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I've always disliked enchantment mainly because it seem to me at least to be by FAR the most morally sketchy of the schools (yes, even more than necromancy) Since its all about taking away people's autonomy and sometimes mentally enslaving them even.
I almost always choose necromancy and enchantment as my opposition schools the few times I play a wizard. I'm not a fan of the universal school. I like specializing.
Necromancy. Harnessing the power that is an antithesis to life seems ... well, it is seen as evil for a reason, whether everyone agrees or not. Life and death seems to be something that should remain in the hands of divine beings more capable of understanding and handling such issues.
Enchantment is more of a mixed bag. Like the other schools, it can be used for nefarious purposes or not.
Obviously, this is just my opinion. You are free to disagree but I am not going to engage in attempts to defend my opinion.
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Evocation. If you're not specialised in blowing holes in things it's probably ineffective. Also blowing holes in people tends to take away their autonomy if that's what you're concerned about.
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I would say Abjuration, but that implies it actually is a real school of magic.
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Yeah I don't have the same problem with Enhantment. Yes it can be used nefariously, but a character could use Cure Light Wounds for nefarious purposes, so that's not inherent to the magic. Spells like COMMAND can change an encounter from a murder-fest into a quick round-up for the local guards, so nothing Evil there. They also encourage teamwork and tactics within the party, which is great for game-play.
Necromancy is probably my least favourite in Pathfinder, simply because they took all the healing magic away from this school. How does it make sense that Cure Light Wounds is Conjuration but Inflict Light Wounds is Necromancy? When you get to higher level spells like RAISE DEAD are REALLY stretching the definition of "conjuration".
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Illusion- it's really hard to find the correct balance between "illusions are super powerful" and "illusions are basically useless."
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Illusion- it's really hard to find the correct balance between "illusions are super powerful" and "illusions are basically useless."
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I've always disliked enchantment mainly because it seem to me at least to be by FAR the most morally sketchy of the schools (yes, even more than necromancy) Since its all about taking away people's autonomy and sometimes mentally enslaving them even.
Logic I will literally never understand
How is charm perform worse than burning hands (go to level 1 spell of each school)
Steal autonomy for 1 minute vs melt skin off face.
I never let that kind of thing influence my decision anyway, they’re all just tools, it’s what you do with them. My choice is Abjuration because I find so many of the barriers awkward and generally the game doesn’t reward becoming a big block of shield. Enemies can just hit your friend.
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Necromancy is probably my least favourite in Pathfinder, simply because they took all the healing magic away from this school. How does it make sense that Cure Light Wounds is Conjuration but Inflict Light Wounds is Necromancy? When you get to higher level spells like RAISE DEAD are REALLY stretching the definition of "conjuration".
I can only speak from my personal viewpoint, but I actually support the change from Necromancy to Conjuration (healing). My rationale is that you are 'conjuring' (summoning) positive energy directly from its source to heal a person, while Necromancy must tear that same energy (if slightly processed) from a person and send it away. The same with Raise Dead and Resurrection. You are conjuring the soul and infusing it back into the body through the power of positive energy. Necromancy rips the soul (or something ... else) from the Planes and 'stitches' the soul back into the body with energy that does not belong there.
Again, just my personal viewpoint. I only arrived at it through much thought on the subject and trying to create a non-contradictory idea of how the universe in Pathfinder functions.
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Necromancy is probably my least favourite in Pathfinder, simply because they took all the healing magic away from this school. How does it make sense that Cure Light Wounds is Conjuration but Inflict Light Wounds is Necromancy? When you get to higher level spells like RAISE DEAD are REALLY stretching the definition of "conjuration".I can only speak from my personal viewpoint, but I actually support the change from Necromancy to Conjuration (healing). My rationale is that you are 'conjuring' (summoning) positive energy directly from its source to heal a person, while Necromancy must tear that same energy (if slightly processed) from a person and send it away. The same with Raise Dead and Resurrection. You are conjuring the soul and infusing it back into the body through the power of positive energy. Necromancy rips the soul (or something ... else) from the Planes and 'stitches' the soul back into the body with energy that does not belong there.
