School confusion.

[Cybren]

I think these schools are just silly in many cases.
Conjuration(creation)-isn't that what evocation is? Creating things? Whereas conjuration is bringing things?

Conjuration(healing)- uhhh, you're conjuring new flesh?

And some of the spells are just mis-matched. Cause Fear is necromancy? Because necromancy is scary?

Unluck is divination because it involves..uh.. things...and luck and things happening...

other things that are off...
Telekenisis, time stop, and rope trick are transmutation? Because you're turning something into a flying thing? Because you time into...no time? How is rope trick explained? That's just confusilating.

[The_Snark]

Yeah... Evocation and Conjuration (creation) are very finely divided, but Evocation tends towards manipulating energy and force rather than physical objects.

Conjuration (healing) is absurd. It should be necromancy.

Fear spells should, I think, be enchantment.

Unluck... eh, it's a tricky one. I guess it could be transmutation instead. But you're dealing with probability and the future, too, I guess.

Time stop probably ought to be universal, rope trick should be classified as Conjuration like teleport, plane shift, etc., and telekineses... doesn't really fit in very well.

I think what happens is that Wizards designs eight nice schools of magic that they like and that encompass most spells, then they realize that many of the cool ones don't really fit in everywhere. Personally, I think there could easily be more universal spells without hurting much.

Psionic disciplines usually work a lot better, I think.

[oriong]

Well, conjuration (healing) is because all healing spells involve some energy brought in from the Positive Energy Plane.

Conjuration (Creation) I think mostly falls into the 'conjury' field simply because that's part of what a literal 'conjurer' is: someone who pulls things from thin air.

Cause Fear, can't really argue with that one, really should be enchantment.

In the case of Unluck, Time Stop and Rope trick I guess they mostly just went with a 'best fit' thing since none of them seem like they'd fall easily into any given school. Rope Trick does seem more conjuration related though.

I think part of the issue is that all of the schools are exclusive, nothing utilizes multiple forces to create an effect in theory but many spells seem to do that (rope trick for instance). If there was the possibility of 'cross-school' abilities I think it would end up making a lot more sense thematically.

[Cybren]

Well, conjuration (healing) is because all healing spells involve some energy brought in from the Positive Energy Plane.

And that just opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. Now we're left wondering why inflict wounds is necromancy.

Conjuration (Creation) I think mostly falls into the 'conjury' field simply because that's part of what a literal 'conjurer' is: someone who pulls things from thin air.

Which, another can of worms. Isn't the fireball spell then conjuring a fireball...from thin air?

In the case of Unluck, Time Stop and Rope trick I guess they mostly just went with a 'best fit' thing since none of them seem like they'd fall easily into any given school. Rope Trick does seem more conjuration related though.

Well i don't get the others but i'm guessing unluck was divination because it just needed more spells. Ao knows that transmutation didn't need more, though...

[Dhavaer]

Which, another can of worms. Isn't the fireball spell then conjuring a fireball...from thin air?

No, fireball is pure energy, and falls under Evocation. Don't ask about the Orb spells, with the exception of Acid and possible Fire and Cold, they're stupid. Especially Force.

[Cybren]

No, fireball is pure energy, and falls under Evocation. Don't ask about the Orb spells, with the exception of Acid and possible Fire and Cold, they're stupid. Especially Force.

I'm pretty sure it's a ball of fire, and fire is a thing, and therefore it was a thing that was either brought from somewhere else (Conjuration) or created (conjuration:creation).

[Dhavaer]

I'm pretty sure it's a ball of fire, and fire is a thing, and therefore it was a thing that was either brought from somewhere else (Conjuration) or created (conjuration:creation).

Fire is not a 'thing', although I could be wrong as there are very few definitions of exactly what a 'thing' is. Fire is energy. Fire is not matter. Therefore, fire falls under evocation.

[Cybren]

Either you're right, and then energy gets more confusing since positive energy is conjuration, negative energy is necromancy, and fire is evocation

[Dhavaer]

The Conjuration (Healing) thing is a side effect of the 'Necromancy is teh eViL!!!1!oneleven' brainbug. We can't possibly let the school of magic that represents power over life and death keep people alive, can we?
The necromantic fear effects are another symptom of the same thought process.

[Yuki Akuma]

Fire is a thing. It's a plasma. A superheated gas, like a star. But not quite as hot.

Time Stop is just a really super-powered version of haste, as it speeds up your personal time, it doesn't actually stop the universe's time. So it's Transmutation.

A spell that actually stops time would be epic.

