Telekinisis...Why.

[D&DPrinceTandem]

So we have the Spell Telekinisis. I have a problem with this spell that i would like to reveal a question to the playground as a topic of descussion to the Playground that i can't find asked anywhere (googe-fu is the lacking) Here is my question
WHY IN THE WORLD IS TELEKINESIS A TRANSMUTATION SPELL AS APPOSED TO AN EVOCATION SPELL?

Srd quotes to consider

Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, they create something out of nothing. Many of these spells produce spectacular effects, and evocation spells can deal large amounts of damage

Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition

[InvisibleBison]

Going off the descriptions you posted, it's because Telekinesis isn't creating something out of nothing, but rather changing an object's location, which is a property of that object.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, you're changing the position of a thing, right?

That's how that works, isn't it?

Right?

Right?

[RedWarlock]

A full 40% of spell categorization is random BS.

See also: cure spells over the ages.

[D&DPrinceTandem]

"tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end" that sounds like Telekinesis to me.

[InvisibleBison]

"tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end" that sounds like Telekinesis to me.

That sounds like literally all magic, though. Surely you're not saying that all spells should be evocation?

[inuyasha]

A full 40% of spell categorization is random BS.

See also: cure spells over the ages.

Necromancy is not the totally evil black magic school dangit! Healing and raising the dead are magic spells that deal with the soul too dangit!!

[Maat Mons]

Going off the descriptions you posted, it's because Telekinesis isn't creating something out of nothing, but rather changing an object's location, which is a property of that object.

But teleportation also changes the location of something. And that belongs to the conjuration school... these days.




"tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end"
That sounds like literally all magic, though.

Evocation spells ... create something out of nothing.

So the real question is, why isn't the entire evocation school folded into conjuration?

[Crake]

But teleportation also changes the location of something. And that belongs to the conjuration school... these days.

It's because of how it changes the location of something. In my homebrew campaign setting, there is no astral plane, so teleportation works by practically making a wormhole between two locations, thus I actually moved it to transmutation, because it's transmuting the plane itself, rather than conjuring via other planes.

[Luccan]

It's entirely possible there are too few schools that are still overly broad, thus it's easy to justify many different schools for a single spell. I still agree with the OP, though, in that it shouldn't be Transmutation. It's clearly Necromancy, since when you push someone off a cliff with it, you're manipulating their soul into the afterlife

[Doctor Awkward]

Because fluff.

When you cast that spell you are altering to brain to gain the ability to move objects with your mind.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Psionic disciplines are so much more discrete ways of categorization.

[Doctor Awkward]

Psionic disciplines are so much more discrete ways of categorization.

It's actually the opposite. There are only six disciplines, and five of them directly conform to a specific school of magic (Clairsentience -> Divination, Metacreativity -> Conjuration, Psychokinesis -> Evocation, Psychometabolism -> Transmutation, Telepathy -> Enchantment).

The nine schools of magic allow for much more specific and refined means of categorization simply because there are more of them. Contrary to the the descriptions of psionic disciplines which must be broad enough to encompass a given effect that an author wishes to include.

The reason why the book feels more discrete is on account of the writing style. Bruce Cordell was a scientist before he was a game designer, and this very much shows through in his work. The XPH is very well researched, containing terms frequently utilized in real life discussions of psychic powers. Many of the descriptions inside are very sharp and precise.

Although pointedly, and probably correctly, Bruce did put all powers that produce telekinetic effects into the Psychokinesis discipline. :smallwink:

[Ramza00]

Psionics vs Arcane Schools of Magic. The D&D 7 schools+Universal is a system that is messy. You either need less schools and just understand that several things can belong ot a same school and either used subschools or just not label all of the details or you need to do the opposite and have way more than 7 schools of magic.

Many spells within the arcane system could be called Transportation, Conjuration, or Evocation depending on how you describe it. While necromancy is more clear cut (though you cna argue healing spells should be necromancy instead of conjuration healing), divination, abjuration, illusion, and enchantment are clear in what their boundaries are. But even then there are some questions like what is the difference between an enchantment and an illusion (if it modifies the mind it is enchantment, if it modifies the senses it is illusion, but some things are kinda modifying the senses via the mind?)

My point is the schools are a mess, because language is a mess. In some ways the Psionic disciplines are more clear for it does not trying to have specificity and thus it does not have accuracy and precision problems. This is both a pro and a con.

[Doctor Awkward]

Psionics vs Arcane Schools of Magic. The D&D 7 schools+Universal is a system that is messy. You either need less schools and just understand that several things can belong ot a same school and either used subschools or just not label all of the details or you need to do the opposite and have way more than 7 schools of magic.

Many spells within the arcane system could be called Transportation, Conjuration, or Evocation depending on how you describe it. While necromancy is more clear cut (though you cna argue healing spells should be necromancy instead of conjuration healing), divination, abjuration, illusion, and enchantment are clear in what their boundaries are. But even then there are some questions like what is the difference between an enchantment and an illusion (if it modifies the mind it is enchantment, if it modifies the senses it is illusion, but some things are kinda modifying the senses via the mind?)

My point is the schools are a mess, because language is a mess. In some ways the Psionic disciplines are more clear for it does not trying to have specificity and thus it does not have accuracy and precision problems. This is both a pro and a con.

I mean... you can make the same argument regarding the subdisciplines of pisonics. They really aren't anything but more specific means of categorization. Of labeling spells and powers in groups that work in similar specific ways. And psionics can also be just as vague on occasion. Take Psychokinesis' description of "tapping into the power of the mind to produce a desired end". Is that not, like, literally every psionic power?

