Explain me like I'm 5 (or 30yo, choose) why "Sending" is an evocation spell

[Hyperversum]

Pretty much the title.
I just found about this after YEARS and I don't get it.

[The Zoat]

The message you send to your target consists of arcane energy that the spell creates and directs. It's like an optical fibre to fireball's laser beam.

[Lapak]

The message you send to your target consists of arcane energy that the spell creates and directs. It's like an optical fibre to fireball's laser beam.
This.

Though as with many (most?) spells, it would have been possible to refluff it for other schools.

Conjuration (it conjures a minor air elemental to deliver your message at the target's location)
Divination (it opens a very limited two-way scrying window between you)
Enchantment (it creates a brief telepathic link to the target's mind as domination spells do, making them hear your message)
Evocation (the existing version; a channel of pure magical energy carries the message)
Illusion (for a moment, you see and hear an image of each other)
Necromancy (message is carried by an unliving spirit)

Only Transmutation and Abjuration are even a stretch.

There are only a handful of spells it's not possible to flip to at least one other school, and my impression is that most of them could be juggled between more than half of them with a little effort. Heck, 3rd edition flipped an entire category of spells to another school when healing moved from Necromancy to Conjuration.

[Nifft]

Enchantment (it creates a brief telepathic link to the target's mind as domination spells do, making them hear your message) As an aside, note that animal messenger is Enchantment, so there's a good canonical analogue.


Only Transmutation and Abjuration are even a stretch. Transmutation: You transform a paper doll into a small creature which flies to the target location, then turns back into paper. You're expected to write on the paper before sending it. (If it's a low-level spell, then magical writing prevents the transformation -- sorry explosive runes.)

[Jaelommiss]

Evocation is all about moving magical energy from one place to another with little to no care for irrelevant things like collateral damage or the right to not be reduced to ashes or nonmagical peons' insistence that you stop magically transmitting advertisements to them about your organ enlargement alchemical solutions from a couple planes over. Environmentalists hate evocation because it's all about energy. Seriously, go through the nearest forest (well, not the nearest because fire spreads fast and you probably like your house, plus insurance might not cover it and you need to keep up your wealth by level, but near enough that it's not a hassle), launch a half dozen fireballs at everything, and just watch how fast wood elves and druids swarm you about disrupting nature and ruining and ecosystem and defiling thousand year old trees. Seriously, those jerks have no appreciation of evocation and the arcane arts despite how much they rely on it for their magic items. Dirty tree hugging hypocrites.

Ahem... Got a little sidetracked there.

Now that we understand evocation and the commie hippies who oppose it and progress and FREEDOM, we can start to look at why sending is classified under the school of magic that encompasses energy production and manipulation (that's evocation, reread paragraph one if you missed that). For that, we need to take a step back and discuss our old friend Spoken Language.

Once upon a time there were creatures. They ran around the woods, ate food at one end, dropped what was left from the other end, and gave each other piggyback rides that somehow ended up making more little creatures. Creatures are weird. Eventually they ran out of land and forests to run around in because there was this ginormous open space that looked kinda like the sky, but darker and rippling. Waves moved on this water, and it flowed around their limbs when they went to touch it. Most things that the creatures had seen were hard, like the ground, and trees, and rocks that they used to bash in the skulls of their victims prey. Even creatures themselves were solid. But this new thing, this ocean, was soft, and gave way under their probing touches. Some exceptionally smart creatures noticed that waves would move along the surface of the ocean, radiating out from the place that something solid touched it. Another creature standing in the ocean could feel the waves push against them when the waves were large enough. Some creatures even got dragged out into the ocean and were never seen again. Truly, they were a noble sacrifice in the name of SCIENCE. Bored, and because they felt like giving each other piggyback rides some more, they left the ocean and went back into the forests.

Some time later, there was a wind storm. Branches were being knocked from trees, creatures were being knocked over, and one especially smart cookie (not that cookies had been invented yet — he was just that good at being smart) noticed that the air was pushing him around much like the ocean waves had when he was splashing around in an attempt to make Noma get sucked away by the ocean. Noma was a jerk who stole fallen fruit and gave all the females piggyback rides and beat up Smart Cookie because he was bigger and stronger. Regardless, Smart Cookie noticed that the wind was like the waves in the water, and he remembered that waves in the water spread and could be felt at a distance. Pay attention now because this is where we see just how smart Smart Cookie really was. See, Smart Cookie took all of that information and SCIENCE he had gathered and put together a hypothesis. The waves, he had noticed, stayed in the ocean. They could not climb up the sandy beaches no matter how hard Smart Cookie hit the water. If the wind is like the waves, because it can push things, then it must be in something like the ocean but invisible. He called this air. If this air is truly like the ocean, he thought, then I must be able to make wind in it by hitting it. Picking up a stick from the ground (there was a wind storm knocking them down, remember? A lesser mind might have climbed a tree to get a stick instead), he started swinging it around to create wind in the air. Harder and harder he swung, each time hearing wind slightly louder than before, but never able to feel it like the waves.