Again, just my personal viewpoint. I only arrived at it through much thought on the subject and trying to create a non-contradictory idea of how the universe in Pathfinder functions.
The idea of "conjuring energy" is an evocation thing.
Enchantment is my least favorite as well. I don't like how directly it deals with game mechanics. Needing to use the right spell for each creature type seems like a waste of spells and having some creatures not respond to enchantment because of how they are animated also seems a bit weird. I'm also not a fan of how failure to use enchantment subtlely will often cause combat to happen. I'd prefer if it worked more to support social actions than to replace them with a binary bipass encounter/start combat switch.
The morality of enchantment is sort of odd, but it's hard to know narratively what's happening. It's opposed by willpower, so it shouldn't effect people with excellent self control, so are you subverting their will or using magic in place of rhetoric?
I dislike Enchantment spells on the basis that the rules really preclude them from being terribly useful. According to the rules a person is aware if they make a saving throw. Since all spells have a visible component without intense specialization, and also casting components, everyone around you is aware you cast a spell. Thus, casting charm person on someone in public leads folks to go "That person bewitched him, GUARDS" and in private if they make their saving throw the same thing happens as well. You need to invest in the ability to conceal your spellcasting or bluff someone into letting you cast another spell on them and hope they don't have spellcraft. This really makes it only useful against captives or the unconscious. Basically, without intense specialization charm person is useless in most of the situations one would expect it to help.
My second dislike is Conjuration, because it does literally everything. Talk about a one stop shop for school specialization. Teleportation, summoning monsters, dealing damage, creating area denial, healing...like what doesn't this school do?
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Divination. There aren't a lot of divination spells. They tend to be used more to bypass or ruin plots than enhance game play. Most divination spells that answer questions are more likely to feed you bad information rather than something helpful.
There are a few divination spells you just can't live without, but by and large its an iffy school of magic that causes more time to be wasted than any other. So much grief for players and GM alike.
My issue with divination (and teleportation) is completely meta.
Either the GM *wants* us to have certain information, to further the adventure/plot/story, and therefore already has ways to feed us that information, or the GM *does not want* us to have that information.
In either case, spending *my* characters limited resource options on stuff that A) the GM was going to do anyway or B) the GM was going to block somehow (the various old-school adventures where 'divination doesn't work' or 'you can't teleport here'), seems like a waste.
If the GM wants us to know, we'll know. If the GM wants us to get somewhere, we'll get there. (And in the case of teleport, it also has the same problem that crops up when one is the only VR cyber-decker, astral projector, dream traveler, flyer, stealther or aquatic character in a group, in that A) you are traveling alone into areas designed for a party of four, so you'll die and B) you are hogging time for a solo trek while other players are fiddling with their phones and quoting Princess Bride and otherwise wasting their game-time.)
As well, I'd like Divination more if there was more *offensive* Divination.
'I open up your mind to the endless surface chatter of every thinking mind in five miles. It's the literal definition of 'I can't hear myself think.' Feel free to curl up in a ball and whimper. It won't help.'
'I give you vivid presentiments of all the horrible possible deaths that could befall you.' (GURPS spell, Death Vision.)
'This is a vivid full-sense memory of my first childbirth. Enjoy trying to fight me while enduring labor pains.'
'I, Jean Grey, open your senses up to the entirety of the universe, all at once, Mastermind. Some minds can handle it...'
Eric Draven "I've been holding onto something. I don't want it any more. Thirty hours of pain. All at once. All for you!"
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My second dislike is Conjuration, because it does literally everything. Talk about a one stop shop for school specialization. Teleportation, summoning monsters, dealing damage, creating area denial, healing...like what doesn't this school do?
Doesn't let you CONJURE illusions or CONJURE mental commands directly into people's heads.
Not yet anyway.
I think some of the higher level summoned monsters could do it for you >_>
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The idea of "conjuring energy" is an evocation thing.
