Forcecage?

[NeoSeraphi]

:smallconfused: Alright, before I get started, I know that everyone says "Evocation should have nice things" and all, but I'm scratching my head trying to understand why exactly forcecage is considered an evocation spell. From a strictly logical standpoint, forcecage is the magical act of crafting an item out of force and having some measure of control over the crafting of that item.

Should it not, then, be Conjuration (Creation)? I know that people generally say Conjuration shouldn't get [force] effects since that's Evocation's thing, but in this particular instance I think it makes sense, since mage armor is a conjuration (creation) effect that also deals with crafting a non-instantaneous item of force.

Evocation effects are generally instantaneous (at least, when it comes to arcane magic). So why is forcecage evocation?

[FearlessGnome]

Of course, while Conjuration has Mage Armor, Abjuration has Greater Mage Armor, as well as Luminous Armor and its Greater brother.

Whoever wrote Abjurant Champion also seems to have thought that Mage Armor was an Abjuration effect. So... awkward.

[bloodtide]

The 'real(world)' reason is that it has always been evocation. And that simply put, nobody much looked at the spells...ever...and they have simply kept whatever school or effects or level that they have always had(mostly).

Force effects should mostly be evocations, as evocation creates energy and 'force' is a type of energy.

The idea that you can 'conjure' force is just wrong. It goes too much into the idea that you can just 'conjure' anything. Why even have any schools of magic when you can just 'conjure' anything? You don't need to cast the divination detect magic when you can just 'conjure' the spell detect magic.

But you also should not read too much into just the core spells. The core spells were never meant to be 'the end all and be all of all magic in the universe'. The core spells are just a random collection of spells used and useful for an adventurer. So you should not say that ''evocation effects are generally instantaneous'', just as that is true for the handful of core spells.

And the first fix that most DM's do to magic is to move Mage Armor over to Abjuration where it should be...

[Siosilvar]

Forcecage is evocation for the same reason Wall of Force is: it's a [force] effect without a legacy reason to be in another school.

Mage Armor is Conjuration because way back when it (IIRC) conjured an actual suit of armor, casting restrictions notwithstanding. Shield is Abjuration because it's always been Abjuration as a defensive effect.

The whole Conjuration (Creation) subschool doesn't make any sense to me, because Conjuration is bringing things from elsewhere and Evocation is creating things, at least as D&D has used the terms, bit that's a subject for another thread.

EDIT: Looks like I was wrong. Unearthed Arcana, p 51-52:

" By means of [the Armor spell], the caster creates a magical field of force which serves as if it were leather armor (AC 8)."

So it's never been real armor, but it has always been Conjuration.

[NeoSeraphi]

Of course, while Conjuration has Mage Armor, Abjuration has Greater Mage Armor, as well as Luminous Armor and its Greater brother.


I agree with you on luminous and greater luminous, but you're misremembering about greater mage armor


MAGE ARMOR,
GREATER
Conjuration (Creation) [Force]
Level: Sorcerer/wizard 3
Components: V, S

[Manateee]

If you're building a cage out of magical force energy, it kinda makes sense that's in the school that does things with magical energy. I think you'd have a better case if you were moving orbs of force and mage armors into evocation.

[jaybird]

The schools just don't make sense, and there's no point trying to make sense of them. I still can't figure out why Illusion and Enchantment are two different schools, and the argument for Abjuration and Evocation to be different schools is only marginally stronger. Then there's all the crap that should belong to other schools in Conjuration...starting with Mage Armour in Abjuration and Orbs in Evocation. Leave Acid damage in Conjuration though - that makes sense.

Don't get me started on Shadow spellcasting...:smallfurious:

[jmelesky]

I still can't figure out why Illusion and Enchantment are two different schools

That's actually fairly easy: it's the difference between fooling the senses and actually messing with someone's mind. There's a pretty good dividing line there, even if it's not consistently respected by school-assigners.


and the argument for Abjuration and Evocation to be different schools is only marginally stronger.

Abjuration is really about absorbing or deflecting energy, rather than creating and focussing it. Again, school-assigners aren't consistent.

The core school problem is, i think, balance. Abjuration should clearly have things like Dispel Magic and Anti-magic shell, but it's far less clear how to fill in a minimum number of 1st-level spell slots. So it gets broadened to "protective stuff" and gets a couple spells that are really about creating and focussing energy.

I suppose there's a fluff fix for some of it. For example, Mage Armor could be refluffed as a field that slows and diverts kinetic energy, rather than "an invisible but tangible field of force". But that's a patch to a systemic classification problem.

[Prime32]

That's actually fairly easy: it's the difference between fooling the senses and actually messing with someone's mind. There's a pretty good dividing line there, even if it's not consistently respected by school-assigners.That's how it should work, except that Illusion (Phantasm) spells mess with someone's mind, and Illusion (Pattern) is a combination of that and a physical illusion.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#illusion

[Keneth]

I think schools as a basis are fine but the spells aren't consistently placed in them. Moreover it gets really messy when you give them subschools, they're completely unnecessary, descriptors should be more than enough.

