As many of us become aware one way or another spell schools are completely arbitrary. Same spell can be assigned different schools with very little effort. Yet I like the school system and I think with few changes it becomes workable.
I know agreeing on a school for every spell is hard to impossible so I am asking for your house rules on the subject.
Worst offenders I see are conjuration(healing) spells, necromancy should be school of both positive and negative energy so it should include these spells. Mage armor should be in abjuration. Ki arrow is clearly evocation. And these are from first level.
Personally I find the allocations to be so arbitrary already that I can't fix it with a house-rule. I could go through the entire core book and reclassify all the spells, but I don't know that I've got the energy to do this with every spell from every book.
Healing spells being moved into Necromancy is a long-time change in my group. Haven't really looked too closely at some of the others, though I know there's a few Conjurations I've considered shoving over into Evocation (Snowball, the Orb spells from 3.5, and such like).
I don't like Conjuration spells that throw energy at a target - that's clearly the job of Evocation. Mage armor as Abjuration makes a lot of sense to me. Honestly, though, you can come up with a refluff of most spells that fits it into another school pretty easily without altering the mechanics significantly.
There is sense in some energy spells belonging to Conjuration, not that you must agree with it, but what I presumed was that when you use an energy-based Conjuration, you're transporting "material" from a place to another.
This "material", be it flames or some litres of acid, isn't itself magical, only the process of bringing it to the spellcaster.
On the other hand, energy-based Evocations seem to manipulate the raw energies of the multiverse. A fireball's fire is magical fire, in opposition to an orb of fire's flames, which are mundane material brought by magical means.
I particularly like this concept, but the difficult thing here is to distinguish "magical fire" and "mundane fire", for example,and what this changes for the spellcaster who is either conjuring it or evocating it.
The only game difference I came across is that energy-based Conjurations don't allow Spell Resistence, which makes a lot of sense.
But what else this concept should mean to magic in game world? And how else could it be reflected on the game system?
Instinctively I think manipulating the elements directly should be more difficult than bringing mundane materials, but this causes a problem in the way that, in game terms, Conjuration gives a great edge over Spell Resistence, and should be more difficult for that advantage. And when I say that I mean that energy-based Conjurations should use higher level than energy-based Evocations.
Personally I find the allocations to be so arbitrary already that I can't fix it with a house-rule. I could go through the entire core book and reclassify all the spells, but I don't know that I've got the energy to do this with every spell from every book.
It's not reclassifying them that's the issue, it's more writing it all down and tracking the changes that can get problematic. Basically, if you can't remember it off the top of your head, it probably won't work well.
Aside from moving "cure" to necromancy, I think these two would be the most reasonable:
* All "force/movement" spells are always evocation
* All "wind/air" spells are always evocation
That would be relatively easy to adjudicate (most spells would be obvious from their name, if not the first sentence of their fluff) and actually be quite interesting. That would mean Fly would move to evocation from transmutation (since it's purely force/movement). That would go a long ways on its own towards dealing with evocation's status as the go-to opposition school.
Two more that I like:
- All Conjuration (Teleportation) spells are moved to Evocation.
- Enchantment is now a subschool of Abjuration.
Two more that I like:
- All Conjuration (Teleportation) spells are moved to Evocation.
- Enchantment is now a subschool of Abjuration.
Please explain your thoughts behind those; given the inherent themes of all four schools, none of them make sense to me.
The only change that I'm big on, as Orthos said, is the reclassification of all cure/inflict spells (as well as heal/harm, breath of life, cleanse, and similar magic) as necromancy spells.
In my opinion, positive and negative energy as a construct serves no purpose then to justify why healing magic doesn't belong to a school called "necromancy," because anything necromantic HAS to be terribad, right?
It has to do more with mechanics than with themes: You can come up with whatever fluff to justify this that you want. This change makes banning evocation and enchantment go from "always do it" to "hmm, I dunno."
I don't actually play with that rule btw (as I don't see the imbalance between schools as big enough of a problem to justify adding yet more houserules to my game), but if you want to mess around with the schools of magic to balance them better then it's a good idea, I think.
It has to do more with mechanics than with themes: You can come up with whatever fluff to justify this that you want. This change makes banning evocation and enchantment go from "always do it" to "hmm, I dunno."
I don't actually play with that rule btw (as I don't see the imbalance between schools as big enough of a problem to justify adding yet more houserules to my game), but if you want to mess around with the schools of magic to balance them better then it's a good idea, I think.
Here's my take on it:
1) Conjuration has three very powerful subschools: Healing, Teleportation, and Summoning. I think moving Healing over to Necromancy will help with Clerics/Witches, but it does not affect the Wizard at all.
2) Enchantment suffers because its mostly save-or-suck, often with few "partial" effects. Its a school that sucks until it is OP. (See Kitsune Sorcerer speced to affect as many targets as possible with her enchantments.)
3) Evocation, on the other hand, tends to be very one-and-done with its effects. Most don't linger very long and evocation suffers very heavily from a lack of flexibility. "These are your fire spells, these are your cold spells, and it is a pain in the butt to mix them with Elemental Admixture."
Personally, I think new spells need to be created to address the weak schools rather than tacking on cool new toys to the strong schools. (Snowball, I'm looking at you.) Like, imagine if this was a feat:
Superior Admixture
Prerequisites: Spell Focus (Evocation), Elemental Spell
Benefit: When using Elemental Spell to replace an evocation spell's normal damage with a different energy type, do not increase the spell's level. Using Elemental Spell to split a spell's energy type still increases its level by +1.
Basically, options need to exist that help evocation spells be the most versatile blasting spells. As written, an evoker is only marginally better than a conjurist who decided against barring evocation.
The only change that I'm big on, as Orthos said, is the reclassification of all cure/inflict spells (as well as heal/harm, breath of life, cleanse, and similar magic) as necromancy spells.
In my opinion, positive and negative energy as a construct serves no purpose then to justify why healing magic doesn't belong to a school called "necromancy," because anything necromantic HAS to be terribad, right?
Yeah I meant all of those, hence why I said "healing" spells rather than "Cure" spells. =)And I agree wholeheartedly, I'm very irked by the constant painting of Necromancy = Evil.
Two pet peeves of mine regarding schools of magic:
1- Spells that give a target/recipient a new intangible quality should = enchantment.
Spells that change a target/recipient quality should = transmutation.
i.e. fly (as in levitate in all directions) = enchantment; growing wings (in order to fly) = transmutation.
2- Conjuration spells creating energy should = evocation