[D&D 3.5e] Reimagining Magic Schools

[Eldariel]

Well, I know it's been done before. But I was thinking of Abjurations and how they fall into the magic system, and I realized that the school acts as a sort of a Metamagic-school; that is, magic that deals with magic rather than magic that affects reality somehow.

As such, I noticed that makes for a nice basis that requires a bit of reworking but leads to a surprisingly solid system. It also comes surprisingly close to the old system, just without the randomness with schools.


So, to start with:
Metamagic (or "Alteration" or something to effect; basically the school that deals with raw magic): Magical effects that interact or produce raw magical effects. This mostly includes every Force-effect, every Dispel-type effect, every spell-altering/improving effect and so on. Abjuration has much of this, already, but this'd also have offensive Force-effects, Mage Armor, etc. This'd also have 100% less Dismissal-type effects and such. Also, Mage Hand/Telekinesis-type effects could fall in here depending on how exactly you fluff them; I'd probably put them in Shaping though.

Conjuration: Basically, all manners of spells that move things through the Aether would fall here. In other words, spell that alter time or space around you. Summoning, Calling, Teleportation, Banishing, Plane Shifting, etc. Woulda renamed it but "Summoning" or "The School That Moves Things" didn't really have a ring to it. This'd mostly have one-half of the old Conjuration (no Glitterdust, Web, Grease & al. tho). This'd also be the "screw with Time"-school, so at least Time Stop could fall in here (unless you flavor it as "making yourself move superfast" as in 3.5).

Creation: The school that creates matter. Much of former Conjuration falls in here; Glitterdusts, Webs, X Creation, Acid-stuff, etc. Not much to say; really straight-forward split.

Elementalism: Basic elemental magic (going by the four Aristotelian non-solid elements in D&D, Fire, Cold, Electricity, Sonic). Every effect that creates or manipulates those elements would fall here. Fogs and Control Weather-type effects would fall in here.

Mindmagic: This'd basically include most of old Illusion and Enchantment. Stuff that alters the mind or its perception. Shadow-type spells would end up in their own school, but all kinds of Images, Fear-effects (sorry, Necromancy; Cause Fear is NOT Necromantic), and pretty much everything Enchantment used to have would fall in here. This'd also have much of the old Divination (reading minds, increasing your own awareness and the like), while the rest of it would fall under Conjuration (such as Contact Other Plane, seeing moment to the future [Foresight], etc.)

Necromancy: Basic negative/positive energy manipulation. This'd mostly remain intact, except Healing would of course fall in here. Necromancy is a bit of a misnomer, of course, but let that be forgiven.

Shaping: Basically, elemental magic deals with energy, this deals with matter. All creation, alteration and such of matter would fall here. One could also collapse magic that alters living matter in here, but of course, manipulating life/death is Necromancy. Still, there is no need for a differentiation between living and dead matter; just, this school can't alter that life itself, it can just alter the being. This'd mostly have most of Transmutation (minus things yoinked by Elemental magic and Conjuration).

Shadow: Mostly a school specialized in manipulating Shadow stuff. Shadow Conjurations/Evocations, Simulacrums and all manners of quasi-real crap would fall in here. The Illusions that fall in Mindmagic are strictly illusionary constructs that fool sensory abilities. Would probably require a dozen new spells to make it worth a new school; otherwise one could collapse it into Creation and Shaping or Necromancy quite easily. After all, creating Shadow Stuff is still creating and manipulating it is still manipulating. It shouldn't really be in Illusion at any rate. I find the old Illusion-school to be the second-most-illogical right after Abjuration.


I think that covers everything; Universal would lose a lot of spells (stuff like Permanency would now fall under Metamagic/Alteration). On counterbalance, one could make "Read Magic" Universal tho. Detect Magic, Arcane Sight and so on is clearly Metamagic here, but yeah.

Also, I think those schools are rather balanced; "Enchantment" and "Abjuration" got quite a bit, Conjuration and Transmutation lost some, Necromancy got some and Elemental magic has monopoly in energy effects now. Shadow is probably a bit lackluster so I'd personally just expand Necromancy to cover a third energy type in Shadow.


Does my logic break somewhere? Is some of the schools illogical? Am I committing a WoTC here? Also, why the hell do I even posting this? [The last one is rhetorical]

[Kosjsjach]

I can't readily grasp what kind of in-game ramifications this would have.

Just to clarify, Divination just stays as-is?

[Eldariel]

I can't readily grasp what kind of in-game ramifications this would have.

Just to clarify, Divination just stays as-is?