Also the difference between enchantment and illusion is an issue of control. Enchantment spells attempt influence and control the mind. Illusion spells attempt deceive the mind, and the subject chooses (or not) to believe of their own free will.

[Pleh]

Maybe they intend Transmutation Teleportation to function more like the Star Trek "beam me up, scottie" effect, where a creature is ripped to pieces, their pattern stored, then reconstructed at the new location.

[Scots Dragon]

Psionics vs Arcane Schools of Magic. The D&D 7 schools+Universal is a system that is messy. You either need less schools and just understand that several things can belong ot a same school and either used subschools or just not label all of the details or you need to do the opposite and have way more than 7 schools of magic.

Two things;

There are eight schools of magic, not seven... Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Illusion, Invocation, Necromancy, Transmutation.

And the whole thing made way more sense back in AD&D when spells could and frequently did belong to multiple schools.

[Jack_Simth]

A full 40% of spell categorization is random BS.

See also: cure spells over the ages.

... only 40%? Are you sure?

[GrayDeath]

Pretty much, yeah. Another 25-30% are BS caused by tradition, prejudice and "Why cant I find the fitting school?", so not random.

[Scots Dragon]

Pretty much, yeah. Another 25-30% are BS caused by tradition, prejudice and "Why cant I find the fitting school?", so not random.

Well they are considered schools of philosophy.

[Mordaedil]

I still maintain that cure spells series should be necromancy, according with tradition, but also because it makes necromancy more than "evil school that creates undead".

[Jack_Simth]

I still maintain that cure spells series should be necromancy, according with tradition, but also because it makes necromancy more than "evil school that creates undead".
Ironically, it's also one of the best suited for "bring 'em back alive"

[Goaty14]

And the whole thing made way more sense back in AD&D when spells could and frequently did belong to multiple schools.

...Which was reintroduced in the PHBII. Too little, too late though.

[gkathellar]

You could make the case (and it's not a great case, but it's not totally incoherent, either) that transmutation is a better fit because it involves making things behave in unusual ways, while evocation effects tend to involve the temporary and directed simulation of energy towards a specific end. None of the spell schools fit 100% naturally, I think.

[Pleh]

...Which was reintroduced in the PHBII. Too little, too late though.

I'm AFB. How do "interdisciplinary spells" work with wizard specialization? For example, suppose spell X belongs to Illusion and Enchantment. Can an Illusionist who is banned to Enchantment cast it?

Can they cast a spell that belongs to necromancy and enchantment if they are not banned to necromancy?

[Malphegor]

The weirdest one to me is why there isn't a healing spell under transmutation to my knowledge. Pretty much all healing, barring feats allowing polymorph effects to give temp healthpoints, and necromantic stuff, is Conjuration (Good), channeling holy energy from some divine source (most of which are only for divine classes to use)

If I was a wizard (and indeed I will be possibly figuring out a custom spell for this), I'd be looking into polymorph spells in transmutation as a method of healing oneself or others, possibly temporarily, by restoring their body to an earlier state, before they were wounded.

[Rijan_Sai]

I'm AFB. How do "interdisciplinary spells" work with wizard specialization? For example, suppose spell X belongs to Illusion and Enchantment. Can an Illusionist who is banned to Enchantment cast it?

Can they cast a spell that belongs to necromancy and enchantment if they are not banned to necromancy?

No and no... I'm also AFB, so I don't have the exact quote, but having banned schools locks you out of those schools completely, even with the dual-school spells.

[Pleh]

No and no... I'm also AFB, so I don't have the exact quote, but having banned schools locks you out of those schools completely, even with the dual-school spells.

That seems like it would be a substantial power reduction for specialists (especially the focused specialists that ban 3 schools). Maybe most of the additionally prohibited spells would be crap, but the sheer number of additional lost spells seems to make it more and more likely you'll have to be more tactical in your selection.

[Knaight]

A full 40% of spell categorization is random BS.

See also: cure spells over the ages.
This feels generous, even allowing for the nonrandom BS category.


It's actually the opposite. There are only six disciplines, and five of them directly conform to a specific school of magic (Clairsentience -> Divination, Metacreativity -> Conjuration, Psychokinesis -> Evocation, Psychometabolism -> Transmutation, Telepathy -> Enchantment).

The nine schools of magic allow for much more specific and refined means of categorization simply because there are more of them. Contrary to the the descriptions of psionic disciplines which must be broad enough to encompass a given effect that an author wishes to include.

More categories doesn't necessarily mean things are more specific. Going backwards, from psionic schools to magic schools what essentially happened is that one magic school was added that remains fairly distinct (mostly), Illusion. Five others were pulled from the psionic categories, but with some remixing going on (Orb of X as conjuration spells, for instance, while they would definitely be Psychokinesis). That leaves three, and those three are basically giant categories with heavy overlap with other fields.

Those points of overlap make it anything but specific.

[Psyren]

The real reason: something something 2e Alteration school.


That seems like it would be a substantial power reduction for specialists (especially the focused specialists that ban 3 schools). Maybe most of the additionally prohibited spells would be crap, but the sheer number of additional lost spells seems to make it more and more likely you'll have to be more tactical in your selection.

Reduction, yes.
Are specialists and f-specialists still T1 even with this rule, also yes.

[Silly Name]

It doesn't help that some magic schools have names that are horrid at describing what the school does in the first place.

"To abjure" means "to reject, renounce; to avoid, abstain". D&D uses Abjuration as the school for... Protection spells? I guess they played on the "avoid" meaning, but it still seems weird. Banishment makes no sense under this interpretation, though.

