What are your ideas (or favorites) for balancing the Schools of Magic to each other?

[aleucard]

This is actually a pet peeve of mine. I'm sure most of the people reading this know this already, but for the people who are fresh to this aspect of DnD, I'll give a brief summary of the problems.

1. Some Schools are FAR too loaded with spells in comparison to their counterparts. Granted, some of the schools are somewhat difficult to come up with interesting spells for after the low-hanging fruit is grabbed, but some have over twice as many spells as the bottom two combined. Several make more sense being in a different school (or at least being multi-school) also.

2. Several types of spells, some of which dominate certain schools, are at best suboptimal and at worst completely useless. Most of Enchantment at later levels spring to mind, as does the form of spell known collectively as 'Blasting'.

3. While not specifically a School issue, the number of spells designed for and effective at close-melee range use (in other words, gish bait) is small enough that your average Wizard is likely to come over most of them by accident in their career. While this does step on the mundane classes' toes a bit, part of the whole concept behind a gish is being able to mix mundane and magical combat. The number of spells that do this (especially those that do it effectively) is vanishingly small.

What are your ideas, or at least your favorite ideas by others, to fix these issues? A few I've had are the moving of certain spells into other schools (for instance, most of the Creation spells like Walls are joined Evocation and Conjuration, while several of the buffs are made Enchantment), the creation/augmentation of blasting spells that are effective at hindering the opponent (for instance, sprouting earth spikes from the nearest viable surface (which rivet whichever poor sods fail the Ref save to said surface), launching them at any targets too airborne to be nearby the starting position (potentially sticking said spikes into them and weighing them down with several cubic feet of stone/metal/etc.)) as well as doing significant damage, and allowing more free augmentation of spells without needing feats (one blasty spell may normally need somatic components, but allow them to be foregone in exchange for dropping the damage or making any riders harder to stick, while another may allow the spell to have a concussive effect if a specific material component or focus is used). If you want me to go more in detail, I have no problems. What I'm REALLY interested in is hearing your ideas. My hope is that the various schools can be made roughly equal in power, with the difference being what direction that power is taken. Maybe have some more interesting things than a +2 to school-relevant skillchecks should come with being a Specialist? Possibly additional Class Features for each specific school a la Master Specialist (with these being advanced when levels in School-Specific PrC's are taken)?

Anyway, I wanna hear your thoughts. Thanks for anything constructive!

[Captnq]

Make wizards stay wizards and don't let them multiclass. The dirty little secret is, their ain't a wizard build alive that goes past 5th level.

Oh, and ban all the spells in the PBH. That should sort it out.

[Jeff the Green]

Make wizards stay wizards and don't let them multiclass. The dirty little secret is, their ain't a wizard build alive that goes past 5th level.

Oh, and ban all the spells in the PBH. That should sort it out.

That... doesn't exactly help. Most of the best evocations are in the PHB, for example, along with bread-and-butter enchantments and abjurations, and while transmutation and conjuration both lose some gems, they still get things like orbs and the polymorph subschool.

Plus, this would horribly break everything that isn't a tier 1-2 caster because their spell lists are ~90% PHB.

And how would not PrCing out balance schools relative to each other? All you're doing is making wizard builds be boring as hell.

[HammeredWharf]

Step 1 would be weakening Conjuration. Move Orb of X spells to Evocation and make them SR: Yes while you're at it. Move healing spells to Necromancy. Then, hit Mind Blank and Protection From Evil with a nerf stick. For example, you could make them +4s to saves instead of full immunity. Remove Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration.

That should take care of the worst offenders, but the schools would still be far from balanced.

[Doc_Maynot]

Give Necromancy back the cures and heals... That's my biggest gripe.


Remove Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration.

I'd think maybe just the greater version and/or be more specific on the conjurations and evocations they can mimic. There's already too many people that just ban the school.
You doom some of the best spells you can emulate by giving them SR with the Shadow Spells.

[Kurald Galain]

A simple way is to force all wizards to be specialists (most of them are, anyway) and then make opposition schools actually matter. Back in 2E, there were two relevant rules for this. First, you can't use spells from your opposing schools at all, not even from a wand or scroll. And second, you don't get to pick what your opposing schools are; every specialization has two opposing schools pre-picked for you (you can easily fill this in with some nice worldbuilding fluff). Now since the two biggest and best schools are Conjuration and Transmutation, obviously these should be opposed schools of one another. This goes a long way in toning down the versatility of the wizard, and it even makes individual wizards more diverse (since they can't all pick the same Top Ten Spells Ever).

