So I'm dreaming up a home-brew setting to run someday and I've come up with a town. In this town, and everywhere within a 10 mile radius of said town, conjuration doesn't work. Simply fails. Any kind of interaction with any other plane is impossible. This includes but is not limited to: Summoning, Teleportation, access to the shadow, ethereal, or astral planes, access to Extradimensional spaces, and even access to spells of the conjuration (healing) school. Even channel energy does not work as it draws power from the positive and negative energy planes.
The story behind this, as with many stories, starts with two wizards. An age ago in this place, two wizards of tremendous power battled. There are dozens of stories of who they were and why they were fighting. None can say which version, if any, is true. But there is one part everyone agrees on. One wizard, losing, desperate and reckless ripped open a tear between the planes with epic magic to call upon the aid of the Abyss. This ended for the idiot about as well as you can expect. The second wizard, though powerful, was unable to oppose the unending flood of demons and fled as they liberated his foe of his life and soul. For weeks demons poured out of the rift until the area was sealed off with epic magic. It has been nearly two thousand years since the battle and the land has healed from most of the ravages of the demons, but the dimensional ward still remains. To this day it seals off the barrier between the worlds with ultimate authority.
tl;dr two epic wizards fight, one idiot opens mini worldwound. The other one (maybe) slaps an epic dimensional anchor on the entire area and now conjuration doesn't work there.
Now lots of people stay as far away from this place as possible. Particularly clerics and casters of the summoning variety. But there are many who are drawn to this place. The place is saturated with magic from the ward and the after effects of the battle and the demonic invasion. Many plants that are useful as magical ingredients grow well here as a result. This is a good place for keeping things safe, the vaults here have the best anti-teleportation wards in the world. And I'm sure I'll come up with other reasons as to why this place would have a thriving trade town.
But enough rambling, on to the point.
What kind of alternate healing is there to the cure line of spells? I know of Troll Syptic but I was hoping for others. I could make something up but I would rather use something that already exists and will do the job if possible. The loss of healing wasn't the intention of this, but the ward needs to be very through for my plans. Instead of a temple there would be a hospital with doctors trained in the heal skill. Crazy I know.
Have you ever run or played in a place like this before? Did it make things more interesting or was it a train wreck?
Of course... Things around adventuring parties tend to go wrong... Even ancient epic magic. I'ts only a matter of time before someone uses something like the line in the last panel of this comic.
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A church or several, or another town that could offer said services even, probably would develop on the outskirts of said area. Chances are there would be a very well kept road to these places.
It would be no different living in a suburb present day and having to commute to the city to get hospital assistance. The heal skill provides the emergency treatment "in zone" to keep someone alive for the trip to where they can get more serious treatment. 10 miles is just outside the normal travel amount a humanoid in game. Toss them on a horse or use any of the other magical schools (transmutation for example) to get access to more mobile options (friendly druid with a super strong fast flying companion for example) and it becomes a day trip.
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You could just make healing spells Necromancy, like they used to be. Having them be Conjuration doesn't make much sense anyway.
Why not? You conjure positive energy from the positive energy plane.
Necromancy healing sounds cool and nasty.
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You could just make healing spells Necromancy, like they used to be. Having them be Conjuration doesn't make much sense anyway.
I'm guessing that you're "conjuring flesh" onto someone's body, but I totally agree. The staple spells for keeping people alive should belong to the school dedicated to life and death. Conjuration has too many nice toys.
Why not? You conjure positive energy from the positive energy plane.
Necromancy healing sounds cool and nasty.
With that logic, it should be evocation because you're invoking energy. Also not a bad idea.
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There was third level healing touch sorcerer/wizard necromancy spell in 3.0/3.5, it was reverse of vampiric touch that allowed the caster to transfer 1d6 of own hit points per two caster levels to the touched creature. It would fit here fine. I think it might fit magus and witch as well.
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I figure a few would research some sort of transmutation based healing. Transmutation already changes one thing into another and temporarily makes things better/stronger/faster. What would be so odd about somebody using transmutation magic to give you fast healing 1 for x number of rounds as your healing factor is set to run on octane?
I guess my "stumbling block" is that the lack of conjuration magic is so localized that it wouldn't have a huge impact on the world. There isn't going to be some huge influx of spells to replace the normal ones because some wizards were being silly and a tiny area doesn't let conjuration magic work. The "wheel" doesn't work in a 20 mile diameter hemisphere/column, big deal? (Not in response to your idea, just that is how the rest of the world would look at that tiny portion where the limitation occurred.) Travel a day to where it works and get what you need done.