"Enchantment" is ridiculously non-descriptive. Sure, the description of the school makes it clear that Enchantment spells are used to influence the mind of others - but if you just read the name, "enchantment" simply refers to magic-working in general, and thus utterly fails at conveying a message.

Oh, and good luck understanding what's the difference between a Conjuration (creation) spell and an Evocation spell. The only quantifiable difference is that Evocations tend to focus on damage-dealing, but apart from that the descriptions are basically the same: you manipulate matter and energy to create something out of nothing. It is also weird that out of five Conjuration subschools , three of them deal with magic means of movement, while the other two are creating stuff out of thin air and healing wounds.

[Elkad]

The correct solution is to put many spells in multiple schools (with different versions to be learned).

Mage armor could be evocation or abjuration or conjuration or transmutation just fine. And I'd take a valid argument for the other schools at my table.

Teleportation could be conjuration or transmutation at least. One creates a portal to somewhere (the astral typically) and then back to the desired location. Transmutation could alter the fabric of reality so you just step through the wormhole. There is no intervening stop.

Cure spells conjures positive energy [conj/healing], or directly manipulates life [necro]

Etc.

[Necroticplague]

Because it's a self-buff, so of course it's Transmutation, just like the Polymorph line is.
wait, people use it for non-cambat maneuver applications?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

But teleportation also changes the location of something. And that belongs to the conjuration school... these days.

So the real question is, why isn't the entire evocation school folded into conjuration?


Oh, and good luck understanding what's the difference between a Conjuration (creation) spell and an Evocation spell. The only quantifiable difference is that Evocations tend to focus on damage-dealing, but apart from that the descriptions are basically the same: you manipulate matter and energy to create something out of nothing. It is also weird that out of five Conjuration subschools deal with magic means of movement, while the other two are creating stuff out of thin air and healing wounds.

That's all because the Conjuration (Creation) subschool simply shouldn't exist. :smallannoyed:

Seriously, Evocation is all about "creating things from nothing" by pulling in Inner Planar matter and energy and assembling things from it, from plain stone to magical force, and it gets a grand total of three sentences in the PHB school descriptions, one of which is about dealing damage, which other schools can do too and isn't a flavor distinction about how the spells are divided in-game? :smallsigh:

Of all the Conjuration (Creation) spells in the PHB, all of the "creating raw elemental and force stuff" spells like acid arrow, fog cloud, and mage armor should be Evocation (though that last one could be Abjuration, though see below for my thoughts on that school), and the "creating animate forces or beings" spells like black tentacles, shambler, and unseen servant should be Conjuration (Summoning or Calling). For the outliers that don't fit into either category, create food and water, heroes' feast, wall of thorns, and web could be subschool-less Conjuration, pulling existing food/plants/webbing in from somewhere else; Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion and phase door would fit well in a new (Extraplanar) subschool for spells that create extraplanar bubbles or inter-planar passageways along with things like rope trick (which, seriously, Transmutation, as if it's changing the rope itself?); Leomund's secure shelter is obviously Transmutation, 'cause it states that it creates the shelter out of common nearby materials; and sepia snake sigil should be Abjuration like glyph of warding.

I have fairly strong opinions about spell schools, in case you couldn't tell. :smallwink:


Many spells within the arcane system could be called Transportation, Conjuration, or Evocation depending on how you describe it. While necromancy is more clear cut (though you cna argue healing spells should be necromancy instead of conjuration healing), divination, abjuration, illusion, and enchantment are clear in what their boundaries are. But even then there are some questions like what is the difference between an enchantment and an illusion (if it modifies the mind it is enchantment, if it modifies the senses it is illusion, but some things are kinda modifying the senses via the mind?)

My point is the schools are a mess, because language is a mess. In some ways the Psionic disciplines are more clear for it does not trying to have specificity and thus it does not have accuracy and precision problems. This is both a pro and a con.

The schools are so close to being a consistent and logical classification. If you restrict Conjuration to "moving things in time and space or connecting distant points in time and space" and Transmutation to "changing the physical form or properties of a creature or object" instead of the lazy and needlessly-broad "making things" and "changing things," and make it clear that Evocation is all about matter and energy in all its forms, it becomes much more obvious where spells should go.

No, the orbs of X aren't Conjuration because they "conjure nonmagical energy," stop it. No, telekinesis isn't Transmutation because it's "changing something's position," stop it. The orbs fall under Evocation in this model, and telekinesis falls under Conjuration (while things like launch item that just give things a big jolt of kinetic energy and aren't exerting continuous control over the object would be Evocation).

Illusion (Phantasm)s, meanwhile, aren't modifying the mind so much as projecting an impression into it, so they're comfortably Illusions rather than Enchantments--but Illusion (Pattern)s should really be dual-school Enchantment/Illusion spells.


The weirdest one to me is why there isn't a healing spell under transmutation to my knowledge. Pretty much all healing, barring feats allowing polymorph effects to give temp healthpoints, and necromantic stuff, is Conjuration (Good), channeling holy energy from some divine source (most of which are only for divine classes to use)

If I was a wizard (and indeed I will be possibly figuring out a custom spell for this), I'd be looking into polymorph spells in transmutation as a method of healing oneself or others, possibly temporarily, by restoring their body to an earlier state, before they were wounded.

Actually, 3e has them as Conjuration (Healing), not Conjuration [Good]; they pull in pure positive energy, with no divine or alignment associations. But as several people have noted, they should really be Necromancy as they were in AD&D.


