Get your minds out of the gutter. What I mean is, some spells confuse me sometimes as to their nature in terms of their school versus what the spell is meant to do.
For example, water walk is a transmutation spell, but all it reads like is that you're walking a couple of inches above the water as if you're levitating over it (Quote: "since the subjects' feet hover an inch or two above the surface"), rather than changing something about your body to help you walk on water or doing something to the water you step on to let you step on it without breaking the surface.
Conjuration, Evocation, and Transmutation seemed to be the common culprits in my experience. Are there any spells you've seen that seem to have odd effects for the school they're in?
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I know I've run into worse offenders. I was going to search for specific examples, but after you mentioned mind in the gutter, I was having trouble thinking straight, so I'll settle for the worst group of offenders:
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Silence should be transmutation, not illusion (glamer).
As a general rule, glamers cannot provide protection from the elements, yet somehow, in an area of silence, creatures are immune to sonic-based attacks.
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In a problem inherited from 3.5, mage armor should be under abjuration. This caused a problem with a 3.5 PrC named Abjurant Champion IIRC.
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The fear spells (Cause Fear, Fear, Feast on Fear, Banshee Blast, Symbol of Fear etc.) should be either illusion or enchantment, not necromancy. If they force the target to be afraid (influencing emotions) they should be Enchantment; if they create the image of something frightening (eg Phantasmal Killer, an illusion spell) they should be illusions. None of these spells "manipulate the power of death, unlife, and the life force" (CRB pg 211, description of the necromancy school.)
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So, so many sacred cows here.
Evocation spells create light and sound. Unless the light is colored, or the sounds sound like something, in which case it's illusion.
Manipulating pre-existing matter or energy is possibly transmutation, unless it's evocation, or illusion, or conjuration, or necromancy...
Making someone happy, sad, angry, etc. is enchantment. Making them scared is necromancy?
Conjuring positive energy is conjuration. Conjuring shadow plane energy is illusion? Conjuring negative energy is necromancy?
Abjuring magical energy (dispel magic) is abjuration. Abjuring light, magical light or mundane light, (darkness) is evocation? Abjuring heat energy ('creating' cold) is also evocation.
Many, many spells have multiple effects, conjuring something and then chucking it at a distant foe, presumably through transmutation magic (acid arrow) or conjuring a creature, and then dominating it to serve you, which works even if you've banned enchantment (summon monster).
Necromancy and Illusion are the worst offenders, here. Abjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation and Transmutation are, for the most part, schools of effect. Enchantment spells affect emotions, minds, etc. Evocation spells create energy, big-bada-boom.
Necromancy spells conjure negative energy, enchant people into being afraid, possible conjure and enhance life (contagion, which empowers and strengthens microbial life!), animate bones and corpses and makes them move around (transmutation!), give people undead-like qualities (more transmutation!) or weaken them (ray of enfeeblement, which, logically, shouldn't be any different than bull's strength, or blindness/deafness, which shouldn't be any different than a spell that grants a new sense, like darkvision), etc.
Illusion spells similarly conjure shadow plane energy (conjuration), or reshape existing light and sound (transmutation), or create colorful lights (evocation) or fool the mind / senses with phantasms (enchantment).
I've got no magic fix for this. It's always been a mess, and it's only gotten messier with choices like changing cure spells from necromancy to conjuration (but not consistently changing remove disease, which kills tiny living things, to necromancy and contagion to conjuration / positive energy, since it creates and bolsters tiny living things).
On the one hand, I'd be fine with ditching the whole school system, but I like the idea of specialist wizards who focus on a particular magical framework, and without every spell having a school pre-selected, each specialist would need to list what spells are part of his narrow focus, which would greatly increase wordcount, particularly if different schools laid claim to some spells (like cause fear being claimed by both enchanters and necromancers, or shadow conjuration being claimed by both illusionists and conjurers). The 1st/2nd edition 'old school' (ha) notion of some spells having multiple schools might be the easiest fix, in that sense, although that would require some sort of ruling as to how to handle spells that are both in your school of specialization *and* in one of your 'forbidden' schools.
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In a problem inherited from 3.5, mage armor should be under abjuration. This caused a problem with a 3.5 PrC named Abjurant Champion IIRC.
At the *very least*, the Abjurant Champion should have included a sentence that they treat mage armor as an abjuration spell.
And that sort of thing could work for a lot of things. Exception-based design can be useful.
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A lot of the problems come from attempts to "balance" the schools against each other between edition changes.
