As title implies- what kind of sense does that make?It's normally not an issue I would suspect, however, it has suddenly become one for my home-brew game due to some changes in the way magic works.
I intend to remove the Divine/Arcane line and school the divine spells as appropriate.
In my homebrew; Cure spells work because they induce the body to repair itself, at a rapid rate. They do not just "poof" the injuries away.
Even so, under the normal paradigm this makes little sense.
Were I to alter it; to which other school would you suggest?
The two I was thinking were Transmutation and Necromancy, but even Evocation has a strong case made for it. From the PRD for your perusal:
Necromancy
Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force.
Transmutation
Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.
Evocation
Evocation spells manipulate magical energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, an evocation draws upon magic to create something out of nothing.
Your thoughts?
-Idle
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As title implies- what kind of sense does that make?
It's normally not an issue; I would suspect but it has suddenly become one for my home-brew game due to some changes in the way magic works. I intend to remove the Divine/Arcane line and school the divine spells as appropriate.In my homebrew; Cure spells work because they induce the body to repair itself, at a rapid rate. They do not just "poof" the injuries away.
Even so, under the normal paradigm this makes little sense.
Were I to alter it; to which other school would you suggest?
The two I was thinking were Transmutation and Necromancy, but even Evocation has a strong case made for it. From the PRD for your perusal:
Necromancy
Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force.
Transmutation
Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.
Evocation
Evocation spells manipulate magical energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, an evocation draws upon magic to create something out of nothing.
Your thoughts?
-Idle
This is a holdover from 3rd Ed. In my campaign they've been retconned to Necromancy (just like Inflict spells) and, IIRC, the way it was in earlier editions . This makes more sense to our party rather than the "summon positive energy so that necromancy is icky, icky, icky!" route that WotC went with.
I've been wanting to remove the distinction between Arcane/Divine for some time. I came to the same conclusion, Conjuration just doesn't seem to fit. I've never really even understood the distinction between Conjuration and Evocation. If Evocation "draws upon magic to create something out of nothing" and Conjuration can be used to "create," what's the difference?
Confusion.
Rolling the Cure spells up with Necromancy would work if other "positive energy" stuff got bundled up, too. Kind of like that idea.
Transmutation seems like it would work, too. Kind of reminds me of Full Metal Alchemist in a way.
I disagree. Not really a debate either. More like a discussion or a collaboration. Some people run their games differently and if they wanna make changes, that's their business.
Debates about this are about as useful as trying to figure out the mechanisms for mass loss or gain with polymorph and wildshaping.
Your post wasn't very useful.
Conjuration makes about as much sense as any other school and a bit more so than some. Maybe you're summoning spirits of life and healing, outside of evocation and illusion practicaly any school can come up with a mechanism for healing with a minor adjustment to the method.Debates about this are about as useful as trying to figure out the mechanisms for mass loss or gain with polymorph and wildshaping.
Bolded for emphasis.
To some, myself included, the method IS the focal point of classification. This is why in my OP I clarified the nature of healing magic for purposes of my home-brew for which I was attempting to categorize. I then went on to muse about it in the normal paradigm. Your point holds plenty of weight if we do not define the method of how the spell works, but in this case, I did specifically:
In my homebrew; Cure spells work because they induce the body to repair itself, at a rapid rate. They do not just "poof" the injuries away.
-Idle
I'd probably go with Transmutation in your setting, seems to make the most sense.
I'm also just not personally sure the school system being used here breaks itself along enough nuanced lines, or it in fact trying to shoe-horn spells into one school when possibly they extend across multiple.
I'm not either; but from my perspective if I don't shoehorn it in; I'm pretty much committed to re-writing Cures method for each school it CAN fit into, or writing similar spells with different methods but similar mechanical effects. Then if I do that; I'm almost certainly committed to the domino effect of doing that for just about EVERY other spell in the game.
I know it's a minor point of contention; but I'm trying to play up Wizardry as a pseudo-science; versus other forms of magic as "focus energy through a paradigm and stuff happens" as a way to make Wizardry more interesting.
