Transmutation does seem to have eaten Div's lunch here, though one could argue that it is at least consistent. The only ones I'd definitely call out as Div are Tactical Acumen and Codespeak. Darkvision and Echolocation are fine as Trans. The others are debatable.
The entire school system is completely arbitrary. They put spells where they go (and have moved them around in the past) based on making sure each school was viable, rather than what made sense. This is why Mage Armor and Shield, which do practically the same thing, are in different schools.
It would be a huge errata undertaking, but I think they should reinstate multi-school spells. Just have the multi-school aspect be a penalty, not a bonus (A Conjurer would need two slots to prep a conjuration/X spell, for example).
They put spells where they go (and have moved them around in the past) based on making sure each school was viable, rather than what made sense.
While that's understandable, it doesn't really explain this situation. Conjuration/Transmutation have too many spells compared to the other schools, and way too many of them are the bread-and-butter spells that see the most regular use. If anything, there should be an active editorial focus on getting material for the other schools and away from these ones.
I didn't say it worked. I just said they did it. :)
Honestly Abjuration gets its lunch taken by the other schools as well. As a school built around wards, walls, defense, and answers (i.e. dispel magic) one would think they would have the best wall spells an defense spells. Except Wall of Force, Mage Armor, Shield, and other big "top picks" tend to NOT be in abjuration (which is weird)
Conj/Trans schools have a lot of spells because the effects that people want most, fit into these schools.
except they don't
The worst offender here is conjuration. Conjuration steps all over the toes of evocation.
Conjuration steps all over the toes of everybody. If there isn't a Conjuration spell that does it, there's a Conjuration spell that summons something that can do it.
Conj/Trans schools have a lot of spells because the effects that people want most, fit into these schools.except they don't
The worst offender here is conjuration. Conjuration steps all over the toes of evocation.
Can you give some examples?
What spells would you keep in Conj of you were to change it?
Well Summon X would stay in conjuration, in addition to spells that summons things (like planar alley, summon infernal host, ect.).
I would also keep teleportation based spells in conjuration as well.
The Create Pit spells I would move to transmutation,
Mage Armor I would move to Abjuration,
Acid Splash and similiar acid spells should be evocation spells (its funny that Conjuration is the school with the "blast" spells that don't require saves... not THE blast school),
Infernal Healing should go to transmutation
Stumble Gap should be transmutation.
Cushioning Bands should be evocation or abjuration (personally I say Abjuration but seeing as Evocation is "the" force school)
Reloading hands should be Transmutation
Ablative Barrier really should be abjuration or evocation.
Ice Spears and Ash Storm should be evocation spells (any spell that deals with messing with the elements should be evocation's)
Sepia Snake Sigil is an abjuration spell (Last I checked abjuration is the school that is supposed to be about wards and such)
The creation spells I feel fall better in transmutation (essentially acting as poor "alchemy" (as in the FMA alchemy))
Wall of stone really should be transmutation and not conjuration (you are not "summoning" a wall as so much mutating th existing stone to make a wall (hence why it requires there being stone to start with).
Wall of Iron I feel should also be transmutation.
Joyful Rapture is all sorts of weird. The only reason is it is a conjuration spells is because, for some unknown reason "healing" is conjuration...
Rampart should be transmutation or abjuration
Wall of lava feels more transmutation or Evocation
Clashing Rocks feel for transmutation or evocation than Conjuration
Tusnami Is more transmutation than conjuration
Heck, I find it funny that Conjuration has better damage spells than THE blast school (having SR: No is kind of nice)
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Spells by school breakdown (across ALL classes):
Divination: 126
Abjuration: 167
Conjuration: 262
Enchantment: 171
Evocation: 217
Illusion: 100
Necromancy: 165
Transmutation: 471
The thing to note with Divination though, each of the detect X alignment spells are counted as different spells. This, along with the fact that about 30 of spells in Divination are simply "Detect something" puts divination about side by side with illusion on the count of "unique spells".
EDIT: What this shows me though is that Divination needs more love. Illusion is deceptively small because they also have Shadow Conjuration, Evocation, greaters, and Shades which let them copy other spells while still under illusion (so your SF illusion actually helps with your "fireball").
Conjuration steps all over the toes of everybody. If there isn't a Conjuration spell that does it, there's a Conjuration spell that summons something that can do it.Er.. Sorry. My previous post quoted the wrong person. This is the quote I meant to use.
