Redefining Magic and the 8 Magic Schools - The Beginning

[JKTrickster]

Is there any relationship between Light and Positive Energy or Dark and Negative Energy?

To give context, many people believe Necromancers should be able to have power over both Positive and Negative energy, power over life and death. But obviously this doesn't necessarily include Light and Darkness...right?

If not, what school of magic should this fall under?

Evocation? Illusion? I'm not entirely sure on this one...

[Shadowleaf]

Darkness and Light? In the physical presence or abscence of light sense, Evocation.

In a more philosophical sense, Necromancy.

[Feralventas]

1, you double-posted. might want to delete one of your threads.

2, illumination or lack there of are not elements in and of themselves in 3.x, so the only allusion of them one would make to positive or negative energy planes or phenomenon would be in that negative energy tends to result in a void or reduction of active forces or energy (darkness included as an absence of light) while positive energy tends to have a much more active and energetic result (healing, buffing, augmenting, causing growth and change) and therefore there may be some association of +/- with light and dark respectively, but the ability of a cleric to channel one or the other would not automatically give them powers of light or darkness as they are treated as lighting conditions rather than elemental forces (though there are plenty of spells for that, most Light and Darkness-inducing spells are either Evocation or Illusion, with no obvious ownership of either between the two.


Edit: If you Want to have a character based around either Light or Darkness, I would advise you take a look at Libris Mortis' Master of Radiance prestige class, or homebrew something for the Elemental Savant prestige class in Complete Arcane. For Darkness, check out the Tome of Magic's section on Shadow Magic, or the Shadowcraft Mage prestige class (of which I don't recall the source for at the moment, but some simple google-fu should make it easy to find.)

[Shadowleaf]

(...) most Light and Darkness-inducing spells are either Evocation or Illusion, with no obvious ownership of either between the two.Which Light/Darkness spells belong to the Illusion subschool? Dancing Lights, Light, Darkness, Deeper Darkness, various Sunlight creating spells etc. are all Evocation.

[Shadowknight12]

The designers have flipflopped on this subject throughout the entire history of D&D. The answer is "it depends." Officially, you have sources saying that they are not related in the slightest. Then you have spells like these two:

Bolt of Glory (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/spells/boltOfGlory.htm) and Armour of Darkness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/spells/armorOfDarkness.htm).

The rules themselves are very contradictory, so don't bother looking for official support. You'll find equally valid sources for and against that relationship.

[Steward]

Prismatic spray (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prismaticSpray.htm) is Evocation, while Prismatic Wall (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prismaticWall.htm) is abjuration. Yeah, I know. I can definitely see how you might have remembered them as illusions.

[Shadowknight12]

I'll be back in a few moments with a list; a lot of the Prismatic spells are, IIRC, Illusion school. I could be wrong, at which point I apologize.

Nope, most of them are Evocation too.

Most of the Illusion stuff you're talking about is on the line of "misguiding lights" and "shadowy stuff". Evocation deals with more straightforward notions of light and darkness.

EDIT: Actually, yeah, Prismatic Wall and Prismatic Sphere are Abjurations, as is IotSV, the iconic Walking Pride Flag PrC (after Radiant Servant). So yeah, whoops.

[Feralventas]

1st lvl
Color Spray

Silent Image could also be seen as light manipulation, though that's up for grabs either way.

2nd level
Hypnotic Pattern

4th level
Rainbow Pattern
Shadow Conjuration (Greater version at 7th)

5th level
Shadow Evocation (Greater version at 8th)

6th level
Shadow Walk

8th
Scintillating Pattern

9th
Shades (80% version of Shadow Conjuration)

And I know there's more of the rainbow/prismatic effects in places like the Spell Compendium and Complete Mage.

[Feralventas]

Prismatic spray (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prismaticSpray.htm) is Evocation, while Prismatic Wall (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prismaticWall.htm) is abjuration. Yeah, I know. I can definitely see how you might have remembered them as illusions.

o.O Oops, sorry.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/spell-lists-and-domains/spell-lists---sorcerer-and-wizard

Was pulling from PF's SRD instead. I'll nuke stuff off the thread if JKT would rather not have my clutter :3.

[Yuki Akuma]

Positive energy glows. It isn't light, it just sheds light.

[JKTrickster]

Hmm okay so definitely not Necromancy then. I would rather not complicate or explode Necromancy out of proportion.

Do you feel Evocation should have control over Light and Darkness?

Playing Devil's Advocate, Illusion does have the Shadow spells.

Or do you feel Shadow is not the same as Light and Darkness?

"Colorful" spells like Prismatic Spray and Wall and Sphere are....confusing to say the least. Cause face it: Prismatic Spray is Evocation because it's an offensive spell and Abjuration can't have any of those.

Where do you believe Prismatic spells should go? Abjuration? Evocation?

[Flickerdart]

The Shadow line of spells isn't light/darkness. It's more like literal shadows cast by creatures and objects that are then brought forth to do your bidding in the 3D world.

[Acanous]

Illusion has almost sole dominion over darkness. Shadow is even a *Subschool* of illusion. Light, however, is not limited to illusion and is spread out among Abjuration, Conjuration, Evocation, and Illusion.

Necromancy itself is not "dark". It has more connection to darkness than to light (Being that some undead take damage/can't exist in daylight) but dominion over neither.

[Flickerdart]

Illusion has almost sole dominion over darkness. Shadow is even a *Subschool* of illusion.
Shadow and Darkness overlap exactly twice - Net of Shadows and Wall of Gloom are both (Shadow) and [Darkness]. Of the [Darkness] spells, Evocation has more. Likewise, Evocation has the overwhelming majority of [Light] effects - there are only four non-Evocation [Light] effects.

[JKTrickster]

The Shadow line of spells isn't light/darkness. It's more like literal shadows cast by creatures and objects that are then brought forth to do your bidding in the 3D world.

Hmm that's interesting. And the number you provide - I'm assuming that its Core only? Outside of Core they generally follow that right?

What about Prismatic spells?

Honestly Sphere and Wall are Abjuration because.....they protect things. And Spray is Evocation because it attacks things.

I want to group it by "type". What should "Prismatic type" spells go under?

[Flickerdart]

It's all D&D 3.5 spells. Core only? Who cares about that?

[JKTrickster]

That's great!

That makes my job so much easier when I'm trying to regroup the spells.

What about Prismatic Spells? I almost feel like they should be in Illusion since Illusion had color spray originally too.

[Flickerdart]

Four Evocations and two Abjurations.

[JKTrickster]

Mhm but I feel as if they should only be in one school. They should not be split simply because Prismatic Wall and Sphere are "defensive" and Prismatic Spray is not.

Magic should not work that way.

[Feralventas]

Abjuration isn't solely defensive; we've all seen Explosive Runes weaponized in some form, and Dispelling effects are a great way to weaken foes.

One of the greatest Abjuration prestige classes has fluff of a prismatic specialist; Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil. IOTSV gains the ability to use the various facets and shades of the Prismatic spell set in wall and barrier effects, making it perhaps one of the most potent 'caster PrC's in the game.

[JKTrickster]

That's my argument. Therefore there is no reason for Prismatic spells to go into Evocation right?

Should they all go under Abjuration?

[Shadowknight12]

That's my argument. Therefore there is no reason for Prismatic spells to go into Evocation right?

Should they all go under Abjuration?

You do realise that there is no rhyme or reason why spells are placed where they are, right? We have Shield in Abjuration and Mage Armour in Conjuration, even though they're both defensive equipment made of force whose main purpose is to raise AC. Either you "conjure" an object made of force (and they're both Conjuration) or they're both used to "abjure" potential damage (and they're both Abjuration).

Same goes for Prismatic spells. Some of them deal damage/nasty effects when used offensively and are Evocation, others deal damage/nasty effects when used defensively and are Abjuration. Seek not for logic, for there is none.

[JKTrickster]

You do realize I am currently re-organizing the spells right? :smallconfused:

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I'm just rearranging it so all the spokes (aka the schools) are the same length (aka balanced against one another).

[Shadowknight12]

You do realize I am currently re-organizing the spells right? :smallconfused:

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I'm just rearranging it so all the spokes (aka the schools) are the same length (aka balanced against one another).

You will need to gut Conjuration and Transmutation and heftily support Evocation and Enchantment if you really want to do that. Enchantment is the school with the least amount of spells and only one of them (Freezing Glance, from Frostburn) is not mind-affecting. Conjuration gets all the damage of Evocation with none of the saving throws/inconveniences, and has most of the overpowered stuff (Summoning and Calling, with low-level breakers like Grease and Web). Transmutation gets the other half of the overpowered stuff (Time Stop, Polymorph, Haste, Slow, etc). But I'm sure you already knew this.

Anyhow, you can throw Evocation a bone and move all the Prismatic spells there (and replace all the Abjuration prereqs/bonuses of IotSV with Evocation-related stuff, to give Evocation a defensive PrC), or you can move all the Prismatic spells to Abjuration and leave everything else as is. I'd vote for the latter, but I'm biased towards Abjuration.

Also yeah, consider moving Colour Spray along with the other Prismatic spells because they're very similar thematically. Give more variety to the schools. Make Abjuration more offensive/debuff-y or Evocation more defensive. Grouping spells by purpose rather than essence/core is one of the main reasons Transmutation ("changing stuff") and Conjuration ("creating stuff") are so overpowered in comparison to the other, much narrower in purpose, schools.

[Eigenclass]

Interesting question! One of the plot strings in an old Forgotten Realms campaign of mine involved exploring this same concept while my PCs were disassembling the machinations of a Dark Moon Heretic cell...

I don't have the wisdom score to understand this exactly, but my Shadow Adept assured me that this is the way it is:

Darkness and light are effects produced by a broad variety of phenomena - fire, shadows, heated metal, the Art, etc. Negative and Positive energy produce effects that look like darkness and, and interact with each other in ways that are analogous to the interaction between darkness and light.

But that does not mean that Negative energy = fundamental darkness and Positive energy = fundamental light. These are two separate elemental forces that happen to look like natural phenomena we're familiar with - but they are elemental forces. Trying to understand them via simple analogy is not only incorrect, but potentially deadly folly.

After all, elemental fire and water oppose each other too, but that doesn't mean fire and water are "aspects" of each other, or that some common theory exists which unites the understanding of both (at least "officially", although your campaign can definitely make one up).


EDIT: About classifying magic:
Schools of magic as appearing in D&D canon aren't necessarily absolute classifications that that attempt to define the fundamental nature of magic. They're grouped together largely based on the effects they produce rather than by what makes them "work", or the underlying mechanisms they employ.

It makes sense if you consider the motivation of most D&D spellcasters - they want to learn how to cast spells to achieve various results. It's as if the rules of physics were written by engineers instead of scientists.

A true investigator of the arcane would likely have drastically different interpretations of magical "schools", and spend a lot of time researching spells that do nothing useful, but provide some information about what makes magic really work...

[ericgrau]

There's no direct relationship, not any more than the relationship between violence and evil. As in they can often be related but certainly not always.

Ya necromancers work directly with negative energy. Light and darkness are typically evocation because you're creating a form of worldly energy out of nothing. Necromancers don't have any special connection to darkness outside of style and the loose link fear has to both undead and the dark.

As for schools, abjuration has the most overlap with just about all the other schools because it's basically "any defensive spell regardless of the effect it has that inevitably would fall into other schools if it weren't defensive."

A lot of non-acid energy conjurations, especially from spell compendium, could /should be moved to evocation. After that conjuration, evocation and transmutation are the most indispensable schools. Other schools due awesome things too, but they're all niche. So if you wanted to make all 8 schools essential you could spread out spells from those 3 into the other 5. Any defensive conjuration could become abjuration. Beyond that... I dunno it's hard to find many others that fit in multiple schools.

I think as-is most of the spells fit in that they fit their own rules for organizing them so unless you change those rules for organizing schools (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#schoolSubschool) the spells fit in the existing school or perhaps fit in the existing school but also fit in another school. So there is a little room to move them a round. And there are rare exceptions that don't really fit in their school but maybe the designers didn't want an essential spell in abjuration or something. So those are easy targets for swapping.

[JKTrickster]

EDIT: About classifying magic:
Schools of magic as appearing in D&D canon aren't necessarily absolute classifications that that attempt to define the fundamental nature of magic. They're grouped together largely based on the effects they produce rather than by what makes them "work", or the underlying mechanisms they employ.

It makes sense if you consider the motivation of most D&D spellcasters - they want to learn how to cast spells to achieve various results. It's as if the rules of physics were written by engineers instead of scientists.

(emphasis mine)


This is what I'm aiming to fix. In my (WIP) homebrewed world, each branch of magic is so fundamentally different that each is a discipline within itself. Magic has also been studied so extensively such that each is a science - with its own discovered rules and limitations and process for how they work.

I think I'll move all Prismatic and Prismatic "looking" spells into Abjuration. This creates a nice "specification" within that school.

Ultimately I"m looking to diversify each school (besides Conjuration and Transmutation of course) such that each school can stand alone by itself. So each school with have entire subschools of magic that are actually quite significant.

About throwing a bone to Evocation I thought about this: all [Fire], [Cold], [Electricity], [Air], [Light], and [Dark] spells, and various Cloud/Fog spells are automatically Evocation (unless it seems grossly inappropriate, but then I can just refluff it as necessary).

I'm thinking about spells like Summoning Elementals, Lightning Leap, Sleet Storm, etc that can help add some BFC and improved Action Economy to Evocation. Would that be enough?

EDIT: I will also homebrew "Energy spells" that basically Magic Missile and other spells that automatically deal damage without an attack roll or immunities. Kind of like Force Missile Mage (that's the PrC IIRC)

[ericgrau]

Don't forget [sonic] to evocation.

[Shadowknight12]

I think I'll move all Prismatic and Prismatic "looking" spells into Abjuration. This creates a nice "specification" within that school.

And lets you keep IotSV as is. Good.


Ultimately I"m looking to diversify each school (besides Conjuration and Transmutation of course) such that each school can stand alone by itself. So each school with have entire subschools of magic that are actually quite significant.

That's a good idea. Are you doing this in a thread in these forums so that we can see progress?


About throwing a bone to Evocation I thought about this: all [Fire], [Cold], [Electricity], [Air], [Light], and [Dark] spells, and various Cloud/Fog spells are automatically Evocation (unless it seems grossly inappropriate, but then I can just refluff it as necessary).

Most of that stuff is already there, to be honest. Except egregious things such as the Orb of X line. Don't be afraid to throw [Force] and [Sound] in Evocation too. Again, most of that is already there.