Interesting setting idea: the eight wizard schools all correspond to one alignment, like so:

Abjuration - lawful good
Conjuration - lawful neutral
Necromancy - lawful evil
Enchantment - neutral evil
Evocation - chaotic evil
Transmutation - chaotic neutral
Illusion - chaotic good
Divination - neutral good

And every specialist can't use the diametrically opposing school, and one to either side (or, if you still think wizards are too strong, both of those). A caster doesn't have to be the alignment of his school if he doesn't want to.

[Jeff the Green]

make them SR: Yes while you're at it.

Gods, no. One of the reason evocation sucks is that it's all SR: Yes.


Remove Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration.

Evocation I'll grant you, but Shadow Conjuration actually improves inter-school balance.

Edit:

A simple way is to force all wizards to be specialists (most of them are, anyway) and then make opposition schools actually matter. Back in 2E, there were two relevant rules for this. First, you can't use spells from your opposing schools at all, not even from a wand or scroll. And second, you don't get to pick what your opposing schools are; every specialization has two opposing schools pre-picked for you (you can easily fill this in with some nice worldbuilding fluff). Now since the two biggest and best schools are Conjuration and Transmutation, obviously these should be opposed schools of one another. This goes a long way in toning down the versatility of the wizard, and it even makes individual wizards more diverse (since they can't all pick the same Top Ten Spells Ever).

Interesting setting idea: the eight wizard schools all correspond to one alignment, like so:

Abjuration - lawful good
Conjuration - lawful neutral
Necromancy - lawful evil
Enchantment - neutral evil
Evocation - chaotic evil
Transmutation - chaotic neutral
Illusion - chaotic good
Divination - neutral good

And every specialist can't use the diametrically opposing school, and one to either side (or, if you still think wizards are too strong, both of those). A caster doesn't have to be the alignment of his school if he doesn't want to.

This doesn't seem to be solving inter-school imbalance as much as reducing wizard versatility. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's just not part of the exercise. While it will make specializing less attractive, it won't affect everything else that keys off of school.

[Gildedragon]

So my usual fix:

conj: gets reduced to calling, summoning, and teleportation
evocation: gets the [creation*] subtype spells, as well as its usual repertoire of energy
abjuration: all shield spells, mage armor (and its ilk)
trans: stays the same
Enchantment: stays the same
illusion: stays the same
necromancy: stays the same + [healing] spells

AMF gets moved to Universal

Some spells get made into mix-school

illus+necro/evocation: the [shadow] spells
trans+conj: minor, major creation, creation spells that require crafting checks
evo+abjur: [force] descriptor spells
illus+ench: [phantasm] spells
conj+abj: planar binding
conj+necro: undead creation

----------

Alternatively: As above but Necromancy gets picked apart and spells tossed into the most adequate school. They gain a [necromancy] tag which is useful for... necromancers?


*spells that create extra dimensional spaces, such as secure shelter, and luminous fortress are dual school spells: conjuration [teleportation] + abjuration

[Kurald Galain]

This doesn't seem to be solving inter-school imbalance as much as reducing wizard versatility.

The balance part is in requiring a conjuration specialist to ban transmutation and vice versa (whereas e.g. an enchanter could use both those schools).

[Noldo]

Balancing the schools of magic against each other (and at the same time hopefully against the gameworld) will pretty much require that you rebuild the schools of magic from ground up.

If done correctly, it could be a great project. If a team of designers could come up with eight schools of magic with (i) approximately equal power level, (ii) comparable versatility and (iii) distinct playstyle, we could also have a solution to the Tier 1 caster problem. If the schools of magic would be roughly equal, we could change the Wizard as follows:

Wizard
All Wizards are either specialists (known as Illusionists, Abjurers, Enchanters etc. or Generalists. The Wizard has to choose at 3rd level either to specialize or to become a generalist and the choice is non-reversible.

Generalist
Save for 1st level spells and cantrips all spells use a spell slot one level higher than normally.

Specialist
At 3rd level choose one school as your primary school. Spells of that school use their ordinary spell slot. Spells of your two associated schools (either make these premeditated or allow the player to choose for more customization) use a spell slot one level higher than normally. Other spells use spell slot two levels higher than normally.