I would rebuild the whole school system from scratch, honestly. I really don't care much for how it works as is.
That said ... the big difference would be that Conjuration doesn't do energy, just matter. Conjuring/creating energy is Evocation IMHO, and Force is energy, not matter.
Clerical/divine healing spells would be Necromancy.
Looking over the first few wiz/sorc levels, I immediately have issues with:
Mage Armor
Ki Arrow
Cushioning Bands
Dust of Twilight
Fiery Shuriken
All of these should be Evocation for me. There would likely be some changes to the Summon Monster lists, and the big-gun gamebreaker spells like Gate would just be a big fat no.
Conjuration steps all over the toes of everybody. If there isn't a Conjuration spell that does it, there's a Conjuration spell that summons something that can do it.Er.. Sorry. My previous post quoted the wrong person. This is the quote I meant to use.I would rebuild the whole school system from scratch, honestly. I really don't care much for how it works as is.
That said ... the big difference would be that Conjuration doesn't do energy, just matter. Conjuring/creating energy is Evocation IMHO, and Force is energy, not matter.
Clerical/divine healing spells would be Necromancy.
Looking over the first few wiz/sorc levels, I immediately have issues with:
Mage Armor
Ki Arrow
Cushioning Bands
Dust of Twilight
Fiery ShurikenAll of these should be Evocation for me. There would likely be some changes to the Summon Monster lists, and the big-gun gamebreaker spells like Gate would just be a big fat no.
Well personally I feel like the defensive spells are buff spells that are not about altering you physically (which is transmutation's lot) should fall under abjuration (especially since abjuration kinda lags behind in the early to mid game until they get Dispel, Spellbane, Disjunction, and Anti-magic field lol
the big reason i think the acid spells should go to evocation has more to do with balance. Its not very cool when a school that is not supposed to be about doing direct damage, has spells that can do damage better than the school that is dedicated to them.
As for Ash and and Ice, again it is more for balance reasons.
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Conjuration and Transmutation tend to get more stuff - and stuff from everywhere - because they have both effect-based definitions AND thematics-based definitions that cover extremely broad things. (Making something and changing something.)
Abjuration has a purely effect-based definition. Almost nothing gets to be abjuration because of its thematics. This means that Abjuration ends up with a narrow and often-borrowed-from slice.
Enchantment has two primarily functional definitions. Its defensive definition is bit into heavily from all sides, and its offensive definition is to a lesser degree. It has little thematic definition outside of its connection to mind-affecting effects.
Evocation has both thematic (making energy-stuff) and functional (hurting people) definitions, but doesn't hold onto those things very exclusively, so lots of other schools (especially conjuration) bite into them heavily.
Divination has a mostly thematic definition, but has a strong-but-narrow functional hold over spells that specifically grant extrasensory perception.
Illusion has a pretty strong but pretty narrow functional definition and a pretty strong but pretty narrow thematic definition.
Necromancy has very little in the way of a functional definition, aside from the very narrow realm of spells that literally create undead creatures. It's mostly thematically defined, and with a thematic that's not the most obvious thematic for most effects.
It's the blur of functional and thematic definitions and the degree to which different schools seem to have exclusive hold over them that leads to general blurriness about what what school spells should be in. For a very large number of the spell effects in the game, it's relatively easy to think of a way that that might be accomplished by creating, changing, or moving matter or energy of some kind, which is why tons of stuff ends up in Conjuration or Transmutation. Abjuration, which has no thematics of its own, doesn't really end up with many effects outside of what you might think of as typical effects for the school, since it's purely functionally defined.
Because the thematic definitions exist, it becomes super easy to fit a lot of basic effects into tons of different schools. For example, consider a spell that gives you +4 AC for some amount of time. Is it:
An abjuration spell that grants magical protection?
A conjuration spell that interposes a physical barrier?
A divination spell that lets you see into the future a bit so you can dodge?
An enchantment spell that inspires you dodge better?
An evocation spell that interposes a magical barrier?
An illusion spell that makes you hard to see?
A necromancy spell that animates a bone to protect you?
A transmutation spell that makes your skin harder?
Some of those are greater stretches than others, but all of them are reasonable implementations of an AC-boosting spell, and in fact all are very similar to effects that already exist within the system, although some are implemented in different ways. (The Divination power is based on the 3.5 Psion power Defensive Precognition.)