I'm thinking about spells like Summoning Elementals, Lightning Leap, Sleet Storm, etc that can help add some BFC and improved Action Economy to Evocation. Would that be enough?

The problem with moving summoning elementals to Evocation is that you're making the Summoning subschool useless (unless you were already planning to get rid of it, in which case, congrats on a good idea). Other than that, makes sense. You can also include "elemental transformation" in Evocation to weaken Transmutation a bit as well.

BFC would fit very well in Evocation, but Improved Action Economy wouldn't, I think. I think Contingency and Miracle fit better in Universal. Improved Action Economy could be a better fit for Divination, really. Yeah, Divination is already good enough to ruin a DM's campaign, but if you limit some of the more egregious spells, it becomes terribly lackluster. You could give it some practicality by narrowing down the focus of the more overpowered spells and then giving it some IAE to round it up.

As for Abjuration, I suggest making it all about denial. Not necessarily defence, per se, but focusing on things like Dispel Magic, force effects, prismatic spells and the like on top of generic defences. You can move [Force] there too, if you want to give it some offensive/BFC capacities (Magic Missile, Shield, Mage Armour, Wall of Force, Forcewave, Orb of Force, Ghost Touch, etc), fluffing it as Abjurers mastering the most impregnable and inexorable "element" of the cosmos (which is not necessarily used purely to protect; after all, I wager there are a lot of Abjurers who believe in the old adage of "the best defence is a good offence").

Also, please tell me you're moving Healing to Necromancy. Because that one's been a long-time coming.

[JKTrickster]

Don't forget [sonic] to evocation.

Yes that makes sense!



That's a good idea. Are you doing this in a thread in these forums so that we can see progress?

It's currently in a Web Document since I don't have the actual classes.

See there will be specialized classes (like Dread necormancer types) that go with each school. Until I come up with those, just having spell lists don't seem like that would be enough.

Or should I post up spell lists first?



Most of that stuff is already there, to be honest. Except egregious things such as the Orb of X line. Don't be afraid to throw [Force] and [Sound] in Evocation too. Again, most of that is already there.

I was mostly talking about the Summoning Elementals and Elemental Transformation type spells from SpC and onward.

I'm thinking about moving [Force] to Abjuration and replacing it with something else like "Pure Energy". It would have many of the same qualities as Force, but even stronger (in some cases) and probably weaker in others.



The problem with moving summoning elementals to Evocation is that you're making the Summoning subschool useless (unless you were already planning to get rid of it, in which case, congrats on a good idea). Other than that, makes sense. You can also include "elemental transformation" in Evocation to weaken Transmutation a bit as well.

There are two approaches I'm taking to Conjuration and Transmutation.

First I'm touching them last. This lets me cut out all the spells I want from these two schools and lets me buff the other schools first.

Second, in the case for Conjuration, it's main focus will be Teleportation spells and probably some new version of [Summoning] and [Calling] spells that are more in line. For example at level 1, Summon spells are completely useless. Summon III and VII are pretty good but IX is completely useless. On the other hand, [Calling] is just too broken. I would need to rebalance their list but I think I can work something out.

I am completely taking out Conjuration [Creation] spells. They don't make sense and I don't like them.

In the case of Transmutation, no more spells that mess with Time, or Action Economy abusing spells. That's just the start of course. By the end, Transmutation will have an entirely new definition.



BFC would fit very well in Evocation, but Improved Action Economy wouldn't, I think. I think Contingency and Miracle fit better in Universal. Improved Action Economy could be a better fit for Divination, really. Yeah, Divination is already good enough to ruin a DM's campaign, but if you limit some of the more egregious spells, it becomes terribly lackluster. You could give it some practicality by narrowing down the focus of the more overpowered spells and then giving it some IAE to round it up.


Actually that was what I was thinking!

Divination is now more of a "Chronomancy" school that utilizes Time to observe and detect foes as well as manipulate Time itself.

What spells do you feel that Divination is overpowered?

For Evocation I was thinking more of "Spell Economy". My Class for Evocation will be able to get more mileage out of their spells, but that's another story. Action Economy really was the wrong word to use there though.



As for Abjuration, I suggest making it all about denial. Not necessarily defence, per se, but focusing on things like Dispel Magic, force effects, prismatic spells and the like on top of generic defences. You can move [Force] there too, if you want to give it some offensive/BFC capacities (Magic Missile, Shield, Mage Armour, Wall of Force, Forcewave, Orb of Force, Ghost Touch, etc), fluffing it as Abjurers mastering the most impregnable and inexorable "element" of the cosmos (which is not necessarily used purely to protect; after all, I wager there are a lot of Abjurers who believe in the old adage of "the best defence is a good offence").

Definitely! I think this is something that really should be done. Otherwise Abjuration would not be viable as its own school.

How do you feel about the Dimensional Lock/Banishment/etc. type spells that target summoning? I"m split between keeping them in Abjuration or putting them in Conjuration....



Also, please tell me you're moving Healing to Necromancy. Because that one's been a long-time coming.

Healing? "Necromancers" in my homebrewed setting are anywhere between Dark and Edgy to Positive bursting White Mages that make the Radiant Servant of Pelor look dim.

(Of course they will have nothing to do with Light or Dark. That's still Evocation)

[Shadowknight12]

It's currently in a Web Document since I don't have the actual classes.

See there will be specialized classes (like Dread necormancer types) that go with each school. Until I come up with those, just having spell lists don't seem like that would be enough.

Or should I post up spell lists first?

*Definitely* do the spells first. Those are the ones in need of fixing. A wizard isn't more powerful than a sorcerer because he casts less spells per day, but because he has them ALL at his disposal. Specialised classes are awesome and everyone loves them.


I was mostly talking about the Summoning Elementals and Elemental Transformation type spells from SpC and onward.

I'm thinking about moving [Force] to Abjuration and replacing it with something else like "Pure Energy". It would have many of the same qualities as Force, but even stronger (in some cases) and probably weaker in others.

That sounds about right for Evocation.

Also yeah, Abjuration needs more love. I recommend not to do that for Evocation, because it makes all the other elements redundant. What's the point in being a fire mage when being a Pure Energy mage means laughing in the face of energy resistance? What I did for a similar homebrew project that I currently have on hiatus, was to give this "pure energy" thing to Divine magic as their ONLY source of damage. In exchange for penetrating through all resistances and immunities, it was also meant to deal significantly less damage than all other forms of magic and be significantly rarer, spells-wise (like, between 5 and 10 spells total). I'm not saying you should do the same, but I think it's an idea to consider.


There are two approaches I'm taking to Conjuration and Transmutation.

First I'm touching them last. This lets me cut out all the spells I want from these two schools and lets me buff the other schools first.

Second, in the case for Conjuration, it's main focus will be Teleportation spells and probably some new version of [Summoning] and [Calling] spells that are more in line. For example at level 1, Summon spells are completely useless. Summon III and VII are pretty good but IX is completely useless. On the other hand, [Calling] is just too broken. I would need to rebalance their list but I think I can work something out.

That sounds like a good idea.


I am completely taking out Conjuration [Creation] spells. They don't make sense and I don't like them.

You are my hero and I fully support this endeavour.


In the case of Transmutation, no more spells that mess with Time, or Action Economy abusing spells. That's just the start of course. By the end, Transmutation will have an entirely new definition.

Yes, thank goodness. I am definitely liking everything you're doing so far.


Actually that was what I was thinking!

Divination is now more of a "Chronomancy" school that utilizes Time to observe and detect foes as well as manipulate Time itself.

I'd go with Time and Space, myself, to justify things like Scrying. You can also buff Enchantment by moving all the "mental" stuff Divination has (like Detect Thoughts, Telepathy, Discern Lies, Zone of Truth and the like) to Enchantment.


What spells do you feel that Divination is overpowered?

Well, let's see. Unless Detect Scrying/Mind Blank and other forms of protection against Scrying and Detection are commonplace in the setting, then everything that Scries (like Scrying, Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, etc) is overpowered since it's all or nothing. Either the target is unwarded and you garner tons of information on them (including enough information to teleport right to their bedside for a surprise attack if you wish) or the target is warded. If the target is warded you either overcome the ward and it's the same thing as though it was unwarded, or you fail to overcome the ward and so the spell might as well not exist, since it's utterly useless.

Then you have the big ones, the ones that can truly wreck campaigns unless the DM is very careful and crafty. I'm talking about the "questions" spells, such as Commune, Commune with Nature, Contact Other Plane, Divination, Legend Lore (and Vision), Stone Tell and anything that is open-ended and vague enough for a player to exploit. In contrast, spells like Moment of Prescience and Foresight are excellent examples of good Divination spells, even if they are a bit underpowered for their levels.

True Seeing deserves its own space because it is the utter bane of Illusions and deceptions of all kinds. I loathe this spell. I think it should be broken up into different, more specific spells (along the vein of See Invisibility), or removed entirely. It's simply so good it's practically a necessity once it's acquired.


For Evocation I was thinking more of "Spell Economy". My Class for Evocation will be able to get more mileage out of their spells, but that's another story. Action Economy really was the wrong word to use there though.

Well, the problem with that is that you're already giving Evocation too much (it's already on the verge of becoming the next Conjuration). Making it elemental-themed helps give mages a good combination of different effects centred around their chosen element (direct damage, BFC, transformation, summoning, etc), but anything else is really overkill. I think Spell Economy belongs in schools such as Divination, Abjuration or Universal, since they tend to deal with more ephemeral matters and the nature of magic itself.


Definitely! I think this is something that really should be done. Otherwise Abjuration would not be viable as its own school.

Indeed!


How do you feel about the Dimensional Lock/Banishment/etc. type spells that target summoning? I"m split between keeping them in Abjuration or putting them in Conjuration....

Banishment and Dismissal are very much Abjuration in the sense that they are the "denial" thing Abjuration is all about. The problem is that they're far too narrow in scope. I think they could be augmented to work on *any* target by keeping them at bay from the caster or a designated creature (much like the Repulsion spell, but perhaps not as strong, or like the Magic Circle and Protection from X spells, but stronger), and if cast on a summoned/called outsider, they'd have their current effect. Just a thing to tie it thematically with Abjuration and keeping them useful in all circumstances.

Dimensional Lock and the like should be in Conjuration, since they're the counter-side of teleporting.


Healing? "Necromancers" in my homebrewed setting are anywhere between Dark and Edgy to Positive bursting White Mages that make the Radiant Servant of Pelor look dim.

(Of course they will have nothing to do with Light or Dark. That's still Evocation)

I was talking about the Healing subschool in Conjuration. Since Necromancy deals with Life and Death, I always found it terribly distasteful that all the healing and resurrection spells were in another school seemingly because they didn't want to be lumped along the other spells in Necromancy. But it sounds like you're already doing that, so congrats, that's what necromancers should be.

[ericgrau]

IMO divination is one of the weaker schools without abuse. You need things like spontaneous divination or other tricks to always find out exactly what you need to know to make it worthwhile. The thing with divination is that you need to know what you're looking for before you can find it, so it's good when you can use it but those times are highly limited. To be viable on its own it needs more spells like foresight or moment of prescience at lower levels (but weaker). Refluffing transmutation's time/speed related spells and moving them to divination might do it.

[JKTrickster]

*Definitely* do the spells first. Those are the ones in need of fixing. A wizard isn't more powerful than a sorcerer because he casts less spells per day, but because he has them ALL at his disposal. Specialised classes are awesome and everyone loves them.

Hmm interesting okay! I will start one soon when I have work out all the kinks in each school ( or at least half of them. I haven't even touched Enchantment and Illusion yet!)


That sounds about right for Evocation.

Also yeah, Abjuration needs more love. I recommend not to do that for Evocation, because it makes all the other elements redundant. What's the point in being a fire mage when being a Pure Energy mage means laughing in the face of energy resistance? What I did for a similar homebrew project that I currently have on hiatus, was to give this "pure energy" thing to Divine magic as their ONLY source of damage. In exchange for penetrating through all resistances and immunities, it was also meant to deal significantly less damage than all other forms of magic and be significantly rarer, spells-wise (like, between 5 and 10 spells total). I'm not saying you should do the same, but I think it's an idea to consider.

Hmm interesting...that's definitely something to think about!

In my view, Evocation is the application of Magical Energy into various medium (Fire, Cold, etc.) and using it as a tool to do whatever. Pure Energy would be doing so without the medium.

For drawbacks, I was thinking that it wouldn't be able to ignore incorporeal miss chance, but ignores half of resistances and only blocked by 50% for Immunities.

Furthermore, they would have a lower damage die, no "rider effects" ever, and will not partake in any of that "spell economy" stuff down there.


That sounds like a good idea.

You are my hero and I fully support this endeavour.

Yes, thank goodness. I am definitely liking everything you're doing so far.


Thanks :smallbiggrin:



I'd go with Time and Space, myself, to justify things like Scrying. You can also buff Enchantment by moving all the "mental" stuff Divination has (like Detect Thoughts, Telepathy, Discern Lies, Zone of Truth and the like) to Enchantment.

Oh Time and Space make sense but they wouldn't be able to bend "space" as in Teleportation.

Why does Divination have Telepathy :smallconfused:
The others I could understand because Divination used to be about truth telling but Telepathy :smallconfused:

And yes totally! I haven't even thought about Enchantment yet!


Well, let's see. Unless Detect Scrying/Mind Blank and other forms of protection against Scrying and Detection are commonplace in the setting, then everything that Scries (like Scrying, Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, etc) is overpowered since it's all or nothing. Either the target is unwarded and you garner tons of information on them (including enough information to teleport right to their bedside for a surprise attack if you wish) or the target is warded. If the target is warded you either overcome the ward and it's the same thing as though it was unwarded, or you fail to overcome the ward and so the spell might as well not exist, since it's utterly useless.

Hmm that is a fair point. I was thinking that Magical Defenses vs Offenses should be more....of a spectrum. Instead of working/not working, I am trying to devise a system of "partially working".


Then you have the big ones, the ones that can truly wreck campaigns unless the DM is very careful and crafty. I'm talking about the "questions" spells, such as Commune, Commune with Nature, Contact Other Plane, Divination, Legend Lore (and Vision), Stone Tell and anything that is open-ended and vague enough for a player to exploit. In contrast, spells like Moment of Prescience and Foresight are excellent examples of good Divination spells, even if they are a bit underpowered for their levels.

Should I take these out? Put them all in Divine? What should I do?


True Seeing deserves its own space because it is the utter bane of Illusions and deceptions of all kinds. I loathe this spell. I think it should be broken up into different, more specific spells (along the vein of See Invisibility), or removed entirely. It's simply so good it's practically a necessity once it's acquired.