In one sense of the word and one particular interpretation, yes, you are correct. But, I am not using that particular interpretation. I meant 'conjuring' in the same sense as when you summon a creature from another plane. Most evocation (again, my viewpoint may or may not be your own) draws on the energy already present in the material plane (which itself ties into the elemental planes of energy surrounding the material plane) and directs that energy. Conjuring positive energy is different simply because it has to be summoned 'further' from a plane with less actual ties directly to the material plane.
Whether or not that lines up with standard cosmology of the pathfinder universe is beside the point, and I don't really care to debate it. That is merely how I use the tools I have access to.
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Conjuration. It's cheating, as it generally gets to ignore SR which the others usually don't. Also because of summoning, which is a rather weird business that is really hard to justify. You somehow create a temporary physical duplicate of a real creature that fights autonomously for several seconds and then suddenly vanishes completely? As a 1st level spell? And because summoning bogs the game down. And also the other complaints about how conjuration has stolen the other schools' lunches.
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Necromancy is probably my least favourite in Pathfinder, simply because they took all the healing magic away from this school. How does it make sense that Cure Light Wounds is Conjuration but Inflict Light Wounds is Necromancy? When you get to higher level spells like RAISE DEAD are REALLY stretching the definition of "conjuration".I can only speak from my personal viewpoint, but I actually support the change from Necromancy to Conjuration (healing). My rationale is that you are 'conjuring' (summoning) positive energy directly from its source to heal a person, while Necromancy must tear that same energy (if slightly processed) from a person and send it away. The same with Raise Dead and Resurrection. You are conjuring the soul and infusing it back into the body through the power of positive energy. Necromancy rips the soul (or something ... else) from the Planes and 'stitches' the soul back into the body with energy that does not belong there.
My problem with that is that it's not consistent. Cure Light Wounds conjures energy from the Positive Energy Plane, but Inflict Light Wounds is apparently not conjuring energy from the Negative Energy Plane. You could just as easily swap these spells, so that Cure is Necromancy (you're draining life energy from your surroundings and putting it into a person "CARNIVALE-style"), and Inflict is Conjuration (You're conjuring energy from another plane). It would have the exact same logic that you've used (and be just as inconsistent), but have a slightly different flavour. So I know you CAN justify it (you've done a very good job of it, well done sir), but why should we be justifying something inconsistent when there's a much easier solution - to make it consistent.
As to Raise Dead ... that's literally the definition of Necromancy. If you ask a layman what Necromancy is for, they'll say: "Raising the dead."
The idea of "conjuring energy" is an evocation thing.
Yeah, I think perhaps it's more than Necromancy that has the problem ...
ADENDUM: It looks like my problem isn't really with Necromancy, it's with Conjuration.
Abjuration as I am basically unable to play defense and support. It is honestly a character flaw, but I only do Offense and stealth/misdirection.
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My problem with that is that it's not consistent. Cure Light Wounds conjures energy from the Positive Energy Plane, but Inflict Light Wounds is apparently not conjuring energy from the Negative Energy Plane. You could just as easily swap these spells, so that Cure is Necromancy (you're draining life energy from your surroundings and putting it into a person "CARNIVALE-style"), and Inflict is Conjuration (You're conjuring energy from another plane). It would have the exact same logic that you've used (and be just as inconsistent), but have a slightly different flavour. So I know you CAN justify it (you've done a very good job of it, well done sir), but why should we be justifying something inconsistent when there's a much easier solution - to make it consistent.
As to Raise Dead ... that's literally the definition of Necromancy. If you ask a layman what Necromancy is for, they'll say:...
This exactly. In fact Inflict Light Wounds actually does explicitly say you're conjuring negative energy, so I guess that means conjuring positive energy = conjuration, and conjuring negative energy = necromancy. But then you look at Circle of Death and Undeath to Death, which are also inverses of each other in the exact same ways as cure/inflict light wounds, except Circle of Death and Undeath to Death are both necromancy spells.