Water walk as Transmutation puts it in the same category as fly and levitate (i.e., a telekinesis-type effect).
All cure, inflict, disease, etc. spells should be Necromancy.
Fear-inducing spells should be Enchantment (with all of the other emotion effects).
Both mage armor and shield should be Evocation [force].
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Agree that many of the problems seem to stem from trying to balance schools against one another, but it's an impossible task. There is no way you are going to divide the spells into the basic 8 schools evenly. If you count just Core+APG:
transmutation: 227 (26%)
conjuration: 142 (16%)
evocation: 127 (14%)
abjuration: 96 (11%)
enchantment: 91 (10%)
necromancy: 79 (9%)
divination: 67 (8%)
illusion: 56 (6%)
(source: d20pfsrd)
Start adding non-campaign setting sources (Ultimate * books, ARG, etc.) and these percentages don't really change all that much:
transmutation: 25%
conjuration: 15%
evocation, enchantment, abjuration: ~12%
necromancy, divination, illusion: ~8%
Add absolutely everything (the Campaign setting source books, AP's, individual modules, etc.), and guess what? These percentages still hold:
transmutation: 26%
conjuration: 15%
evocation, enchantment, abjuration: ~11%
necromancy, divination, illusion: ~8%
You're never going to be able to "balance" the size of the schools, much less the power of the effects. And I haven't even tried to break down how many spells/level there are in each school. You're not going to balance that, either.
This means that there are problems with the school specialization framework as-is:
- There aren't enough schools. This is how you get the kind of thinking that put teleportation and healing under conjuration. It all stems from arbitrary decisions to lump things into these 8 basic schools and try to keep transmutation from growing too large. Why is this list of 8 so sacrosanct? Healing should be a school. Teleportation effects should be a school.
- Just from a pure numbers standpoint, you'd have to be crazy to choose transmutation as an opposed school because a full quarter of the spells are in there. Same goes for conjuration which has 1/6th of them.
- School specialization needs a better system than "bonus slots in exchange for penalties for opposed schools". Honestly, this has never been a good idea, though it was worse in earlier editions, and DOA in the original AD&D.
Prior to PF, the only good reason to specialize was for game flavor. From a playability standpoint (and I don't even mean optimization, just basic playability), specialization was a terrible idea. In PF, not specializing is a terrible idea. When you have a choice between A and B, and B is terrible, then that's not really a choice. It's a sign that your idea sucks.
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Another issue is that the schools don't necessarily all have the same equivalence of effect. Spell Focus (evocation) or (transmutation) or (illusion) are decent choices, if you use a lot of spells of those types.
Spell Focus (abjuration) or (divination) are almost always terrible choices, and there are times you kind of need them (spell focus abjuration is a possible prerequisite for what might be the worst possible Varisian Tattoo choice, for instance).
One solution would be to make more divination spells that have saving throws (an effect that opens a victim's senses to all sorts of distracting stimuli, or barrages them with visions of horrible possible future deaths they could suffer, or hypersensitizes them to light or sound, temporarily blinding or deafening them, for instance) or similar offensive abjurations (a spell that causes spells on you to overload and damage you, so that you take more damage the more buffs you have, or one that 'abjures' forces you need to function, like heat or light, or even the very air you need to breathe).
Another solution would be to add a sentence to Spell Focus that says 'If the spell doesn't have a DC, you instead cast it at +1 caster level' or something similar.
As it stands, Spell Focus (divination) is about as useful as Weapon Specialization (net).
I think the system just needs to move away from the opposed school idea. Just provide boons for specialization in a school, and either dump the universalist idea (there's no reason to be one if there's no penalty to specializing) or give them a different kind of boon.
I feel that necromancy shouldn't be a school. Pretty much all of its spells could comfortably fit into other schools.
I'd rather put healing in abjuration, since it's related to protecting people.
I'd like to see a setup where most spells are universal and schools of magic have powerful spells but few.
Also I'd like to see Heat/Chill Metal and Disintegrate as evocation rather than transmutation, healing as something that isn't conjuration, and ear-peircing scream as illusion.
One solution would be to make more divination spells that have saving throws (an effect that opens a victim's senses to all sorts of distracting stimuli, or barrages them with visions of horrible possible future deaths they could suffer, or hypersensitizes them to light or sound, temporarily blinding or deafening them, for instance) or similar offensive abjurations (a spell that causes spells on you to overload and damage you, so that you take more damage the more buffs you have, or one that 'abjures' forces you need to function, like heat or light, or even the very air you need to breathe).