There might be one or two people who do invest the time and money (and in comparison to what NPCs normally see, it is A LOT of money to sink into new forms of healing for little return) to research new spells and capitalize on it, just to gouge the healing market. They wouldn't share their "secret" because it would cut into their profits though. All told in general, it wouldn't change a thing as 99.999999% of the world can do without. People would make due without and if needed travel to where the cheap normal healing and such were available as needed, if they resided in the zone.
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Conjuration and evocation are synonyns my friend.
You conjure things that are real and actually exist, which is why many of those spells bypass spell resistance. You can't spell resist a ball of actual fire.
You evoke thing that don't actually exist, literally creating them through interaction of energies. They are not quite real, because you're not a god. Hence spell resistance apply.
Positive energy is being -summoned- from the positive energy plane, either by yourself or your god. It's real.
It would be evocation if you were causing different universal energies to interact, resulting in a pseudo-real positive energy with inferior structure to the actual thing.
That's my logic, anyway. Because if you could resist things that actually exist with spell resistance, you could theoretically resist anything at all.
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I like to imagine conjuration as fundamentally a school of transportation. When you conjure a chair, you're not actually creating a chair from nothing. That chair already existed somewhere in the multiverse from one of the infinite number of planes/demiplanes. Your spell merely teleports a chair of your description to you. This makes sense because of the following.
1) It explains why spells of creation fall into the same category as summoning and planar travel. They all work the same way.
2) It explains why created items disappear after a duration. After the duration, the item returns to its normal location.
3) GameMastery Guide illustrates there exists an infinite number of unusual demiplanes, giving the demiplane of cats and the demiplane of sentient tumors as explicit examples. There might be a demiplane for anything a conjurer "creates."
4) There's a god that owns a vault filled with a copy of every item in the multiverse.
I also had fun thoughts of polymorph spells working like this, too. When you transform, you're actually swapping bodies with something else in the multiverse.
For magic items I believe there is a pair of boots that heal you for 1 damage per round as long as you don't move, might or might not be conjuration powered though. Nothing else I can think of off the top of my head.
Constructs wouldn't mind at all since Make Whole isn't a conjuration spell.
With the mana-infused land and lack of conjuration healing (and thus competition for healing services), sounds like the perfect place for a strong druid community selling bags of goodberries at a premium, 1-5 gp per berry or so. Plus goodberries will stay fresh for a while (1 day/level) and also cover the party's needs for trail rations. You might want to nix the "maximum of 8 points of such curing in any 24-hour period" for balance reasons though. It isn't a huge change and your players are unlikely to complain.
I say go for it, players could use a little more fear in their eyes. Also it sounds cool. (Not that I have been in a game where there was a conjuration blocking effect)
I know what boots your are talking about. Boots of the Earth. I'd rule no in this case because 1: Cure Light Wounds is in the construction requirements and 2: It is way under priced for what it does. On the other hand I would make an exception for ring of regeneration because of how expensive it is.
I like the good berries option. The "magic infused plants" are even already part of the story. Maybe greater goodberries is in the picture.
3) GameMastery Guide illustrates there exists an infinite number of unusual demiplanes, giving the demiplane of cats and the demiplane of sentient tumors as explicit examples. There might be a demiplane for anything a conjurer "creates."
...Cats... Ok...
Conjuration is concerned with matter. Evocation is concerned with energy. Positive energy is the latter.
Energy Planes
Two energy planes exist—the Positive Energy Plane (from which the animating spark of life hails) and the Negative Energy Plane (from which the sinister taint of undeath hails). Energy from both planes infuses reality, the ebb and flow of this energy running through all creatures to bear them along the journey from birth to death. Clerics utilize power from these planes when they channel energy.
...Cats... Ok...3) GameMastery Guide illustrates there exists an infinite number of unusual demiplanes, giving the demiplane of cats and the demiplane of sentient tumors as explicit examples. There might be a demiplane for anything a conjurer "creates."
Cathus, the demiplane of intelligent cats weirds you out, and not Kinara, the demiplane of magical sentient tumors? Or Stais, the demiplane of living diseases?
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With that logic, it should be evocation because you're invoking energy. Also not a bad idea.
"I cast Positive Energy Bolt. Every creature in this 30 foot line si healed for 10d6, save for half."
"I cast a quickened Magic Healing Missle. You're healed for 5d4+5 - no attack roll needed."
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Both are awesome, and make me happy. :)
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As a note Alchemists get Healing Touch which would probably be seen as transmutation, but it only works on creatures of the same type and it requires being level 6.
