how balanced is this?

[lunar2]

how balanced would it be if calling spells simply worked like reverse teleportation? all they do is bring the creature or object to you, they do not compel it to act in any particular fashion. so a "call lesser creature" spell works like lesser planar binding, but without the binding part. you could still use magic circles to hold the creature in place, but you'd have no way to force them to act without further use of spells, such as charm or dominate.

i'm asking because in the setting i'm working on, i'm using 4 limited list casters, and i'm trying to make sure the conjuration/divination caster doesn't dominate the other 3 (enchantment/illusion, transmutation/necromancy, evocation/abjuration). also, healing gets moved to necromancy, and creation gets moved to evocation. so conjuration is now just teleportation, summoning, and calling.

in this way, it'd take 3 casters working together to duplicate the effects of planar binding

[Keneth]

That's how I handle calling spells as well. Not that it makes much difference in the end.

Also, why move creation to evocation? You don't evoke objects. If anything you evoke creatures (i.e. calling spells). :smallconfused:

I generally take teleportation out of conjuration (along with healing), as it never made much sense to me for it to be there.

[ItWasFutile]

Conjuration is the act of opening portals to call things to you (for the most part). If I can open a portal to somewhere else, and bring something through it, why can't I go through it myself? That's why teleportation is conjuration.

As for why healing is a conjuration effect, it's the act of calling positive energy to you, from the positive energy plane most likely, and using it to reverse damage. If necromancy didn't have so many spells in it, it would be conjuration too. Because necromancy is pretty much the same thing, just tapping into negative energy.

And as for stripping so much out of conjuration, you have already paired it with divination, arguably the weakest of the 8. I think that's more than enough.

As for the subject matter of the post,
Calling
A calling spell transports a creature from another plane to the plane you are on. The spell grants the creature the one-time ability to return to its plane of origin, although the spell may limit the circumstances under which this is possible. Creatures who are called actually die when they are killed; they do not disappear and reform, as do those brought by a summoning spell (see below). The duration of a calling spell is instantaneous, which means that the called creature can’t be dispelled.
The argument could be made in your favor, in fact, many of the calling spells state that you request the service/assistance of a BLANK. Request means I'm allowed to say no.

[Keneth]

Conjuration is the act of opening portals to call things to you (for the most part). If I can open a portal to somewhere else, and bring something through it, why can't I go through it myself? That's why teleportation is conjuration.

As for why healing is a conjuration effect, it's the act of calling positive energy to you, from the positive energy plane most likely, and using it to reverse damage.

I know what the justification is, it doesn't make it any less stupid. By that logic you can cram pretty much every spell into conjuration.


And as for stripping so much out of conjuration, you have already paired it with divination, arguably the weakest of the 8. I think that's more than enough.

Even if you left nothing but summon spells in conjuration, it would still be arguably one of the best schools you could choose.

[eggynack]

As for why healing is a conjuration effect, it's the act of calling positive energy to you, from the positive energy plane most likely, and using it to reverse damage. If necromancy didn't have so many spells in it, it would be conjuration too. Because necromancy is pretty much the same thing, just tapping into negative energy.
You can justify just about anything being in just about any spell school. The only reason why healing is pulling positive energy from the positive energy plane, instead of creating positive energy making it evocation, or just manipulating the creature's life force making it necromancy, is because that's how they flavored it. It's pretty much arbitrary. Hell, I could easily justify healing being transmutation, because you're reshaping the target's body to remove ailments, or abjuration, because you're dispelling the pain, or even enchantment, because hell, maybe you're making the guy think they're not hurt, and it really works. I can't come up with a good one for divination. Anyways, it's completely arbitrary. The best way to determine spell school is based on what the spell does, rather than on how the spell works, which makes necromancy, the school about manipulating the forces of life and death, the best choice.

[nedz]

What eggynack said. Also, I remove the compulsion from these too.
With the compulsion effect the calling spells are some of the most powerful broken in the game. Instead: role-play and negotiate for your tasks.

[KaNT]

The reason so much stuff fits into conjuration, is because it was their catch all. Yes the argument could be made that healing could be a necromancy sub-school, but doing so would completely ignore the feel of a necromancer. Necromancers are supposed to be people that surround themselves with dead and undead things. Healers... Kind of the opposite. At the end of the day, where do you want to be treated? At the Good Samaritan, or the medical office of Doctor Frankenstein? It's not just about mechanics. It's about flavor. And I don't like the flavor of having to go see a grave robber because I broke my arm

[eggynack]