-Idle
You mean being a Wizard as it is is boring??? Check your average gaming group. How many folks volounter to be the cleric? Or is that the root behind this?
Your on the right track with your asserstion. Spoiler tags to not derail primary thread purpose.
Before I continue; let me say this is highly up to taste.
It's an issue of re-fluffing. Actually the idea came from a discussion my players and I were having over "Cleric Sameness". They and I believe that Clerics are far too generic as written; so we've essentially decided each Cleric of a particular God is it's own Class. Clerics can only cast spells from their deities domains list; and their martial ability is variable based on the God in question. Also, we removed "Channel Energy" and the ability to dump prepped spells for cures. Now instead, Cleric's receive alot more granted powers and abilities in place of those things.
This then led to the idea that we should remove the Arcane/Divine barrier. After that we came to many ideas on how to re-fluff the casting classes as different from one another. We ended up settling on Wizards being pseudo-science like and dependent on their components and schools (no non-specialist Wiz's) to make magic work.
Unlike other casting classes; Wizards can take raw magical energy and shape it into something not aligned with their particular "casting paradigm", unlike the other 4 full casters in the game, Clerics who channel their gods will, Druids who channel magic into forms which already exist in nature, Sorcerer's who have the inherent ability to bend magical energy to their will with no component focus, and Witches who are sort of the bridge between Druidic Magic and Wizards, have a bit of both.
Anyways, what this basically leads us to is all major casting classes can, in theory, heal. However, this comes into the caveat of "they don't have to". This made Clerics a more attractive option than just being heal-bots; and gave the rest of the full casters another thing they could do. As to the worry about whether this makes an already amazing class even better- don't worry. We play E6. =)
Hope that helps explain the why, a little.
-Idle
I go with necromancy over transmutation:
Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force. Spells involving undead creatures make up a large part of this school.
As such it seems anything that specifically heals or brings life back should be necromancy.
I could understand the "positive energy" idea more if it was in the evocation school which is supposed to deal with energy stuff.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The change from necromancy to conjuration school, as well as the introduction of the inflict spells, as opposed to simply making the cure spells reversible, was implemented between 3rd Edition and 3.5.
In Tricky Owlbear's "Behind the Spells" series, Bret Boyd suggested an in-game reason that the spells actually changed (it wasn't a ret-con), involving a lich who was drawing power from the necromantic versions of the spells.
It should be possible to develop different versions of the spell, some necromantic, some transmutation. Maybe they're regional variations, or spiritual denomination distinctions.
"This elf was carrying scrolls of cure moderate wounds, Lord Watson. But see here: a simple Spellcraft analysis indicates that these are transmutational spells! That suggests that he has had contact with the Western Isles."
As title implies- what kind of sense does that make?It's normally not an issue I would suspect, however, it has suddenly become one for my home-brew game due to some changes in the way magic works.
I intend to remove the Divine/Arcane line and school the divine spells as appropriate.
In my homebrew; Cure spells work because they induce the body to repair itself, at a rapid rate. They do not just "poof" the injuries away.
Even so, under the normal paradigm this makes little sense.
Were I to alter it; to which other school would you suggest?
The two I was thinking were Transmutation and Necromancy, but even Evocation has a strong case made for it. From the PRD for your perusal:
Necromancy
Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force.
Transmutation
Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.
Evocation
Evocation spells manipulate magical energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, an evocation draws upon magic to create something out of nothing.
Your thoughts?
-Idle
I've always interpreted them as conjuring positive energy since that's what cure spells use. If you summon positive energy on a living creature then it will heal. If you summon positive energy on an undead creature then it gets damaged.
Greetings, fellow travellers.
Interesting idea here, IdleMind.
You might want to check the old Lankhmar-Setting from AD&D adapting Fritz Leiber's classic setting for D&D.
There are White and Black Wizards - white magic being the divine based stuff and black being the arcane based stuff.
Priests as such were people stemming from all classes, who received "gifts" (special powers) from their patron deity.
Ruyan.