Frustrated, he through the stick at a tree nearby and it clattered to the ground. The tapping and tinkling reminded him of breaking open the little shelled animals with rocks. Taking up the stick again, he found that by hitting it against different objects at different speeds he could create many types of tapping that reminded him of lots of different things. Hitting the ground reminded him of footsteps. Rubbing it down a tree reminded him of grass moving in the wind. Stomping his heel into the dirt reminded him of fruit falling from a tree. Snapping a stick in two reminded him of the flashes that cut the air when the sky got angry during day-night. Excited, Smart Cookie grabbed his stick and showed what he had learned to others.

Over time the others started to see how hitting sticks to remind them of things could be. The stomp that reminded them of fruit could be used to tell others that they were hungry. Cracking a stick in half could get the attention of others when predators came close. Throwing sticks at trees could tell others that they needed more wood for the fires. Eventually, they even realized that their own bodies could make these air-winds from their food-holes, and with a far greater variety. Soon the creatures stopped using sticks altogether in favour of their food-holes. In time they came to call the air-winds "noise" and their food-holes "mouths." They made a name for everything they could see, and before long they could convey complex ideas to each other with nothing but these noises. This notion of communication with noises made from mouths is called Spoken Language.

Like the waves in the ocean, noises of all kinds can be made by hitting things. When things are hit, energy is transferred from the moving object to the fluid, such as the ocean or the air. Spoken Language, a type of noise, is the result of special organs near the mouth putting energy into the air.

At the end of the day, Spoken Langauge is just energy moving through the air. Evocation, as a school of magic, is all about moving energy from one place to another. One of the evocation spells, Sending, collects the energy that leaves the caster's mouth and transfers it to the ear of someone many, many miles away in much the same way that a fireball moves fire energy from the Elemental Plane of Fire to trees in the druids' forest.

And that is how Spoken Language came to be, what Smart Cookie learned while Noma was making little Nomas in the wind storm, and why Sending is an evocation spell. Just makes sure that you don't cast it near any druids or wood elves.

[gkathellar]

Because it makes an event happen.

Evocation spells in general briefly convince the universe that Y energy is in X location doing W, allow that energy to act on its environment, and then drop the act. In other words, Evocation spells use magic to directly cause an event to take place.

It would also be reasonable to put it in the illusion school, but evocation and illusion are conceptually similar anyway.

[Cespenar]

D&D magic schools are very clunky anyway, so I wouldn't worry in any case.

As demonstrated by some of the above posts, it's probably possible to stay within the limits of the descriptions in the books and still be able to interpret any given spell to 2-3 schools.

And if you go full fluff, it's probably possible to fluff all spells into all schools.

[Frozen_Feet]

D&D's school classification are a good example of taking a bunch of priorly existing words and cramming new game specific meanings into them. The meanings are not consistent between editions and it's questionable if they're that even within them.

More, in occultism spells are NOT classified by what they do, but how they do it. So, there could be multiple ways to achieve the same effect.

D&D never made its mind about which way its school classification works. This makes sending's placement largely arbitrary.

To wit, what evocation means outside of D&D is calling forth something in its external form. Non-magically, the best example is drawing an image if something, magically, it is the act of summoning a spirit, demon etc.

This is contrasted with invocation, which means calling something in to yourself. Non-magically, the best example would be emulation and mimicry, magically, the best example would be calling spirits into yourself so they can speak with your mouth.

However, in modern day English invocation and evocation are used as near-synonyms. Meanwhile, conjuration is the act of using invocation or spell to do magic.

I hope you're starting to see the problem here. In real occultism, something like Sending would be either evocation or invocation through conjuration. Or in plain words: "casting a spell to call forth another being".

[gkathellar]

In real occultism,

I concur, occultism is totally a unified field with agreed-upon standards that one can make broad generalizations about, not hundreds or thousands of discreet traditions from all over the world with a complex mix of shared and divergent elements.

[Joe the Rat]

And now we complicate things by noting the original school was invocation/evocation.

[Nifft]

D&D's school classification are a good example of taking a bunch of priorly existing words and cramming new game specific meanings into them. The meanings are not consistent between editions and it's questionable if they're that even within them.

More, in occultism spells are NOT classified by what they do, but how they do it. So, there could be multiple ways to achieve the same effect.

D&D never made its mind about which way its school classification works. This makes sending's placement largely arbitrary.

To wit, what evocation means outside of D&D is calling forth something in its external form. Non-magically, the best example is drawing an image if something, magically, it is the act of summoning a spirit, demon etc.

This is contrasted with invocation, which means calling something in to yourself. Non-magically, the best example would be emulation and mimicry, magically, the best example would be calling spirits into yourself so they can speak with your mouth.

However, in modern day English invocation and evocation are used as near-synonyms. Meanwhile, conjuration is the act of using invocation or spell to do magic.