True Seeing and Mindblank are the two spells that I'm really aiming to revise with the "partial immunity" rule. Instead of any one spell being a complete defense, a spell (or maybe even a series) will be much more limited in power.

A big part of this may come from the Specialized Classes themselves.

But no matter how, the point is so that no one school can be completely shut out by another school.



Well, the problem with that is that you're already giving Evocation too much (it's already on the verge of becoming the next Conjuration). Making it elemental-themed helps give mages a good combination of different effects centred around their chosen element (direct damage, BFC, transformation, summoning, etc), but anything else is really overkill. I think Spell Economy belongs in schools such as Divination, Abjuration or Universal, since they tend to deal with more ephemeral matters and the nature of magic itself.

This is what I meant by "spell economy". When an Evoker casts a spell, they can utilize the "residual spell energy" (because they have magic over energy) in order to fuel other weaker spells.

I was thinking like: They cast Wall of Fire, a level 4 spell. Instead of letting it go out to its full duration, they "utilize its spell energy", to automatically enlarge the Fireball spell they throw out now. Or convert the wall into a burst effect that deals X damage to all within X ft of the Wall.

Now this wouldn't work with any of the Instantaneous damage spells but they would add a tactical element to the Summoning and the Wall/BFC spells. Let them stay for the duration or convert them into damage now?

Note: to curb Evocation I will only give it Wall spells for BFC and maybe some other spells at a higher level. I definitely do not want them to become to next Conjuration. Maybe I will put the summoning Elementals on a hold if it becomes too strong.

Also should I add rider effects to some of the blasty spells to beef them up?


Indeed!

Banishment and Dismissal are very much Abjuration in the sense that they are the "denial" thing Abjuration is all about. The problem is that they're far too narrow in scope. I think they could be augmented to work on *any* target by keeping them at bay from the caster or a designated creature (much like the Repulsion spell, but perhaps not as strong, or like the Magic Circle and Protection from X spells, but stronger), and if cast on a summoned/called outsider, they'd have their current effect. Just a thing to tie it thematically with Abjuration and keeping them useful in all circumstances.

Dimensional Lock and the like should be in Conjuration, since they're the counter-side of teleporting.

Hmm okay. What about Anticipate Teleportation?



I was talking about the Healing subschool in Conjuration. Since Necromancy deals with Life and Death, I always found it terribly distasteful that all the healing and resurrection spells were in another school seemingly because they didn't want to be lumped along the other spells in Necromancy. But it sounds like you're already doing that, so congrats, that's what necromancers should be.

Yep I am :smallbiggrin:



IMO divination is one of the weaker schools without abuse. You need things like spontaneous divination or other tricks to always find out exactly what you need to know to make it worthwhile. The thing with divination is that you need to know what you're looking for before you can find it, so it's good when you can use it but those times are highly limited. To be viable on its own it needs more spells like foresight or moment of prescience at lower levels (but weaker). Refluffing transmutation's time/speed related spells and moving them to divination might do it.

That is true. What other ways can Divination be buffed up? Assuming it had all of the Time related spells, what else can I do?

[Shadowknight12]

Hmm interesting okay! I will start one soon when I have work out all the kinks in each school ( or at least half of them. I haven't even touched Enchantment and Illusion yet!)

Ah, yeah. I'd wait until you've got at least a good bunch for each school before showing it off. I'd avoid focusing on one school at a time and instead making larger changes first across the board and then focusing on individual schools to fine-tune everything.


Hmm interesting...that's definitely something to think about!

In my view, Evocation is the application of Magical Energy into various medium (Fire, Cold, etc.) and using it as a tool to do whatever. Pure Energy would be doing so without the medium.

For drawbacks, I was thinking that it wouldn't be able to ignore incorporeal miss chance, but ignores half of resistances and only blocked by 50% for Immunities.

Furthermore, they would have a lower damage die, no "rider effects" ever, and will not partake in any of that "spell economy" stuff down there.

The problem is that you're being so generic that you're turning Evocation into the new Conjuration. Conjuration was really a lot like that ("bringing or creating stuff") and so it was easy to throw lots of things into it. You want narrow focuses and specific definitions.

Also, you're not addressing the main disadvantage of Pure Energy: You're obsoleting all the other elements. It's a lot better to go with Pure Energy already because no element ignores incorporeal miss chance (except Force, but that's in Abjuration presently) and gets fully blocked by immunities and resistances. The lack of rider effects is mute as well, since most of the main elemental spells (Fireball, Lightning Bold, Cone of Cold) have no rider effects at all (this is not true of Psionics, however, who have very nice rider effects in their energy powers).

If you like the idea of Pure Energy, give it to Universal as something all mages can pick up on (so that they can all cast damage spells if they must), and then reduce the damage roughly by half of what a given Evocation spell of the same level can deal. So while Pure Energy penetrates resistances and gets halved on immunities, it's far more efficient for an Evoker to prepare ordinary Evocation spells (since they'll take care of the problem faster and with less spell slots).


Thanks :smallbiggrin:

Credit where it's due!


Oh Time and Space make sense but they wouldn't be able to bend "space" as in Teleportation.

Oh no no, not bending it, but perceiving it.


Why does Divination have Telepathy :smallconfused:
The others I could understand because Divination used to be about truth telling but Telepathy :smallconfused:

I blame Detect Thoughts.


And yes totally! I haven't even thought about Enchantment yet!

Well, the problem with Enchantment is that it is also all or nothing. If you're not facing something immune to it (and "mind affecting effects" is the most common immunity), you can literally take it out of combat with things like Charm Person, Hold Person and Dominate Person. So either the Enchanter rules and turns the tide of combat in the party's favour or sits on their thumbs because all of its spells are useless.

Enchantment desperately needs the spectrum thing you talk about below.


Hmm that is a fair point. I was thinking that Magical Defenses vs Offenses should be more....of a spectrum. Instead of working/not working, I am trying to devise a system of "partially working".

I agree completely, but that's not how most spells work. Most spells are indeed all or nothing (hence why they're called Save or Suck).


Should I take these out? Put them all in Divine? What should I do?

Most of those ARE Divine. Yet they're still just as game-breaking. What I'd advice you to do would be to look at the oft-ignored Augury. That is a good open-ended divination spell that doesn't constrain the GM in the slightest and lets him screw with the party's mind if they want to.

What I'd do for many of them would be to take control away from the player (who gets to ask the questions) and instead give it to the DM, who is forced to provide truthful information (though I'd keep the tables as they are to introduce the chance of information being intentionally false or misleading) but who can obscure the truth in the form of a vague, symbolic, lateral-thinking, Nostradamus-esque prophecy, dream or vision. That way, you still have a chance to get information with Divination, but it's up to the DM to obscure it and up to the party to decipher it.


True Seeing and Mindblank are the two spells that I'm really aiming to revise with the "partial immunity" rule. Instead of any one spell being a complete defense, a spell (or maybe even a series) will be much more limited in power.

That's an excellent idea. That's definitely what 3.5e needs. It also makes magic less infallible and overpowered. Degrees of success is far better than SoSs.


A big part of this may come from the Specialized Classes themselves.

I wouldn't rely too heavily on a class to do the balancing. Trust me, it's better to balance the spell themselves. Relying on classes for balance is one of the main reasons we have tiers.


But no matter how, the point is so that no one school can be completely shut out by another school.

And that's an excellent design idea.


This is what I meant by "spell economy". When an Evoker casts a spell, they can utilize the "residual spell energy" (because they have magic over energy) in order to fuel other weaker spells.

I was thinking like: They cast Wall of Fire, a level 4 spell. Instead of letting it go out to its full duration, they "utilize its spell energy", to automatically enlarge the Fireball spell they throw out now. Or convert the wall into a burst effect that deals X damage to all within X ft of the Wall.

Now this wouldn't work with any of the Instantaneous damage spells but they would add a tactical element to the Summoning and the Wall/BFC spells. Let them stay for the duration or convert them into damage now?

Note: to curb Evocation I will only give it Wall spells for BFC and maybe some other spells at a higher level. I definitely do not want them to become to next Conjuration. Maybe I will put the summoning Elementals on a hold if it becomes too strong.

Also should I add rider effects to some of the blasty spells to beef them up?

That's a good idea, but you need to give the other specialisations something as tactical and varied too.

The thing is, you have to be careful with the options. The idea of this mechanic is to give the evoker options he doesn't normally have in his repertoire, so you don't want to obsolete direct-damage spells by letting them convert anything to damage (similarly, this is why no druid ever prepares Nature's Ally spells).

What you want is to sacrifice a spell already in place to gain a bonus on the next spell cast (preferably a direct-damage one, to encourage their use). So you need some non-instantaneous spells, like summons, walls, clouds and the like (and nothing more).

What I'd do would be to give the evoker the ability to add a rider effect and a damage plus on its next instantaneous, direct-damage spell (such as fireball). Sacrificed a Wall of Fire? Your next Fireball (if cast within 4 rounds) gives you a +4d6 on the damage dice and any target caught in the blast area (regardless of whether they saved or not) catches fire (as per the catch fire rules) and takes 1d6 damage per round for the next 4 rounds (Ref negates, save each time you take damage). Summoned an ice elemental with a level 2 spell? Your Cone of Cold deals +2d6 damage and all targets caught in the area take a -2 to Dexterity for 2 rounds (Fort negates).

That sort of thing.


Hmm okay. What about Anticipate Teleportation?

Divination, of course! :smallbiggrin:

No, seriously, it seems like it'd be good in Conjuration ("it takes a teleporter to anticipate teleportation") but that's the sort of thing that would beef Divination up without making it overpowered. Divination specialists would be very good at anticipating events to come and gathering knowledge without actually being very good at doing anything about it. They don't have the defensive powers of Abjuration, the offence of Evocation, the mobility of Conjuration, the effects of Enchantment, Illusion or Necromancy and they also don't have whatever Transmutation ends up with. They are left with only the basic stuff all mages have access to (Universal), which means the school needs to be beefed up to be hard to surprise/deceive but not overpoweredly so. And Anticipate Teleportation is great for that.


Yep I am :smallbiggrin:

Awesome. :smallamused:


That is true. What other ways can Divination be buffed up? Assuming it had all of the Time related spells, what else can I do?

Give it ways to anticipate the other schools (but without being able to actually do anything about it). Moment of Prescience and Foresight can be seen as "anticipate damage", you have Anticipate Teleportation, keep Detect Scrying and the like (so it can anticipate itself), Detect Wards/Protections and Anticipate Dispelling (against Abjuration), See Invisibility (against Illusion) and so on. I'm sure that there are spells out there in other books that do stuff like I mentioned, you just have to hunt them down and revise them to make sure they're not overpowered (Anticipate Dispelling, as I imagine it, would be an hours-long spell that gets discharged when you're the target of a dispel and give you a minor bonus on the opposed check, like a +2 or a +4, something like that). It's a matter of getting creative. The idea would be to give Divination ways to stay alive and gather useful knowledge without the ability to do much with it. The Divination specialist would be the archetypical "always prepared" wizard, only without the overpowered, game-breaking silver bullets at her disposal.

[JKTrickster]

Ah, yeah. I'd wait until you've got at least a good bunch for each school before showing it off. I'd avoid focusing on one school at a time and instead making larger changes first across the board and then focusing on individual schools to fine-tune everything.

Okay but first I have to look over at least Enchantment, Illusion, Conjuration, and what Transmutation will be.



The problem is that you're being so generic that you're turning Evocation into the new Conjuration. Conjuration was really a lot like that ("bringing or creating stuff") and so it was easy to throw lots of things into it. You want narrow focuses and specific definitions.

Also, you're not addressing the main disadvantage of Pure Energy: You're obsoleting all the other elements. It's a lot better to go with Pure Energy already because no element ignores incorporeal miss chance (except Force, but that's in Abjuration presently) and gets fully blocked by immunities and resistances. The lack of rider effects is mute as well, since most of the main elemental spells (Fireball, Lightning Bold, Cone of Cold) have no rider effects at all (this is not true of Psionics, however, who have very nice rider effects in their energy powers).

If you like the idea of Pure Energy, give it to Universal as something all mages can pick up on (so that they can all cast damage spells if they must), and then reduce the damage roughly by half of what a given Evocation spell of the same level can deal. So while Pure Energy penetrates resistances and gets halved on immunities, it's far more efficient for an Evoker to prepare ordinary Evocation spells (since they'll take care of the problem faster and with less spell slots).

I'm not entirely tied to the Pure Energy idea - it was something random that I thought that may or may not be feasible. That's why I'm bouncing it around here. Since it doesn't seem to be feasible I'll drop it for now.




Credit where it's due!



Oh no no, not bending it, but perceiving it.

Totally legitimate! And thanks for the praise - really encouraging :smallbiggrin:

This is such a big project and I was thinking no one was interested (since my last two threads to discuss magic kind of died really really quickly)



I blame Detect Thoughts.

Well, the problem with Enchantment is that it is also all or nothing. If you're not facing something immune to it (and "mind affecting effects" is the most common immunity), you can literally take it out of combat with things like Charm Person, Hold Person and Dominate Person. So either the Enchanter rules and turns the tide of combat in the party's favour or sits on their thumbs because all of its spells are useless.

Enchantment desperately needs the spectrum thing you talk about below.

On one hand I believe Enchantment can be buffed by adding those "Detect Thoughts" type of spells. Some form of mind reading would be a flavorful addition.

Then perhaps instead of just Domination, one can work in Fear Effects. They naturally progress and represent the ability to affect and poison the mind.

Another side could be "buffs". After all I believe Enchantment should be able to provide long term buffs (based on morale bonuses) and even "counter" Fear based effects. It could form an interesting choice when playing Enchantment - the "Dominatrix" or the "Empath".



I agree completely, but that's not how most spells work. Most spells are indeed all or nothing (hence why they're called Save or Suck).

I think Immunities are the most important offenders. True Seeing destroys Illusions. Mind Blank destroys Enchantments. Sure a Save or Suck is too binary but those spells completely negate with no scale at all. That's unreasonable.



Most of those ARE Divine. Yet they're still just as game-breaking. What I'd advice you to do would be to look at the oft-ignored Augury. That is a good open-ended divination spell that doesn't constrain the GM in the slightest and lets him screw with the party's mind if they want to.

What I'd do for many of them would be to take control away from the player (who gets to ask the questions) and instead give it to the DM, who is forced to provide truthful information (though I'd keep the tables as they are to introduce the chance of information being intentionally false or misleading) but who can obscure the truth in the form of a vague, symbolic, lateral-thinking, Nostradamus-esque prophecy, dream or vision. That way, you still have a chance to get information with Divination, but it's up to the DM to obscure it and up to the party to decipher it.