Conjuration is taking something that already exist(monsters from other plans, and or positive energy reserves) and manifesting it. Evocation is making something from nothing at all. When healing you are literally conjuring the positive energy from the plane of positive energy. Similar concept with acid spells. It's a tangible substance that you conjur.
This idea has been mentioned by others before--as mentioned earlier, cure and inflict spells were all necromancy spells before 3.0. I personally like them as necromancy spells, myself--it gives necromancy a more interesting feel than having it just be the capital-E-Evil school.
In our game (where we're also doing away with the arbitrary arcane/divine distinction), we moved it to necromancy for a few reasons: 1) The conjuration description never made sense to me, for all the reasons listed previously; 2) we like shades of gray; and 3) it's just so much cooler to have to go to the creepy necromancer's house to get healed instead of the happy cleric's temple.
I'm not either; but from my perspective if I don't shoehorn it in; I'm pretty much committed to re-writing Cures method for each school it CAN fit into, or writing similar spells with different methods but similar mechanical effects. Then if I do that; I'm almost certainly committed to the domino effect of doing that for just about EVERY other spell in the game.No, all you have to do is either make your own schools and list the spells that go in them, or list the spells that are clearly in one school in one school and list the spells that span multiple schools as being of multiple schools.
This is one reason why I miss 2E's multiple-school spell system.
Placing the Healing subschool in Conjuration makes sense, because any sort of healing involves the creation of new temporary super-cells that regenerate damaged tissue. That's the way I've always seen it anyway.
Personally, I'd like to see the end of the Positive/Negative energy spectrum.
back in 2e they were necromancy and yes i never understood the change myself. They control/manipulate life energy which falls under necromancy in my book.
In my setting cure spells are under the necromancy school, but with the good subtype and the transmutation school. The reason for necromancy is because it deals with invoking the life force, but it draws from the positive energy plane instead of the negative energy plane. The reason it is also transmutation is that it alters the the targets body repairing the wounds it has sustained. Each culture in my setting has a reason for this.
I'm with the camp of putting them into Necromancy. However a thought just occurred to me. Cure spells can be used to deal damage to Undead, who get a save for 1/2 damage. As such, the cure spells are one of the few spells that benefit from Spell Focus: Conjuration, which is normally only taken as a prereq for Augment Summoning. With their move to another school, that feat prereq becomes even more useless than it already is.
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As such, the cure spells are one of the few spells that benefit from Spell Focus: Conjuration, which is normally only taken as a prereq for Augment Summoning. With their move to another school, that feat prereq becomes even more useless than it already is.
That's more of an issue with Spell Focus than with conjuration, since the Feat is also pretty crappy for Abjurers and Diviners. Ideally, the Feat would give +1 save DC or some other bonus (like +1 CL) to a spell that doesn't have a save DC, so that it wasn't of such limited use to those whose spell school isn't exactly brimming with spells that have saving throws.
I'd be inclined to make the cure spells either necromancy or transmutation.
Or just shrug and ignore it. It doesn't make a lot of sense that it's necromancy to conjure negative energy, illusion to conjure energy from the plane of shadow, evocation to 'conjure' fire or lightning or cold, and conjuration to conjure positive energy, but that's the price of trying to shoe-horn all of the spells into eight schools, when many have effects that encompass multiple schools, and two of the schools (illusion and necromancy) are hodge-podge 'theme schools' cobbled together with effects from more effects-based schools (evocation, transmutation, conjuration, enchantment).
The short of it is that you can get just about aney spesific spell effect through the use of aeny of the schools and the placement of a spesific series or set of effects in a given school has more to do with power economy, material component requirement or casting time eficency to achieve that effect at the reqired spell level than it dose with a paticular perspective of how the universe operates.
I mean, we thought that the world was flat once...
Well one of the reasons why I lump cure spells in with necromancy is because of a group of elves that worship their dead ancestors. In my setting the elves have settle in a location that has a natural opening to the positive energy plane. The energy that radiates from that opening has risen their dead, but as an undead (they have starting calling them the undying). Though they look like elven skeletons, zombies, or mummies they are infused with positive energy and have stopped the decaying process.