The reason so much stuff fits into conjuration, is because it was their catch all. Yes the argument could be made that healing could be a necromancy sub-school, but doing so would completely ignore the feel of a necromancer. Necromancers are supposed to be people that surround themselves with dead and undead things. Healers... Kind of the opposite. At the end of the day, where do you want to be treated? At the Good Samaritan, or the medical office of Doctor Frankenstein? It's not just about mechanics. It's about flavor. And I don't like the flavor of having to go see a grave robber because I broke my arm
I actually think it's far more flavorful. Necromancers get to drain people of their life energy, and with healing, they also get to pump that life energy back into people. They can give people normal life energy, thus bringing them back to their past self, or they can funnel them full of false life energy, turning them into a lingering shadow of their former self. Sure, you have a kind hearted healer on one side, and doctor Frankenstein on the other, but at the end of the day, what you have is two doctors. The idea of good and evil, light and darkness, Tui and La, being part of the same whole, is full of a crazy amount of resonance. Shoving half of the equation, the healing half, over into calling up positive energy, is a surefire way to remove a lot of the flavor from the game. Seriously, moving healing into necromancy has virtually no impact on the game's mechanics, so I think the change should be made for pure flavor reasons.

[Keneth]

I'm inclined to agree with eggynack. Besides, necromancers wouldn't even get most healing spells simply by changing the school, and to most divine casters, the spell schools are just a silly formality that wizards concern themselves with.

[lunar2]

That's how I handle calling spells as well. Not that it makes much difference in the end.

Also, why move creation to evocation? You don't evoke objects. If anything you evoke creatures (i.e. calling spells). :smallconfused:

I generally take teleportation out of conjuration (along with healing), as it never made much sense to me for it to be there.

evocation creates fire, cold, electricity, acid, sonic and force effects anyway. why not have it create objects?

the real answer, of course, is to buff up evocation somewhat. even just getting the orb spells makes evocation better at its main shtick.

[TuggyNE]

@OP: If the magic circle can still hold them, it's basically the same as its current form, with one notable exception: you can't ensure deals struck will be reliably carried through, even just to the letter of the agreement. And that loses a lot of the desired flavor of a wizard making deals with fiends.


The reason so much stuff fits into conjuration, is because it was their catch all. Yes the argument could be made that healing could be a necromancy sub-school, but doing so would completely ignore the feel of a necromancer. Necromancers are supposed to be people that surround themselves with dead and undead things. Healers... Kind of the opposite. At the end of the day, where do you want to be treated? At the Good Samaritan, or the medical office of Doctor Frankenstein? It's not just about mechanics. It's about flavor. And I don't like the flavor of having to go see a grave robber because I broke my arm

Coupla webcomics would disagree: Runewriters has a main character that's a healer and a necromancer, and Earthsong has a vampire (i.e., life-force drainer) that can reverse the flow. So fiction is often fine with it.

[Keneth]

evocation creates fire, cold, electricity, acid, sonic and force effects anyway. why not have it create objects?

While it's technically true that evocation creates something out of nothing, it does so by manipulating energy. Even though matter is basically energy, for the sake of the catgirls, creating actual objects should be beyond the scope of evocation.


the real answer, of course, is to buff up evocation somewhat. even just getting the orb spells makes evocation better at its main shtick.

I agree that orb spells should be evocations, and they should also be SR: Yes and have nothing to do with creation (except orb of acid). Besides, evocation is doing its shtick perfectly fine, the problem is other schools trying to do the same thing (or doing it better, as is the case with RAW orb spells).

[lunar2]

i don't think they need to be SR: Yes. there's nothing wrong with having blasting that bypasses SR. the warmage needs something to throw at a golem, after all. maybe they should be increased in level by 1, but that's about as far as i would go in changing them.

[TuggyNE]

I agree that orb spells should be evocations, and they should also be SR: Yes and have nothing to do with creation (except orb of acid). Besides, evocation is doing its shtick perfectly fine, the problem is other schools trying to do the same thing (or doing it better, as is the case with RAW orb spells).

Hey now. There's a perfectly good way to make (some of) the orbs make sense within Conjuration. :smalltongue: (Expect more changes within the next few days, in fact.)

[Keneth]

The standard orbs make zero sense, to make them proper conjuration, you need:

Orb of Acid: Conjuration (creation) [acid]
Orb of Magma: Conjuration (creation) [earth, fire]
Orb of Ice: Conjuration (creation) [cold, water]
Orb of Plasma: Conjuration (creation) [air, electricity]

Summoning a ball of energy from a different plane is just plane ridiculous (pun intended), and makes me even more annoyed than healing spells being under conjuration.

All of those spells also need to deal less damage than their evocation counterparts (fire, cold, electricity, force, and sound), and they probably shouldn't apply any conditions to make up for them being SR: No and stealing a different school's thang.

[nedz]

But they're all just funny coloured Orbs of Acid anyway.