Augury is interesting! I was thinking that most of these spells can be taken out and isolated for now. I can fine tune them afterward.


That's an excellent idea. That's definitely what 3.5e needs. It also makes magic less infallible and overpowered. Degrees of success is far better than SoSs.

Mhm but this will probably be a part of the fine tuning.


I wouldn't rely too heavily on a class to do the balancing. Trust me, it's better to balance the spell themselves. Relying on classes for balance is one of the main reasons we have tiers.

I was thinking each class start around Tier 3 in power and maintain that versatility and strength until level 17. By level 9 spells, it's hard to not claim that you're low Tier 2.

By balance I am referring to interesting mechanics that combine well with the spells. Like your suggestion for the Evoker's ability would be in the class and not the inherent spell mechanics. This way I wouldn't have to fix all the spells and add rider effects to all of them because the class already does so.


And that's an excellent design idea.

That's a good idea, but you need to give the other specialisations something as tactical and varied too.

Of course, but that's a later design goal. I'm just bouncing ideas around and I will definitely be creating equivalent abilities for everyone.

My goal is to create 8 tactically varied classes that are fun to play. Magic should be complex enough that at level 20, it should be more than Rocket Tag. It should be layers of magic and spells trying to overwhelm each other, especially when no spell can outright succeed 100%.


The thing is, you have to be careful with the options. The idea of this mechanic is to give the evoker options he doesn't normally have in his repertoire, so you don't want to obsolete direct-damage spells by letting them convert anything to damage (similarly, this is why no druid ever prepares Nature's Ally spells).

What you want is to sacrifice a spell already in place to gain a bonus on the next spell cast (preferably a direct-damage one, to encourage their use). So you need some non-instantaneous spells, like summons, walls, clouds and the like (and nothing more).

What I'd do would be to give the evoker the ability to add a rider effect and a damage plus on its next instantaneous, direct-damage spell (such as fireball). Sacrificed a Wall of Fire? Your next Fireball (if cast within 4 rounds) gives you a +4d6 on the damage dice and any target caught in the blast area (regardless of whether they saved or not) catches fire (as per the catch fire rules) and takes 1d6 damage per round for the next 4 rounds (Ref negates, save each time you take damage). Summoned an ice elemental with a level 2 spell? Your Cone of Cold deals +2d6 damage and all targets caught in the area take a -2 to Dexterity for 2 rounds (Fort negates).

That sort of thing.

You, my dear sir, have saved months of thinking and tweaking. You've really help develop my concept! I think all of this is pretty good and will definitely make it into the final Evoker class.


Divination, of course! :smallbiggrin:

No, seriously, it seems like it'd be good in Conjuration ("it takes a teleporter to anticipate teleportation") but that's the sort of thing that would beef Divination up without making it overpowered. Divination specialists would be very good at anticipating events to come and gathering knowledge without actually being very good at doing anything about it. They don't have the defensive powers of Abjuration, the offence of Evocation, the mobility of Conjuration, the effects of Enchantment, Illusion or Necromancy and they also don't have whatever Transmutation ends up with. They are left with only the basic stuff all mages have access to (Universal), which means the school needs to be beefed up to be hard to surprise/deceive but not overpoweredly so. And Anticipate Teleportation is great for that.

But Anticipate Teleportation delays the Teleport effect as well. How can I reason that with Divination?

Perhaps I can give Divination various abilities that allow it to "Forsee" effects and/or spells since that is what you seem to be going for. This will definitely involve homebrew, but I figured that it would.



Awesome. :smallamused:

Give it ways to anticipate the other schools (but without being able to actually do anything about it). Moment of Prescience and Foresight can be seen as "anticipate damage", you have Anticipate Teleportation, keep Detect Scrying and the like (so it can anticipate itself), Detect Wards/Protections and Anticipate Dispelling (against Abjuration), See Invisibility (against Illusion) and so on. I'm sure that there are spells out there in other books that do stuff like I mentioned, you just have to hunt them down and revise them to make sure they're not overpowered (Anticipate Dispelling, as I imagine it, would be an hours-long spell that gets discharged when you're the target of a dispel and give you a minor bonus on the opposed check, like a +2 or a +4, something like that). It's a matter of getting creative. The idea would be to give Divination ways to stay alive and gather useful knowledge without the ability to do much with it. The Divination specialist would be the archetypical "always prepared" wizard, only without the overpowered, game-breaking silver bullets at her disposal.

Mhm that was my thoughts! I am thinking that Divination is the master of Time - always prepared, always has enough time, but just doesn't have the same game breaking spells that other classes have.

Now as a completely separate point:

Should all Conjuration spells have the [Teleport] descriptor? This would actually be a nerf (I...think) since there are many spells that prevent Teleportation.

In essence I am trying to fluff Conjuration as a magic over Teleportation and Portals. They "summon" and "call" by opening portals. Therefore if you can't use portals normally to Teleport, you shouldn't be able to do it for summons either.

Of course the Conjurer class would probably have some way to mitigate being shut down completely, etc. etc.

But does this do enough to control Summons and Called Creatures?

[Shadowknight12]

Okay but first I have to look over at least Enchantment, Illusion, Conjuration, and what Transmutation will be.

Well, it's still a good idea to have a bit from every school to showcase how the changes will end up being in the end, roughly.


I'm not entirely tied to the Pure Energy idea - it was something random that I thought that may or may not be feasible. That's why I'm bouncing it around here. Since it doesn't seem to be feasible I'll drop it for now.

Well, like I said, you can still leave a bit of damage in Universal for all mages to tap into. Sometimes you really need to shoot some Magic Missiles at someone's face, and nothing else will do.


Totally legitimate! And thanks for the praise - really encouraging :smallbiggrin:

This is such a big project and I was thinking no one was interested (since my last two threads to discuss magic kind of died really really quickly)

Hah, no problem, I know projects are like plants, they need to be watered or they'll wither!

Oh? What were you discussing, exactly?


On one hand I believe Enchantment can be buffed by adding those "Detect Thoughts" type of spells. Some form of mind reading would be a flavorful addition.

Then perhaps instead of just Domination, one can work in Fear Effects. They naturally progress and represent the ability to affect and poison the mind.

Another side could be "buffs". After all I believe Enchantment should be able to provide long term buffs (based on morale bonuses) and even "counter" Fear based effects. It could form an interesting choice when playing Enchantment - the "Dominatrix" or the "Empath".

Well, fear is a good addition, but don't neglect all the other emotions in the spectrum (since D&D only seems to recognise two emotions as worth bothering with: rage and fear). Homebrew spells if you must, but remember that high-RP campaigns thrive on emotions and the like, and having spells that evoke love, distrust, hatred, trust, sorrow, joy and the like (even if they're fairly useless in combat) would really strengthen Enchantment without unbalancing it.

The rest is very good as well, especially the addition of thought spells and morale bonuses (morale debuffs should go there too, the bard spell list has lots of those, actually, and Mind Fog is a great Enchantment debuff). But again, all of that is mind-affecting and that's the most common immunity.

Freezing Glance was a great spell and more should be made like it. Maybe move some of Transmutation's "I give you a very specific power that imitates a monster's" into Enchantment so that the Enchanter isn't completely useless against undead, constructs and the like. Or, if you want to solve this with classes, give focused enchanters (and bards, and beguilers, and so on) the ability to sacrifice spells (like the evoker does) to be able to overcome mind-affecting immunity (though the target should still get a bonus on the save).

Another idea would be to create a new damage type (Psychic, Mental or the like) and give it to Enchantment. It's still mind-affecting, so it's still very easy to be immune to it, and it should deal less damage than any other damage type, but it would bypass typical resistances and immunities, and it would give Enchanters something to do offensively that doesn't utterly wreck the encounter like Charm Person.


I think Immunities are the most important offenders. True Seeing destroys Illusions. Mind Blank destroys Enchantments. Sure a Save or Suck is too binary but those spells completely negate with no scale at all. That's unreasonable.

That is quite true. No-Save-Just-Die are really the worst spells in the system.


Augury is interesting! I was thinking that most of these spells can be taken out and isolated for now. I can fine tune them afterward.

Good idea.


Mhm but this will probably be a part of the fine tuning.

A'ight.


I was thinking each class start around Tier 3 in power and maintain that versatility and strength until level 17. By level 9 spells, it's hard to not claim that you're low Tier 2.

Wish and Miracle do that to you, yes. But really, if you're rebalancing the spells, might as well go all the way and rebalance the niners as well.

An idea I had: if you ever come across something that is very good and unique and you don't want it to go away but you still see it's overpowered (like polymorph and calling), just turn it into an Incantation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm). That way, you don't lose the iconic magical effect but you let any class with enough gold, knowledge ranks and other miscellaneous resources to achieve the effect, levelling the playing field (though still skewed towards classes with knowledge ranks, sadly).


By balance I am referring to interesting mechanics that combine well with the spells. Like your suggestion for the Evoker's ability would be in the class and not the inherent spell mechanics. This way I wouldn't have to fix all the spells and add rider effects to all of them because the class already does so.

Ah, all right. That sounds good.


Of course, but that's a later design goal. I'm just bouncing ideas around and I will definitely be creating equivalent abilities for everyone.

My goal is to create 8 tactically varied classes that are fun to play. Magic should be complex enough that at level 20, it should be more than Rocket Tag. It should be layers of magic and spells trying to overwhelm each other, especially when no spell can outright succeed 100%.

That's a much better magic system than the one currently around. It's a fine design goal. Rocket Tag is really the bane of the current magic system.


You, my dear sir, have saved months of thinking and tweaking. You've really help develop my concept! I think all of this is pretty good and will definitely make it into the final Evoker class.

Thanks! Glad I could help.


But Anticipate Teleportation delays the Teleport effect as well. How can I reason that with Divination?

They're bending time around the area the teleporter will arrive, slowing it down enough to have time to prepare themselves. Or they're slowing down the teleporter herself. Or the spell. You know, timey wimey stuff.


Perhaps I can give Divination various abilities that allow it to "Forsee" effects and/or spells since that is what you seem to be going for. This will definitely involve homebrew, but I figured that it would.

That's definitely the best bet for Divination. Less omniscience, more specificity.


Mhm that was my thoughts! I am thinking that Divination is the master of Time - always prepared, always has enough time, but just doesn't have the same game breaking spells that other classes have.

Indeed, and it poses a great conundrum for the average Diviner (who's likely more paranoid than Girard himself): do you risk trusting someone to work together with them (putting the Diviner's foreknowledge with the other person's powers to affect the world) or do you sit on that foreknowledge without being able to do anything with it? It's a great roleplaying starting point for anyone playing a Diviner.


Now as a completely separate point:

Should all Conjuration spells have the [Teleport] descriptor? This would actually be a nerf (I...think) since there are many spells that prevent Teleportation.

In essence I am trying to fluff Conjuration as a magic over Teleportation and Portals. They "summon" and "call" by opening portals. Therefore if you can't use portals normally to Teleport, you shouldn't be able to do it for summons either.

Of course the Conjurer class would probably have some way to mitigate being shut down completely, etc. etc.

But does this do enough to control Summons and Called Creatures?

The main problem with that is that only two classes as written have any ability to deal with Conjurers. Abjurers (via spells like Dismissal, Forbiddance and the like) and Diviners (via Anticipate Teleportation). So that's not really a proper nerf, only a bonus for playing Abjurers or Diviners.

A proper nerf would be to remove Calling altogether (turn them into Incantations as I outlined above, if you want to keep the iconic 'bargaining with outsider' theme), then diversify the Summoning and Teleportation subschools. Maybe add the [Teleportation] descriptor to almost all Conjuration spells (save things like Dimensional Lock and Dimensional Anchor) and then expand the Teleportation subschool to something like "Transportation" so that you can diversify what it does. Include offensive things there too in the vein of Plane Shift and Baleful Transposition (homebrew a few spells that deal low amounts of weird damage, like "transdimensional", as the caster uses teleportation to offensively disrupt the target's body. This could be a type of damage that ignores incorporeal miss chance, as it affects creatures in the Ethereal/Shadow plane as well, for example).

You can also let them use teleportation offensively without dealing damage. Homebrew a spell that, if the target fails its save, it disappears from the battlefield until the next round, or the round after that one (you can do a scale of effects here; if they save, they're merely Staggered for a round, if they don't, they're gone, but they can save again to come back the next round instead of the one after, that way you have three different effects in one spell). You can also give them movement buffs/debuffs, like Slow and Haste to round them up.

And then you need to diversify Summoning because as it stands now, it's just a big messy hodge-podge. I have a few thoughts on how to do that, but I've rambled enough for now. I'll just sum them up as "separate them via creature type/alignment/subtype/etc" or "do away with summoning spells, give the summoner specialist a single customisable creature to summon (like a familiar) and then a bunch of spells that augment specific aspects of it, like endurance, attacks, defences, resistances, movement, sneakiness, etc."

[Flickerdart]

You could give Enchantment the same empathic damage used by (Hostile) Empathic Transfer. It makes sense for the school.

[JKTrickster]

You guys are amazing.

Seriously. This is why I come to these boards. :smallbiggrin:

Also this is my first ever homebrew project. I've helped homebrew my friend's base classes and even critiqued some on this site and others, but this is genuinely my first attempt at making something of my own. Let's hope it works out :smallbiggrin:


You could give Enchantment the same empathic damage used by (Hostile) Empathic Transfer. It makes sense for the school.

This is great! It's always better to adapt and reuse something the system already has.

Do you think Enchantment should have spells that resemble Share Pain/"If you hit me I'll make you feel Pain" spells? Or in general, spells that cause Pain to the target?


Well, it's still a good idea to have a bit from every school to showcase how the changes will end up being in the end, roughly.


Well, like I said, you can still leave a bit of damage in Universal for all mages to tap into. Sometimes you really need to shoot some Magic Missiles at someone's face, and nothing else will do.

Yep definitely!

I was thinking if needed, every school should have a separate damage dealing mechanic instead of a general "magic blast". How do you feel about that?

There is still a Universal pool of magic that all casters will have spells of (Read Magic, Detect Magic, etc.) that shows their ability to sense Magic and detect the presence of Magic.

What should this Universal school also contain?


Hah, no problem, I know projects are like plants, they need to be watered or they'll wither!

Oh? What were you discussing, exactly?

Necromancy vs Healing spells and Time v Transmutation related spells mostly. The obvious fluff breakers that didn't make sense to me.