Yes, healing was 'white necromancy'. All things that had anything to do with positive and negative energy were actually in necromancy. There's even a story in FR with Szass Tam, zulkir of Necromancy and lich, using healing magic...
You can reskin any spell to make it fit in another category, you just have to change the foundation on which it works. Shadow Magic does this with evocations...move the energy to 'shadow energy' and suddenly you've absorbed a whole school.
While you can argue that bringing up acid balls is summoning matter, acid is considered an energy attack, not a physical attack, and the matter doesn't stick around after impact. That's pretty much the definition of evocation.
However, walls of stone are permanent, and probably should be conj. You aren't actually morphing stone, you're bringing them in from elsewhere.
Abjuration tends to be a small school because it's effects are so broad. It's the anti-magic school, spells from it affect whole schools or all of magic (dismissal against all summonings, dispel magic against everything, etc).
Divination is small because there's only so many Detects you can come up with before you start retreading the same ground. Combat divination, like True Strike, should be more developed, but div spec wizards are already pretty strong.
Combo schools should be brought back as the strength of the Universalist wizard. I'm still annoyed they are so weak.
==Aelryinth
Spells by school breakdown (across ALL classes):
Divination: 126
Abjuration: 167
Conjuration: 262
Enchantment: 171
Evocation: 217
Illusion: 100
Necromancy: 165
Transmutation: 471
The thing to note with Divination though, each of the detect X alignment spells are counted as different spells. This, along with the fact that about 30 of spells in Divination are simply "Detect something" puts divination about side by side with illusion on the count of "unique spells".
EDIT: What this shows me though is that Divination needs more love. Illusion is deceptively small because they also have Shadow Conjuration, Evocation, greaters, and Shades which let them copy other spells while still under illusion (so your SF illusion actually helps with your "fireball").
This was an interesting list. Thank you for posting it.
ON a side note, Darkvision should totally be transmutation.
it's giving you a basic creature ability, darkvision, not an extrasensory power.
Same thing with echolocation, and probably tremorsense. I want sense like X creature has, is basically the effect.
The ability to see magic is, however, definitely magical and firmly divination, even if some magical creatures get it.
But darkvision is totally a non-magical ability and best emulated by transmutation turning your eyeballs into heat-seekers or whatever, as low-light vision would be best emulated by giving you cat's eyes.
==Aelryinth
Honestly, the only school I feel that isn't trampling around on everyone else with no reason and also isn't being trampled on itself is Illusion oddly enough. Kind of hard to justify a spell that alters your view of reality without actually altering reality as a spell other than illusion (I guess you could stretch and call it enchantment). And Illusion has the ability to copy other schools without trampling on their turf by making "fake" effects (silent image to create a "pit" where there is no pit to funnel the mooks where you want them).
I think it is pretty debatable, Aelryinth. Divination has a lot of spells that adjust how you see things. It has a lot of detect spells that see non-magical things. It can create little constructs that go and look at things with normal vision and come back to you.
Further, True Seeing essentially does what Dark Vision does and a whole bunch of other stuff -- you can see through non-magical darkness with it.
If there were multischool spells I could see it being part of both. Given the small size of Divination though it seems better to go there. It isn't like Transmutation is hurting for tons and tons of spells.
It creates scrying sensors. Wizard Eye is no different then clairvoyance, except its shorter range and motile. Scrying sensors are definitely divination.
Darkvision is a very low order ability...normal, non-magical creatures and PC's have it as a natural racial power.
True Seeing isn't a natural power of anything except high level very magical monsters, largely outsiders. Just because one effect subsumes another doesn't make them both the same thing. That's like saying changing size subsumes all strength increases.
Could you make a Div-based darkvision? Sure, I imagine so. But it's a natural ability, and fits better in Transmutation because of it.
Although honestly, it should be a first level spell...
==Aelryinth
In a home game, spell research can solve alot of this as a "by the rules" solution. Good old fashioned houseruling can also fix some of this. I've actually heard from some other gamers that healing used to be in necromancy before they moved it to make necromancy only "evil", "bad", and "death".
This is true. Prior to 3e, the divine healing spells were Necromancies.