Voila, no wizard can have all the best tools at the same time.

[HammeredWharf]

Gods, no. One of the reason evocation sucks is that it's all SR: Yes.

In practice, I never found SR to be more than a small annoyance. Assay Spell Resistance takes care of it when it's high enough to pose a problem.


Evocation I'll grant you, but Shadow Conjuration actually improves inter-school balance.

Yes, that's true.

[Jeff the Green]

The balance part is in requiring a conjuration specialist to ban transmutation and vice versa (whereas e.g. an enchanter could use both those schools).

Which, like I said, doesn't balance the schools as much as disincentivize specialization in Conjuration or Transmutation. There are a bunch of other effects that key off of school (Spell Gifted, the Adjective School feats, the other classes that cause you to ban a school, Spell Focus) that aren't affected, and so Conjuration and Transmutation are still winners. Under your system, divination or abjuration are the clear winners, as they can ban Evocation and Enchantment. And, especially at higher levels, any wizard worth his salt is going to be casting at least one spell of each level in divination or abjuration.

Honestly, I think a better option would be to eliminate specialists rather than generalists. It also has the benefit of reducing wizards' staying power and daily versatility, and maybe making the Sorcerer = lots of spells/day and Wizard = lots of spells known dichotomy meaningful.

[Gildedragon]

Balancing the schools of magic against each other (and at the same time hopefully against the gameworld) will pretty much require that you rebuild the schools of magic from ground up.

If done correctly, it could be a great project. If a team of designers could come up with eight schools of magic with (i) approximately equal power level, (ii) comparable versatility and (iii) distinct playstyle, we could also have a solution to the Tier 1 caster problem. If the schools of magic would be roughly equal, we could change the Wizard as follows:

Wizard
All Wizards are either specialists (known as Illusionists, Abjurers, Enchanters etc. or Generalists. The Wizard has to choose at 3rd level either to specialize or to become a generalist and the choice is non-reversible.

Generalist
Save for 1st level spells and cantrips all spells use a spell slot one level higher than normally.

Specialist
At 3rd level choose one school as your primary school. Spells of that school use their ordinary spell slot. Spells of your two associated schools (either make these premeditated or allow the player to choose for more customization) use a spell slot one level higher than normally. Other spells use spell slot two levels higher than normally.

Voila, no wizard can have all the best tools at the same time.

... so what good are second level slots?

[aleucard]

Honestly, I'm wanting the majority of the focus to be on the schools themselves (their spells, their mechanics, etc.) than the class(es) that cast them. Fiddling with forced-bans for Wizard Specialization and similar things does a decent job of bringing the WIZARD down a step, but it does exactly bugger-all to the schools themselves. If you want your contribution to be mods to the class, please make them be things that fill up the Wizard's dead levels rather than nerfs to the class (with the exception of if it's tied to a nerf of a school, and even then the currently weakest school is your baseline). Hopefully, these changes won't do anything to the classes' Tier Ranking, just make the schools a great deal more even. There should be things that make anyone not choosing a playstyle that excludes a school by default hesitate in banning them, just as much as there's things that make people hesitate not Specializing in all 8.

Also, for the record, if this is done RIGHT, then Divination should be viable as being allowed for one of the bannable schools, because it has comparable power in its own way. Spontaneous Divination should be either scrapped or modded so each of the schools gets a nerfed version for their specialists, possibly with the range of viable spells expanding in Specialist levels (this includes Specialist PrC's).

[SinsI]

Break each school into smaller sub-schools of ~10 spells max. Assign a Speciality Points Cost to each such sub-school - useless can cost 1 point, while Polymorph can cost 10 points.
Specialists get a limited number of Speciality Points to select the schools they want to have access to.

Maybe instead of selecting everything for life right at 1st level of specialization, you'd be able to get some Speciality points at specific levels, akin to skill points.

[Kurald Galain]

Break each school into smaller sub-schools of ~10 spells max. Assign a Speciality Points Cost to each such sub-school - useless can cost 1 point, while Polymorph can cost 10 points.
Specialists get a limited number of Speciality Points to select the schools they want to have access to.

I like that idea. It may also be interesting to add that a caster must know the lower-level spells of a mini school before learning the higher ones: I've always found it weird that a wizard who casts lots of Fireballs might not know Burning Hands, or that a summoning specialist may be unable to cast Mount.