Divination pretty much ceases to exist, becoming part of Metamagic, Mindmagic and Conjuration. Though maybe all sorts of communication magic should fall under Mindmagic (including Contact Other Plane), leaving Conjuration out of the deal.

[hewhosaysfish]

"Mindmagic" doesn't sound too great to me. What about "Mentalism"?

[OverdrivePrime]

I find the concept very enticing and will put in a second vote for changing the name of Mind Magic. Mentalism isn't bad.

At first blush, it sounds fairly balanced, though I think you'd see fewer specialist mages. Not necessarily a bad thing.

[Lapak]

I really like the idea. One of my big problems with 3e is that they tried to re-balance the schools of magic (Alteration was the uberschool in 2e, with more and better spells than almost anything else) and ended up with the same problem, just with different schools in the driver's seat. Any reorganization that gets closer to an even distribution of power has my support.

And I'd suggest Mesmerism for the mind-affecting school.

[Dimers]

Having most illusions in Mind poses a problem. If the illusion is just in people's heads, rather than visible to the eyes, then mindless creatures won't perceive them at all, possibly including mind blanked characters. And it means that illusion spells would need ridiculously large ranges of effect, or creatures wouldn't be able to see them from far away but would suddenly have them appear once they got within range. Finally, since magic is being imposed on other creatures' minds (as opposed to their eyeballs collecting reflected light), shouldn't all viewers automatically get saves as soon as they have any chance of seeing the illusion? I guess what I'm saying is, if they're in the Mind school, all illusions would be the phantasm type.

You could put figment and glamer illusions in Elemental, using 'light' as an element, but that fails in certain cases too. If they're 'light' spells, they'd have to be pretty advanced magic to be visible in daylight but not in darkness ... and far more advanced to register to darkvision in darkness, rather than disappearing completely! Maybe figments and glamers are all made of some substance or force which shows up in all forms of vision but still can't be touched ... which
(A) should have a name,
(B) sounds rather "it just works because it's MAGIC, okay?!",
(C) will probably be abused badly by powergamers somehow, and
(D) still sounds like the Elemental school, vastly over-powering it.

These are some of the reasons that illusions are the hardest school of magic to learn in the game system I'm writing.

[Longcat]

How would you handle specializations under your new system, Eldariel? Basically the old system (trade two schools, get bonus spells in one), or the EPH (everyone gets to choose one school, and gets special bonus spells only available to them) version?

[lsfreak]

I could see Summon X's all being Shadow, or rather have Shadow versions of them (beyond merely Shadow Conjuration, which really should probably go for balance reasons). It's not the real creature even with Summons, rather a sort of projection of them, and wouldn't be hard to imagine that summons are actually just shaping magic into the facade of different creatures.

Alteration (yes, like Elder Scrolls) or Manipulation seems like it would be a better description than Shaping. Things like slow/haste, transmute x to y, and the like aren't really 'shaping.'

[Justin B.]

Shaping and Creation could probably be rolled into one, since they both deal with the manipulation of matter itself.

[lsfreak]

Shaping and Creation could probably be rolled into one, since they both deal with the manipulation of matter itself.

The problem is, it then becomes the super-school that no one in the right mind doesn't take, which is part of what Eldariel is trying to remedy.

[Lysander]

I agree that Mentalism sounds better than mindmagic, and splitting divination spells and illusion spells up between the schools makes sense.

Orb spells would leave Conjuration and go into creation.

Maybe shadow magic should just be a part of conjuration rather than a seperate school? You're channeling extradimensional forces so it makes sense. And this takes A LOT away from conjuration. It might need shadow spells to make it worthwhile for stuff other than teleport and plane shift.

How about instead of metamagic (since that doesn't really apply for all those spells) you call it "Enchantment." Enchantment doesn't exclusively mean mind-control like wotc designated it to be, it was just a broad term for magic in general.

I think it's fine to have Creation and Shaping as separate categories.

[jiriku]

Third vote for Mentalism.

This system is aesthetically clean apart from the concern Dimers raised about illusion magic. I'd vote you simply move illusions under shadow, since a) you need more shadow spells and b) illusions are, y'know, made of light.

Naturally, the change has significant ramifications. You're going to to need to review and recatalogue upwards of a thousand spells, redefine what it means to be a specialist wizard, and revise about a dozen prestige classes. For completeness, it would help to update the various alternative class features that reference schools of magic or specialization, and you'll need to review about twoscore feats to make sure they still make sense in the context of the new schools.