It doesn't help that some magic schools have names that are horrid at describing what the school does in the first place.

"To abjure" means "to reject, renounce; to avoid, abstain". D&D uses Abjuration as the school for... Protection spells? I guess they played on the "avoid" meaning, but it still seems weird. Banishment makes no sense under this interpretation, though.

Abjuration made much more sense historically, as the earliest Abjuration spells in D&D fell into one of three categories: anti-outsider or anti-evil spells like atonement, dismissal, exorcise, protection from evil 10' radius, sanctuary, and the like for the still-very-Christian-inspired Cleric, so they protected against evil in the "I renounce thee, demon!" sense; creature- or substance-specific wards like repel insects or protection from fire, so they actively rejected certain creatures or things (and they didn't have the 3e "you can't push the barrier against the target" verbiage which lessens the impression of rejection); or "purification" spells for removing diseases, poison, fear, etc., which sort of fall into the "abstain" category, and also into the above renunciation category if you go by the Medieval "diseases and insanity are caused by evil spirits" interpretation.

When the cleric moved away from its Christian influence (which wasn't at all a bad thing, of course) and they started putting other random spells into the school like banishment, mind blank, shield (which was Evocation in 1e, by the way), and such, yeah, the name lost its original strong resonance.

I don't mind the name itself, as it's suitably magic-sounding and quite iconic by now, but I've long been of the opinion that Abjuration should be a subschool, not a full school. So banishment is Conjuration (Abjuration) (which is a contradiction by the literal school meanings, I know), mind blank is Enchantment (Abjuration), mage armor and shield are Evocation (Abjuration), nondetection is Illusion (Abjuration), and so forth. Then all the "pure magic" and magic-affecting spells like dispel magic, antimagic field, prestidigitation, wish, arcane spellsurge, and so forth can go into a new Thaumaturgy school, along with metamagic spells like extension and alacrity if you port them to 3e like I do.


The correct solution is to put many spells in multiple schools (with different versions to be learned).

Mage armor could be evocation or abjuration or conjuration or transmutation just fine. And I'd take a valid argument for the other schools at my table.

Teleportation could be conjuration or transmutation at least. One creates a portal to somewhere (the astral typically) and then back to the desired location. Transmutation could alter the fabric of reality so you just step through the wormhole. There is no intervening stop.

Cure spells conjures positive energy [conj/healing], or directly manipulates life [necro]

Etc.

I strongly disagree. Partly because it dilutes the schools themselves to water down the in-setting fluff, partly because the D&D multiverse works in certain ways and changing some things would contradict that (e.g. the wormhole method of teleportation, when traveling between two non-coterminous planes without going through an intervening Transitive Plane is a contradiction in terms), and partly because at that point there's no point in having schools at all because, as mentioned above, every single spell can fit into Conjuration because it "conjures magical energy" or Transmutation because it "changes stuff." Precisely as in your example, actually: most wormhole fluff is something about "punching a hole through to the other side," which might work for the original PHB version of Evocation if you squint, but you phrased it as "altering" the fabric of reality, putting it by default into Transmutation when it really shouldn't be, like so many other spells.

Certain effects could certainly be achieved in different ways, yes--like Conjuring a fire elemental to light something on fire vs. Evoking raw fire on the target vs. Transmuting the surface to fire--but allowing those sorts of things doesn't actually gain you anything flavorwise, and gains you nothing mechanically except the ability for specialist wizards to ignore school boundaries so all of them can generate any effect. Plus, a major player-side benefit of the schools is being able to say "You detect auras of Necromancy and Enchantment" and have players be able to reason about what sort of trap they're about to walk into, and "Ha ha, the death spell isn't a Necromancy effect, it just Conjured negative energy!" is unfair and kind of a jerk move.

Far better to make the schools more distinctive and mutually-exclusive, not less, so they're more thematic and mechanically useful.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's actually the opposite. There are only six disciplines, and five of them directly conform to a specific school of magic (Clairsentience -> Divination, Metacreativity -> Conjuration, Psychokinesis -> Evocation, Psychometabolism -> Transmutation, Telepathy -> Enchantment).Psionic disciplines are about how effects are performed, not about what the effects are ultimately perceived to do. You pretty much always know if an effect is psychokinesis, because it involves the manipulation of energy. It manipulates the mind? Telepathy. It moves something from point A to point B, in either space or time? Psychoportation. There are occasions where powers might -- might -- be misplaced in the discipline lists (such as energy wall, for example), but such issues are vanishingly rare, because such things tend to be extremely clear-cut.

What is abjuration, anyway? It protects things from other things. Why aren't summoning spells abjurations? Summoned monsters protect the caster, right? So does teleporting away from things at instantaneous velocity. Why aren't teleportation spells abjurations, then? What about dominate spells? After all, a dominated creature won't attack you unless you explicitly order it to.

You just don't typically have that problem with the way psionic disciplines are defined.

Hence why I said that psionic classifications are more discrete. They define effects by how they are produced, not by what the effect ultimately does, which fixes a lot of the complaints about things like mage armor (which would forever and always be psychokinesis, as it deals with the projection of [force]).

[ben-zayb]

Psionic disciplines are about how effects are performed, not about what the effects are ultimately perceived to do. You pretty much always know if an effect is psychokinesis, because it involves the manipulation of energy. It manipulates the mind? Telepathy. It moves something from point A to point B, in either space or time? Psychoportation. There are occasions where powers might -- might -- be misplaced in the discipline lists (such as energy wall, for example), but such issues are vanishingly rare, because such things tend to be extremely clear-cut.

