Eldritch Blast School?

[Yue Ryong]

Does anyone know what school a Warlock's Eldritch Blast is? My Rules- & Google-Fu have both failed me. I'd assume Evocation, but there is a fair case to be made for universal & conjuration as well, given it's nature.

If anyone can help.

[Alent]

Someone more experienced will probably slide in and swordsage with something more accurate, but...

I don't believe it has a school because it isn't magic- it's a spell like ability.

[Kane0]

It's not actually listed as belonging to a school because it isnt a spell, just an invocation.
That said however, invocations are SLAs and operate in a similar vein to spells, so one could assign a school to it if necessary. Evocation would seem most appropriate to me.
For the purposes of things such as spell focus rulings get much less clear very quickly, so one might want to stay away from that if possible and follow complete arcane's advice of using ability focus and the like.

[illyahr]

Universalist

[KillianHawkeye]

It doesn't have one. Spells are divided into schools. Spell-like abilities are not. Warlock invocations are spell-like abilities.

[Yue Ryong]

I mostly care because an adventure I'm running applies the impeded magic trait by school in certain circumstances, although I will confess to a certain amount of curiousity as to what it'd register as under detect magic.

[Chronos]

Detect Magic tells you the school if there is one. If there's no school, it'll tell you "no school".

Though I'm not sure how you'd concentrate on an eldritch blast for three rounds, anyway.

[torrasque666]

Though I'm not sure how you'd concentrate on an eldritch blast for three rounds, anyway.

Keep getting shot in the face while passing concentration checks?

[Akkristor]

Invocations which duplicate a spell will match the school of the spell they duplicate. This can also be stretched, finding spells 'similar' to invocations and using those schools if need be, for invocations which do not directly copy a spell.

As for Eldritch Blast, if you must assign a school, Evocation would be the most common, but you'd want to change the school (or make it a dual-school) based on the Eldritch Essence invocation. Frightful Blast, for example, adds a fear effect, placing it likely into the Necromancy school, alongside the Cause Fear spell. Sickening Blast would probably also follow suit, as would Beshadowed Blast. Vitrolic blast, as it ignores spell resistance, would be in the Conjuration school. Deteriorating Blast would be Transmutation.