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-mancy is used for magic, in spite of its original meaning of divination.
We could have used -kinesis, but it sounds more SF / Super heroes and in PF became the province of the Kineticist.
And Necromancy as speaking with the dead (and undead like ghosts) is usually described as dangerous and upsetting. Or even outright blasphemous. So putting the creation of undead there was not such a great stretch.
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The thing about necromancy in the Age of Lost Omens is that prophecy already is dead.
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... and now I'm just thinking about the linguistic drift going on behind conjuring and evocation.
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Also Words and Common association with them change over time. :)
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Conjure is easy, the word is used in general for the sense of "create something out of nothing" or "summon something". Hence "I conjured a plan".
Evoke is a bit more messy because it uses conjure for its meaning. However, it does have its main use being for "recreate a feeling or memory". Hence "evoking a feeling of sadness".
-ation is the suffix meaning "the process of doing something". So conjuration is the process of creating something out of nothing. Meanwhile, evocation is the process of recreating a situation.
As for necromancy, a lot of it is still talking and communing with the dead. Its just that set of powers is less flashy than summoning and reviving and less impactful than healing/hurting. The use of -mancy to mean "control" came about as a matter of style, saying "urge" is weird and its easier to just tack on the extra meaning to an the existing word. Just like Zombies and Vampires have had a bunch or stuff tacked on.
I can't tell if you're trying to agree with my point that these words have familiar meanings to us today that aren't always related to their original uses, or arguing that the original words are actually logical descriptions of the schools.
Conjuring has historically referred to the act of swearing together (con + juro), joining by oath, forming a conspiracy, and performing magic tricks. There was a time when 'conjurer' was the generic name in English for a magic user. Evocation was the act of 'calling out' (e-voco) gods or spirits; in fact, 'evoco' in Latin literally just means "I summon" and evocation was the ritual to entice your enemy's protective spirits to abandon them.
Ad hoc justifications are all the justifications we have, is all I'm saying... not that we even need them anymore, unless we're going to talk about the other wizard game that invented half of these arbitrary associations. Maybe if this subtopic gets any more traction it would be best to spiral off into a new discussion rather than further muddy the question of specialized casters.
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I think for any kind of actually specialized mage which doesn't require a lot of upkeep to maintain as new material comes out, Paizo would have needed to get serious about spell traits.
Its the same thing that holds back Personal Staves really.
If there was a more robust spell trait system in place, then their would be room to design more complex and fulfilling specialized casters without needing to overly maintain speific classes / features.
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I think for any kind of actually specialized mage which doesn't require a lot of upkeep to maintain as new material comes out, Paizo would have needed to get serious about spell traits.
Its the same thing that holds back Personal Staves really.
If there was a more robust spell trait system in place, then their would be room to design more complex and fulfilling specialized casters without needing to overly maintain speific classes / features.
There was the DnD spell schools trait system. But they had to get rid of it in Remastered.
Next stop on this way will be PF3, I'm afraid.
There was the DnD spell schools trait system. But they had to get rid of it in Remastered.
Next stop on this way will be PF3, I'm afraid.
Yeah, pretty much. I built this thing as, in essence, the most plausible path that I could see for limited-list casters to work within the current constraints, and the overwhelming response has been that people in general aren't cool with the kind of compromises it would require.
I started another thread on the "how do we do this in PF3" version of things, and the response to that one has been a fair bit more positive. Perhaps the Paizo devs will find it useful. That's a ways off, though.
So a rough draft of a way to maybe handle this as a Class archetype
Class archetype rules
Reduce spells slots by one for each spell rank
Pick two traits
Excluding cantrips all spells prepared must have at least one of your two chosen traits
When you level up you may choose one spell from outside your tradition that has at least one chosen trait to add to your spell list.
You may have up to one spell per spell rank (excluding the highest available spell rank) prepared that doesn't possess one of the chosen traits
focus spell, free action
If your next action is to cast a spell that possesses a chosen trait it doesn't consume its spell slot
one action, spellshape
If your next action is to cast a spell that possesses a chosen trait and is at least two spell ranks below your highest available spell rank, then it doesn’t consume its spell slot
Dangerous Sorcery, Spell Penetration, Overwhelming Energy