What is abjuration, anyway? It protects things from other things. Why aren't summoning spells abjurations? Summoned monsters protect the caster, right? So does teleporting away from things at instantaneous velocity. Why aren't teleportation spells abjurations, then? What about dominate spells? After all, a dominated creature won't attack you unless you explicitly order it to.

You just don't typically have that problem with the way psionic disciplines are defined.

Hence why I said that psionic classifications are more discrete. They define effects by how they are produced, not by what the effect ultimately does, which fixes a lot of the complaints about things like mage armor (which would forever and always be psychokinesis, as it deals with the projection of [force]).
How about metacreativity powers that move something (ectoplasm) from point A (astral plane) to point B (plane you are on)? Or a metacreativity power that physically transforms one thing (raw ectoplasm stuff or a fraction of time itself) to another thing (astral construct or time-suspending semisolid material)? Or clairsentience powers that move something (information) from point A (future time) to point B (present time)? Or telepathy spells that move something (your mind and soul), forcibly even according to its description, from point A (your body) to point B (target's body)?

Those aren't exactly esoteric examples. Really, whether its the magic or the psionic subsystem, spells/powers from one grouping can be described belonging to another if you squint hard enough.

[Necroticplague]

How about metacreativity powers that move something (ectoplasm) from point A (astral plane) to point B (plane you are on)? Or a metacreativity power that physically transforms one thing (raw ectoplasm stuff or a fraction of time itself) to another thing (astral construct or time-suspending semisolid material)? Or clairsentience powers that move something (information) from point A (future time) to point B (present time)? Or telepathy spells that move something (your mind and soul), forcibly even according to its description, from point A (your body) to point B (target's body)?

Those aren't exactly esoteric examples. Really, whether its the magic or the psionic subsystem, spells/powers from one grouping can be described belonging to another if you squint hard enough.

They aren't esoteric, but you are really, really stretching definitions to try and make things not fit, while it takes considerably less effort to do so with the way spells are categorized. There's a massive difference between 'possibly if you squint hard enough' and 'quiet reasonably based on ill-defined words'.

[Knaight]

Those aren't exactly esoteric examples. Really, whether its the magic or the psionic subsystem, spells/powers from one grouping can be described belonging to another if you squint hard enough.

This is undeniably true - and it's not even necessarily a bad thing; the setting material being uncooperative to easy categorization can help it feel more believable and less gamey, and issues appearing in the margin is helpful to these.

That said, psionics at least feels like the best attempt of psions who had some idea of what they were doing, managing to come up with a mostly solid taxonomy that looks off if you squint hard enough. The magic categorization on the other hand feels like someone built a taxonomy for an entirely different population, ported it over, then tried to fit something new into it without considering how it worked. Part of that is because that's exactly what happened across editions, but there being a good explanation for it doesn't make it stop being iffy.

[Zaq]

"To abjure" means "to reject, renounce; to avoid, abstain". D&D uses Abjuration as the school for... Protection spells? I guess they played on the "avoid" meaning, but it still seems weird. Banishment makes no sense under this interpretation, though.

Arguing after the fact, but maybe there's some fudged overlap between "to abjure" and "to adjure (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adjure)"? At least as far as banishment goes? Not a great argument, I freely admit.

I guess it's basically just because of the "reject or renounce" meaning, really. Abjuration spells say "no, you don't get to do that." Whether "that" refers to hitting someone effectively or being magical or being an extraplanar being up in my Prime Material grill. It's the school of no.


"Enchantment" is ridiculously non-descriptive. Sure, the description of the school makes it clear that Enchantment spells are used to influence the mind of others - but if you just read the name, "enchantment" simply refers to magic-working in general, and thus utterly fails at conveying a message.

I still always want to call weapon enhancements "weapon enchantments." Possibly a holdover from my Guild Wars days, wherein "enchantment" meant "buff spell of any stripe" (versus hexes, which were debuff spells) Not sure where I'd go for a markedly different name, though. (Which I admit is almost certainly habit talking. Maybe "beguilement"?)


Oh, and good luck understanding what's the difference between a Conjuration (creation) spell and an Evocation spell. The only quantifiable difference is that Evocations tend to focus on damage-dealing, but apart from that the descriptions are basically the same: you manipulate matter and energy to create something out of nothing. It is also weird that out of five Conjuration subschools , three of them deal with magic means of movement, while the other two are creating stuff out of thin air and healing wounds.

Conjuration (Creation) was mostly fine until the damned Orbs came along.

[RedWarlock]

I don't see much confusion between Evocation and Conjuration in 3e, personally. Evocation creates energy (fire, ice, lightning, force, etc). Conjuration brings forth matter. Matter and energy are similar, but distinct. Illusion is similarly distinct from Enchantment, as Enchantment directly affects the mind, while Illusion controls light/color/sound/etc. (Or at least, that's the way it seems distinct to me!)

My homebrew divides the schools up a bit more distinctly, anyhow. I also add telekinesis, telepathy, and a few other things as individual schools. I think I've got like 14?

