Your Schools of Magic

[Saidoro]

Inspired by the discussion over here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=284636&page=3).

If you could redefine D&D's schools of magic how would you do so?


Here's my method, four schools each focused on manipulating one specific thing with a wide variety of game-mechanical effects. Each are broad enough to be more usefully defined by what they can't do then what they can. The four schools:
Conjuration: Conjuration manipulates the stuff of the outer planes, faith. It contains the most versatile summons and the best mind control type effects and illusions. Conjuration has a difficult time acting directly, preferring intermediaries either summoned or controlled.
Evocation: Evocation controls the stuff of the elemental planes. This includes most of the traditional evocation school plus large chunks of what was once conjuration and transmutation, things like elemental summons or weather control. Evocation has no real way of effecting the mind of anything that isn't an elemental.
Necromancy: Necromancy controls the stuff of the positive and negative energy planes. It heals, it creates undead, and it has access to a number of highly specialized mind affecting effects. Unlike the other schools, Necromancy really has no way of effecting anything that is not either living or dead.
Abjuration:Abjuration controls the stuff of magic. It's the major exception to the "schools have many effects" rule, Abjuration has only a few things it can do but those few things are very broad. Teleport, plane shift, telekinesis and force effects all find their place in Abjuration.

So, what are your thoughts on the subject? How would you define the schools?

[Eldan]

I would probably go very broad and then include specializations. A suggestion would be:

Mind, Matter, Energy.

The first is mostly what is now Illusion and Enchantment. The second is Conjuration and Transmutation, or at least some of it. The last is Evocation and Abjuration, and bits and pieces from here or there. Probably Necromancy, too.

[Yora]

I like the schools from Dragon Age: Creation (healing, transmutation, conjuration), entropy (necromancy), elements (evocation), and spirit (illusion, abjuration, divination, enchantment).

[Setra]

I like the current schools honestly, though I would swap some spells around and maybe try to simplify what each school is.

That said... I actually like the Orb spells as conjuration (Except Orb of Force).

[Yora]

Orbs are a travesty and mockery of the school system!

Also, healing needs to go back to necromancy. It's the power over life and death and manipulating life energy. Not just draining life energy.

[Setra]

Orbs are a travesty and mockery of the school system!

Also, healing needs to go back to necromancy. It's the power over life and death and manipulating life energy. Not just draining life energy.
I definitely agree with healing as necromancy.

The reason I like Orbs as Conjuration is... I figure Wizards are smart, and they know some things resist spells... so they make spells that summon the strongest non-magical whatever they can and throw it at people. Maybe Dragon Breath or a small chunk of the sun, for example.

[Saidoro]

I would probably go very broad and then include specializations. A suggestion would be:

Mind, Matter, Energy.

The first is mostly what is now Illusion and Enchantment. The second is Conjuration and Transmutation, or at least some of it. The last is Evocation and Abjuration, and bits and pieces from here or there. Probably Necromancy, too.
Cool. Matter and energy might have some odd overlaps but nothing too major.

I like the schools from Dragon Age: Creation (healing, transmutation, conjuration), entropy (necromancy), elements (evocation), and spirit (illusion, abjuration, divination, enchantment).
Those work well enough for a combat game, but entropy and elements seem a bit limited compared to the others in something more open ended like D&D.

I definitely agree with healing as necromancy.

The reason I like Orbs as Conjuration is... I figure Wizards are smart, and they know some things resist spells... so they make spells that summon the strongest non-magical whatever they can and throw it at people. Maybe Dragon Breath or a small chunk of the sun, for example.
But if that's so easy to do, why isn't it the primary means of engagement rather than big, hard to control fireballs?

[Setra]

But if that's so easy to do, why isn't it the primary means of engagement rather than big, hard to control fireballs?
Trying to figure out what you mean by primary means of engagement.

[Saidoro]

Trying to figure out what you mean by primary means of engagement.
The first option someone thinks of when they come across a problem like "that guy over there needs to be not alive." Evocation is treated in universe as the first option for warfare, but if conjuration is just as capable(and it is) why does the school of evocation even exist?