Even worse than making healing conjuration is making fear effects necromancy, which is just completely nonsensical. Literally every other emotion-type spells are enchantment, which is completely logical, except fear-type spells for some reason.
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I've never liked enchantment, both mechanically and thematically. Mechanically it's chock full of binary save-or-lose spells that, in addition to trivializing combats in a single dice roll, gives wizards absolute authority in many non-combat encounters that they would otherwise have no business in. And if the NPC makes their save the wizard will spend the rest of the session b+@&%ing about it.
Thematically it's probably a war crime. Shooting an enemy soldier is generally accepted practice, forcing a captured soldier to shoot his buddy will get you sent to the Hague.
... but why should we be justifying something inconsistent when there's a much easier solution - to make it consistent.
Because I look down on Necromancy with a certain level of distaste and prioritize the use of negative energy as being somewhat inherently evil. I simply value keeping the alignment of certain elements more consistent than interpretations of spell functions. Allowing for non-evil uses of negative energy opens up doors to issues that I don't want open. Other people have different play styles and that is cool. I'm just more direct in saying that people who think they are "doing good" by manipulating negative energy are, at best, delusional.
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Enchantment and Divination kind of bug me for reasons people have previously stated. They both can be very disruptive to campaigns or promote combative GM-Player relationships when the GM tries to turn off the player's magic or the player uses those spells to subvert plot points. Way too often I see games that have ended up with GMs either struggling to play around those spells and accommodate the player or the player end up frustrated because they keep getting shut down.
How does it make sense that Cure Light Wounds is Conjuration but Inflict Light Wounds is Necromancy? When you get to higher level spells like RAISE DEAD are REALLY stretching the definition of "conjuration".
It feels like at some point during the development of 3.X it was decided that instead of having a cohesive theme as a school of magic, Necromancy was to have a cohesive theme in representing a character archetype.
So even though CLW and Raise are totally within the purview of life and death, they have to go because they're not things evil mages in graveyards do and instead the bulk of the school's spells are things a spooky necromancer would use like Cause Fear, Enfeeblement and Raise Dead, nevermind that altering someone's emotions with magic is basically the description of the Enchantment school and Enfeeblement sort of looks like the debuff equivalent of all those transmutation spells that change stats.
I'm just more direct in saying that people who think they are "doing good" by manipulating negative energy are, at best, delusional.
Why? Doing 1d6 damage to someone via negative energy doesn't seem any intrinsically more or less evil than doing the same damage with fire or electricity or sword.
It feels circular. It's evil, because it's evil... because it's evil.
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^Not only that, but if you have friends (or yourself) that have Negative Energy Affinity (and that doesn't necessarily mean Undead, and doesn't necessarily mean Evil), you're going to need Inflict-series spells or Channel Negative Energy just to heal them.
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... but why should we be justifying something inconsistent when there's a much easier solution - to make it consistent.Because I look down on Necromancy with a certain level of distaste and prioritize the use of negative energy as being somewhat inherently evil. I simply value keeping the alignment of certain elements more consistent than interpretations of spell functions. Allowing for non-evil uses of negative energy opens up doors to issues that I don't want open. Other people have different play styles and that is cool. I'm just more direct in saying that people who think they are "doing good" by manipulating negative energy are, at best, delusional.
I get that, but a lot of necromancy spells aren't evil. Inflict spells specifically aren't.
As Squiggit pointed out there's no real difference between 3d8+5 negative energy damage and 5d6 electricity damage.
The reason I brought this up at all is that it used to be a necromancy spell (although my google-fu just revealed how old I am that I remember that), but it got moved into conjuration for "reasons".
(I just realised that my haunt-collector occultist with a haunted conjuration implement is more thematic with the conjuration school containing all the resurrection magic. I'll be a conjuration focused necromancer.)
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Since the (healing) subschool was inexplicably removed from it in 3e, my answer would be Necromancy. Add those spells back in... and it would be my favorite again.
It isn't that it's mostly Evil, it's just that it has relatively few spells I'd be interested in casting.
"instead of having a cohesive theme as a school of magic, Necromancy was to have a cohesive theme in representing a character archetype."
