

you do realize that to balance wall of iron + fabricate abuse or whatever the case may be, all it requires is simple economics. creating huge chunks of iron, and then forging them into whatever they are fabricating, drops the value of those items significantly. not to mention that they'd have difficulty actually selling all those whatever. when supply far outweighs demand, not only do prices drop, but it becomes more difficult to sell even at reduced prices. creation spells can only really be abused in a vacuum, not in a real campaign where the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. or simply say that fabricate doesn't work on materials of a magic origin, because the residual magic of the creation interferes with the spell.

keep shadow magic in illusion. it doesn't make much sense to have shadow conjuration as a conjuration spell.

Baron Corm
2012-05-30, 03:51 PM
you do realize that to balance wall of iron + fabricate abuse or whatever the case may be, all it requires is simple economics. creating huge chunks of iron, and then forging them into whatever they are fabricating, drops the value of those items significantly. not to mention that they'd have difficulty actually selling all those whatever. when supply far outweighs demand, not only do prices drop, but it becomes more difficult to sell even at reduced prices. creation spells can only really be abused in a vacuum, not in a real campaign where the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. or simply say that fabricate doesn't work on materials of a magic origin, because the residual magic of the creation interferes with the spell.

Wizards being able to create matter which doesn't wink out instantly creates tons of issues other than money. What happens when you have a few thousand wizards casting wall of iron just to protect themselves a few times per day, over the course of a few generations? I haven't done the logistics but it would probably mess up the campaign world.

Creating permanent matter from nothing just seems like something requiring a divine rank to me, while creating temporary, illusory matter fits in much better with my own personal view of what a wizard can do. Your own may differ.

Giegue
2012-05-30, 03:59 PM
While most of this looks good, the one thing I disagree with is taking the debuffs out of necromancy. by taking the debuffs out of necromancy, you essentially reduce the amount of necromancy spells on the wiz/sorc list to nothing UNLESS you plan on adding heals and other usually cleric exclusive spells to Necromancy. So, unless wizards/sorc list get the healing spells, you have literallly NO reason to specialize in necromancy as a wizard since debuffs was all the necro wizard had. So unless you add some cleric exclusives to the wizard/sorc list you have basically made arcane necromancy totally irreverent and useless.

Squark
2012-05-30, 04:20 PM
While most of this looks good, the one thing I disagree with is taking the debuffs out of necromancy. by taking the debuffs out of necromancy, you essentially reduce the amount of necromancy spells on the wiz/sorc list to nothing UNLESS you plan on adding heals and other usually cleric exclusive spells to Necromancy. So, unless wizards/sorc list get the healing spells, you have literallly NO reason to specialize in necromancy as a wizard since debuffs was all the necro wizard had. So unless you add some cleric exclusives to the wizard/sorc list you have basically made arcane necromancy totally irreverent and useless.

For some debuffs at least, I agree with you. Touch of Fatigue, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ghoul Touch, and the like are all fine, representing draining attacks that have an alternate penalty instead of damage or negative levels. Chill Touch is kind of iffy (although I'm not sure where you'd put it instead), and Bestow Curse and Contagion are both questionable as well. Astral Projection is also questionable (I suspect it's a holdover from old fluff where entering the astral plane only involved sending out your spirit or something like that). Those are the questionable spells I found in my PH, personally.

Baron Corm
2012-05-30, 04:39 PM
While most of this looks good, the one thing I disagree with is taking the debuffs out of necromancy. by taking the debuffs out of necromancy, you essentially reduce the amount of necromancy spells on the wiz/sorc list to nothing UNLESS you plan on adding heals and other usually cleric exclusive spells to Necromancy. So, unless wizards/sorc list get the healing spells, you have literallly NO reason to specialize in necromancy as a wizard since debuffs was all the necro wizard had. So unless you add some cleric exclusives to the wizard/sorc list you have basically made arcane necromancy totally irreverent and useless.

You've still got save-or-dies, energy drain, undead creation, and random spells like chill touch which deal negative energy damage in addition to the ability score damage. Because Necromancy is higher than Transmutation on the list I posted, the spell goes under Necromancy.

I'm more worried about Transmutation being too strong of a school, when it was already strong but... the top goal should really just be making the schools make sense. You could probably pick at least a few spells in each school which completely break the game no matter what.