Well personally I feel like the defensive spells are buff spells that are not about altering you physically (which is transmutation's lot) should fall under abjuration (especially since abjuration kinda lags behind in the early to mid game until they get Dispel, Spellbane, Disjunction, and Anti-magic field lol
The entire Abjuration school is weird to me, to be honest. I could easily see disbanding it, putting most of the spells into other schools, and adding the 'magic-manipulation' spells like Dispel and the rest into Universal.
The healing and life-manipulation spells should go back to necromancy. Then the fear spells could be moved from necromancy to enchantment with all the other emotion-manipulating spells. You could also combine illusion and enchantment and have a single school of mind manipulation. The shadow spells could be moved to a subschool of necromancy.
The healing and life-manipulation spells should go back to necromancy. Then the fear spells could be moved from necromancy to enchantment with all the other emotion-manipulating spells. You could also combine illusion and enchantment and have a single school of mind manipulation. The shadow spells could be moved to a subschool of necromancy.
I'd be down with most of that. Not sure about the shadow spells, though, since necromancy is life/death, and the shadow spells aren't about that. Since they 'tap energy', that sounds like Evocation to me, as redundant as that would be in a lot of cases.
I'd be down with most of that. Not sure about the shadow spells, though, since necromancy is life/death, and the shadow spells aren't about that. Since they 'tap energy', that sounds like Evocation to me, as redundant as that would be in a lot of cases.
I was thinking of the connection between the shadow plane and negative energy. I'm not sure if this is different in Pathfinder, but in 3.5 the shadow plane was described as being connected to the plane of negative energy. If shadow is connected to negative energy, then why not make shadow part of necromancy?
*checks Wiki*
According to what I found, the Negative Energy Plane is the 'core' of the Shadow Plane, with the Shadow plane being the mantle (to use a planetary analogy). Though this assumes you're using the Golarion cosmology, which I most likely would not since I don't use Golarion for my gameworlds anywho.
If it's not directly manipulating life energy, I don't think it should be necromancy, whether or not it draws on positive/negative/shadow energy. That's just my viewpoint, though; I wouldn't raise a fuss if I were in a game that used yours.
If it's not directly manipulating life energy, I don't think it should be necromancy, whether or not it draws on positive/negative/shadow energy. That's just my viewpoint, though; I wouldn't raise a fuss if I were in a game that used yours.
Yeah, the shadow spells are kinda hard to place. They don't really fit well in illusion either but there aren't enough of them to make their own school. Evocation, as you mentioned, is another school they could be put in (though that would make shadow evocation really silly).
Unrelatedly, why is blood money a transmutation spell?
I think the biggest defense that shadow spells should be evocation is because the Daylight and Darkness (the spells) fall into evocation. Especially since, if you look at the descriptio of Darkness, the spell literally pulls "shadow stuff" from the shadow plane to drop the level of light.
It literally transforms your blood into a material component. That one I think does make perfect sense.
Putting Shadow Evocation in Evocation would definitely lessen it, but it would still be useful as a kind of 'meta-spell' in the 'I didn't prepare Lightning Bolt, and i wish I had one ... but I do have Shadow Evoc!' It would also still be VERY useful for spontaneous casters.
Personally I like combining Enchantment and Illusion together. Especially since when I make an illusionist, I tend to also take enchantment as a sort of "secondary" focus to augment my illusions, especially when I am playing a fear master (like the Shadow Weaver prestige class (or whatever it was called) from 3.5).
I think the biggest defense that shadow spells should be evocation is because the Daylight and Darkness (the spells) fall into evocation. Especially since, if you look at the descriptio of Darkness, the spell literally pulls "shadow stuff" from the shadow plane to drop the level of light.
Darkness could very easily be a shadow spell as well. Daylight seems pretty solidly evocation, though.
It literally transforms your blood into a material component. That one I think does make perfect sense.
Looking at the srd, Pathfinder seems a bit split as to which school spells dealing with blood should belong to. Some are necromancy and some are transmutation. (Blood biography and blood transcription are both divination, which is nice.)
Putting Shadow Evocation in Evocation would definitely lessen it, but it would still be useful as a kind of 'meta-spell' in the 'I didn't prepare Lightning Bolt, and i wish I had one ... but I do have Shadow Evoc!' It would also still be VERY useful for spontaneous casters.
Oh, I don't think it would lessen it, but it could lead to silly things.
^^^ this is full of win xD
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The thing with making conjuring shadow energy part of conjuration, is that you'd probably have to also make conjuring negative energy part of conjuration as well, which pretty much guts necromancy.