[Yora]

The question is: Why aren't they using conjuration like that all the time and still use evocations?

Orbs are better at doing exactly the same thing that evocation spells do, without being evocations. And the only explaination I can think of is that the writer wanted to be able to cast evocations with a specialist wizard that has blocked access to evocations.
By that logic, I could make an evocation spell that cures damage and goes on the wizard spell list. That's not how the schools are supposed to work.

[Deepbluediver]

One of the few things I really liked about D&D's magic system was the ability to divide things into very specific schools, so you could affect (either positively or negatively) very specific subsets of magic for a given encounter or story.

For the sake of familiarity and simplicity for a revised system, I would generally keep the standard 8+1 designations, and alter their descriptions and what they incude bit. I would also teak the dual-school rules to be less stupid and have more dual-school spells.

This is mostly copy-pasta'd from my old thread regarding spell schools (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=264327).

Abjuration: Nearly all spells with defensive effects fall here, including some force effects and counter-magic. Shares "hiding" style spells with Illusion.
*subschools: Negation

Conjuration: Mostly summoning creatures, teleportation & interplanar travel with a little matter-generation.
*subschools: Creation, Teleportation, Summoning

Divination: Anything dealing with transfer of information, visions, or enhancing the senses.
*subschools: none

Enchantment: Nearly all mental-related effects fall in this school; primarily for controlling other creatures (either subtlely or directly).
*subschools: none

Evocation: Engery-related and blaster-type spells. If a spell has a Fire, Cold, Electric, or Force descriptor, and isn't a creature-summon, it's evocation. Some [Light] effects are also present, shared with Illusion.
*subschools: none

Illusion: Control over light and sound and other ways of manipulating the senses. Most of the spells that immitate other schools are gone.
*subschools: Figment, Glamer

Necromancy: Deals with positive and negative energy (including healing), resurrections, and soul-related magic.
*subschools: Decay, Vitality, Spirit

Transmutation: Changes the form and characteristics of existing matter, and at a high level, even time itself.
*subschools: Temporal


If I where going to reduce things slightly, Illusion and Enchantment would be merged into one school with all the "mind-affecting" stuff, and the [Light] and [Sonic] spells would be moved to Evocation. Abjuration would also be dissolved since it's a school definded more by intent than mechanics, and it's effects spread around to the various other school as appropriate.

If I had to reduce things majorly, I'd probably put everything in one of three super-schools (super as in the opposite of sub):

Summoning (Conjuration, Evocation, some Necromancy, some Abjuration)
Perception (Enchantment, Illusion, & Divination)
Alteration (Transmutation, some Necromancy, some Abjuration)

[Setra]

The first option someone thinks of when they come across a problem like "that guy over there needs to be not alive." Evocation is treated in universe as the first option for warfare, but if conjuration is just as capable(and it is) why does the school of evocation even exist?
Good point, I'd probably just remove evocation....

[GreenSerpent]

Also, healing needs to go back to necromancy. It's the power over life and death and manipulating life energy. Not just draining life energy.

I immediately thought of Dazzle from DOTA.

"Heal... and Harm!"

This could have very interesting implications - because it'd create a two-sided coin for Necromancers.

[Deepbluediver]

The first option someone thinks of when they come across a problem like "that guy over there needs to be not alive." Evocation is treated in universe as the first option for warfare, but if conjuration is just as capable(and it is) why does the school of evocation even exist?


Good point, I'd probably just remove evocation....

I think it sort of depends on how you want to define each school as well. As people have pointed out, nearly EVERYTHING can be a subset of Conjuration if you fluff it correctly.

I like to think of it this way: Evocation is specifically control over energy via generation (how you violate the known laws of physics to do this is immaterial, its just magic).
Conjuration is opening the doorway to somewhere and pulling through a specific creature or item. You can't do this for energy because you can't really grab a chunk of energy, and there's no really controllable way to open a door to the elemental plane and get "just a little bit of fire".