So if one were to extrapolate basic defensive spells according to schools:

Abjuration - Straight up attack deflection (i.e. deflection bonus generally), no energy or matter or anything (ex. Shield of Faith).
Conjuration - Conjures or creates an actual suit of armor (none of that mage armor and orb bull, you don't conjure energy, except for acid which technically isn't energy, period).
Evocation - Creates a field of energy that protects you (this is where shield and mage armor should be).
Transmutation - Changes your own form for better resilience (i.e. natural armor bonus like that from Barkskin).
Illusion - Makes it harder for creatures to target you in the first place (ex. Blur).
Divination - Allows you to see things beforehand (insight bonus, ex. Moment of Prescience).
Necromancy - This is where all the cure spells should be, honestly. I don't know what that Conjuration (healing) business is all about but it's retarded as far as I'm concerned.
Enchantment - Stop your opponent from attacking you altogether (ex. Charm Person).

For the most par spell schools should work just fine, their basic ideas are clear enough to divide the spells among them. Of course sometimes the lines are blurred, some spells don't fall definitively into one school and that's where things get problematic, but the problem lies mostly in the spell design, not the schools as such. Just my ¢2.

[The Winter King]

My belief is that spell schools were created based on how they work as opposed to what they do.
In my games:

Abjuration is a sub school of evocation.
Conjuration spells move things from one place to another (calling, summoning, teleportation)
Divination lets you obtain knowledge.
Enchantment spells affect the mind(charm, compulsion, phantasm)
Evocation spells manipulate energy and create stuff(creation, abjuration]
Illusions fool the senses(glamer, pattern, shadow)
Necromancy does not exist. its spells are divided appropriately.(fear to enchantment,neg energy effect to evocation, still don't know where to put undead creation thinking transmutation.
Transmutation, spells that change things into other things

[Keneth]

While I agree that fear effects should be under enchantment, why would you want to take out necromancy entirely? The way I see it, it's one of the few schools that makes perfect sense. :smallconfused:

[NeoSeraphi]

Indeed, and where would you put the decay effects, like enervation and ray of entropy? Those certainly don't belong in Evocation. (Ray of sickness, ray of enfeeblement, escalating enfeeblement, mind poison, poison, shivering touch, none of these use negative energy)

[The Winter King]

It does make sense, its just 75% of its spells belong in other schools.
examples

cause fear is mind affecting so thats enchantment
blindness/deafness change the targets capabilities so transmutation
gentle repose protects the target from aging so abjuration or transmutation
enervation fires negative energy at the target-evocation
Inflict/cure are transmutation because they change the targets health

If I leave Necro its only going to be left with undead and death spells because i sort based on what spells do, not how they do it.

[Cieyrin]

Evocation is about creating and manipulating energy. Conjuration is summoning or calling things to you. Force isn't something that just is, that you can call, since it doesn't natively exist. You create force and manipulate it to the end you need it for.

Also, it's a bit fallacious to say all Evocations are instantaneous, that's typically true of damage spells but Evocation has a good chunk of the Wall spells, as well as Contingency, which tend to stick around for a while. Also consider Call Lightning, it's a damage spell that's not just over, as you keep generating bolts.

[NeoSeraphi]

Inflict/cure aren't transmutation. You're channeling positive and negative energy! :smallconfused: If you make all negative energy effects evocation, you should make inflict/cure evocation as well.

And seriously, calling life back to the lifeless is a classic example of "necromancy". If you moved all the conjuration (healing) spells that function like raise dead to necromancy, and kept all the decay spells like ray of enfeeblement and bestow curse, you'd still have a decent-sized school (along with undead creation, of course)

[nightwyrm]

Schools are messed up anyhow. Some are defined by what they do (Div finds things out, Abj protects), others are defined by fluff (Evo deals with "energy", Conj with "things" but somehow orbs are Conj while fireball is Evo), still others are defined by writer's feelings (all this stuff is icky and evil so let's put it into Nec) hence buffs are Trans and debuffs are Nec.

[Cieyrin]

Schools are messed up anyhow. Some are defined by what they do (Div finds things out, Abj protects), others are defined by fluff (Evo deals with "energy", Conj with "things" but somehow orbs are Conj while fireball is Evo), still others are defined by writer's feelings (all this stuff is icky and evil so let's put it into Nec) hence buffs are Trans and debuffs are Nec.

Yeah, I don't think anyone understands why the orbs are Conjuration. The flimsy reasoning is you summon the energy and then hurl it, though that doesn't make sense for Orb of Force, as I mentioned earlier, as there is no force to just call to you, you create it on the spot and do stuff with it.

[The Winter King]

Inflict/cure aren't transmutation. You're channeling positive and negative energy! :smallconfused: If you make all negative energy effects evocation, you should make inflict/cure evocation as well.