Well, fear is a good addition, but don't neglect all the other emotions in the spectrum (since D&D only seems to recognise two emotions as worth bothering with: rage and fear). Homebrew spells if you must, but remember that high-RP campaigns thrive on emotions and the like, and having spells that evoke love, distrust, hatred, trust, sorrow, joy and the like (even if they're fairly useless in combat) would really strengthen Enchantment without unbalancing it.

The rest is very good as well, especially the addition of thought spells and morale bonuses (morale debuffs should go there too, the bard spell list has lots of those, actually, and Mind Fog is a great Enchantment debuff). But again, all of that is mind-affecting and that's the most common immunity.

Oh other emotions is definitely interesting! Should it be different spells or one spell that invokes different emotions of different levels?

The Mind Affecting immunity can be bypassed by other spells or changing the definition of the immunity or the class. I'm still deciding.


Freezing Glance was a great spell and more should be made like it. Maybe move some of Transmutation's "I give you a very specific power that imitates a monster's" into Enchantment so that the Enchanter isn't completely useless against undead, constructs and the like. Or, if you want to solve this with classes, give focused enchanters (and bards, and beguilers, and so on) the ability to sacrifice spells (like the evoker does) to be able to overcome mind-affecting immunity (though the target should still get a bonus on the save).

Frezing Glance is cool! I would remove the "Cold" type though cause thematically I want it to be a total mental domination that creates the "Frozen" condition as opposed to any actual freezing (which doesn't make sense).

Why would Enchanters have the ability to mimic other monsters? :smallconfused:

Perhaps expending a spell slot can work...but that becomes very expensive at higher levels. This concept will have to be revisited when I make the class.


Another idea would be to create a new damage type (Psychic, Mental or the like) and give it to Enchantment. It's still mind-affecting, so it's still very easy to be immune to it, and it should deal less damage than any other damage type, but it would bypass typical resistances and immunities, and it would give Enchanters something to do offensively that doesn't utterly wreck the encounter like Charm Person.

I love this idea actually :smallbiggrin:


That is quite true. No-Save-Just-Die are really the worst spells in the system.

Good idea.

A'ight.

Wish and Miracle do that to you, yes. But really, if you're rebalancing the spells, might as well go all the way and rebalance the niners as well.

Most probably. I'm still looking at the big picture, and as long as the classes are balanced to each other, that is the most important part. Being Tier 3 -> Tier 2 isn't as imbalancing as the current Wizard.


An idea I had: if you ever come across something that is very good and unique and you don't want it to go away but you still see it's overpowered (like polymorph and calling), just turn it into an Incantation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm). That way, you don't lose the iconic magical effect but you let any class with enough gold, knowledge ranks and other miscellaneous resources to achieve the effect, levelling the playing field (though still skewed towards classes with knowledge ranks, sadly).

Interesting....this could potentially impact how I do away with problematic or in between spells that I don't know what to do with.



Ah, all right. That sounds good.

That's a much better magic system than the one currently around. It's a fine design goal. Rocket Tag is really the bane of the current magic system.

Thanks! Glad I could help.

They're bending time around the area the teleporter will arrive, slowing it down enough to have time to prepare themselves. Or they're slowing down the teleporter herself. Or the spell. You know, timey wimey stuff.


This is what I needed. That is a great refluff of the spell! I don't know how I didn't think of that! :smallbiggrin:



That's definitely the best bet for Divination. Less omniscience, more specificity.

Indeed, and it poses a great conundrum for the average Diviner (who's likely more paranoid than Girard himself): do you risk trusting someone to work together with them (putting the Diviner's foreknowledge with the other person's powers to affect the world) or do you sit on that foreknowledge without being able to do anything with it? It's a great roleplaying starting point for anyone playing a Diviner.


Mhm! I totally imagine the average Diviner going, "IF ONLY YOU WOULD LISTEN" and the average caster person going "IF ONLY YOU WEREN"T SO PARANOID SOUNDING" :smalltongue:


The main problem with that is that only two classes as written have any ability to deal with Conjurers. Abjurers (via spells like Dismissal, Forbiddance and the like) and Diviners (via Anticipate Teleportation). So that's not really a proper nerf, only a bonus for playing Abjurers or Diviners.

Well I'm sure I'll be able to think of other ways. For example, the Evoker has access to walls that can control the placement of the Summons, prevent LoS or LoE and (hopefully) deal enough damage to down them.

Of course then the Conjurer counters with tactical positioning, taking advantage of gaps, etc.

Hopefully it should be that a fight between any two casters is just as fun and unexpected and varied.


A proper nerf would be to remove Calling altogether (turn them into Incantations as I outlined above, if you want to keep the iconic 'bargaining with outsider' theme), then diversify the Summoning and Teleportation subschools. Maybe add the [Teleportation] descriptor to almost all Conjuration spells (save things like Dimensional Lock and Dimensional Anchor) and then expand the Teleportation subschool to something like "Transportation" so that you can diversify what it does. Include offensive things there too in the vein of Plane Shift and Baleful Transposition (homebrew a few spells that deal low amounts of weird damage, like "transdimensional", as the caster uses teleportation to offensively disrupt the target's body. This could be a type of damage that ignores incorporeal miss chance, as it affects creatures in the Ethereal/Shadow plane as well, for example).

Hmm definitely a great idea! I wasn't sure what to do with the Calling spells but I did plan to change the Summon spells to have [Teleport] descriptors.

And offensive teleportation spells sound fun :smallbiggrin:

This should be limited though because if the Diviner is the Batman, the Conjurer is the Chessmaster. "Proper Positioning is Key" and "The right person, at the right place, makes all the difference" type.


You can also let them use teleportation offensively without dealing damage. Homebrew a spell that, if the target fails its save, it disappears from the battlefield until the next round, or the round after that one (you can do a scale of effects here; if they save, they're merely Staggered for a round, if they don't, they're gone, but they can save again to come back the next round instead of the one after, that way you have three different effects in one spell). You can also give them movement buffs/debuffs, like Slow and Haste to round them up.

That sounds great!

I was actually going to fluff movement based -> time based to further strengthen Divination. Giving Haste to Diviners should be able to accurately represent speeding up Time for themselves or Slow to slow down others. What do you think?




And then you need to diversify Summoning because as it stands now, it's just a big messy hodge-podge. I have a few thoughts on how to do that, but I've rambled enough for now. I'll just sum them up as "separate them via creature type/alignment/subtype/etc" or "do away with summoning spells, give the summoner specialist a single customisable creature to summon (like a familiar) and then a bunch of spells that augment specific aspects of it, like endurance, attacks, defences, resistances, movement, sneakiness, etc."

That sounds great! I do need to relook at that because many of the Summon line were subpar options anyway. The level 9 option makes no sense :smallannoyed:

One thing I found weird was that the Conjuration school wasn't known for "bringing things from one place to another" via Teleports or Summons, but known to be good for its BFC. That irked me because that has nothing to do with Conjuration.

I want to remake into a school that can put everyone in the proper place and switch those places instantly (at higher levels). I also want to make summons viable at Level 1 - I mean a summon for 1 round is pretty meh :smallannoyed:.

EDIT:

Just to clarify (if it wasn't) I am not putting [Earth] spells or [Acid] spells into Evocation. I know its a classical element but it is mostly matter while Evocation (and all the options I chose) were Energy based in nature.

[Earth] and [Acid] can go into Transmutation.....does that sound good?

[Flickerdart]

I think there used to be emotion-based spells in 3.0 (Cause Hate/Friendship and similar) that one of the MMII monsters has as SLAs, but I don't know what book they're in. I think they cause a creature to count as 1 friendlier/unfriendlier on the Diplomacy initial attitude spectrum.

[JKTrickster]

That sounds cool, although do you believe there should be a mechanical impact?

E.g. Inspire Rage/Love/etc.?

EDIT: I just had a....weird idea.

What if instead of inspiring emotions, they allows those with strong emotions to gain power from them?

I like the idea that Enchanters can fool the mind, inspire certain emotions, even strike fear into the hearts of men...but they cannot create the strongest emotions.

But they can "draw" power from them. Amplify the bonds of love and friendship, turn raw hatred into a powerful attack that cripples the enemies' psyche, etc.

[Flickerdart]

There's a monster in MMIV (I think) called the Joystealer. It has a Charisma-damage ability, and any monster damaged to 0 CHA by a Joystealer cannot rage or benefit from morale bonuses/penalties until I think Remove Curse is applied. You could extend the concept further if you wanted to boost Enchantment.

[JKTrickster]

Wow....that seems definitely doable. Deny morale bonuses/deal some kind of mental stat damage/etc.

Definitely doable!

EDIT: Would it be sensible to give Enchantment stat damage like Ego Whip the psionic power? Or no?

[Flickerdart]

The problem with Ego Whip is that it's really strong even as-is. You would either have to make it a really high level spell, or deal with the fact that it deals few dice of damage. I would not recommend letting it scale with CL (maybe 1d6+1/2 CL max 5 or something).

[JKTrickster]

Ego Whip only does 1d4 :smallconfused:

I would probably scale it with CL somewhat with a cap (as always).

I figured it would just stay at that....like how Ray of Enfeeblement works?

[Flickerdart]

No, Ego Whip does 1d4+augment. At ML20 you could be throwing around 5d4 Ego Whips, which on average are likely to instantly take down anyone who doesn't rely on CHA and is vulnerable to the damage.

[JKTrickster]

Ahhh. The augment will probably be taken out in some form and just have +X/CL.

How does that sound?

[Flickerdart]

Well that's kind of what I'm warning against. Even 1d4+10 is guaranteed to knock out someone not focusing on CHA (will probably have it at 8-10), whereas 5d4 is likely but not guaranteed. A larger margin of chance is always more helpful for balance, because for those same people, having 1 CHA and having 10 is identical.

[JKTrickster]

Good point. One can always just limit the cap to +5 or add a stipulation that Cha cannot be reduced below 1.

Or are either of these two debilitating?

[ericgrau]

Changing it to a non-stacking ability score penalty and making it so it can't reduce an ability below 1 is the general way to fix ability damage spells. I think some core spells got fixed this way when going from 3.0 to 3.5.

As-is even someone who does focus on cha will quickly find all of his abilities useless. He may not be unconscious, but he might as well be. That would be fine if the spell merely hosed cha classes on a failed save and that was it, but point is as-written it hoses everyone. Save for half plus stackability means even on a passed save all the caster needs is another try.

[JKTrickster]

Mm those are fair points. It definitely should not be allowed at such a low level.

So far I've sketch out:

Evocation
Necromancy
Divination
Abjuration

I have done a little work in:

Conjuration
Enchantment

I have not done really anything at all for:

Illusion
Transmutation

Hmmm I need to work in those last two schools especially. And most of my Conjuration and Enchantment suggestions have really been broad strokes with no idea for the details. It will be some time before I'm remotely ready to throw together an actual list of spells.

But this is totally worth it :smallcool:

[Shadowknight12]

You guys are amazing.

Seriously. This is why I come to these boards. :smallbiggrin:

Also this is my first ever homebrew project. I've helped homebrew my friend's base classes and even critiqued some on this site and others, but this is genuinely my first attempt at making something of my own. Let's hope it works out :smallbiggrin:

Awesome. Let's hope it does!


This is great! It's always better to adapt and reuse something the system already has.

Do you think Enchantment should have spells that resemble Share Pain/"If you hit me I'll make you feel Pain" spells? Or in general, spells that cause Pain to the target?

That would be a good idea, especially since pain doesn't need to be mind-affecting, so it definitely helps the school.


Yep definitely!

I was thinking if needed, every school should have a separate damage dealing mechanic instead of a general "magic blast". How do you feel about that?

There is still a Universal pool of magic that all casters will have spells of (Read Magic, Detect Magic, etc.) that shows their ability to sense Magic and detect the presence of Magic.

What should this Universal school also contain?

That's a great idea. Giving every school its unique damage type will help keep them differentiated and varied enough. The problem will be, of course, balance.

Give the Universal school the sort of thing every mage should have. Detect Magic and Read Magic are great examples, along with Contingency, Wish, that type of thing. Stuff that is indispensable to all spellcasters.


Necromancy vs Healing spells and Time v Transmutation related spells mostly. The obvious fluff breakers that didn't make sense to me.

Ahh, I see.


Oh other emotions is definitely interesting! Should it be different spells or one spell that invokes different emotions of different levels?

The Mind Affecting immunity can be bypassed by other spells or changing the definition of the immunity or the class. I'm still deciding.

Different spells, definitely. One spell would make it too good and versatile. As a general rule, the more specific and narrow a spell is, the better.

That could work, yes.


Frezing Glance is cool! I would remove the "Cold" type though cause thematically I want it to be a total mental domination that creates the "Frozen" condition as opposed to any actual freezing (which doesn't make sense).

No no no no. You just missed the point of Freezing Glance. The entire reason it's not mind-affecting it's because it's literal cold. The enchanter is enchanting their eyes with that effect. It's not mental domination, it's self-enchanting.


Why would Enchanters have the ability to mimic other monsters? :smallconfused:

Because you can enchant yourself temporarily to acquire specific abilities for a short while. Just like you can enchant a sword to deal cold damage, you can enchant your eyes to petrify or freeze others with unearthly cold. Overlaps with Transmutation, yes, but I always saw Transmutation as actual transformation, rather than merely "charging something with a specific magical effect," which could well go into Enchantment.


Perhaps expending a spell slot can work...but that becomes very expensive at higher levels. This concept will have to be revisited when I make the class.

Yeah, it requires some work.


I love this idea actually :smallbiggrin:

Thanks!


Most probably. I'm still looking at the big picture, and as long as the classes are balanced to each other, that is the most important part. Being Tier 3 -> Tier 2 isn't as imbalancing as the current Wizard.

Quite true.


Interesting....this could potentially impact how I do away with problematic or in between spells that I don't know what to do with.

And it's fairer in that it makes them available for everyone.


This is what I needed. That is a great refluff of the spell! I don't know how I didn't think of that! :smallbiggrin:

Awesome. :smallamused:


Mhm! I totally imagine the average Diviner going, "IF ONLY YOU WOULD LISTEN" and the average caster person going "IF ONLY YOU WEREN"T SO PARANOID SOUNDING" :smalltongue:

Exactly! :smallbiggrin:


Well I'm sure I'll be able to think of other ways. For example, the Evoker has access to walls that can control the placement of the Summons, prevent LoS or LoE and (hopefully) deal enough damage to down them.

Of course then the Conjurer counters with tactical positioning, taking advantage of gaps, etc.

Hopefully it should be that a fight between any two casters is just as fun and unexpected and varied.

Indeed!