I agree that healing should be Necromancy and fear effects should be Enchantment, however. That's how I house rule my games.

[oriong]

The best guess I can give on Necromancy is that, typically it involves some sort of 'extra effort' above and beyond normal conjuration. While a lot of healing spells might be defined as just a 'positive energy bath' (maybe with some effort taken to 'target' it and some safties to keep it in check) Necromancy often involves some pretty complex manipulations of negative energy. Of course this still falls apart since they've put things like ressurection under Healing instead of Necromancy. It occurs to me that there really isn't much 'white' necromancy left anymore.

So, that's more or less out.

Really, when it comes down to it spells aren't assigned by their logic, they're assigned by theme. This seems far more important to D+D magic than the actual 'how does this work'

The 'theme' of conjuration (in general) is making something appear or disapear (almost always matter or a creature).

Conjuration (Healing) is anything that 'makes living things better'. It's purely a recovery theme, it doesn't involve improvement so much as the negation of injury/penalties.

Evocation is the manipulation of external, flashy forces such as lightning and fire (while positive and negative energy are arguably 'internal' manipulations). Anything that blows something up or flings around energy is mostly evocation (With some exceptions)

Necromancy is anything that manipulates death/undead or causes direct 'unpleasantness' to a living creature without actually changing them or inflicting gross physical injury.

[Dhavaer]

Fire is a thing. It's a plasma. A superheated gas, like a star. But not quite as hot.

Fire is heat and light associated with rapid oxidation. Flame is plasma.

[Yuki Akuma]

Fire is heat and light associated with rapid oxidation. Flame is plasma.

Details...

You can't generally have fire without a flame.

The rapid oxidisation releases heat and light, which turns any gasses in the immediate viscinity into a plasma until the fuel runs out. I just skipped a step, okay?

[oriong]

But neither actually matters as far as D+D is concerned. It doesn't care about molecular chemistry or any of that.

In D+D Fire is energy.

[Yuki Akuma]

But neither actually matters as far as D+D is concerned. It doesn't care about molecular chemistry or any of that.

In D+D Fire is energy.

So is acid. And cold.

...Yeah.

Wait, if acid is an energy type, why are there no evocation spells that deal acid damage? Isn't it even banned from Energy Subsitution?

[Dhavaer]

Details...

You can't generally have fire without a flame.

Wrong way around. The fire causes the flame. Fire is energy, and fireball is correctly placed in Evocation.

[Yuki Akuma]

Wrong way around. The fire causes the flame. Fire is energy, and fireball is correctly placed in Evocation.

Well, you can't have fire without a flame spontaneously appearing. >.> Can we leave my nine o'clock bad grammar out of this, please?

[Dhavaer]

Well, you can't have fire without a flame spontaneously appearing. >.> Can we leave my nine o'clock bad grammar out of this, please?

No. With the bad grammar, you're disagreeing with me. Without, you're agreeing. Grammar is, in fact, relevant.

[oriong]

So is acid. And cold.

...Yeah.

Wait, if acid is an energy type, why are there no evocation spells that deal acid damage? Isn't it even banned from Energy Subsitution?

Yeah, exactly in D+D Cold is an energy type. Attempting to argue physics or chemistry to support just about anything in D+D is a bad idea that's doomed from the start.

It's not meant to model the real world, don't try and make it.

As for acid, it's actually only treated as an 'energy' for defensive purposes (i.e. the energy resistance ability) and I think that's mostly for simplification. In terms of inflicting damage with it acid has never been lumped in as 'energy'. It's pretty much always conjuration or something of the like.

[cupkeyk]

My two cents worth:

Conjuration [Creation] deals with materials while Evoc deals with energy. Although both usually have instantaneous effects, the manifestation of each spell is different. Take Wall of Iron. It has an instantaneous duration and leaves a permanent piece of Iron behind. Fireball Leaves nothing behind. The explanation we have for the Orb spells not having SR applicable to them instead of pulling energy from nowhere, you conjure the energy from a plane where it is abundant and hurl it forward. Those things are as real as your toe.

As for other things, yes Necromancy should have retained the healing spells.

Transmutation is specifically tied in to the ethereal plane. Considering how DnD explains that the ethereal plane overlaps the material, this does not require extradimensional manipulation, with another plane overlapping the material plane, the Plane of Shadow. Plane of Shadow = Illusion; Ethereal Plane =Transmutation. So Trans gets Blink(where you teleport between the material and ethereal planes every other second), Rope Trick(you bridge the gap to create a small living space for a brief moment) and that's also why you are screwed if anyone attacks you with a ghost-touch weapon in either case because these things exist in both material and ethereal planes at the same time, and same with creatures with the incorporeal subtype.

