A New Organization of Spell Schools

[PhoneLobster]

Nor do I understand the reason for 'Fire' mages or 'Ice' mages.

The reason for fire mages is so you can put on a robe covered in fire decals and go round saying "ultimate mega fire attack" and set fire to fire elementals.

This whole thing with a complex mystical cosmology elemental wheel thingy is neither part of meaningful game balance nor is it a meaningful part of most of the fictional source material.

It's pretty much pure wank.

The characters that matter in various "elemental" universes, or ones with arbitrary divisions of magic types almost inevitably use the elements/divisions differently, in different combinations or just plain better than everyone else in those settings that interact with the cosmology.

Go look at god damn avatar avatar boy breaks the rules and uses ALL the elements, water girl goes off and learns mildly special healing and unique super rare one of a kind "blood control" water magic no one has even HEARD of, and earth girl INVENTS metal bending.

Those characters do not exist in a universe with formalized school specializations built into the laws of physics. They exist in a universe where powers are largely customizable modular things and a bunch of cultures have traditional selections that the PCs feel fairly free to buck the trend on.

[Caedrus]

Go look at god damn avatar avatar boy breaks the rules and uses ALL the elements, water girl goes off and learns mildly special healing and unique super rare one of a kind "blood control" water magic no one has even HEARD of, and earth girl INVENTS metal bending.

You can do all of those things under this system. You can gain new schools entirely (like Aang) or diversify into things that aren't normally part of your school in small dips (like Toph or Kitara). The system simply begins from a default of specialization and expands rather than a default of generalization and contracting. Due to the customizability of this system, you could easily set up arbitrary cultural norms and build characters around that. But the system isn't already built up around some given cultures because it's not intended to be a setting-specific system any more than D&D is.

[Username17]

Anything where your water mages spend any amount of time arguing to the DM that they should be able to to control other peoples' bodies by puppeting around the water in their lymph is one in which your schools don't mean anything mechanically. They really are just special effects themes.

In such a circumstance you might as well just throw down a list of game mechanically acceptable powers and let magicians take whichever ones they want justified with whatever thematic system they felt like justifying them with.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

Anything where your water mages spend any amount of time arguing to the DM that they should be able to to control other peoples' bodies by puppeting around the water in their lymph is one in which your schools don't mean anything mechanically. They really are just special effects themes.

In such a circumstance you might as well just throw down a list of game mechanically acceptable powers and let magicians take whichever ones they want justified with whatever thematic system they felt like justifying them with.

-Username17

On the one hand, you appear to be advocating no schools at all. On the other, we want to encourage a degree of specialization in mages, so that they're not expanding out to cover too many roles without expending resources to do so. How do you suggest doing that without schools?

[Username17]

On the one hand, you appear to be advocating no schools at all. On the other, we want to encourage a degree of specialization in mages, so that they're not expanding out to cover too many roles without expending resources to do so. How do you suggest doing that without schools?

Actually, I'm advocating dividing up the magic into hard mechanical groups and then come up with the thematic justification afterward. You can justify any effect at all under any magical theme. At all. Going from theme to effect is just a bad way to do things, because everyone will end up doing everything.

You should put down balanced magic packages, and then come up with schticks for them later. Some of them can end up being "Chaos Magic" or whatever. Maybe one magic school causes everything it does to be accompanied by purple lightning. That would be very identifiable and people familiar with the game would instantly know what those magicians could do. Even if that list happens to be teleport short distances (by turning into purple lightning and then reassembling on the end of the bolt), tear things in half (by ripping them up with purple lightning), conjure tentacled monsters (by rending the fabric of space with purple lightning and letting cthulhu spawn in), and heal wounds (by disassembling the injury into purple lightning and reassembling it into whole flesh).

Divide effects mechanically and then justify the packages with themes. Anything else just leads to fappery.

-Username17

[Mr. Bane]

Divide effects mechanically and then justify the packages with themes.

Thus my post.

[Caedrus]

Actually, I'm advocating dividing up the magic into hard mechanical groups and then come up with the thematic justification afterward

For reference, this is mostly based on splitting up the 3.5e mechanical groups into thematic justifications, with a few notable changes in mind I'm still in the process of implementing (expanding blasting, bringing in the psionics lists (which helps out divination), expanding mobility-related effects and their importance).

I don't have a hard list yet simply because I haven't gotten through *rewriting a coupla hundred spells* yet, and moreover since it's intended to be cooperative (because writing a coupla hundred spells takes a lot of work) I need at least a loose concept to rally people around so they're not going off in completely different directions. That said, these are by no means complete and I certainly agree with you: If it turns out that the powers we're making up favor one school over another, we will adjust the thematic justifications to accommodate the mechanics.