Abjuration — Negating or blocking magical effects
Alteration — Altering the substance of physical, non-living material
Conjuration — Creating magical objects or material
Divination — Gathering information
Enchantment — Self-sustaining magical effects
Evocation — Creating and controlling magical energy
Illusion — Generating false images, sounds, and other sensory deception
Metamagic — Altering other magical effects
Necromancy — Using or manipulating negative energy, the energy of decay
Restoration — Using or manipulating positive energy, the energy of healing
Summoning — Created or gathered creatures
Telekinesis — Moving or reshaping non-living material without affecting substance
Telepathy — Affecting the living mind and communicating thoughts
Teleportation — Breaking dimensional barriers and traveling between planes
Transmutation — Altering the form of a creature

My system gets very building-block with how it functions, kind of like an expanded version of Words of Power. Most spells have a core 'Axiom' which is the base mechanic of that spell, with various add-on chunks which expand range, targets, etc.

So for instance, in my case, the mental effects of "enchantment" are shifted off to telepathy, but a lot of the lasting-charm effects are dual telepathy/enchantment, as enchantment covers anything with a self-sustaining duration (vs a duration the caster sustains with an action). Creating skeletons in combat would be necromancy/summoning, with metamagic to create a horde rather than only one at a time, and enchantment for making them permanent (vs just collapsing after combat finishes).

My system also doesn't use school-banning, since there's no all-in-one caster class. Instead there's distinct summoner, conjurer, blaster, etc classes that multiclass together. (It's a 10-level independent-gestalt system, but your overall caster level is the sum of your highest caster class, plus half the level of your next two highest caster classes.)

[Silly Name]

Well, the fact is that the way D&D defines "energy" is iffy at best. Energy is vaguely based on the four classical elements, but they aren't really represented through "energy". Why is ice energy and not matter? I can see a case being made for fire, lighting, sonic and force as form of energy, but acid isn't gonna cut it.
Yes, game-wise the distinctions are clear, but why would creating a chunk of ice count as Evocation rather than Conjuration (creation)? You're still making something out of thin air. After all, Wall of Stone is a Conjuration (Creation) spell, and stone is much more closely tied to the classical element of earth than bolts of acids.

[gkathellar]

"To abjure" means "to reject, renounce; to avoid, abstain". D&D uses Abjuration as the school for... Protection spells? I guess they played on the "avoid" meaning, but it still seems weird. Banishment makes no sense under this interpretation, though.

Abjuration forbids things. It's the school of negation, of refusal, of "lolnope," and occasionally of punishment for taking a specific action. Abjuration includes protection spells that refuse harm, banishment spells that refuse extraplanar beings, warding spells that react (sometimes violently) when disrupted, and dispels that refuse other magic.


Oh, and good luck understanding what's the difference between a Conjuration (creation) spell and an Evocation spell. The only quantifiable difference is that Evocations tend to focus on damage-dealing, but apart from that the descriptions are basically the same: you manipulate matter and energy to create something out of nothing. It is also weird that out of five Conjuration subschools , three of them deal with magic means of movement, while the other two are creating stuff out of thin air and healing wounds.

Theoretically, the difference is that the (creation) subschool creates stuff, and that evocation fakes stuff. A fireball spell doesn't conjure up any actual fire, but rather briefly convinces the universe that some fire is present for a moment during which it acts on the world, after which it disappears leaving only the modified state of affairs that it has acted on. Non-instantaneous evocations last for longer periods but are conceptually similar. Of course, this doesn't really explain the difference between evocation-proper and, say, Shadow Evocation or Shadow Conjuration, and it doesn't really justify the placement of Contingency in the evocation school.


I still always want to call weapon enhancements "weapon enchantments." Possibly a holdover from my Guild Wars days, wherein "enchantment" meant "buff spell of any stripe" (versus hexes, which were debuff spells) Not sure where I'd go for a markedly different name, though. (Which I admit is almost certainly habit talking. Maybe "beguilement"?)

Mentalism?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't see much confusion between Evocation and Conjuration in 3e, personally. Evocation creates energy (fire, ice, lightning, force, etc). Conjuration brings forth matter. Matter and energy are similar, but distinct. Illusion is similarly distinct from Enchantment, as Enchantment directly affects the mind, while Illusion controls light/color/sound/etc. (Or at least, that's the way it seems distinct to me!)

Theoretically, the difference is that the (creation) subschool creates stuff, and that evocation fakes stuff. A fireball spell doesn't conjure up any actual fire, but rather briefly convinces the universe that some fire is present for a moment during which it acts on the world, after which it disappears leaving only the modified state of affairs that it has acted on. Non-instantaneous evocations last for longer periods but are conceptually similar.

Well, the fact is that the way D&D defines "energy" is iffy at best. Energy is vaguely based on the four classical elements, but they aren't really represented through "energy". Why is ice energy and not matter? I can see a case being made for fire, lighting, sonic and force as form of energy, but acid isn't gonna cut it.
Yes, game-wise the distinctions are clear, but why would creating a chunk of ice count as Evocation rather than Conjuration (creation)? You're still making something out of thin air. After all, Wall of Stone is a Conjuration (Creation) spell, and stone is much more closely tied to the classical element of earth than bolts of acids.

Actually, the description of Conjuration in the PHB says it can bring "manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you" or "create objects or effects on the spot," the latter of which is precisely the same as Evocation's "manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to...create something out of nothing." Evocation and Conjuration (Creation) both create completely real energy and matter, and there's really no reason to have both, as I ranted about in my previous post.

Evocation deals with the stuff of the Inner Planes: the four classical elements and the two energies, plus paralements like ice and magma, quasielements like light and crystals, and so forth (though more complex manifetations of positive and negative energy generally fall under Necromancy). The orbs of X being Conjuration (Creation)--and the latter school existing at all, really--is an affront to god and man Boccob and demihumankind. :smallwink:


My homebrew divides the schools up a bit more distinctly, anyhow. I also add telekinesis, telepathy, and a few other things as individual schools. I think I've got like 14?