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How about you take all the "cure" spells and make them "stitch" spells with transmutation as the school? Instead of curing damage, they grant temporary hit points for 24 hours. Yeah, not as useful for practical healing, but throw in a healing bonus and you might have something. Below is just an example of how it might work but once you had the formula down, you could apply it to all cure spells to make them stitch spells. Perhaps the spells are a lesser known cousin of the traditional cure spells and only available to locals or those they deem worthy. Perhaps an important scholar moved to the area for the sole purpose of testing these spells in the field. Lots of options.
School transmutation; Level alchemist 1, bard 1, cleric/oracle 1, druid 1, inquisitor 1, paladin 1, ranger 1, witch 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range touch
Target creature touched
Duration see text
Saving Throw Fortitude negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
When laying your hand upon a living creature, you use magic stitches to bind flesh to flesh, granting the target 1d8 temporary hit points +1 temporary hit point per caster level (maximum +5). These temporary hit points last for 24 hours or until the target rests for 8 hours and, unlike normal temporary hit points, stack with other temporary hit points from "stitch" spells. If a creature with temporary hit points from this spell rests for 8 hours, it regains a number of additional hit points equal to half the temporary hit points (rounded down). This healing is considered natural healing gained in addition to the normal natural healing of the creature. Full bed rest and long-term care do not affect this additional natural healing.
Injured townfolk go town hall share Runewell Amulet. Not realize heal from cannibalize greed souls.
PCs arrive, know this.
Quest get Boots of the Earth for town before destroy evil amulet.
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You could just make healing spells Necromancy, like they used to be. Having them be Conjuration doesn't make much sense anyway.
Why not? You conjure positive energy from the positive energy plane.
Necromancy healing sounds cool and nasty.
Necromancy as currently defined is about conjuring (really, channeling) negative energy from the negative energy plane. By your logic, it should also be conjuration school.
In original flavor D&D 3.0, Necromancy actually referred to channeling energy from BOTH the negative and positive energy planes. In 3.5, they changed it because necromancy (meaning "death magic") they wanted to have a solely entropic/death/undead flavor.
You could either revert back to the 3.0 definition of necromancy (drawing from positive and negative energy planes) or make up a new, parallel school called vivimancy.
You could also add regenerative spells (e.g., spells that grant you fast healing for a certain period of time) and make them transmutation school.
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In original flavor D&D 3.0, Necromancy actually referred to channeling energy from BOTH the negative and positive energy planes. In 3.5, they changed it because necromancy (meaning "death magic") they wanted to have a solely entropic/death/undead flavor.
You could either revert back to the 3.0 definition of necromancy (drawing from positive and negative energy planes) or make up a new, parallel school called vivimancy.
You could also add regenerative spells (e.g., spells that grant you fast healing for a certain period of time) and make them transmutation school.
The flavor of Necromancy was originally "magic dealing with the power of life, death, and undeath", hence it containing healing magic. I personally dislike the more recent trend of trying to shuffle Necromancy off as "the evil magic school" and have long since houseruled all healing, restorative, and resurrective magic back into Necromancy unless it has a really, really, REALLY good reason to be something else.
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Why not? You conjure positive energy from the positive energy plane.
Necromancy is the magic involving life and death.
That's pretty much a slam dunk case for healing being necromancy. "White" necromancy as opposed to EEEvil Black Necromancy, to be sure. But still necromancy.
It's bizarre that PF has cure spells as conjuration. One might even accuse Pazio's developers of having made a mistake.
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Why not? You conjure positive energy from the positive energy plane.
Necromancy is the magic involving life and death.
That's pretty much a slam dunk case for healing being necromancy. "White" necromancy as opposed to EEEvil Black Necromancy, to be sure. But still necromancy.
It's bizarre that PF has cure spells as conjuration. One might even accuse Pazio's developers of having made a mistake.
Or 3.5 developers before them.
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Yeah I'm going to lay the blame on the 3.5 conversion team, they're the ones that moved healing spells out of Necromancy and into Conjuration. Paizo just didn't think, either by deliberate choice or accidental oversight, to move them back.
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Yeah I'm going to lay the blame on the 3.5 conversion team, they're the ones that moved healing spells out of Necromancy and into Conjuration. Paizo just didn't think, either by deliberate choice or accidental oversight, to move them back.
Considering the hell Paizo went through to get the CRB out the door, I don't think it's fair to be pointing fingers, especially when the whole company at stake and the company only had interest in publishing setting books and adventures at the time.
If fingers must be pointed, I'm more inclined to do so towards the WotC 3.5e staff for lumping way too many spells into conjuration.
Exactly.
If there's no conjuration magic there, what happens to bags of holding and their like when they enter this zone? Blow up? Just won't open?
This said, it's an interesting twist on a dead magic zone.