So there's 2 things here: These are based on my predictions of how the mechanics will split up, and are subject to change.
Second, they make a helluva lot more sense than the old delineations already.

Quoting from the SRD...

Abjuration

Abjurations are protective spells.

But... there are already protective spells in all the other schools. Wall of Force is Evocation, Mage Armor is Conjuration, etc etc.

Enchantment

Enchantment spells affect the minds of others

Illusion

Illusion spells deceive the minds of others.

...Kay

Evocation

Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end.

Conjuration

Conjurations bring manifestations of some form of energy to you ... or create objects or effects on the spot

Wait wasn't that basically what Evocation just said?

And then there's Transmutation

Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.

So... Transmutation spells "do something." Got it.

___

Even if these don't end up being the final thematic justifications due to mechanical concerns, they're already far more *sensible* thematic justifications than there were before, and an example of what a working delineation might look like.

[Mr. Bane]

Got a question for ya.

How do you gauge the 3.X spells? As in: Do you think the list of spells is comprehensive, lacking, overflowing, and/or trash?

[Username17]

Second, they make a helluva lot more sense than the old delineations already.

Not really.

See, the delineations between one school and another never make any sense outside the context of whatever the list of spells in the school happens to be. Yes, Transmutation "does stuff" and thus you could justify adding essentially any effect to Transmutation with no effort. Yes, Necromancy can do essentially anything so long as there is a dark shadow, a spooky sound, or a skull showing up at some point even if it is tangential flavor text to the main effect. This is true. But this is also the case for literally any other thematic school you could ever devise.

Let's say I wanted to control someone. Now you'd think that might be in Stevery because I'm affecting someone in the mind. But who said that my special effect was anything mentalism related? What if I'm animating the water that composes most of their body and I call the spell "Blood Puppet?" Couldn't I make that a water spell? What if I make it a fire that burns away someone's impetus, and call it "Mind Fire?" Couldn't it be a Fire spell at that point? What if I make it into some sort of soul trapping dealio, wouldn't I be justified in calling it some sort of Necromantic thing? All with essentially, or perhaps actually the same mechanics?

A lot of people don't read the little piece of italicized text at the beginning of Spell Compendium Entries. And that's fine, because those are worthless. So really, unifying the theme of the italicized text of the spell entries isn't going to have a whole lot of effect on anything.

I mean, let's say you had four spell schools:

• Transmutation: Changes the qualities of something or someone.
• Manipulation: Imposes your will on the people and the world around you.
• Sorcery: Creates magical effects that affect things in profound ways.
• Cynicism: Enchants and Conjures dogs.

Which is the most versatile spell school? Whichever one has the most breadth in its actual spells! Cynicism could easily have the most diverse effects in it, because you can justify pretty much anything by using magic to make a dog produce a magic effect. Just look at "summoning" in Final Fantasy. It's more versatile than White Magic or Black Magic.

Futzing around with the thematic limitations of any spell school is pointless, because thematic limitations are not meaningful limitations in a D&D-style setup.

-Username17

[Grek]

Thematic limitations can work, if and only if you are absolutely literal about what each school is about. If you define "Water Magic" as "Magic which acts upon H2O" and have "Fire Magic" explicity defined as "Magic which increases the temprature of an object or objects" then you're fine. It's only once stuff like Blood Puppet and Mind Fire is allowed in that the trouble starts.

[Murtak]

Thematic limitations can work, if and only if you are absolutely literal about what each school is about. If you define "Water Magic" as "Magic which acts upon H2O" and have "Fire Magic" explicity defined as "Magic which increases the temprature of an object or objects" then you're fine. It's only once stuff like Blood Puppet and Mind Fire is allowed in that the trouble starts.

Actually that is exactly what doesn't work. Using your examples both fire and water magic get save or dies, damage over time effects and battlefield control effects. Fire doesn't get Fireball, Summon Fire Elemental or Pyrotechnics however, and water magic has to do without Wall of Ice or Sleet Storm.

I doubt this is intended.

[PhoneLobster]

"Magic which acts upon H2O" and have "Fire Magic" explicity defined as "Magic which increases the temprature of an object or objects"

So, one controls the movement of molecules. And the other controls the movement of molecules.

Color me largely unimpressed. Especially since one of those schools gets one molecule, and the other gets ALL of them. But hey, H20 is a pretty common and exciting thing so that's pretty much enough to explode and or control the universe.

Also you aren't allowed to use modern science terms like "H20" when talking about these elemental magic things. That's a new rule made up by me just then.