[daggaz]

And you are not only killing catgirls, Dhav, you are being so nitpicky as to border on simply wrong.

One could easily define 'flame' as just a piece of the 'fire.' When a person walks into a campsight, and points and says, 'hey look a fire,' they are generally indicating the bright burning flames.

And regardless of that, even if we accept your very narrow definition of 'fire,' its still not simply 'energy.' Energy is an extremely broad and abstract term- are you talking about light, or potential chemical energy, or kinetic energy, etc etc.. and if you are gonna define one thing so neatly, you can't just switch midtrack and tack on a final argument that isn't just as accurate. Thats just bad science. (Meoooowww--oomph, another dead catgirl).

Also, you weren't really defining fire, you were defining BURNING. Burning is the exothermic process of oxidation through which atmospheric oxygen combines with other matter, usually but not strictly limited to hydrocarbons, which results in the release of heat, light, and by-product gasses, some of which are heated enough to form an incandescent plasma, commonly referred to as the 'flames of the fire.' The entirety of the mess, the flames, the light, the heat, even the burning fuel, is commonly referred to as 'a fire.' If somebody uses the term 'on fire,' then they are referring to the burning process directly, and the flames indirectly. As in, 'Oh crap! My house is on fire!' (It is oxidizing in an exothermic reaction, and there are freakin flames popping out of the roof now!).

At any rate, flames are not pure energy. They contain gasses and plasma. The only parts of a fire that are 'pure' energy are the radiated heat and light. Both elements of the electromagnetic spectrum. And if we narrow it down to electromagnetic radiation, we aren't really talking about fire anymore, are we? (Note: I definite pure energy this way, as only EM radiation exists without the need of matter as a complimenting entity. All other forms of energy, kinetic, potential, physical, chemical, even gravitational and the strong and weak force, are fundamentally tied to the existance of matter, either as a direct and constant source of the field, or a carrier of the unit of energy.)

[Rei_Jin]

Um, I thought we were discussing schools of magic, not EM radiation daggaz.

If you want to astound us with your intellect, then do it in the right place.

[Charity]

If you want to astound us with your intellect, then do it in the right place.

Somewhere useful like the bookies?

Let's face it, the obvious spell schools are well... obvious, all the others they chucked in the air to see where they land. No rhyme or reason was employed, though no doubt someone will witter on about balancing the schools or some such.

[Zeb The Troll]

Yeah, exactly in D+D Cold is an energy type. Attempting to argue physics or chemistry to support just about anything in D+D is a bad idea that's doomed from the start.

It's not meant to model the real world, don't try and make it.

As for acid, it's actually only treated as an 'energy' for defensive purposes (i.e. the energy resistance ability) and I think that's mostly for simplification. In terms of inflicting damage with it acid has never been lumped in as 'energy'. It's pretty much always conjuration or something of the like.

I can kind of see the "cold energy" thing as the opposite of "fire energy". In the same way that flame is the physical manifestation of "fire energy", ice is the physical manifestation of "cold energy". So while Fireball is evocation because it's not conjuring flame but evoking fire, Ice Storm is also not conjuring ice but evoking cold.

Acid, on the other hand, doesn't meet this categorization even thematically. The Acid Splash isn't a manifestation of some (poorly) defined energy, it's acid, and so is conjured and not evoked.

That being said, I agree, mostly, with the OP in that there are a slew of spells that just don't make sense where they are. Necromancy should include all spells that deal with the body or the soul/spirit directly, including both heals/cures and negative levels and all that other necromantic stuff (like it used to be). Fear should definitely be Enchantment the same as any other mind affecting spell.

[Thomas]

It's phlogiston, you fools!

[Yuki Akuma]

Yuki Akuma - Inspiring catgirl genocide since 1988.

[cokefiend]

Those catgirls have it comin'. They deserve all the genocide they get.
And really, no-one mentioned Power Words yet? Enchantment? I think that makes the least sense of all.

[Yuki Akuma]

Okay. What do you think primal words of pure arcane power that cause people to just do things like stand still or keel over dead should be?

[cokefiend]

Power Word: Kill... how about Necromancy? I'll admit I haven't kept track of all the new Power Words, but I don't really see most of the effects as being obvious enchantments. Why would you compel someone to stand still when you could make him physically unable to move?
Oh, and blindness? Really? Please justify that somehow. I really want to be able to look at that spell without my brain imploding.

[Yuki Akuma]

You enchant their minds to believe they're blind when they aren't really?