I have to ask, what benefit does this new system offer that justifies all that effort?

[Eldariel]

I have to ask, what benefit does this new system offer that justifies all that effort?

Well, for one, it's more balanced. Under such a split, Conjuration isn't nearly as omnipotent as it used to be (though it's still strong) and neither is shaping.

Second, it's intended to make sense; that is, you can automatically figure out what school a spell goes as opposed to "is Mage Armor an Abjuration 'cause it's protective, an Evocation 'cause it's a Force-effect or a Conjuration 'cause it creates something?"-crap.


The latter is the principal reason I ended up thinking about this in the first place. It isn't the first time the redivision has been done, but I think it's the first one using these particular parameters.


Yeah, Mentalism sounds fine.

Orb spells would leave Conjuration and go into creation.

Actually, they'd depend. Orb of Acid? Creation. Orb of Fire/Cold/Electricity? Elementalism. Orb of Force? Metamagic/whateverthehellyacallit. But yeah, they'd leave Conjuration where they NEVER belonged in the first place.

Maybe shadow magic should just be a part of conjuration rather than a seperate school? You're channeling extradimensional forces so it makes sense. And this takes A LOT away from conjuration. It might need shadow spells to make it worthwhile for stuff other than teleport and plane shift.

I don't know, you've still got all sorts of Planar Bindings and Summonings and such in Conjuration. It still seems strong. It also now has some parts of the former Divination. But yeah, making it less overwhelmingly strong "one school to do it all" was one of the principal goals here.

How about instead of metamagic (since that doesn't really apply for all those spells) you call it "Enchantment." Enchantment doesn't exclusively mean mind-control like wotc designated it to be, it was just a broad term for magic in general.

Hmm, that's one possibility. I'd rather want some more appropriate term though.

I think it's fine to have Creation and Shaping as separate categories.

Yeah; balance-wise, cramming Creation into Shaping would be a disaster since that'd mean we'd have much of the old Transmutation plus the best Conjurations there.

How would you handle specializations under your new system, Eldariel? Basically the old system (trade two schools, get bonus spells in one), or the EPH (everyone gets to choose one school, and gets special bonus spells only available to them) version?

It's perfectly compatible with the old system. Writing specialization systems is frankly a separate topic. Sufficient to say though, I'd want some in-school specializations under e.g. Elementalism and Conjuration. XPH system would require relisting spells under "school-exclusives" and such and would be even more work. So meh.

Having most illusions in Mind poses a problem. If the illusion is just in people's heads, rather than visible to the eyes, then mindless creatures won't perceive them at all, possibly including mind blanked characters. And it means that illusion spells would need ridiculously large ranges of effect, or creatures wouldn't be able to see them from far away but would suddenly have them appear once they got within range. Finally, since magic is being imposed on other creatures' minds (as opposed to their eyeballs collecting reflected light), shouldn't all viewers automatically get saves as soon as they have any chance of seeing the illusion? I guess what I'm saying is, if they're in the Mind school, all illusions would be the phantasm type.

Well, see, here's a problem with how Illusions and Mindless creatures interact in the first place. Obviously the mindless creatures still have some kind of sensory abilities since they can perceive targets they should attack and so on. Obviously they also have some "source of commands" since they can be programmed to perform certain tasks.

So if Illusion is a source of false sensory information, so to speak, they should perceive it just as well as creatures with a mind. Not mindmagic per ce and not targeting the creatures it affects, but a...well, an image that's nothing more than that, just an image.

With just as much data output as the Illusionist manages (greater images come with smell and feel and so on). Really, the way I see it, Illusion would just be an area with magical energy that makes you perceive what the Illusionist wants you to. Thinking you see something falls under old Enchantment and should use Suggestion-type spells instead.

That'd work for Figments and Patterns at least. Phantasms already work. I think Glamers work as is. Alternatively, they could all be collapsed into Shadow.


Meh, maybe just eliminating Shadow and collapsing it into Conjuration, Shaping/Whatever (yeah, Manipulation sounds better) or Necromancy would be the best

[Dimers]

That'd work for Figments and Patterns at least. Phantasms already work. I think Glamers work as is. Alternatively, they could all be collapsed into Shadow.

Meh, maybe just eliminating Shadow and collapsing it into Conjuration, Shaping/Whatever (yeah, Manipulation sounds better) or Necromancy would be the best

Aww. I quite agree with Jiriku about illusions fitting with Shadow, which I hadn't read well enough the first time when I suggested Elemental instead. I think it's a good school with plenty of potential, and should stay around.