For a start modern science is just not compatible with those world views, it is a completely competing and contradictory model of reality.

But it is also not compatible with the game mechanical divisions those world views ultimately are supposed to be providing fluffy cover for.

If "Fire" and "water" elements have fluff which describes the way they work introducing discussions about how they effect the movement or arrangement of certain molecules only brings complications to the table when someone realizes some simple modern scientific theory has real implications for your fluff and presumably then your game.

Like how your fire and water descriptions are largely the same thing.

[virgil]

It is common for people discussing magic to implicitly ignore scientific principles that make Grek's fire & water magic 'the same'.

Also, there's a great difference between imparting energy to perform work on a system (moving water) and imparting purely thermal energy onto a system. The kind of oversimplification required to lump those two events together is inane.

[Caedrus]

*snip*

Frank, I fully understand what you are saying about being able to organize and balance things based on any arbitrary thematics you want. Not disagreeing with you on that point.

For a start modern science is just not compatible with those world views, it is a completely competing and contradictory model of reality.

Yes, PL, MAGIC isn't compatible with real science.

[Mr. Bane]

What if I boil someones blood via the water in their body?

[PhoneLobster]

The kind of oversimplification required to lump those two events together is inane.

Moving molecules with your mind is moving molecules with your mind. If I can move water molecules ten feet to the left why can't I move water molecules in a log of wood until it burns?

If I can move about the molecules in the god damn air with such fantastic energy to create a fire ball like explosion why can't I just move the air ten feet to left?

Indeed for that matter, remember air pressure and temperature, I just made a cyclone! How is that stepping on Air elementalists? Now lets do that with water too! What happens now?

[virgil]

So your response to "that is oversimplifying things" is to reiterate your point? I get it, you got a gold star in your science class and remember that a stove top is hot because its molecules move around faster. You don't need to act like a stupid tourist and figure saying the same damn thing louder will actually mean anything.

Heat shows a distinct lack of 'control' in the direction of each molecule, only that it is going faster. An arm can lift a bucket of water, but it's not going to boil its contents. Continuing down that logic, the response to someone postulating a world where the first sign of the supernatural is a man that gains the psychic power to telepathically speak "Hello" to someone he touches is to decide that this world makes complete nonsense, because this man is obviously a Physical God that dwarfs Dr. Manhattan in his utter control of reality.

Also, you're not even following your own damn rule of not mixing modern science in a discussion of elemental magic; where the concept of molecular heat transfer, or really anything on the scale of molecules, is supposed to be glossed over when discussion magic. Especially magic that is implicitly assumed to be in a setting where some can legitimately argue for humours as a medicinal practice (when clerics aren't handy).

[Psychic Robot]

PL's logic is why mage armor is conjuration instead of abjuration: you're summoning a literal suit of armor around yourself, which makes it conjuration, even though everyone agrees it should be abjuration because summoning armor is bullshit when there's an entire school of magic is about protection spells.

[virgil]

It's worse than that. PL's reasoning decides that mage armor is the same fvcking thing as time stop, because both involve moving and stopping molecules without changing the state of the system (no transfer of momentum to the wearer, no temperature change, etc).

Hell, it's the same thing as dominate person, because people think through electrical pulses in their brain, and since energy and matter are the same, moving one is the same as moving the other; and you've obviously got enough manipulative control from mage armor because the wearer can actually move.

[Psychic Robot]

Well, that's not good. While the fluff can justify the spell to an extent, at some point people will say "bullshit" and hate the spell. I suppose that the goal with magic is not to overthink. Even though some people might consider this "dumbing down" the game, when you've got conjuration spells shooting fire everywhere because you're summoning them from the Elemental Plane of Fire, players are just going to say, "So why isn't this evocation?"

[Username17]

But Mage Armor and Time Stop are the same thing. I mean honestly, if Time Stop was an abjuration because it gave you a few rounds of time when people couldn't hurt you, would you notice that as being in any way strange?

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

Yes.

[virgil]

Frank, that is an argumentative stance towards mage armor being equivalent to time stop that I can actually work with and not consider an overcomplicated reducto ad absurdum (I hope I used that term right).

Personally, if all Time Stop did was make you immune to damage/spells/etc for a few rounds, I can see that being a pretty accurate comparison. However, it gives a strategic offensive advantage by allowing you to set up your Rube Goldberg death trap around them before they can react to get out of the way, which makes it a lot less like mage armor.

[NineInchNall]

Time stop, as a crazy-go-nuts ninth level spell, provides a short burst of complete and total protection from everything to everything. How you choose to make use of that protection is up to you.

[Psychic Robot]

You can moon people without repercussions.