Exactly, or we can elaborate that by noting Necromancy and Necromancer as word/concept predated D&D and if Conjurer and Enchanter and Diviner and Transmuter were going to have their own school it appeared strange for Necromancers to be "sidelined" by not having own school.
I came to similar conclusion re: Abjuration, albeit while it's less iconic it even more freely steps in almost every other School's territory, as long as it has excuse of "Protectiveness" i.e. hinging on character POV/attitude/role. Now, that can work fine as Divine Domain, or distinct class' spell list, but it just blatantly fails as magical school hinged on fundamental mode of operation.
One spell I really don't get it's typing is Contingency (Evocation). Like WTF. It occured to me because Contingency's 'concern' about context is similar to Abjuration (and really is better candidate for Abjuration if that's supposed to be Abj's thing), but really can also probably be Divination since it hinges on Detecting the trigger condition. This type of thing and Dispels also seem Universal candidates, which might be what you'd do if removing Abjuration and distributing it's spells around.
AD&D had an actual "universal" spell list that Mages had access to regardless of their prohibited schools.
Too lazy to grab my books, but it included detect/read magic, permanency, contingency, and teleport.
permanency still is universal along with wish, arcane mark, and prestidigitation (LOL)
at least 2e tried to clean up some of the stupidity on spell school typing
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This exactly. In fact Inflict Light Wounds actually does explicitly say you're conjuring negative energy, so I guess that means conjuring positive energy = conjuration, and conjuring negative energy = necromancy. But then you look at Circle of Death and Undeath to Death, which are also inverses of each other in the exact same ways as cure/inflict light wounds, except Circle of Death and Undeath to Death are both necromancy spells.
Even worse than making healing conjuration is making fear effects necromancy, which is just completely nonsensical. Literally every other emotion-type spells are enchantment, which is completely logical, except fear-type spells for some reason.
Yeah, necromancy is a hodge podge of Halloween-themed effects, including fear spells (which should be enchantment), animating undead (transmutation, same as animating objects, even objects made of wood, bone or corpse-meats, that aren't undead?), calling up energy from the negative energy plane (conjuration), debuffing stats through ray of enfeeblement or bestow curse (transmutation, for sure this time), etc.
Illusion is another grab-bag of stuff poached from other schools. Create light? Evocation. Create darkness? Evocation. Create *colored* light, or patterns of light in any form other than just 'pure light'? Illusion. Create sound? Evocation if it's damaging, illusion if it sounds like literally anything other than a shout spell... Conjure energy or creatures from almost** any other plane of existence? Conjuration. Conjure energy or creatures from the plane of shadow? Conjur-lusion!
**Well, except conjuring energy from the negative energy plane, as we've already established that it's the *other* exception, conjur-omancy!
It was slightly more sensible in 1st edition AD&D, when spells could belong to two or three different schools, which particularly makes sense for spells that are doing some very different things (like a druid summoning some animals, and *also* compelling them to obey their commands and fight for them, or a wizard making an 'abjuration' that is mainly creating a fiery explosion of evocation magic when triggered).
That allowed a GM, if they wanted, to make a spell like prismatic spray both an evocation (spray of random damaging effects!) *and* an illusion (pretty colors!), or make a neat bit of precedent for one who wants to go further afield and get rid of negative energy and positive energy entirely, and have cure and inflict spells be both necromancy (magic of life and death!) *and* transmutation (knits together or tears open wounds in flesh!), skipping conjuration entirely.
It was slightly more sensible in 1st edition AD&D, when spells could belong to two or three different schools, which particularly makes sense for spells that are doing some very different things (like a druid summoning some animals, and *also* compelling them to obey their commands and fight for them, or a wizard making an 'abjuration' that is mainly creating a fiery explosion of evocation magic when triggered).
That allowed a GM, if they wanted, to make a spell like prismatic spray both an evocation (spray of random damaging effects!) *and* an illusion (pretty colors!), or make a neat bit of precedent for one who wants to go further afield and get rid of negative energy and positive energy entirely, and have cure and inflict spells be both necromancy (magic of life and death!) *and* transmutation (knits together or tears open wounds in flesh!), skipping conjuration entirely.