Taking a hint from Monte Cook's old setting:
Make 'battle healing', i.e. instant cures, evocation effects using positive energy. Channel energy is basically a positive energy fireball, after all.
Make 'out of battle healing' more effective, and use white necromancy. Increase the casting time and healing effect. I suggest a two round casting time that grants fast healing 1-4 for Cures 1-4 for a number of rounds = 8 + caster level, effectively maximizing the spell at a cost of not happening so fast.
Actually, I'd probably go 1e and make the spells evoc/necro, but that's a no-no for some reason in 3e.
I agree it never should have been conjuration.
===Aelryinth
If there's no conjuration magic there, what happens to bags of holding and their like when they enter this zone? Blow up? Just won't open?
This said, it's an interesting twist on a dead magic zone.
Hm... he said "no conjuration", which those don't fall under, but it's because of a dimensional lock.
That means they are affected. As to what happens: they simply cease functioning (magically). They effectively don't work.
You could put a portable hole (which is now just a magic cloth) inside a bag of holding and experience no issues whatsoever... until you took them out of the region. In fact, that could be a pretty nasty anti-thief trap.
Put stuff in the hole and bag, enter area, place hole I bag, and rest secure that if anyone ever does take your stuff, they'll be lost forever in one of the most dangerous regions of existence. Bonus points: mildly sew them together.
When you need to retrieve the stuff, simply remove the stitching, remove the hole, and exit the region.
Whether or not people would do this depends on how long the lock has been in place. If it's been there long enough, it might even be common practice in areas near the border.
... of course, if it's common enough, breaking the lock might be an additional way of "ending the threat" ... by dropping the entire region into the astral plane instead of material.
Sure that'd cause other problems, but, you, they're not yours (for now). :D
Yeah I'm going to lay the blame on the 3.5 conversion team, they're the ones that moved healing spells out of Necromancy and into Conjuration. Paizo just didn't think, either by deliberate choice or accidental oversight, to move them back.Considering the hell Paizo went through to get the CRB out the door, I don't think it's fair to be pointing fingers, especially when the whole company at stake and the company only had interest in publishing setting books and adventures at the time.
If fingers must be pointed, I'm more inclined to do so towards the WotC 3.5e staff for lumping way too many spells into conjuration.
.... that's exactly what I said.
Or did you think by "3.5 conversion team" I meant Paizo converting 3.5 to Pathfinder? No, I meant WOTC converting 3.0 to 3.5.
Ok, alternate forms of healing, let's see here.
Well, the first thing I'd go to is psionics. Psychometabolism to my knowledge doesn't rely upon any planar connections to heal. There's some stuff in Psionics Expanded that well, expands upon the healing that psionic classes can do, though a psion can do some amount of healing in just the core Psionics Unleashed rules if she specializes in psychometabolism.
Necromancy might be able to work via wands of vampiric touch and false life.
I seem to recall in some prior editions polymorphing allowed one to restore a minor amount of hit points with a transformation. I can't recall how much of that transferred to PF, but if it did polymorphing just to heal a few hit points might be a (highly inefficient option.) Of course, you can always polymorph into shapes that can regenerate damage (Giant Form II allows you to get regeneration 5, so polymorph into a troll).
On a conceptual level (making up your own rules), transmutation could work if you could figure out a way to to morph to your "uninjured" self, or to grow replacement cells/body parts from other matter. (Perhaps some alchemists could make some form of troll's blood extract?) Chronomancy might also be an option, in that you might be able to reverse the flow of time to before the injury occurred.
Scratch that on Vampiric Touch. I forgot it only gives you temporary hit points. Healling Warmth (from the advanced race guide) allows you to heal hit points and is an abjuration spell. (It gives you protection from fire like a protection from energy spell.)
I'm a fan of having spells be grouped by how they work, which differs from other spell systems that group spells by their intended effect. It influences flavor and provides many ways each spell can be countered. Unfortunately, 3.5e/PF borks it up by trying (and failing) to balance all the schools of magic. Since this balance is already pretty irreparable, it would be fun if there existed different spells that accomplished the same effect in different ways, similar to SKR's fly spells.
Maybe conjuration cures work by conjuring new flesh to repair a person's body. That might also mean it could work on fixing objects or constructs!
Evocation would work by using positive energy and thus harm undead.
Necromancy would work by stimulating the life/unlife energy already in a subject, allowing it to work on both living and undead creature.
.... that's exactly what I said.Or did you think by "3.5 conversion team" I meant Paizo converting 3.5 to Pathfinder? No, I meant WOTC converting 3.0 to 3.5.
I thought you were referring Paizo as the conversion team. So, I guess that means we're in agreement here!
Be dhampir use new repair undead spell.