[jedipotter]

1. Number of spells. Are you just talking about Core? Add in the Spell Compendium, other Wizard books, 3rd party books and Homebrew from places like right here on this site and you can get a good 25-50 spells per school, per level. And some schools get 100 or more per level. That is tons of variety. I don't think the fruit idea is true, you can come up with spells for each school that you feel needs to be filled.

1.Moving spells. Yes. Put all life force, positive energy, negative energy, healing and soul type spells in necromancy. Put all the orb spells, and all the other conjuration SR:no cheat spells in evocation and make them SR:yes. Put Mage Armor in abjuration.

2. Again your just talking core right? There are hundreds more spells out there other then Core. I'm not sure many spells are ''completely useless'', as it depends on what your doing to be of use.

3. And again, guess your just talking about Core.


If you want ''balance'' as in ''each specialists wizard of that school, casting only spells from that school, is equally able to contribute to the adventure'' then you should be fine. At least in a normal game. If the game is a high level endless slaughter-fest of monsters or some crazy anime explosion , then some schools will fall behind. For example, a Diviner or Enchanter can do a lot of information gathering in a normal game, but if your game is just ''room 23 you see 10 red dragons, Huzzza!'' then they will feel left out.

[VoxRationis]

Gods, no. One of the reason evocation sucks is that it's all SR: Yes.


Really, most spells that affect a target should be SR: Yes. That is the point of spell resistance.

[Jeff the Green]

Really, most spells that affect a target should be SR: Yes. That is the point of spell resistance.

I strongly disagree. There should be exactly one point of failure for most spells; otherwise they're so unreliable as to be not worth casting. Evocation almost universally has two.

Really, Spell Resistance should go die in a fire.

[VoxRationis]

Spell Resistance is not an omnipresent trait. The presence of creatures that shrug off the wizard's spells helps to make up for those other monsters that ignore the rogue's sneak attack, the cleric's turning, or the fighter's swordplay.

[NichG]

Rewrite the entire arcane spell list from scratch, using a strict top-down set of guiding principles to decide whether a spell is appropriate for a given school.

What I mean by that is, start with statements like the following (just for example, not really the best way to break things down):

- The only school that can cause material to exist where it previously had not is Conjuration. All Conjuration effects must work primarily through this method.
- The only school that can create energy from nothing is Evocation. All Evocation effects must work primarily through this method.
- The only school that can alter the properties of something without replacing, creating, or destroying it is Transmutation. All transmutation etc, etc
- The only school that can conditionally respond to particular situations (in past, present, or future) or provide or make use of true sensory information is Divination. All divination etc etc
- The only school that can directly affect the soul is Necromancy. All necromancy etc etc
- The only school that can directly influence magic itself is Abjuration. All abjuration etc etc.
- The only school that can directly influence the state of the mind is Enchantment.
- Most Illusion is now part of Enchantment, and the rest is Evocation (the ones that create actual light/shadow energies)

Then basically only write spells that use this principles directly, based only on what those principles could logically do without much twisting or bending. If you end up with no spells to do a particular thing, that's okay, leave it be and do not try to shoe-horn it in. So for example, Contingency is impossible in this ruleset because it would have to simultaneously be Divination and Abjuration.

The result is a much more narrowly applicable set of spells that actually leaves some blanks that magic just isn't good for, which I think is generally a good thing. For example, magical flight in this system would require changing the target into a creature that can fly - you can't just hover, because it doesn't fit cleanly into any of the schools (you could launch yourself ballistically with Evocation or teleport yourself into the air with Conjuration, but in an uncontrolled way).

The other cool thing this sort of ruleset is that it makes spell research much more well-defined. There are some spells you can't research because they just don't belong to any school. If the core principle of a school logically lets you do something that there isn't a spell for, then thats something which is pretty clear that you could research it. You could also get more baroque, allowing for example cross-school spells at certain minimal spell levels. So for example, combining two schools adds +3 to the resultant spell level; combining three schools adds +6. That gives you logical layers of complexity where certain things only become possible at certain spell levels, which again helps with formalizing spell research.

[Jeff the Green]

Spell Resistance is not an omnipresent trait. The presence of creatures that shrug off the wizard's spells helps to make up for those other monsters that ignore the rogue's sneak attack, the cleric's turning, or the fighter's swordplay.