Occult Adventures published a few divinations with saving throws, like Mind Thrust I-VI and Anticipate Thoughts and Mental Block.
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This means that there are problems with the school specialization framework as-is:Prior to PF, the only good reason to specialize was for game flavor. From a playability standpoint (and I don't even mean optimization, just basic playability), specialization was a terrible idea. In PF, not specializing is a terrible idea. When you have a choice between A and B, and B is terrible, then that's not really a choice. It's a sign that your idea sucks.
- There aren't enough schools. This is how you get the kind of thinking that put teleportation and healing under conjuration. It all stems from arbitrary decisions to lump things into these 8 basic schools and try to keep transmutation from growing too large. Why is this list of 8 so sacrosanct? Healing should be a school. Teleportation effects should be a school.
- Just from a pure numbers standpoint, you'd have to be crazy to choose transmutation as an opposed school because a full quarter of the spells are in there. Same goes for conjuration which has 1/6th of them.
- School specialization needs a better system than "bonus slots in exchange for penalties for opposed schools". Honestly, this has never been a good idea, though it was worse in earlier editions, and DOA in the original AD&D.
What I'd like to see is something like what the Psionics system did (initially 3rd Edition and later Dreamscarred Press) with Disciplines: You have Core Arcane, Core Divine, Core Psychic, etc. spell lists, and then Arcane Schools, Bloodlines, Patrons, Domains, Mysteries, Disciplines, Implements, etc. add additional spells to these lists (but much more than 1 per spell level), and let you do more with the spell if you already have it on your spell list (no more getting ripped off by your Domain, Patron, or something giving you spells you could already get). Some classes would also modify spell lists independently of this (for instance, Bard would add spells of artistic or performance flavor).
I think the system just needs to move away from the opposed school idea. Just provide boons for specialization in a school, and either dump the universalist idea (there's no reason to be one if there's no penalty to specializing) or give them a different kind of boon.I can think of 2 existing examples of the latter option:
- Arclord of Nex prestige class
- Exploiter Wizard
You can divide up magic any number of ways, from the 4 (or 5) elements to Shadowrun's 5 types to Ars Magica's 50 noun-verb combos to the uncounted spell lists of Rolemaster or disciplines of Vampire. In no case does it make sense to count up the number of defined spells in a category and then declare that the power of the category. The power, variety and flexibility of the individual effects within the category also matters, as does the amount of effective overlap with other categories. In particular, transmutation (aka manipulation, Muto) is often limited or inefficient at achieving results that other types of magic do also.
If you were going to write from scratch you probably wouldn't take a load of random descriptive text that Gygax attached to spells and make those your categories, but PF isn't ever going to start from scratch. That's not its thing.
I wouldn't mind having spells divided up by their descriptors instead of schools.
Could also adds new descriptors like [rune] for all the symbol spells and [trap] for stuff like stone spike or pit spells
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I wouldn't mind having spells divided up by their descriptors instead of schools.
Could also adds new descriptors like [rune] for all the symbol spells and [trap] for stuff like stone spike or pit spells
I am a big fan of the new curse, disease and poison descriptors, so yeah, I could go with a few more of those.
Grouping all of the runes, symbols, glyphs, scripts, sigils, marks, etc. under a rune or inscription descriptor makes sense, as well.
I feel that necromancy shouldn't be a school. Pretty much all of its spells could comfortably fit into other schools.
I'd rather put healing in abjuration, since it's related to protecting people.
IF healing spells are not into necromancy (manipulating the enrgies of life and death), then it's definitely a conjuration spell, as it 'conjures' energy, or at worst and evocation, definitely not an abjuration.
I think you could make an excuse for almost any school to heal people. Transmutation changes your body so there's no longer a wound there. With abjuration you simply banish/negate the wound from being there.
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In no case does it make sense to count up the number of defined spells in a category and then declare that the power of the category. The power, variety and flexibility of the individual effects within the category also matters, as does the amount of effective overlap with other categories. In particular, transmutation (aka manipulation, Muto) is often limited or inefficient at achieving results that other types of magic do also.
When transmutation is holding fully one quarter of the spells, and the next largest school, conjuration, is arguably the strongest (or one of the strongest) in the game, it is very reasonable to claim that the buckets aren't balanced. From there, it's not a huge leap to the conclusion that the school specialization/opposition system is broken, and heavily favors some schools over others.
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I think you could make an excuse for almost any school to heal people. Transmutation changes your body so there's no longer a wound there. With abjuration you simply banish/negate the wound from being there.