In other parts of the world, in my setting, scholars believe that cure spells are from the transmutation school because it stimulates the beings own cells. They also believe that since it stimulates a living beings cells, it harms negative energy powered undead. They came to this conclusion because of what the positive energy does when it comes into contact with negative energy. It starts to strip away the energy holding that creature together trying to repair the undead target. If there is no negative energy there to power the creature, then they begin to decompose.
Druids and ranger don't see their spells in any type of school of magic. They just see it as tapping into the forces of nature.
Clerics, paladins, other beings that use faith to heal the wounded see it as drawing the power from the gods. Though there is a price for them to heal the wounded. Even though the gods wants whats best for their followers, they don't like for mortals to intervene in that affair. When a cleric, paladin or other faith based healer heals another being or brings them back to life they begin to become weakened. Calling on that type of power from the gods begins to take a toll on the persons body, another words they start accumulating subdual damage.
Can we get rid of positive/negative energy in Pathfinder 2nd edition, pretty, with a still beating dragon heart on the top pretty please?
Basically I´d introduce a new school for that, "healing" or the like - there shoulda be a ingame reason wizards can´t heal.
But to defend conjuration, I once had this idea about what conjuration actually is:
Conjuration is powering structures from a "ghost plane" with magic energy so that it becomes material. Summoners carry around the "ideas" (ancient greek concept of ideas) in their auras, basically all these monsters and shields and acid attacks hover around the wizard on the "ghost plane".
As for healing spells, everybody has an astral body that adjusts itself only very slowly to reality - when someone casts a healing spell, he brings the astral body (which is still whole) to reality.
To use necromancy for it well... necromancy just sounds unholy while healing sounds kinda holy. I´d say yes, you can heal with necromancy but it´s a little bit like that unicorn blood business from Harry Potter.
I understand transmutation as temporary effects but basically it´s quite fine for healing.
I've actually toyed several times with the idea of having spells be in multiple schools, depending on how they are implemented.
So, a cure spell could be in Necromancy (Manipulation of life energy), Conjuration (summoning positive energy from the positive energy plane), Transmutation (physically changing the injuries), or possibly even Illusion (convincing the patients body it's healed, and the body does the healing itself) depending on the 'flavor' of the spell.
The two things that have kept me from going through and doing it are :
A) How involved it would be to list up every spell and all the valid schools it could belong to.
B) How it might affect the power level of School focused wizards.
I've always interpreted them as conjuring positive energy since that's what cure spells use. If you summon positive energy on a living creature then it will heal. If you summon positive energy on an undead creature then it gets damaged.
How is the Positive Plane different from the Plane of Fire then? Why isn't fireball a 'summon of fire'?
Doesn't fly. Positive/Negative energy and their respective effects should be necromancy, or at the very least Evocation for the drawing of energ.
This is all, btw, high level debate for wizards in the academy setting. ;D Fast Healing might be transmutation (Vigor, Lesser and Greater), insta-healing may be conjuration (Cure Spells), Insta-Destruction may be Necromancy (introduction of entropy and decay to otherwise living, healthy bodies), and bleeding effects may be Necromancy as well (as the control of life suggests). It's all house rules or as written, as you so decide.
Why not remove schools from spells altogether. Casters still choose a school, but it's now in the sense of "School of thought". They have their method of doing things (be it conjuration from elsewhere, evoking from nothingness, or faking it with illusions), and any spell they cast is themed to their school. So a conjuration healing spell might summon up a minor archon (like a lantern archon, but weaker - possibly not even sentient) which channels life-giving energy into the target, whereas an evoker would create pure positive energy, etc. If the player can't think of a way it would make sense within their school, then they can't take that spell.
Alternatively, just start getting rid of / combining schools until you have clear demarcations and reclassify the few spells which no longer fit. For example:
Abjuration (or split this among Energy, Physical, and Mental)
Divination (or merge with Mental)
Energy (Conjuration + Evocation)
Physical (Necromancy + Transmutation)
Mental (Enchantment + Illusion)