Illusion and necromancy suffer most from being 'theme park' schools that poach effects from other schools to make up the meat of their spells, such as necromancy poaching fear effects from enchantment (the school to affect all emotions not named fear), or illusion poaching patterns from evocation (the school one uses to create light and darkness, but not, apparently *colored* light...).
Thematically, if negative energy based, necromancy should be all about draining and weakening various energy types, and include spells like resist energy and dispel magic and darkness, but, not so much. Cold spells and even perhaps acid spells could be thematically tied to negative energy (negating heat to 'create' cold, or causing matter to fall apart through entropic effects or draining away subatomic energies or 'exposure to the waters of duat' or accelerated decay or whatever fluff you want to justify it).
The school system is pretty much a mess (one of the things that 3rd edition went too far in trying to codify and nail into one spell = one school paradigm), and I'd much prefer that some spells be seeded into multiple schools, or, like the old 2nd edition Spells & Magic, multiple *types* of schools (sort of how like a spell could be part of the evocation school *and* part of an 'elemental fire' specialization).
As for Divination, specifically, I've long felt that it needs not just more spells (including an assortment of buffs and debuffs based off of enhanced perceptions or confused perceptions), but also a few offensive spells (to get some mileage out of the otherwise hapless Spell Focus Divination feat), inspired by stuff like Jean Grey expanding Mastermind's consciousness so that he can perceive all of reality at once, or the Crow 'gifting' the man responsible for his fiancé's death with the memories of 'thirty hours of pain, all at once, all for you.'
Giving someone premonitions of their own death could daze or stun them (or even smack them with nonlethal damage), and leave them shaken or penalized, particularly if the death-visions included people or events present. Causing someone to remember all of their own past injuries could cause some sort of spontaneous recurrence of past harm. They could be shown alternate possibilities, all the terrible things that *almost* happened to them, leaving them paralyzed with doubt. 'Gifting' someone with painfully heightened and uncontrollable perceptions could leave them with 'Usher syndrome,' where a whisper sounds like a painful screech and the feel of soft silk against their skin feels like sandpaper. 'Gifting' them with a new sense, such as uncontrollable telepathy, or trapping them in their past memories by giving them uncontrollable total recall, or able to see across planar barriers a la From Beyond, and perceive all sorts of creepy Mythos creatures that, now that you gaze into the Abyss, it also gazes back into you and can see and harm the unwilling viewer, all are possibilities.
Giving someone premonitions of their own death could daze or stun them (or even smack them with nonlethal damage), and leave them shaken or penalized, particularly if the death-visions included people or events present.
So what, you cast this spell on someone and they are staggered from the vision of seeing the barbarian in front of them cleave them in twain after they are staggered from failing their save against this spell?
That's pretty cool.
Divination is supposed to be a bit "nerfed" in this world, at least ever since the "Death of Prophecy!" There could well have been many more Divination Spells in earlier ages, which no longer work.
The Divination School Power: Forewarned, still rocks hard though!
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Giving someone premonitions of their own death could daze or stun them (or even smack them with nonlethal damage), and leave them shaken or penalized, particularly if the death-visions included people or events present.So what, you cast this spell on someone and they are staggered from the vision of seeing the barbarian in front of them cleave them in twain after they are staggered from failing their save against this spell?
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, it can turn pretty 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' if done right!
Giving someone premonitions of their own death could daze or stun them (or even smack them with nonlethal damage), and leave them shaken or penalized, particularly if the death-visions included people or events present.So what, you cast this spell on someone and they are staggered from the vision of seeing the barbarian in front of them cleave them in twain after they are staggered from failing their save against this spell?
That's pretty cool.
That sounds like an illusion to me, though ... you're giving them false images/visions.
You perceive every possible timeline for the next full round, ala True Strike...and in every one of them, the man in front of you kills you horribly. No matter what you do, you KNOW you can't escape...
Yeah, I think there'd be penalties. That's definitely not an illusion. It's exposing you to all the worst possible options from a selected short term timeline, like True Strike working against you.
I remember one from a "Math Telepath" from The Authority. He totally paralyzed an enemy by making them perceive their exact size in ratio from here to Alpha Centauri. I believe the words from the afflicted were 'so small....'
==Aelryinth
You're making someone either see something that isn't there (all the images of dying), or making him think something that isn't necessarily true ... that's either an Illusion or an Enchantment.