I hope you're starting to see the problem here. In real occultism, something like Sending would be either evocation or invocation through conjuration. Or in plain words: "casting a spell to call forth another being". 1/ In D&D, there are many different ways to do very similar things.

2/ The spell sending does not "call forth" another being. The message might be: "STAY AWAY". I guess would make the school Abjuration by your reasoning?


I concur, occultism is totally a unified field with agreed-upon standards that one can make broad generalizations about, not hundreds or thousands of discreet traditions from all over the world with a complex mix of shared and divergent elements.

Indeed, the Unified Fiend Theory was truly an achievement.

[Falontani]

Evocation is all about...
Huge snip, and amazing post. I could honestly see a College Professor talking down to a huge number of students and would be mages, teaching the supremacy of Evocation giving this in an actual lecture, with many hands raised asking relevance only to be screamed at to put their damned hand down.

[Frozen_Feet]

I concur, occultism is totally a unified field with agreed-upon standards that one can make broad generalizations about, not hundreds or thousands of discreet traditions from all over the world with a complex mix of shared and divergent elements.

Your sarcasm is misplaced. It's precisely because the field lacks unity that things are categorized by method and tradition, that is, by how things are done, not by what effect the occult action is supposed to trigger.

---


And now we complicate things by noting the original school was invocation/evocation.

Aye, that's the result of the meaning of the two words having become blurred somewhere down the line.

---


1/ In D&D, there are many different ways to do very similar things.

Which doesn't make anything I said about its school distinctions less true.


2/ The spell sending does not "call forth" another being. The message might be: "STAY AWAY". I guess would make the school Abjuration by your reasoning?

No, it would be banishment through conjuration, or possibly exorcism. I was talking of what words mean outside of D&D and it's easy for you to check a dictionary to see that the ordinary meaning of "forswearing" and "renouncing under oath" are not suitable.

I guess Sending is versatile enough to use for actual abjuration through conjuration, but your example isn't such.

[Mordaedil]

I makes most sense to me as a divination spell, but I guess they wanted wizards giving up evocation to give up something useful.

[Deophaun]

Only Transmutation and Abjuration are even a stretch.
Yet minor sending message is transmutation.

The odd thing about sending is that "a creature with an Intelligence score as low as 1 can understand the sending," which is clearly a divination ability a la comprehend languages, tongues, and speak with animals.

[ericgrau]

The evocation school has the simplest description (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#evocation): Manipulating energy or some unseen source of power to create something out of nothing.

You're sending sound directly to the target, so that's evocation. All done.

Also because unlike similar spells there's nothing or almost nothing about it that might make it transmutation or illusion. Divination might make sense if the main purpose was to receive information instead of sending it (even though you do both). So evocation is the best fit almost by default.


Yet minor sending message is transmutation.
Same material component too. Message is a buff. Telepathic bond is likewise transmutation. Plus you're changing/moving sound to somehow make whispers audible. Sending probably could be transmutation with the right fluff... adding a little bit to the spell description and making it transmutation might have been easier than just pushing it into evocation because it doesn't fit well elsewhere.



The odd thing about sending is that "a creature with an Intelligence score as low as 1 can understand the sending," which is clearly a divination ability a la comprehend languages, tongues, and speak with animals.
A lot of spells do things from multiple schools. Guards and wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/guardsAndWards.htm), an abjuration, explicitly includes spells that are illusion, abjuration, conjuration, enchantment, evocation and transmutation. So you have to ask what does a spell mainly do, not where does one of its effects fit. And often a spell might fit ok into multiple and it's arguable. But they picked one and moved on. Is it absolutely 100% without a doubt evocation? Nah. Can it fit evocation about as well or better than other schools? Sure.

[Deophaun]

You're sending sound directly to the target, so that's evocation. All done.
Nowhere in the spell's description or header does the word "sound" appear. You're sending a message. That could be sound, it could be a thought, it could be a piece of paper, it could be an hallucination. And if were just sound, there would be no reason for it to be comprehensible by anything with an Int of 1 or higher, and there would likely be a chance for the sending to be overheard. Sound is actually the least-likely form of conveyance as you can even cast and receive a sending within a silence spell.

A lot of spells do things from multiple schools. Guards and wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/guardsAndWards.htm), an abjuration, explicitly includes spells that are illusion, abjuration, conjuration, enchantment, evocation and transmutation.
Abjurations "create physical or magical barriers, negate magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, or even banish the subject of the spell to another plane of existence." By its definition, it's a very broad school that can accomplish pretty much anything as long as it is in service to guarding something.

Is it absolutely 100% without a doubt evocation? Nah. Can it fit evocation about as well or better than other schools? Sure.
I'll say it's only better than abjuration, because abjuration has no business doing this, and only as well as transmutation, which would logically have the exact same vulnerabilities to silence that should exist and the same inexplicable universal understanding. Every other school--necromancy, illusion, enchantment, conjuration, and divination--has less "wtf" going on with it.