Though I don't recall schools being anything but pure flavor in 1st ed AD&D? Glancing at my PHB it doesn't look like the term "school" was even there, just the undefined "type of magic." Schools and school specialization were introduced in 2nd ed. 1st ed did have the Illusionist, but they had an entirely separate spell list which was not exclusively illusion spells.
Returning to the thread topic, my least favorite is conjuration, or rather conjuration(summoning), because it so easily bogs down the game. Conjuration's other subschools are okay.
^Not only that, but if you have friends (or yourself) that have Negative Energy Affinity (and that doesn't necessarily mean Undead, and doesn't necessarily mean Evil), you're going to need Inflict-series spells or Channel Negative Energy just to heal them.
Justifications for using Negative Energy don't change what it is, nor the need for using it. It can be used for (personal) beneficial effects and some things are tainted by it. It makes a very effective weapon in some cases. Negative Energy is an antithesis to life and does not belong on the material realm. It interferes with the Cycle, perhaps in non-mechanical ways that Players have no interest/ability to understand.
My reasons for disliking Negative Energy are my own and are internally consistent (rather than externally, since there are points of disagreement with existing lore). If it doesn't line up with how you view it, that's fine. I am aware the viewpoint forces certain other methods of play into a narrow space. I am fine with that. We aren't sharing a table. We are merely discussion personal preferences. Sort of similar to why I think different alignments are "better" than others.
For me, it's the Illusion school. I find it really hard to adjudicate sometimes.
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Can I choose a specific group of spells in a school?
I choose conjuration attacks spells which don't go against spell resistance because somehow there's a big difference between evoking a fireball and conjuring an arrow of acid.
It's a big pet peeve of mine.
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Can I choose a specific group of spells in a school?
I choose conjuration attacks spells which don't go against spell resistance because somehow there's a big difference between evoking a fireball and conjuring an arrow of acid.
It's a big pet peeve of mine.
That is an oddity. One could as easily say that the acid arrow is created from nothing 'ex nihilo' magically, and the fireball is conjured from the plane of elemental fire, and rule the absolute reverse, and it would make even more sense, since there *is* a plane of infinite elemental fire from which one could conjure fireballs and flame strikes, and there *is not* a 'plane of elemental acid' from which one conjures acid arrows.
It's super-inconsistent.
Similarly, evocation is supposed to bring energy into being, and yet darkness and cold effects are evocation, despite those spells *negating* light and heat, respectively. Abjuration or necromancy, depending on your view of those two schools, would make *far* more sense for darkness and cold subtype spells than evocation.
Similarly, acid itself seems like a good representation of decay or dissolution, or even a metaphorical/symbolic calling forth the powers of the river styx / river duat / river dividing the living world from the underwold of spirits, and could be rationalized as necromancy with less mental gymnastics than it takes to rationalize fear spells as necromancy or acid spells having anything to do with elemental Earth...
Some of the divination spells kind of bother me to for a similar reason to enchantment: they seem like a pretty big violation of people's privacy. I mean, spying on the bad guy is ok, but just casting detect thoughts on everyone you meet seems like a pretty scummy thing to do. (though that may be why they gave rakshasas the ability to do it at will)
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It's almost like harming people is bad
It looks like everyone loves transmutation. Evocation is almost popular, with its only downside being that it's a bit...feeble.
It's almost like harming people is bad
Well duh. Obviously only an evil wizard would shoot a fireball into a mob of innocent people. I'm just saying if you have a spell that violates people's privacy or personal autonomy you should have a pretty good reason (assuming you're not evil)
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It's almost like harming people is bad
Nah, if you HARM someone they can still walk away from it, it's not that bad ;)
The elemental schools, because Paizo hasn't kept them up to date over time.
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Again, casting a magic spell on someone without their prior permission is a criminal offence in my campaigns for a reason.