Hmm definitely a great idea! I wasn't sure what to do with the Calling spells but I did plan to change the Summon spells to have [Teleport] descriptors.

And offensive teleportation spells sound fun :smallbiggrin:

Good, good!


This should be limited though because if the Diviner is the Batman, the Conjurer is the Chessmaster. "Proper Positioning is Key" and "The right person, at the right place, makes all the difference" type.

The problem here is that the only thing the Conjurer can "properly position" is a summon. Or possibly themselves (but then, what will they do?). The idea is that the Conjurer is also much like the Diviner and the Abjurer in that while they are experts at placement and mobility, they lack the power to actually do anything to affect their surroundings. Necromancy, Evocation, Enchantment and Illusion are very much about creating effects that alter the world, but they in turn have problems planning, locating and protecting themselves/others or penetrating defences. Hence why they need the aid of the other schools.


That sounds great!

I was actually going to fluff movement based -> time based to further strengthen Divination. Giving Haste to Diviners should be able to accurately represent speeding up Time for themselves or Slow to slow down others. What do you think?

That works just as well, it's totally up to you. I can see them ending in either school. Figure out which school needs it the most (I wager Divination?) and go with that.


That sounds great! I do need to relook at that because many of the Summon line were subpar options anyway. The level 9 option makes no sense :smallannoyed:

One thing I found weird was that the Conjuration school wasn't known for "bringing things from one place to another" via Teleports or Summons, but known to be good for its BFC. That irked me because that has nothing to do with Conjuration.

I want to remake into a school that can put everyone in the proper place and switch those places instantly (at higher levels). I also want to make summons viable at Level 1 - I mean a summon for 1 round is pretty meh :smallannoyed:.

That's a good idea. Definitely solid design choices.


EDIT:

Just to clarify (if it wasn't) I am not putting [Earth] spells or [Acid] spells into Evocation. I know its a classical element but it is mostly matter while Evocation (and all the options I chose) were Energy based in nature.

[Earth] and [Acid] can go into Transmutation.....does that sound good?

No no no no no. Noooo. Firstly, that makes no sense, because [Acid] is an energy type while [Water], for example, isn't, so it makes even more sense for Acid to be in Evocation than Water or Air. No, I recommend you move all the elemental stuff to Evocation. Fluff it as all the elements being energy in its pure form and the evoker being able to evoke them as raw damage or as solid things (summons, walls, etc). That makes all the elements balanced between each other (by virtue of belonging to the same school and getting the same treatment) and gives Evocation enough variety to remain diverse without having to add anything more to it.

If you need a fluff justification, say that all the elements can exist as physical, solid things or as ephemeral energy. You can have solid Earth in a Wall of Stone or you can have ephemeral Earth in an Earth-based damage spell. After all, even Fire and Sound and Cold exist in tangible forms. A flame can be touched, sound disturbs the medium it travels through and cold is the absence of heat, which causes the typical effects of temperature drops.

You can say that in the cosmos, the elements exist as pure energy, and the evokers draw upon that to cast spells of their chosen element, and that lets them use the energy as is or turn it into something more solid.


That sounds cool, although do you believe there should be a mechanical impact?

E.g. Inspire Rage/Love/etc.?

EDIT: I just had a....weird idea.

What if instead of inspiring emotions, they allows those with strong emotions to gain power from them?

I like the idea that Enchanters can fool the mind, inspire certain emotions, even strike fear into the hearts of men...but they cannot create the strongest emotions.

But they can "draw" power from them. Amplify the bonds of love and friendship, turn raw hatred into a powerful attack that cripples the enemies' psyche, etc.

Definitely give Enchantment the ability to inspire all types of emotion in others. Enchantment should be a VERY morally dubious school (worse than Necromancy), since the ability to dominate/read minds and force others to feel things they wouldn't normally feel strays VERY quickly into squicky territory. And that's what Enchantment should be like. Moral quandaries for the whole family!

The problem with drawing power from emotions is that it's wholly DM-dependant, so it's very hard to balance properly, since it's highly situational. A good example of a spell that could work like that would be a spell that gives a bonus to attack based on the target's hatred. But the player will always want the maximum bonus possible, so they will always aim for maximum hatred. And if you leave it in the hands of the DM, they will assign the bonus that's most convenient for them.

What you can do is homebrew a spell that, unless you cast an emotion-manipulation spell first, lets the DM decide what bonus you get (or what penalties your enemies get). But if you use a spell that manipulates the target's emotion (such as a spell that creates hatred in a character and then a spell that gives you a bonus to attack based on the hatred the character feels), then the enchanter gets to decide the size of the bonus/penalty. That would be fairly balanced, provided there's a cap to the bonus/penalty. You could also homebrew spells that afflict the target with a condition, such as Stunned or Staggered (based on feelings of love, lust, joy, sorrow, shock, etc) with a spectrum of effects. Again, if you cast it alone, the DM decides the effect, but if you spend a spell previously to ensure you get the right emotion at the right intensity, you get to decide the outcome.


Changing it to a non-stacking ability score penalty and making it so it can't reduce an ability below 1 is the general way to fix ability damage spells. I think some core spells got fixed this way when going from 3.0 to 3.5.

As-is even someone who does focus on cha will quickly find all of his abilities useless. He may not be unconscious, but he might as well be.

This is very true and you should listen to this guy. In short, ability damage/drain is a VERY bad idea. The only school it might belong in is Necromancy (along with energy drain) and even then it should be very carefully monitored.

For Necromancy, if you want to keep ability/level drain/damage, you want to either keep the damage to a minimum, provide lots of ways for the target to save/evade/etc, cause the same damage/drain to the caster (and make sure they can't cheese their way out of paying the cost) or all of the above.

Ability damage/drain and level drain can and will wreck most encounters (just like having control of undead creatures that deal ability damage/drain, level drain and create spawn that do the same). They are not to be handled lightly.

[JKTrickster]

Awesome. Let's hope it does!



That would be a good idea, especially since pain doesn't need to be mind-affecting, so it definitely helps the school.

What I was thinking :smallbiggrin:


That's a great idea. Giving every school its unique damage type will help keep them differentiated and varied enough. The problem will be, of course, balance.

It could be simply a matter of making school flavored damaging spells for each class.

Would it be bad if one (or even some) schools didn't have the abilit to use magic -> damage outright?

For example what if Conjuration depended on summons to to deal damage?


Give the Universal school the sort of thing every mage should have. Detect Magic and Read Magic are great examples, along with Contingency, Wish, that type of thing. Stuff that is indispensable to all spellcasters.

I will have to compile a good list soon...

Why Wish? Or Contingency?


Ahh, I see.

Different spells, definitely. One spell would make it too good and versatile. As a general rule, the more specific and narrow a spell is, the better.

That could work, yes.


Okay. I was thinking multiple spells across different "levels" or strengths of "emotions".


No no no no. You just missed the point of Freezing Glance. The entire reason it's not mind-affecting it's because it's literal cold. The enchanter is enchanting their eyes with that effect. It's not mental domination, it's self-enchanting.

I was actually thinking that it could mess with the nervous system a.k.a. not be Mind Affecting, but not turning their eyes into ice cubes.


Because you can enchant yourself temporarily to acquire specific abilities for a short while. Just like you can enchant a sword to deal cold damage, you can enchant your eyes to petrify or freeze others with unearthly cold. Overlaps with Transmutation, yes, but I always saw Transmutation as actual transformation, rather than merely "charging something with a specific magical effect," which could well go into Enchantment.

Actually this has given me some idea for Enchantment/Transmutation/Necromancy. See below.



The problem here is that the only thing the Conjurer can "properly position" is a summon. Or possibly themselves (but then, what will they do?). The idea is that the Conjurer is also much like the Diviner and the Abjurer in that while they are experts at placement and mobility, they lack the power to actually do anything to affect their surroundings. Necromancy, Evocation, Enchantment and Illusion are very much about creating effects that alter the world, but they in turn have problems planning, locating and protecting themselves/others or penetrating defences. Hence why they need the aid of the other schools.

Well one, Conjurers can position their allies as well. The Evoker is surrounded? Not anymore! He needs to be closer? Sure! Now he needs to be far, far away? Okay!

And then there's the enemies - after all we agreed on offensive teleportation effects too!




No no no no no. Noooo. Firstly, that makes no sense, because [Acid] is an energy type while [Water], for example, isn't, so it makes even more sense for Acid to be in Evocation than Water or Air. No, I recommend you move all the elemental stuff to Evocation. Fluff it as all the elements being energy in its pure form and the evoker being able to evoke them as raw damage or as solid things (summons, walls, etc). That makes all the elements balanced between each other (by virtue of belonging to the same school and getting the same treatment) and gives Evocation enough variety to remain diverse without having to add anything more to it.

Actually I only said [Cold]...never [Water] :smallconfused:

Cold I see as the application of energy to create an exothermic reaction, so it doesn't violate the Laws of Thermodynamics.

In my mind, I don't have to give the Classical Elements any leeway. Sure they exist as planes, but that would matter to an Elementalist. That an Evoker definitely is not. An Evoker manipulates Energy, even if that Energy is in different forms.


If you need a fluff justification, say that all the elements can exist as physical, solid things or as ephemeral energy. You can have solid Earth in a Wall of Stone or you can have ephemeral Earth in an Earth-based damage spell. After all, even Fire and Sound and Cold exist in tangible forms. A flame can be touched, sound disturbs the medium it travels through and cold is the absence of heat, which causes the typical effects of temperature drops.

You can say that in the cosmos, the elements exist as pure energy, and the evokers draw upon that to cast spells of their chosen element, and that lets them use the energy as is or turn it into something more solid.

For this part see the whole Enchantment/Transmutation/Necromancy idea. Actually by now I should add Evocation....

But a major factor: Evocation is currently bursting at its seams. It is filled with MUCH more spells than the other schools, especially Conjuration (which has been gutted), Divination (never had much spells to begin with), and even Abjuration (which mainly has Force + Prismatic + some other defensive spells). I cannot add more spells unless I am sure that it will be balanced for the other schools.


Definitely give Enchantment the ability to inspire all types of emotion in others. Enchantment should be a VERY morally dubious school (worse than Necromancy), since the ability to dominate/read minds and force others to feel things they wouldn't normally feel strays VERY quickly into squicky territory. And that's what Enchantment should be like. Moral quandaries for the whole family!

The problem with drawing power from emotions is that it's wholly DM-dependant, so it's very hard to balance properly, since it's highly situational. A good example of a spell that could work like that would be a spell that gives a bonus to attack based on the target's hatred. But the player will always want the maximum bonus possible, so they will always aim for maximum hatred. And if you leave it in the hands of the DM, they will assign the bonus that's most convenient for them.

That is true. I was thinking of creating various conditions, similar to Fear conditions, to emulate this.


What you can do is homebrew a spell that, unless you cast an emotion-manipulation spell first, lets the DM decide what bonus you get (or what penalties your enemies get). But if you use a spell that manipulates the target's emotion (such as a spell that creates hatred in a character and then a spell that gives you a bonus to attack based on the hatred the character feels), then the enchanter gets to decide the size of the bonus/penalty. That would be fairly balanced, provided there's a cap to the bonus/penalty. You could also homebrew spells that afflict the target with a condition, such as Stunned or Staggered (based on feelings of love, lust, joy, sorrow, shock, etc) with a spectrum of effects. Again, if you cast it alone, the DM decides the effect, but if you spend a spell previously to ensure you get the right emotion at the right intensity, you get to decide the outcome.

That is....an interesting idea.

On one hand, I love the idea of combinations. Each spells being worked with another sounds amazing to me.

But I don't want to make it into a "spell tax". Casting upwards of 3 spells would get insane really quickly. I would want to treat this like Fear effects. Certain spells create certain conditions. When those conditions are met, other spells can take advantage/be utilized to their full capability.


This is very true and you should listen to this guy. In short, ability damage/drain is a VERY bad idea. The only school it might belong in is Necromancy (along with energy drain) and even then it should be very carefully monitored.

Agreed. See below.



For Necromancy, if you want to keep ability/level drain/damage, you want to either keep the damage to a minimum, provide lots of ways for the target to save/evade/etc, cause the same damage/drain to the caster (and make sure they can't cheese their way out of paying the cost) or all of the above.

Ability damage/drain and level drain can and will wreck most encounters (just like having control of undead creatures that deal ability damage/drain, level drain and create spawn that do the same). They are not to be handled lightly.

All true. Perhaps we may not even have any....but that can be left for the specifics. Let's focus on that Enchantment/Transmutation/Evocation/Whatever stuff I promised you.

__________________________________________________ ______________

Before I start, have you ever seen Full Metal Alchemist? If you have, then you should see where I am going....

Evocation is the application of Magic onto energy forces by changing temperature ([Fire] and [Cold]), pressure (strictly talking about [Air] and [Sound]), the static charges ([Electricity]) or even the light ([Dark and [Light]) in the surroundings. Magic is the catalyst here and it is through Magic that such effects occur.

Evocation is not the Elementalist. They do not draw their power from the Elemental Planes, nor do they know anything special about these planes. They study vigorously how to use Magic as a catalyst to create fire, not depend on the Elemental Plane of Fire (or even the Elemental Sense of Fire as a philosophical concept) for a source of power.

Mechanically, I want Evocation to have access to non-damaging spells but I do not want it to be the BFC school. If it had ALL of these spells, then it would be the new Conjuration (between BFC, Damage, and Summons, I don't think I'm making an exaggeration here).

Instead it will have access to primarily Walls, Energy Transformative effects, and Summon Elementals for non damaging spells. I may remove the last one (and deny it to all schools, giving it to a Elemental class if I ever homebrew one) if I feel Evocation is the new Conjuration.

My reason for denying them [Acid] and spells like Wall of Sand is because this will give it too many BFC spells. It is a matter of balance. Fluff wise, Earth is an element, it has a philosophical and ephemeral sense to it, but not a Energy base to it. If I do not draw the line at Earth then Evocation could theoretically affect EVERYTHING since EVERYTHING can have energy applied to it to make changes. This was what made Conjuration (Creation) and Transmutation out of control.

Transmutation is the application of Magic on the Ley Lines - the magical streams of energy that permeate the land. These Ley Lines change everyday, naturally through the growth of living beings on the plane. Transmuters seek to warp the Ley Lines to create much more drastic changes, changing terrain and weather to their whims. While dramatic, such effects do not last as the Ley Lines must always seek equilibrium again.

Transmuters will lose almost all of its buffs spells, Time spells, and even its shagechange/polymorph type spells. In fact, it will only contain BFC spells such as Fogs, [Acid] spells, and Earth themed spells. I do not mean ALL BFC spells. That would be crazy. Only those that I listed above would count, and any others I believe as necessary to achieve balance.