My own 'brew keeps the eight-school setup (swapping Abjuration out for Thaumaturgy), but every school gets exactly four subschools and lots of things key off of the subschools rather than the schools. So where you have Alteration, Transmutation, Telekinesis, and Metamagic as schools, I have Transmutation (Alteration), Transmutation (Shapechanging), Evocation (Forces), and Thaumaturgy (Metamagic).


Of course, this doesn't really explain the difference between evocation-proper and, say, Shadow Evocation or Shadow Conjuration, and it doesn't really justify the placement of Contingency in the evocation school.

Shadow conjuration and shadow evocation are the spells that create fake matter and energy that you were probably thinking of above. Material from the Inner Planes is real, and the substance from which the Material Plane and everything in it is formed. Material from the Plane of Shadow is only quasi-real, as the Plane of Shadow originally was the "para-energy" plane between the Positive and Negative Energy Planes--all creative and destructive energy, but no actual substance from the Elemental Planes, so it sort of "latched on" to the Prime and became a shadow of it.

Those spells create an illusion of a desired effect and then inject shadow-stuff to give them some quasi-reality, but their structure hinges on that illusion. If someone disbelieves the containing illusion, then the shadow-stuff also loses cohesion and has a much reduced effect.

[Elkad]

I strongly disagree. Partly because it dilutes the schools themselves to water down the in-setting fluff, partly because the D&D multiverse works in certain ways and changing some things would contradict that (e.g. the wormhole method of teleportation, when traveling between two non-coterminous planes without going through an intervening Transitive Plane is a contradiction in terms), and partly because at that point there's no point in having schools at all because, as mentioned above, every single spell can fit into Conjuration because it "conjures magical energy" or Transmutation because it "changes stuff." Precisely as in your example, actually: most wormhole fluff is something about "punching a hole through to the other side," which might work for the original PHB version of Evocation if you squint, but you phrased it as "altering" the fabric of reality, putting it by default into Transmutation when it really shouldn't be, like so many other spells.

Certain effects could certainly be achieved in different ways, yes--like Conjuring a fire elemental to light something on fire vs. Evoking raw fire on the target vs. Transmuting the surface to fire--but allowing those sorts of things doesn't actually gain you anything flavorwise, and gains you nothing mechanically except the ability for specialist wizards to ignore school boundaries so all of them can generate any effect. Plus, a major player-side benefit of the schools is being able to say "You detect auras of Necromancy and Enchantment" and have players be able to reason about what sort of trap they're about to walk into, and "Ha ha, the death spell isn't a Necromancy effect, it just Conjured negative energy!" is unfair and kind of a jerk move.

Far better to make the schools more distinctive and mutually-exclusive, not less, so they're more thematic and mechanically useful.

Specialization and especially Opposition schools does mess that up.
But I like the idea of there being different ways to achieve the same effect. Whether I create a rock wall out of shadowstuff, ectoplasm, conjure it from the Plane of Earth, draw it from the earth under my feet, or literally transform the molecules of the air adds lots of flavor. And if you extend that, you get lots of ways where you could counterspell one wizard but not the next with a related or opposing spell. Turning Air into Earth? I use Gust of Wind as my counterspell to disrupt it. Conjuring it? I block it with - oh say Protection from Evil 10'r. Shadowstuff? Daylight.

And I like games where the spellcasters are always coming up with new stuff. I don't care that there are thousands of spells already, putting your own mark on the world is worth it. Fighters build castles and kingdoms. Wizards invent spells that will be used, ridiculed, or found in dusty tomes a millennia hence.
Bugsby's Cat Retrieving Hand deserves a place, I don't care if it's too specific and underpowered for it's spell level.

Then consider worlds where magic is broken in some way. Burning Sky campaign comes to mind. If you go to the Astral, you die (or at least risk dying) without extraordinary measures. So no normal teleportation.
But you can shadowjaunt just fine. Wizards would immediately be picking (or extracting) the brain of Swordsages trying to figure out how to harness that power for their own use. Or learning teleports that used the Near Ethereal. Or something similar, like wormholes. Sure, it may not work as well. Maybe the range category drops a step, or it always stuns you, or it takes 1 round per mile traveled (putting you at roughly Mach 1).

Now you go to a different plane (or fix the Astral). The old better versions work again. But you'd still know the new ones. So if you get Dimension Locked, the wormhole version might still work.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Specialization and especially Opposition schools does mess that up.
But I like the idea of there being different ways to achieve the same effect. Whether I create a rock wall out of shadowstuff, ectoplasm, conjure it from the Plane of Earth, draw it from the earth under my feet, or literally transform the molecules of the air adds lots of flavor. And if you extend that, you get lots of ways where you could counterspell one wizard but not the next with a related or opposing spell. Turning Air into Earth? I use Gust of Wind as my counterspell to disrupt it. Conjuring it? I block it with - oh say Protection from Evil 10'r. Shadowstuff? Daylight.

I do think there should be different ways to achieve similar effects, but those spells should actually be different. An Evoked stone wall is real nonmagical stone, a shadow conjured stone wall looks real but can be walked through by someone with sufficient willpower, a stone wall shaped from the earth below should either shape the earth around it (to pull in enough material) or be smaller and weaker than an evoked version (since it doesn't have enough material), and so forth.

What I object to is simply taking the same spell and changing the school without changing anything else, because (A) that goes against the flavor of there being an underlying in-game magical theory for all this stuff and (B) if you can e.g. cast wall of stone as a Transmutation as easily as an Evocation, why would the Evocation version have ever been researched in the first place? And then of course you get spell-specific flavor breaks like orbs of "nonmagical force" in Conjuration and the like.