Yeah, both necromancy (manipulating the forces of life and death) and transmutation (causing flesh and bone to knit back together) seem to me the most appropriate schools for healing magic, with conjuration (positive energy) coming in third.
Illusion (shadow) healing could be funky, granting you a pool of temporary hit points (made of shadowstuff) that covers up your injuries and replaces the form and function of any damaged tissue, until it has time to physically heal on it's own. Unlike traditional healing, it could be dispelled before that happens... :)
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Has anyone suggested that different schools could both have different flavoured replicants of the same spell?
Like I feel like that would simplify things.
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^Repost of an idea I had 2.5 years ago, slightly edited:
Take the example of Flying, for instance (and while we're at it, the following replaces the generic "Fly" and "Overland Flight" spells). Conjuration using a spell of 3rd or 5th Level ("Overland Wings" or "Greater Overland Wings") creates a pair of wings on you -- you get a moderate fly speed with decent or good endurance, but not so great maneuverability, because you are using a clunky device (like a magic device, but temporary) to fly, and you need space to flap the wings in (or in another variation on this, you have summoned a specialized Outsider to do the job). Transmutatation using a spell of 3rd Level or so ("Form of Flight") makes you actually grow the wings (like Beast Shape I or Monstrous Physique I, but specialized for giving you wings with minimal other changes) -- you get a moderate fly speed (somewhat better than "Overland Flight") and good maneuverability, but potentially worse endurance (which need not be the same as the duration of the spell), because you are using your own flesh to put out the effort, even if it is magically assisted; on the other hand, if you also have some sort of Fast Healing or Regeneration in effect at the same time, it also repairs your wings. All other things being equal, the more physically fit magic users capable of casting 3rd but not 5th Level spells might tend to favor the latter spell, whereas the more traditional nerd Wizard might tend to favor the former, as would those going up against opponents that have Anti-Shapechanger weapons or magic. Evocation [Force] using a spell of 7th Level or so ("Levitating Flight") gets you superhero-style flight, with no wings (or the space that they require) and great speed and awesome maneuverability, with decent endurance, but it's a high-level and rather expensive spell. A combination Evocation + Transmutation [Chaotic, Fire] spell of 5th Level or so ("Flight of the Brijidine") also gets you superhero-style flight and great speed but not so great maneuverability or endurance, and you leave behind a trail that is somewhat of a temporary environmental hazard, and Stealth is practically impossible while flying with this spell; the spell is not so expensive as the previous example, although as somatic and material components you do need to consume a significant volume of spicy beans with prunes (ever wonder why Brijidines love spicy foods? -- now you know, as well as having an idea why this spell gets the [Chaotic] Descriptor :-) -- and for thermodynamic reasons, you NEED that entropic aspect to get the proper pneumodynamic effect . . .).
Just to mention, this school division effects magic items as well. After all, magic items grant auras based upon what spell is used for crafting ...usually. Sometimes the aura is different from its base spell in favor of a more thematic school, an sometimes it makes no sense whatsoever.
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I feel that necromancy shouldn't be a school. Pretty much all of its spells could comfortably fit into other schools.
I'd rather put healing in abjuration, since it's related to protecting people.
I'd rather make the argument that abjuration is the school which doesn't belong. Other schools are all about the means (manipulates life and death, changes physical objects, etc.), and imply that the schools reflect immutable magical laws. Whereas abjuration is all about the ends (it protects), and implies that the schools of magic reflect mere cultural/institutional divisions.
Just my 2 cp. :)
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It'd be interesting to know which schools were discovered earliest
I've seen a proposal that spell spells like Cure/Inflict X Wounds and Heal/Harm should be evocation since you're making energy from nothing.
It'd be interesting to know which schools were discovered earliest
My guess is Evocation first (the "simplest" school, as its iconic blasts are just forcing energy around instead of manipulating much) then Divination (which makes magical analysis and study possible). Next is probably Abjuration because it doesn't often require fine manipulation of details and would be pushed for as a method of defense. Or perhaps Conjuration with regards to solving basic resource scarcity problems. The other would come next. After those probably Transmutation (applying the now somewhat understood forces to safely modify objects) then Necromancy (applying negative energy, conjuration (binding), and transmutation to animate the dead) and Illusion and Enchantments in the back because they often require a greater degree of control than others (so your illusions are credible and enchantments don't simply fry the brain when they shouldn't).
I also assume the first to discover magic already had several levels in Wizard before they finished researching the first spells, since many schools need to wait a bit for some of the key spells that define the school. Usually 5-9 for 3-5 level spells.