If this is too strong, I would simply delete some of the BFC spells entirely. I never planned on including every spell ever printed by WoTC. Only enough so that each school is varied, but I will limit them so that each school is balanced. Just because a spell is out there and it could fit into Transmutation (or any other school) does not mean it has to be included - if the school does not need the help, it will receive none.

BFC is a very strong tool. Any school that has a lot amount of these spells cannot have any other type in order to preserve balance. Note: It is not the only school with BFC. Abjuration will have its fair share of Force effects that are much more durable and longer lasting. Even Evocation will have a variety of Wall spells (and other spells that serve along the same role at higher levels).

The difference is that Transmutation will look a lot like Full Metal Alchemist (for this exercise, ignore Roy and Armstrong - they are not Transmuters for this exercise. Ignore when they make weapons out of the ground, I don't intend for that. I am talking about when they touch the ground and create a pillar, but this pillar is now temporary instead of a permanent fixture). Transmutation will be able to do various AoE and BFC effects that make every battlefield in their favor.

But I will be editing many of these BFC spells. I know they are right now they end encounters too easily. I will be shortening their duration, extending casting time, and adding saves as necessary.

Transmutation is no longer a school that "creates changes" in other things. It now only affect the land and environment and its versatility should have rapidly decreased.

For Enchantment, they will have some of the buffs after they have been changed or refluffed.

Enchantment is the school of Magic over Emotions, Mind, and Pain. They study the psyche of not only humanoids but creatures all over the world and the planes. They understand how some beings have minds so complex that is almost impossible to perceive their thoughts, and some who seem to have minds so simple, it is hard to even call them sentient.

But the skilled Enchanter can change them all.

Emotions are a Elemental Force - they are Incarnations, pivotal forces in the universe. While beings can shield their mind from Enchanters, they cannot shield Emotion. Rationality can be protected. Irrationality cannot.

Certain, new Emotion spells are not [Mind Affecting, and only those at the higher level. Only skilled Enchanters can tap into those Incarnations, emulate them, and use them against opponents with Mind Affecting immunity.

This is like the Binder almost, and will definitely be a part of the class as well (I do not imagine the spells to be the full part of this of course).

But I will add a cost to them - using them also incurs the same cost of the caster. After all no one is protected, not even the Enchanter. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the backlash on the Enchanter. This is a much more interesting cost on the caster and it fits with the morality aspect you wanted - incur positive emotions in your allies, you are bringing happiness to yourself. Bring too much hate onto your enemies, and watch as hatred fill you - destroys you.

This will take the most time to balance, but I think this is what I needed for Enchantment. Something provocative and hard like this.

Enchantment will very much be Buffs and Debuffs of different natures, and some Pain related spells for damage.

I do not want Enchantment to be emulating Monsters and other such effects.

Here is my though on such matters:

It's broken.

This is why Polymorph, and the like, were broken. There are a lot of monsters out there. Being able to emulate any of them deserves its own special class with a strict eye over looking at it.

Even if you limit it to X ability or Y ability, I do not want to have this precedence in Magic.

There will be a completely different magic system that emulates the monsters and beasts of the world. Or maybe not. I do not feel this relic is flavorful or important enough to include (as of right now).

Necromancy is the study of Magic on the Soul and the Life force. They primarily use Positive and Negative Energy - which is much different than the Energy Evocation uses because these have a Planar origin.

Necromancy should be capable of great good and malice. Their spells can heal as well as hurt, raise the dead back to life or bind their souls for a century of servitude.

First, I believe there needs to be a whole subschool that deals with the Incorporeal and the Souls. That would be an interesting addition that doesn't force any moral restrictions - this doesn't just include spells that trap souls for power but also spells that speak to the dead, ask for their guidance, and free them from their binds and allow them to pass on.

Necromancy deals Ability Damage/Drain primarily through Undead and Negative Energy.

As a general rule, what if these never stacked and never dropped something below 0?

I am fiddling with this idea because I want enough schools to have a counter to it. Abjuraton can deny it and a Positive Energy Necromancer can heal it. But what about the other schools?

This is definitely a hard subject to touch....


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Wow that took...a long time to write! But wow I'm done :smalltongue:

This is a preliminary look at the schools. I still haven't sketched out the others and there are probably mainly holes in the ones I have described for now.

I hope for a good and honest critique, but I also hope you can understand the worries I have.

Mechanics is first and foremost. They all must be balanced. That is the goal.

Without that, this whole project is useless.

Fluff is secondary. Not only can I homebrew, or find homebrew, I can refluff spells. I can exclude spells even (as I have shown).

I am pretty adamant of the "Emulating Monsters" and "Removing all Transformative effects aside from Elemental". But if I'm doing anything wrong, please tell me.

But I feel no reason to "preserve" relics from an older edition simply because they were included before. I never played 1E, 2E, or even 3E before. I feel no reason why I should bother complying with these old stereotypes that are no longer appropriate.

Many have said that in order to re-balance magic, you have to remake all of the spells. That is kind of true. I will remake those that I feel are necessary and worth the effort.

Everything else can be edited out - nothing is sacred enough that it "has to be included" - only if it can balance the classes and the schools.

With that in mind, please critique what I have for now. I obviously haven't thought of all the sides so I would need more input on this.

[Shadowknight12]

It could be simply a matter of making school flavored damaging spells for each class.

Would it be bad if one (or even some) schools didn't have the abilit to use magic -> damage outright?

For example what if Conjuration depended on summons to to deal damage?

You can solve that by giving Universal a very inefficient (but accessible to all mages) way of dealing generic damage. That means you're under no compunction to give schools a way of dealing damage, beyond the ones you want to.


I will have to compile a good list soon...

Why Wish? Or Contingency?

Wish is both the best and the worst spell in the game. It's the best because it does a few things no other spell can do (such as curing some afflictions/curses/special effects/killing the Tarrasque/etc) and then lets you replicate lower-level spells (which is frankly invaluable, especially if you're going to make other schools unavailable to specialists.

It's also the worst because it's the most open ended of all spells (with the possible exception of Miracle, which in that specific aspect could be arguably worse than Wish) and that is the worst thing a spell could possibly be. There's also the fact that it's the poster child for "Magic Can Do Anything Ever" thing that a lot of people (myself included) dislike. A possible way to fix Wish is to make it more like Miracle. Let it replace other spells, get rid of the clause that lets it create items (magical or not), let it continue to get rid of the things only a Wish can get rid of, get rid of the inherent bonuses to abilities and let it revive/transport/undo misfortune. In the "open ended" clause of Wish, make it so that it's not up to the player whether it succeeds or not. The player makes his Wish and the DM evaluates it. If the DM concedes it, it happens. If he does not, the spell is wasted (and no XP cost is paid). Same thing for Miracle and Limited Wish.

Contingency is one of those spells that are just in the edge of "good" and "too good." Contingency is a spell that, quite frankly, gives a very distinct advantage to casters by letting them have "precast" spells to trigger just when they need it the most. The arguable thing is whether they need this to survive or not. It's entirely up to you whether you feel the casters are already powerful enough without it. However, Craft Contingent Spell is a feat that duplicates this effect (albeit with a GP cost) so make of that what you will.

Permanency is downright necessary to maintain the cohesion of your standard fantasy setting. Almost all magical effects are temporary, so we needed a spell that made them permanent, especially when it came to defences and enhancements cast on locations.

Prestidigitation is the most useful cantrip ever. Definitely belongs in Universal.

You might want to move Mage's Lucubration, Mage Hand, Miracle, Mnemonic Enhancer, Helping Hand, Imbue with Spell Ability, Spellstaff and (if you want) Disintegrate to Universal, along with Read Magic and Detect Magic.


Okay. I was thinking multiple spells across different "levels" or strengths of "emotions".

So long as you have all emotions fairly represented in every level (and not, for example, Cause Fear at level 2 and Cause Love at level 4), it's fine.


I was actually thinking that it could mess with the nervous system a.k.a. not be Mind Affecting, but not turning their eyes into ice cubes.

Nervous system is still mind-affecting. What is the mind, then, but a clump of nerves? No, the spell is meant to work like a medusa's gaze. She turns creatures to stone, your gaze literally freeze creatures with actual cold. You may not like it, and that's fine, but I thought it was a welcome diversification of the school away from the extremely limited and easily thwarted "mind control" shtick.


Well one, Conjurers can position their allies as well. The Evoker is surrounded? Not anymore! He needs to be closer? Sure! Now he needs to be far, far away? Okay!

And then there's the enemies - after all we agreed on offensive teleportation effects too!

True, but all those are variables outside the Conjurer's control. He only controls himself and his summons. But I digress.


Actually I only said [Cold]...never [Water] :smallconfused:

Cold I see as the application of energy to create an exothermic reaction, so it doesn't violate the Laws of Thermodynamics.

In my mind, I don't have to give the Classical Elements any leeway. Sure they exist as planes, but that would matter to an Elementalist. That an Evoker definitely is not. An Evoker manipulates Energy, even if that Energy is in different forms.

Oh no no no no no noooooo no no. No. Don't go there. Don't do that. Don't bring physics to D&D. I'm serious, it's a terrible idea. No no no. Bad. Bad idea.

Seriously, you can use fluff and arbitrary rules as much as you want, but do NOT, ever, use RL science or physics or chemistry or whatever as your guide for D&D because you WILL create more problems than you think you're solving. Just trust me on this.

If you want to make up arbitrary rules to put X in this school and Y in that one, by all means, go ahead. But don't bring RL science into D&D. It will only end in tears.


For this part see the whole Enchantment/Transmutation/Necromancy idea. Actually by now I should add Evocation....

But a major factor: Evocation is currently bursting at its seams. It is filled with MUCH more spells than the other schools, especially Conjuration (which has been gutted), Divination (never had much spells to begin with), and even Abjuration (which mainly has Force + Prismatic + some other defensive spells). I cannot add more spells unless I am sure that it will be balanced for the other schools.

If you truly want to go with Evocation = Energy, you'll have to gut a lot of the things you've stated thus far. The only Wall that you're gonna have left is Wall of Fire. The only summon spells you'll get are the fire ones. The rest of the spells in the school are strictly damage-dealing (Fireball, Cone of Cold, Lightning Bolt, Polar Ray, Chain Lightning, Scorching Ray, Flame Strike, Shout, Shatter, Sound Burst, Sunbeam, Sunburst, etc) and the exceedingly few Darkness/Light ones (Light, Daylight, Darkness, Deeper Darkness, Continual Flame, Flare, Dancing Lights and Faerie Fire).

If you don't include the remaining classic elements (Earth, Air and Water) and the remaining energy type (Acid), you'll be left with not that much in the way of non-instantaneous effects. If you include Air, you get another set of summons, Wind Wall, Gust of Wind and Whirlwind. Whee.


That is true. I was thinking of creating various conditions, similar to Fear conditions, to emulate this.

You don't need to create new conditions, you can use the more underused ones, like Staggered, Dazzled, Dazed, Fascinated, Flat-Footed (appears often, but rarely caused by a spell other than Invisibility), Prone and Paralysed.

You can also add diversity to the current spell selection, too. Create emotional variations of Charm and Dominate, which are lower level and less likely to work, but keyed off emotions like trust, love and lust (perhaps are entirely up to the DM how long they last (though the DM is encouraged to take into consideration the character's roleplay, along with social skill rolls, of course) unless you spend spells like Create Love to maintain the creature's emotions towards you). The regular versions of Charm and Dominate would be more absolute and harder to shake off, but they should also be higher level and have their duration shortened.


That is....an interesting idea.

On one hand, I love the idea of combinations. Each spells being worked with another sounds amazing to me.

But I don't want to make it into a "spell tax". Casting upwards of 3 spells would get insane really quickly. I would want to treat this like Fear effects. Certain spells create certain conditions. When those conditions are met, other spells can take advantage/be utilized to their full capability.

The thing is, it's not a tax, because each individual spell still has a specific effect on its own. Cause Hatred still has a very specific effect worth casting it for, and Distil Hatred, for example, still gives the character a bonus based on the hatred they feel, it's just utterly in the hands of the DM. Both spells combined give the maximum benefit for true synergy, but such synergy is not necessary, merely optimal.


All true. Perhaps we may not even have any....but that can be left for the specifics. Let's focus on that Enchantment/Transmutation/Evocation/Whatever stuff I promised you.

__________________________________________________ ______________

Before I start, have you ever seen Full Metal Alchemist? If you have, then you should see where I am going....

Nope, sorry, never seen it. I heard of it, however.


Evocation is the application of Magic onto energy forces by changing temperature ([Fire] and [Cold]), pressure (strictly talking about [Air] and [Sound]), the static charges ([Electricity]) or even the light ([Dark and [Light]) in the surroundings. Magic is the catalyst here and it is through Magic that such effects occur.

Evocation is not the Elementalist. They do not draw their power from the Elemental Planes, nor do they know anything special about these planes. They study vigorously how to use Magic as a catalyst to create fire, not depend on the Elemental Plane of Fire (or even the Elemental Sense of Fire as a philosophical concept) for a source of power.

Mechanically, I want Evocation to have access to non-damaging spells but I do not want it to be the BFC school. If it had ALL of these spells, then it would be the new Conjuration (between BFC, Damage, and Summons, I don't think I'm making an exaggeration here).

Instead it will have access to primarily Walls, Energy Transformative effects, and Summon Elementals for non damaging spells. I may remove the last one (and deny it to all schools, giving it to a Elemental class if I ever homebrew one) if I feel Evocation is the new Conjuration.

I answered most of this in my previous "Don't bring actual physics to D&D" rant above. It's seriously the worst of ideas. Well, no. The worst idea would be "don't commit crimes against your players" but that one is a given.

Being arbitrary is fine, because all of D&D is arbitrary, even the stuff that's meant to simulate reality somewhat accurately. It's a terrible faux pas to mistake a crude bridge made of matchsticks with an actual bridge and assume it's safe to walk over it.


My reason for denying them [Acid] and spells like Wall of Sand is because this will give it too many BFC spells. It is a matter of balance. Fluff wise, Earth is an element, it has a philosophical and ephemeral sense to it, but not a Energy base to it. If I do not draw the line at Earth then Evocation could theoretically affect EVERYTHING since EVERYTHING can have energy applied to it to make changes. This was what made Conjuration (Creation) and Transmutation out of control.

Again, see above. You are not left with a lot of spells. Leaving direct damage aside (and adding Air to it), you only get two sets of elemental summons (fire and air), three wind spells, two darkness spells and six light spells (five of which are useless).