Honestly, just dump the SR:No and works in an AMF stuff and you're done.

[Socratov]

well, I agree with what is said (mostly) here. However I still have my 2 cp to add:

So we have these schools. Each school has a certain philosophy behind it. It explains the way magic is used to interact with the world around the players:

Evocation: the creation of energy through magic. The most iconic spell (or at least the one averyone agrees on to be evocation for sure) being fireball. You create a fireball out of pure arcane energy and throw it at your target (area/person).

Conjuration: to summon or call up something or someone. most iconic: summon X Y

Transmutation: the act of transitioning X to Y: most iconic: magic weapon: now your non-magic sword is magic.

Divination: the act of (magically) gather infomration. Most Iconic: Scry

Illusion: the act of creating an image of what is not there; Most Iconic: mirror image

Enchantment: to alter the mind. Most iconic: Charm (also the source of enchenté or enchanted to meet you). Here, though, is the problem that it treads on the area of illusion a bit (or vice versa): alteration of perception

Necromancy: Nekros = death, manteia = divination (funny isn't it?) in this sense most iconic is Death watch. (though animate dead woudl be iconic for the school)

Abjuration: protection, most iconic mage armor.

Now in the classic sense, where goes teleport? it's not a calling up effect, more of a connection. Where go the orb of X spells? one could argue that you pull the material form the elemental plane of X. Another could say that you use energy to create an orb of X. The fact that the creation sub-school is in conjuration baffles me.

that is, until you realize that evocation is defined as the manipulation of energy (or entropomancy: affecting the entropy (and enthalpy for you chemists out there) of a given energy or substance. But wait, what does that make transmutation? Or does Evocation only affect states of energy? But what about the rock to X line?

And healing? Striclty speaking it has nothing to do with life, unless you define positive energy and engative energy to be polar opposites.

So, the spell categorization in 3.5 is confusing to begin with... And Spell Compendium does not make it any easier...

[TuggyNE]

The standard orbs make zero sense, to make them proper conjuration, you need:

Orb of Acid: Conjuration (creation) [acid]
Orb of Magma: Conjuration (creation) [earth, fire]
Orb of Ice: Conjuration (creation) [cold, water]
Orb of Plasma: Conjuration (creation) [air, electricity]


Did you read the link? I went further than that, actually, switching all but Acid to (teleportation) and removing Electricity and Sound. (Pretty sure Plasma is more fire than anything.)


Honestly, just dump the SR:No and works in an AMF stuff and you're done.

If you make them bog-standard Evocations, sure. But that's boring. Much better IMO to make them quirky Conjurations that have a more natural effect.

[eggynack]

And healing? Striclty speaking it has nothing to do with life, unless you define positive energy and engative energy to be polar opposites.
As I've mentioned, defining spell school by methodology makes absolutely no sense, because method is easily the most malleable part of a spell's description. The what of a spell, how it effects the game, how the spell feels as it brushes against your skin, that's what's important. It doesn't matter that healing is based on calling energy from the positive energy plane, because I can just say that now it isn't. Start from pure mechanics: this heals people. Determine a school from there. To me, it seems like that should be necromancy, especially when there does exist an equal and opposite spell in the necromancy school already. Everything else feels somewhat irrelevant.

[lunar2]

yeah, necromancy is defined in game as manipulation of the forces of life and death. healing is definitely manipulating life forces, especially raise dead etc.

[Socratov]

As I've mentioned, defining spell school by methodology makes absolutely no sense, because method is easily the most malleable part of a spell's description. The what of a spell, how it effects the game, how the spell feels as it brushes against your skin, that's what's important. It doesn't matter that healing is based on calling energy from the positive energy plane, because I can just say that now it isn't. Start from pure mechanics: this heals people. Determine a school from there. To me, it seems like that should be necromancy, especially when there does exist an equal and opposite spell in the necromancy school already. Everything else feels somewhat irrelevant.

exactly, but if you go down that road, you'd best be prepared to 'relocate' some others.

[eggynack]

exactly, but if you go down that road, you'd best be prepared to 'relocate' some others.
Very true, though spell movement is often a complicated affair. Necro-curing is the biggest and best example, with orbs having high potential, if only for pure school balance reasons. I am also of the belief that the good and evil subtypes should be removed from the game entirely, because it's such a screwy mechanic in general. I wouldn't really like it even if all evil spells were logically so. Mage armor moving from conjuration to abjuration or evocation is also a pretty good one. It'd be evocation for the creation of force thing, and abjuration for the protection thing, as well as the synergy with abjurant champion, and it would never be conjuration, because I don't even know what they were thinking when they put that there. Those are the ones I can think of offhand, though there's likely a whole bunch of others.