No one needs to agree with me, that's entirely my own opinion, and I acknowledge that it's not a perfect explanation of how things work. But I think its fairly straightforward for the majority of cases and keeps conjuration from swallowing up everything else, Pac-man-style.

[Waker]

Evocation- Is all about redirecting energy. All spells with an elemental, light, dark or force tag are Evocation. This does not include summoning spells which gain an elemental tag when summoning a creature with an elemental subtype.
Abjuration- Is all about cancelling magic. All spells that interfere with creatures or spells go here.
Transmutation- Is all about manipulating matter. If you change something physically, it goes here. This includes several of the Wall effects from Conjuration (Stone, Iron...)
Psychomancy- Is all about clouding perception. This school embodies both Illusion and Enchantment. Also stole the Fear effect spells.
Animancy- Is all about manipulating the soul. Includes a bunch of stuff like Conjuration (Healing), Necromancy as well as the creation of things like Golems.
Conjuration- Is all about connecting two points. You either summon something to you or you to something else. Teleportation, Calling, Ethereality and so on.
Divination- Is all about being a Know-It-All.
That is my simple approach to the magic schools.

[Devils_Advocate]

Old post of mine on the subject. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5872119#post5872119)

Broadly speaking, I'd say that there are three main types of effect:

- Altering the mental properties of creatures. (Mainly, Divination alters knowledge, Illusion alters perception, and Enchantment alters emotions.)
- Physically transforming or manipulating objects, creatures, or substances. (Transmutation is the primary school for this.)
- Making things appear and disappear. (Conjuration and Evocation, generally.)

So perhaps things could be primarily divided along those lines, and then subdivided further?

I'm not sure that there's a need for Abjuration, really. Protective spells can mostly be divided up based on what they protect against. This is how psionics does it. Heck, it's how protective spells are classified sometimes already, depending on designer whim; see death ward (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/deathWard.htm), for example. Dispel magic should really be Universal.

[DMVerdandi]

Enlightenment Schools of Magic :smallcool:

1. Biomancy
(Life magic. Necromancy no longer deals with negatives, but re-animation is seen as putting life back into dead matter. Things like curses and such yield to viral spells, bacterial magics and such. Also absorbs most druid spells.)

2. Alchemy
(transmutation and some conjuration. Deals with shifting properties of Inert matter.)

3.Metaphysics
(Controls the properties of time/space,energy,and force.)

4.Psychomancy
(Power over the soul, spirit, and mind. Illusion and enchantment both are absorbed by this, as is alignment spells.)

5.Theosophy
(Deals with pacts with supernatural creatures and outsiders. Summonings, gates, aid, ect.)

6.Omniscience
(Power to draw from conceptual reality of ideas and thought, to gather information about ALL subjects and objects, developing one's personal Akashic Library)

[Jeff the Green]

Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure, but here's a rough idea.


Biotomancy. Deals with life. Healing (particularly things that cause the body to heal itself, like vigor), disrupting life force, summoning or messing with plants or animals. Transmuting living creatures.
Elemental magic. Deals with the elements. In standard D&D metaphysics, that's fire, water, air, and earth, plus possibly positive and negative energy, shadow. This could result in healing from two schools with different approaches. Summoning or binding elementals. Creating material (but not shaping it).
Pact magic. Deals with bargains. Binding Vestiges, summoning outsiders, bargaining with outsiders for information or services.
Divination. Learning things.
Illusion. Exactly what it says on the tin.
Enchantment. Mental stuff.
Transmutation. Shaping inanimate matter. Creating constructs, animated objects, etc.
Entropomancy. Manipulating luck and decay. Rerolls, bonuses and penalties, curses, redirecting rays etc., withering and decomposing.


Then you could have spells with two schools. Most of the wall spells would be Elemental/Transmutation, because they create stone/salt/iron and shape it into a wall. Shadow spells would be Illusion/Elemental. Animating undead could be Biotomancy/Elemental, Biotomancy/Enchantment, or Biotomancy/Transmutation, depending on how it's fluffed.