Transmutation is the application of Magic on the Ley Lines - the magical streams of energy that permeate the land. These Ley Lines change everyday, naturally through the growth of living beings on the plane. Transmuters seek to warp the Ley Lines to create much more drastic changes, changing terrain and weather to their whims. While dramatic, such effects do not last as the Ley Lines must always seek equilibrium again.

Uh. No, that's not what Transmutation is at all. I mean, if you want to change Transmutation to that, that's fine, but you're terribly mistaken if you think that's what it is in D&D.

Also, something you might want to know: The D&D world has no Ley Lines by default. They are purely optional additions. There're only a couple of PrCs who specifically have something to do with Ley Lines and it's also pure fluff, which can get changed if your campaign setting does not include them.

I am utterly against forcing fluff onto campaign settings because the mechanic rules don't make sense if you don't use that fluff, so I honestly can't support your new definition of Transmutation.


Transmuters will lose almost all of its buffs spells, Time spells, and even its shagechange/polymorph type spells. In fact, it will only contain BFC spells such as Fogs, [Acid] spells, and Earth themed spells. I do not mean ALL BFC spells. That would be crazy. Only those that I listed above would count, and any others I believe as necessary to achieve balance.

If this is too strong, I would simply delete some of the BFC spells entirely. I never planned on including every spell ever printed by WoTC. Only enough so that each school is varied, but I will limit them so that each school is balanced. Just because a spell is out there and it could fit into Transmutation (or any other school) does not mean it has to be included - if the school does not need the help, it will receive none.

That's not the direction I'd take Transmutation towards (I'd focus on buffing and transformation, but that's just me), but I can't really criticise your own personal preferences.


BFC is a very strong tool. Any school that has a lot amount of these spells cannot have any other type in order to preserve balance. Note: It is not the only school with BFC. Abjuration will have its fair share of Force effects that are much more durable and longer lasting. Even Evocation will have a variety of Wall spells (and other spells that serve along the same role at higher levels).

The difference is that Transmutation will look a lot like Full Metal Alchemist (for this exercise, ignore Roy and Armstrong - they are not Transmuters for this exercise. Ignore when they make weapons out of the ground, I don't intend for that. I am talking about when they touch the ground and create a pillar, but this pillar is now temporary instead of a permanent fixture). Transmutation will be able to do various AoE and BFC effects that make every battlefield in their favor.

But I will be editing many of these BFC spells. I know they are right now they end encounters too easily. I will be shortening their duration, extending casting time, and adding saves as necessary.

Transmutation is no longer a school that "creates changes" in other things. It now only affect the land and environment and its versatility should have rapidly decreased.

*shrug* See above. Not my cup of tea, but oh well.


For Enchantment, they will have some of the buffs after they have been changed or refluffed.

Enchantment is the school of Magic over Emotions, Mind, and Pain. They study the psyche of not only humanoids but creatures all over the world and the planes. They understand how some beings have minds so complex that is almost impossible to perceive their thoughts, and some who seem to have minds so simple, it is hard to even call them sentient.

But the skilled Enchanter can change them all.

Emotions are a Elemental Force - they are Incarnations, pivotal forces in the universe. While beings can shield their mind from Enchanters, they cannot shield Emotion. Rationality can be protected. Irrationality cannot.

Certain, new Emotion spells are not [Mind Affecting, and only those at the higher level. Only skilled Enchanters can tap into those Incarnations, emulate them, and use them against opponents with Mind Affecting immunity.

This is like the Binder almost, and will definitely be a part of the class as well (I do not imagine the spells to be the full part of this of course).

But I will add a cost to them - using them also incurs the same cost of the caster. After all no one is protected, not even the Enchanter. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the backlash on the Enchanter. This is a much more interesting cost on the caster and it fits with the morality aspect you wanted - incur positive emotions in your allies, you are bringing happiness to yourself. Bring too much hate onto your enemies, and watch as hatred fill you - destroys you.

Ehhhh, I sort of dig what you're doing by giving emotions more importance, but I am not sure I really follow your reasoning. If Enchantment has a tendency to be backlash-y (I'd personally do that with Necromancy, but that's a personal preference), wouldn't it stand to reason that enchanters would know how to shield themselves from these very obvious effects? I'd personally find it far easier to digest if it was Necromancy. You can't shield yourself very well from the fundamental forces of Life and Death. Shielding oneself from emotions seems trivially easy.

Personally, what I'd do to balance the enchanter would be what I suggested above, making spell effects utterly outside the enchanter's control unless they spend more spells to cause/control the emotions the previous spells are affecting. I think the entire point of the enchanter is control. They seek to control people, emotions, thoughts and the like. Emotions and the mind are chaotic and unpredictable, and a mage that seeks to tame those would easily develop a domineering iron fist (covered in a velvet glove or not). It makes for a powerful temptation and balancing tool to make them spend more resources than they should to achieve as much control as they can.

But that's just my take on it. Yours is just as valid, if a bit baffling to me (I simply fail to understand it, sorry).


This will take the most time to balance, but I think this is what I needed for Enchantment. Something provocative and hard like this.

Enchantment will very much be Buffs and Debuffs of different natures, and some Pain related spells for damage.

I do not want Enchantment to be emulating Monsters and other such effects.

*shrug* You may not like it, but that's what the school originally covered as well. Enchantment wasn't simply about mind control, but about the ability to imbue magical effects on things and people. Though Transmutation was also about that, so Enchantment only got its scraps.


Here is my though on such matters:

It's broken.

This is why Polymorph, and the like, were broken. There are a lot of monsters out there. Being able to emulate any of them deserves its own special class with a strict eye over looking at it.

Even if you limit it to X ability or Y ability, I do not want to have this precedence in Magic.

There will be a completely different magic system that emulates the monsters and beasts of the world. Or maybe not. I do not feel this relic is flavorful or important enough to include (as of right now).

As you wish. It is, of course, your prerogative. You're not unbalancing anything by removing that feature, so knock yourself out.


Necromancy is the study of Magic on the Soul and the Life force. They primarily use Positive and Negative Energy - which is much different than the Energy Evocation uses because these have a Planar origin.

Necromancy should be capable of great good and malice. Their spells can heal as well as hurt, raise the dead back to life or bind their souls for a century of servitude.

First, I believe there needs to be a whole subschool that deals with the Incorporeal and the Souls. That would be an interesting addition that doesn't force any moral restrictions - this doesn't just include spells that trap souls for power but also spells that speak to the dead, ask for their guidance, and free them from their binds and allow them to pass on.

Necromancy deals Ability Damage/Drain primarily through Undead and Negative Energy.

The souls subschool is a good idea, I like grouping them all together like that.


As a general rule, what if these never stacked and never dropped something below 0?

I am fiddling with this idea because I want enough schools to have a counter to it. Abjuraton can deny it and a Positive Energy Necromancer can heal it. But what about the other schools?

This is definitely a hard subject to touch....

You don't really get the impact of ability drain/damage. It's seriously overpowered and possibly broken in the hands of the players. The reason it's fairly meh if enemies use it on the PCs is because the PCs are generally assumed to have some downtime after a fight where they can cast Restoration and the like in order to patch themselves up. Enemies are assumed to be dead, enslaved or imprisoned by the time the PCs are done with them.

And then there's the matter of prevention. PCs are assumed to know they'll be fighting enemies with the power to drain, and as such, they have spells, items and protections available. Enemies, in general, do not have such forethought. It's trivially easy for PCs to spam a draining spell and watch mighty monsters felled by them. There's a reason Enervation and Energy Drain are the bane of non-casters, Shivering Touch is the bane of dragons and other mighty, low-dex creatures, Ego Whip owns everything and Ray of Enfeeblement usually owns unprepared casters. They're really that good.

Unless the enemy takes precautions against it, they are likely to be utterly doomed by a single casting. Most of these spells offer no saving throw. A metamagicked Enervation, in particular, is rather brutal. And even Undead, who are immune to most of these tactics, are still vulnerable to being Int-damaged, Wis-damaged and Cha-damaged.

There are only two ways to make these spells balanced (besides the obvious, which is giving them all a save and SR: Yes, which is merely the first step):

1) Make it so that the only way the spell works is if the caster takes the exact same amount of ability/level damage/drain. If the caster is immune/protected/etc, the spell fails. If the caster heals the drain/damage, the target is also healed. This leaves only two ways to abuse it: A) the caster willing takes himself out of the fight to take the target out of the fight as well, and gets healed when the fight's done; and B) the caster cripples himself in a non-crucial way to cripple the target in a crucial way (such as a wizard draining his own Strength, Wisdom or Cha to 1 versus something that is very vulnerable to getting those scores diminished, like a cleric, sorcerer or brute). This would be the easiest but less balanced method, since it has those two glaring flaws.

2) Make it so that the amount drained/damaged is very small and almost negligible (like merely 1 or 2 points per casting) and takes repeated castings to be anywhere near effective. This is the most balanced of the two, but the least satisfying. Most players would pass up these spells unless they were facing something with an abysmally low score (such as a dragon with low dex) where it might be worth casting. Still mildly abusable in the usual ways.

A third option would be relegating the drain exclusively via undead... but that means putting monsters in the hands of players, and that has always been a bad idea (see: polymorph, calling, wightocalypse). The only way to balance this is balancing the monsters... which is just adding more to your plate. Another option is to automatically weaken the draining ability and remove the ability to create spawn for every undead that comes under a player or enemy's control. That makes free-willed undead deadlier but also less predictable and avoids the infuriating double standard of heroes being hampered while an NPC does the exact same thing better. This way, a PC with a pet shadow can't destroy a whole village and get himself a whole army of shadows, and the same thing goes for an enemy necromancer. A free-willed shadow can create spawn, but for as long as its spawn is under its control, they can't create further spawns (and all spawn-creating undead should have a hard cap of HD under its control, just like a rebuking cleric or a necromancer). If the master shadow wants to expand its... conclave, it must free a spawn, which is under no obligation to do as it wills. And if the master shadow happens to have a way to control it... then the spawn loses the ability to create spawn again.

A possible way to weaken such an ability is to give the undead a pool of "negative energy points" that they consume with each attack (as well as giving the attacks a save and diminish the amount drained). To make things more interesting, the same pool of negative energy is consumed every day to keep the shadow alive (well, undead) and gets diminished whenever it's attacked by positive energy or turned. Rebuking a shadow might give it a scant few points (barely enough to keep it alive) while spending whole spells to recharge it would give it a substantial increase in the pool... but that same spell could also be used to animate another shadow, thereby keeping it balanced to what a given spell can do. More powerful undead could require more points every day and consume more points with each attack, but the amount given by a rebuking or a given spell remain fixed, thereby keeping lower-level undead relevant even as the necromancer/cleric attains higher levels.

Just an idea.


Wow that took...a long time to write! But wow I'm done :smalltongue:

This is a preliminary look at the schools. I still haven't sketched out the others and there are probably mainly holes in the ones I have described for now.

I hope for a good and honest critique, but I also hope you can understand the worries I have.

Well, I personally WOULD turn the Evoker into the Elementalist (without the BFCs, merely the walls, the elemental summons and the direct damage), give Transmutation most of the BFC along with some buffing and debuffing, and then the suggestions for Enchantment and Necromancy I outlined above. I am frankly very much against the physics approach and the idea of the Ley Lines is very leery to me, since I'm against forcing fluff on a DM's campaign setting as a matter of principle.


Mechanics is first and foremost. They all must be balanced. That is the goal.

Without that, this whole project is useless.

Fluff is secondary. Not only can I homebrew, or find homebrew, I can refluff spells. I can exclude spells even (as I have shown).

I am pretty adamant of the "Emulating Monsters" and "Removing all Transformative effects aside from Elemental". But if I'm doing anything wrong, please tell me.

And I did.


But I feel no reason to "preserve" relics from an older edition simply because they were included before. I never played 1E, 2E, or even 3E before. I feel no reason why I should bother complying with these old stereotypes that are no longer appropriate.

Many have said that in order to re-balance magic, you have to remake all of the spells. That is kind of true. I will remake those that I feel are necessary and worth the effort.

Everything else can be edited out - nothing is sacred enough that it "has to be included" - only if it can balance the classes and the schools.

With that in mind, please critique what I have for now. I obviously haven't thought of all the sides so I would need more input on this.

Well, I hope I did a good job with the critique, though you're obviously free to ignore anything that doesn't jive with your own principles. Otherwise, feel free to ask me to elaborate. I cut myself short as much as I can to avoid wall-of-texting.

[JKTrickster]

I'm not going to go point by point mainly because I want to move this to a new thread. I'll just post some quick comments here.

Just to start it off quickly, I totally understand your viewpoint. After giving it some thought, I think it has a lot of merits. I also understand the error of using too much science in my fluff - that will be amended in the future.

I understand why you want to place [Earth] spells in Evocation. In fact I initially wanted to do so to. But I was afraid of making Evocation too strong.

You want to separate the BFCs out of Evocation....but that doesn't work because [Earth] is almost completely BFC. That actually doesn't quite work. And then if I do manage to split it up, then it doesn't really make sense. If Evocation is the Elementalist, then it should have ALL of those spells. But that creates a big imbalance.

If possible, I would want transmutation to be buffs + transformation. But that...gets messy. Here's why:

The following schools would have BFC:

Transmtuation

The following schools would have buffs:

Transmutation
Enchantment
Divination
Abjuration
Necromancy

Now why do so many schools have buffs?

Enchantment provides moral bonuses. We already covered this. If you want to add in magical enchantments as well, that doubles this.

Divination provides insight bonuses to attack, init, etc. It will probably also provide Luck bonuses because I believe Divination should be the only school with Luck/Fate related spells.

Abjuration is the protective/deterrent school so its buffs would resemble shield, and force bonuses of some sort. I'll group it in here as protective spells but yeah.

Now Necromancy is probably the one that surprises you the most. Remember how Necromancy is positive and negative energy? Well if negative energy drains, that I feel we should homebrew/assign some spells to reflect positive energy buffs. Not sure how to do it but it logically makes sense.

See how this becomes an issue? Transmutation ends up being other schools + BFC and that's really hard to balance. Especially when some of those schools are like Divination.

You see the issue here?

Finally, I have a huge issue with Illusion right now. I simply can't create a viable school. How are illusions supposed to do any real damage to the opponent? In the past, illusions were tricky because it might be a real spell or an illusion.

But against an illusionist who only have illusions and shadow spells....that pales in comparison to being any other caster. How should I balance this?

I'm going to create a new thread for this. Hope you can continue the discussion with me!