Treating Necromancy As Healing School Instead of Conjuration?

[muichimotsu]

From what I've heard older editions had healing in the Necromancy school, though if we wanted a slightly more complicated change in the rules, call it Zoemancy or even just Thanatomancy to get the idea across that it's more about life and death in a spiritual sense, and it can be applied to corpses and use negative energy, but by the general description in PHB, it manipulates and grants life force as much as takes it, so I wonder if others have house ruled that healing subschool spells are treated as Necromancy rather than Conjuration (which barely makes metaphysical sense)

It wouldn't even take away much from Conjuration, which still has Summoning and Teleportation. If Necromancy gets a number of perks with having Healing, might make the school feel less icky to people who just associate it with undead, rather than the deathless/undying also being a valid part of the general coverage of life and death. Heck, it'd also work potentially to have spells like Raise Dead or Resurrection fall under Necromancy if it follows the same principle, albeit most of them do move a soul from an extraplanar location as I recall, so maybe not as much? Have to make a second subschool relating to resurrection, perhaps?

[Eloel]

Other energy spells are all Evocation, and Evocation could use a buff, so that tends to be a good match. Necromancy isn't bad for healing either though, I agree.

[Goaty14]

Other energy spells are all Evocation, and Evocation could use a buff, so that tends to be a good match. Necromancy isn't bad for healing either though, I agree.

Moving it to evocation could get funky with warmage, but it's not like warmages are overly good in the first place...

[Falontani]

IIRC it used to be necromancy and made complete sense. Necromancy is the art of life and death, healing totally makes sense there. Conjuration [healing] is "creating" new flesh/sinew/bone/etc so I guess? But I'd have just made it Conjuration [creation] then.

[KillingAScarab]

IIRC it used to be necromancy and made complete sense. Necromancy is the art of life and death, healing totally makes sense there. Conjuration [healing] is "creating" new flesh/sinew/bone/etc so I guess? But I'd have just made it Conjuration [creation] then.Conjuration (healing) spells accomplish their effect by conjuring positive energy, taken from the plane of positive energy. And yet, a number of necromancy spells require tapping into the plane of negative energy, but it was never considered to be conjuration (death) or similar.

Take any given reference in the game to conjuration (healing), make it instead necromancy (healing) and you're good. Healing spells still don't appear on arcane caster spell lists other than bards, though I suppose they might be added for prestige classes which draw from certain spell schools. Or, you use Mark Hall's homebrew transmutation and evocation sorcerer/wizard spells for healing (http://www.mymegaverse.org/nexx/tsr/wizheal.html).

[muichimotsu]

Other energy spells are all Evocation, and Evocation could use a buff, so that tends to be a good match. Necromancy isn't bad for healing either though, I agree.

Evocation does note energy creation and such, but I feel like it's just brute force for the most part, not complicated usage, positive and negative energy being more advanced as well. Evocation does make complex stuff in a way, but it's more the pattern, not the usage itself. Conjuration gets into more complicated stuff like Mage Armor or Fog Cloud

Evocation is what I'm specializing in as a Wizard in our main campaign, and with the right feats and alternate class features, they're likely going to be a great benefit in battle, even if outside of it, they're more just knowledgeable in arcane matters

[muichimotsu]

Conjuration (healing) spells accomplish their effect by conjuring positive energy, taken from the plane of positive energy. And yet, a number of necromancy spells require tapping into the plane of negative energy, but it was never considered to be conjuration (death) or similar.

Take any given reference in the game to conjuration (healing), make it instead necromancy (healing) and you're good. Healing spells still don't appear on arcane caster spell lists other than bards, though I suppose they might be added for prestige classes which draw from certain spell schools. Or, you use Mark Hall's homebrew transmutation and evocation sorcerer/wizard spells for healing (http://www.mymegaverse.org/nexx/tsr/wizheal.html).


The explanation would probably be put that way, but the counter argument does make it fall apart.

The general idea would be that arcane casters using necromancy would be taking advantage of the death and enfeebling type spells rather than healing, even though there are some that simulate healing, either through temporary hit points or draining hit points from an enemy, which is a decent trade off for not getting access to more positive energy based spells

[Darth Ultron]

I have always had healing type spells as Necromancy. This was one of my first Houserules after seeing 3.0 for the first time.

Necromancy deals with life and death or just life force, in general. BOTH positive and negative.


I never liked the cartoon juvenile idea that Nercomancy is always badwrongfun. I do go with the idea that unlike other schools, necromancy does have much more alignment type spells. Some things, like draining life force and destroying souls is pure Evil and is Black or Dark Necromancy. Healing and cures, is pure Good and is White or Light Necromancy. And the rest of the Necromancy spells fall in the middle of Gray Necromancy.

Though I also let clerics and such get away with casting other alignment spells occasionally, as long as it's not a habit. For example, I like my evil gods dark and evil, so they have more special evil healing type spells.

I use the idea that positive energy is simply too powerful for mortals to control....they have no problem directing it as a pure attack, but they can't ''funnel'' or ''shape'' it to be healing. And this is where the Gods step in. As the Gods can channel the positive energy for healing and give that ability to clerics and such. It's one of the 'perks' of worship.