The problem with it is that it discourages the spells that are already weak and encourages using the ones that were already strong. If you want a creature to be harder to affect with spells, give them a saving throw bonus; don't add an additional 50% chance of failure.

Also, I kind of hate having such an enormous number of monsters immune to Sneak Attack and mundane a having almost no way of harming e.g. incorporeal creatures reliably. The only thing those sorts of mechanics do is make one or more party members unable to contribute for an encounter.

[eggynack]

Spell Resistance is not an omnipresent trait. The presence of creatures that shrug off the wizard's spells helps to make up for those other monsters that ignore the rogue's sneak attack, the cleric's turning, or the fighter's swordplay.
What particular thing are we talking about that ignores swordplay? Cause there's ways around a lot of it, though layered defenses can be tricky. As for clerics, they also have magic, so wizards don't need to be poked in comparison, especially because they tend towards buffing. As for sneak attack, there's ways around most of those ignoring effects, though not all. Really, the solution to that is to just get rid of most of the things that cause immunity to sneak attack.

In any case, even if you try to apply SR more universally, there's pretty much always going to be something that bypasses it, whether that thing be wall of stone, polymorph, or summoning. By applying this restriction to the school shifted orb you're harming a type of magic that doesn't deserve that type of harm, while likely leaving alone types of magic that do. It's especially silly because the goal of this exercise is to balance the schools against each other, rather than to balance wizards against not-wizards. Shifting things to evocation, and nerfing them at the same time, makes no sense unless you think that evocation with orbs is stronger than conjuration without orbs.

[firebrandtoluc]

I have come to the conclusion that complete rewrite is the best solution.

[Coidzor]

One thing would be to give them all buffs and debuffs of various sorts & ensure that they all have at least some ability to change the nature of the game, I suppose. Maybe increase the number of utility spells for utility-weak schools. Probably make sure that every spell either has a few level appropriate blasts/blast-debuffs or buffs that functionally allow one to blast. But in all of that remember to give an edge to the schools that are supposed to focus on this or that. So Abjuration should probably lead with defensive buffs or at least tie with Transmutation for defensive buffing. Illusion could touch upon everything a little bit, especially using its whole quasi-reality almost conjuration-schtick. Divination might debuff by doing things like causing a designated foe to telegraph what they're going to do to everyone around them, decreasing their attack/damage/saveDCs/whathaveyou.

And minionmancy, extend that to all of the schools one can possibly justify & a bit more evenly and with clearer rules on the disposition, use, and duration of minions. That's probably the hardest part after coming up with more BFC options that don't leave it concentrated on Conjuration or just make it so that it's Conjuration & Evocation+Necromancy & maybe Illusion. Maybe Divination gets some BFC by being able to create an area where creatures in it provoke attacks of opportunity for lots of different actions that would normally be safe. Maybe even allowing for Ranged AoOs.

But, the killer here is that it would mostly require hard work, a dedicated team, and a unified creative direction. Things you don't really find unless money is involved. Or a lone person with lots of time on their hands who has basically come up with their own version of 3.5 already.

So basically the same problem you run into with making spellcasting less broken. A total or near total rewrite of the magic system is going to take a good bit of work.

[Jeff the Green]

What particular thing are we talking about that ignores swordplay? Cause there's ways around a lot of it, though layered defenses can be tricky. As for clerics, they also have magic, so wizards don't need to be poked in comparison, especially because they tend towards buffing. As for sneak attack, there's ways around most of those ignoring effects, though not all. Really, the solution to that is to just get rid of most of the things that cause immunity to sneak attack.

In any case, even if you try to apply SR more universally, there's pretty much always going to be something that bypasses it, whether that thing be wall of stone, polymorph, or summoning. By applying this restriction to the school shifted orb you're harming a type of magic that doesn't deserve that type of harm, while likely leaving alone types of magic that do. It's especially silly because the goal of this exercise is to balance the schools against each other, rather than to balance wizards against not-wizards. Shifting things to evocation, and nerfing them at the same time, makes no sense unless you think that evocation with orbs is stronger than conjuration without orbs.
Dammit, why is it that you can put my thoughts on paper pixels better than I can? :smalltongue:

While we're talking about work-intensive fixes, completely resorting spells, maybe even splitting and merging them, would be a good fix.