Then consider worlds where magic is broken in some way. Burning Sky campaign comes to mind. If you go to the Astral, you die (or at least risk dying) without extraordinary measures. So no normal teleportation.
But you can shadowjaunt just fine. Wizards would immediately be picking (or extracting) the brain of Swordsages trying to figure out how to harness that power for their own use. Or learning teleports that used the Near Ethereal. Or something similar, like wormholes. Sure, it may not work as well. Maybe the range category drops a step, or it always stuns you, or it takes 1 round per mile traveled (putting you at roughly Mach 1).

Now you go to a different plane (or fix the Astral). The old better versions work again. But you'd still know the new ones. So if you get Dimension Locked, the wormhole version might still work.

In that particular instance, the entire point of locking off the Astral, from a metagame perspective, is to prevent instant teleportation and forcing people to rely on the longer and more encounter-prone ethereal jaunt, shadow walk, and so forth. So coming up with a spell that's "teleport, but using the Ethereal Plane" or "plane shift, but using the Shadow Plane" (which is what I object to) defeats the entire purpose, but coming up with "shadow walk, but faster" or "phase door, but longer range" (as you suggest) is something I'm fine with, since it respects both the mechanics and the flavor.

[Devils_Advocate]

Spells are classified based on how they do things, instead of what they do. And that means e.g. that a Conjuration spell can do anything, so long as you say that conjured energy is responsible for the spell effect. Similarly, Transmutation can do whatever the hell it wants because any event at all can be described as a change to the properties of things. So these schools aren't limited in what they can do, just in what fluff their spell descriptions have to contain.

If you wanna divide spells up based on what they do, some schools are simple to formulate:

Abjuration spells prevent. And they do this directly. So making a lock harder to open is fine, but traps aren't. A trap spell falls into the school of whatever effect it produces, probably Evocation.

Divination spells inform. I'm pretty sure that all of the core Divination spells, at least, genuinely are Divination. Prying eyes is borderline, I guess, since it actually creates something. Darkvision and the like also fit here.

Illusion spells create false sensations. Ideally, these are made of real sounds, sights, and/or odors, and have no additional effect on anyone's mind, or vice versa.

Enchantment spells effect the mind in ways not covered by Illusion or Divination. This includes buff spells like fox's cunning and glibness.

Evocation spells create, impart, or reduce energy. This includes spells like fireball, cone of cold, shout, haste, slow, and fly. It shouldn't include force effects, because it shouldn't get to do Conjuration's job by B.S.ing that it's not really using matter but energy that behaves just as though it were matter (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PureEnergy), no, really! (And if you let it make impenetrable, unmovable walls, that's like letting Conjuration produce fire that's not subject to spell resistance -- it makes a school better at another school's job than the other school is! NO. BAD. :smallyuk:)

Conjuration spells instantaneously transport things. The main problem with this is that if you allow them to call in anything from anywhere in the infinite planes, you can legitimately call in something that allows you to do something in one of the other schools. Heck, even if you can only transport yourself anywhere in the multiverse, you still only need one other school (Divination) to find out exactly where the precise doohicky you need is, and then you can zap there, get it, zap back, and save the day. So Conjuration either needs to be eliminated, or you need to allow it to indirectly do anything but not nearly so well as other schools can do them directly. Or arbitrarily prohibit it from indirectly doing specific things, but that seems like it would be a fairly half-assed solution even if you could make it workable.

Necromancy spells... are currently whichever spells are fluffed as working by manipulating the life force. So, basically any spell that only works on a creature (and not an object), and that you want to be Necromancy. In order to be consistent, you could include all such spells that don't fall into any of the above schools, and also don't change the subject's shape, size, or what it's made of.

Transmutation spells have the same potential as Conjuration spells to indirectly do anything, in this case by endowing you with the ability to do whatever it is you want to do. Therefore they should only do stuff not covered by any of the other schools. Of course, there's no sense in having Transmuation as the miscellaneous school and also having Universal, so you either eliminate Universal, or narrow down Transumation even more.

Hmm... Transmutation, Necromancy, and Universal are the hardest to sort out, but I think it works pretty well if you treat them as changes to physical properties that objects have (but which creatures also have), changes to physical properties that only creatures have, and changes to / replication of magic, respectively, with the caveat that they only cover things not covered by the other schools.
The problem with dividing schools of magic by how they work is that there's then potentially no real difference in what they do if they each can do anything given the right fluff. The problem with dividing them by what they do but letting them achieve those effects in any way is that that doesn't really make in-setting sense; it's weirdly gamey and mechanics-based to have conjuring a real, physical shield be Abjuration instead of Conjuration because that boosts AC. The obvious solution, beyond just abandoning schools entirely*, is to give each school fluff that significantly limits what sorts of effects it can produce.

Otherwise, you wind up with different magical traditions that are philosophically distinct without contrasting strengths and weaknesses. And if that's what you want to do, I think that that goal is better served by writing up lots of lore about the different schools of magical thought in your setting. That's not really something that needs to be mechanically enforced, and if it were would probably better be modeled by appropriate bonuses and penalties than through differences in which spells which sort of arcane philosopher could cast at all.

*If nothing else, taking a look at why you want to have spell schools at all should probably help you to figure out how best to divide them. If you don't understand what you want the distinctions between schools to do, you don't even have a clear standard by which to call one categorization schema better than another!