And seriously, calling life back to the lifeless is a classic example of "necromancy". If you moved all the conjuration (healing) spells that function like raise dead to necromancy, and kept all the decay spells like ray of enfeeblement and bestow curse, you'd still have a decent-sized school (along with undead creation, of course)

Excellent point. Will do.

okay so we have Conj=transportation/reinforcements, Evo=creation/protection/destruction, Div=intel&maybe communication, Ench=control/mind, Ill=tricks/deception, Necro=decay/undeath/death/life/healing, Tran=transformation/change

So Destroy, Protect, Create, Change, Kill, Heal, Learn, Deceive, Control, Resurrect, Move...I think thats everything. Anything missing from there?

[ericgrau]

Personally I'm surprised mage armor isn't abjuration. That school steps on the toes of a lot of other schools whenever protection is involved. What's more the spell shield is already abjuration. You could conceivably chop up abjuration and divvy it out to all the schools it took spells away from. The force spell shield might make abjuration look like evocation, but most of the other abjurations are transmutation with only a tiny amount of evocation and divination.

More on topic, I agree you could make an argument for conjuring anything, especially if you consider conjuration to be a dimensional effect that could pull just about anything from another plane. And I agree this shouldn't be done except for conjuring matter and teleportation.

[imneuromancer]

Stepping back a bit: the CORE rulebook spells are often weird as to their school. The expanded spells in splat books (Spell Compendium, etc.) are usually just terribly wrong. I am beginning to think that schools should work less like specialist wizards and more like cleric domains.

[FMArthur]

Conjuration wound up so crazily diverse to begin with because it is possible to justify pretty much any magical effect as a 'conjuration' because they all create some effect on the world around them and the word itself can mean any of it. You conjure heat and motion and other energy with Evocation. Illusions are conjured by spells from the Illusion school. You conjure friendship, fear and stupidity with Enchantment. You conjure insights into the future with Divination. You conjure special effects to wrap around creatures and objects with Transmutation. You conjure infuriating moral triplines with Necromancy. You conjure protection and un-conjure the conjured spells of others with Abjuration.

I am not entirely certain that Conjuration should have been a school of magic at all. It might as well have been called the Sorcery school for all the term means and gets used to justify.

[ericgrau]

Well that's why there are more concrete descriptions here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#schoolSubschool). Conjuration is supposed to include calling, creation (typically matter not energy), healing, summoning and teleportation. Though the fact that they had to make a special category just for healing shows how forced it is.

Thus in D&D "conjure" means to make tangible things. Fluffwise it works extra-dimensionally which is why teleportation is included (teleportation works by touching the astral plane briefly). So it could not be used to justify casting any spell directly. But you could argue pulling material from the plane of shadow for illusion (shadow) spells, from the elemental planes for evocation and from the positive/negative energy planes for cure/inflict. I would specifically avoid ever doing things like that, but at least you could make a case for such unlike saying "conjure = casting in general".

[FMArthur]

Well that's why there are more concrete descriptions here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#schoolSubschool). Conjuration is supposed to include calling, creation (typically matter not energy), healing, summoning and teleportation. Though the fact that they had to make a special category just for healing shows how forced it is.

The whole thing's pretty forced. If they wanted to be consistent they should have left it with teleportation (calling and summoning being a subset of that) and creations that are nonmagical after casting.

Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you (the summoning subschool), actually transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling), heal (healing), transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation), or create objects or effects on the spot (creation).
These bolded parts can categorize nearly anything you ever do with magic under Conjuration.

[Cieyrin]

The whole Conjuration(healing) thing came about b/c somebody at WotC got squeamish in 3.0 about Cures and Inflicts being Necromancy, like that made it inherently evil or something. Necromancy is all about manipulating positive and negative energies, why can't you use it mend wounds or restore life to what was formerly in addition to animating corpses with faux-souls for your undead needs? :smallannoyed:

[nightwyrm]

Conjuration wound up so crazily diverse to begin with because it is possible to justify pretty much any magical effect as a 'conjuration' because they all create some effect on the world around them and the word itself can mean any of it. You conjure heat and motion and other energy with Evocation. Illusions are conjured by spells from the Illusion school. You conjure friendship, fear and stupidity with Enchantment. You conjure insights into the future with Divination. You conjure special effects to wrap around creatures and objects with Transmutation. You conjure infuriating moral triplines with Necromancy. You conjure protection and un-conjure the conjured spells of others with Abjuration.

I am not entirely certain that Conjuration should have been a school of magic at all. It might as well have been called the Sorcery school for all the term means and gets used to justify.


heh, no worse than 2ed's Alteration school which included everything, even stuff like burning hands, color spray and comprehend language.

"It changed you from not shooting flame from your fingers into shooting flame from your fingers, into Alteration it goes."

or Disintegrate: "It changed the orc into a pile of dust, Alteration!!"