I do find it annoying, because it ignores thematics within the game. Necromancy is often associated with necrotic damage, and spells like chill touch or Toll of the Dead. If you make it the "evil darkside of magic" then what do you do with the Spore Druid who deals necrotic damage and makes a zombie servant? Are they automatically evil and dark, associated with fiends and aberrations from beyond the stars?
The word "necrotic" is a medical term that means the cells are dying, such as gangrene.
When an Undead inflicts Necrotic damage, it means the targets are starting to become corpses, literally rotting.
Deathliness is darkside. When the Spore Druid deals Necrotic damage and especially when using fungus to animate a zombie, the concept flirts with the darkside. This is Negativity influencing the natural world. The absence of Positive Energy.
I don't want ANY morality to be in the magic, because it is hard to justify it. Even Enchantment which I strongly feel has many negative thematics... also has spells like Zone of Truth, Bless, and Hold Person which I cannot say are evil spells.
It isnt about alignment, because Good characters can wield the powers of death and demons for Good purposes. Compare the Warlock.
At the same time, the themes are about death and demons. Namely, darkside flavor.
Enchantment can be taboo in some cultures because it violates free will. In Norse culture, warriors avoided manipulating the minds of opponents because it seemed unfair and a cowardly way to avoid a fight. The stories still describe warriors doing it, however. Even Thor resorts to mind manipulation on occasion.
Even saying something like "the void is evil" ignores other conceptions of the universe and morality. The Void in Shinto religions is not a force of evil. So why enforce that upon the game?
The Negative Void itself is strictly neutral, and serves a Good purpose by making creation possible. The Negativity is what allows finite things to be possible. Without the Negativity demarcating boundaries where something isnt, everything would be indistinguishable infinity.
That said, the absence of Positivity is bleak nihilation, like a black hole.
Heh. If you want blood and guts and death and corpses. Face it. This is darkside stuff. But not necessarily Evil.
Depends on the story-telling. Most stories that feature prophecies and precognition often don't involve gravity manipulation. Those that involve telekinesis... actually often involve precognition and telepathy, all as the same power. I've even seen psychic teleportation.
Yeah. The folklore stories feature seers who foresee the future without flying around.
However, modern stories often have the telekinetic be precognitive as well. This is because the reallife scientific investigations of the "paranormal", tended to group the experiments that involved these claims together. The scientific terminology is new, but the what they describe is ancient, including "extra sensory perception" (Norse spá), "remote viewing" (Norse hamfarir), etcetera. "Telekinesis" (moving by spirit) and "Teleportation" are known in Jewish literature, where Teleportation (Hebrew kafats) is described in a way similar to a modern wormhole, that pulls two points in space together.
A modern theme "psionic" psychic character, would choose spells from the Dunomancy and Divination schools.
So, it matters deeply which stories you are trying to emulate, because reading people's minds, looking into the future, and throwing people around or setting them on fire can all be the exact same power source in the right sort of fiction.
Yes, it matters which stories a player is drawing inspiration from. That is why it helps to organize the spells in a thematically salient way. Then the player can find the relevant spells more easily.
It also depends on how you are creating the illusions, ie, are you manipulating light or perception. But more importantly, the point was that Fey are well known for illusions, and Dunomacny was ethereal... but then illusion was ethereal matter. Giving manipulated light a physicality can even be gravity magic.
I distinguish between "objective" illusions that are quasi-real, versus "subjective" phantasms that are strictly mental sensory manipulation.
The objective illusions use force subtly to manipulate light and sound, or force with increasing strength for odor and solid touch, even fully virtual to support weight and so on. However, illusions have a mental affectation that ultimately can blur the lines between subjective imagination and objective reality, whence actually real scenarios with enduring mass and so on.
Yes, many Fey creatures are known for Illusion and Enchantment, as well as being immaterial Fey spirits. They are originally known for personifying and manipulating fate, namely Divination. A player who wants one or more of these narrative themes, selects the appropriate spell school.
But then again, you are correct, illusions are often seen as distinct and make sense as a field of study.
Illusions are like art. One can describe the chemical properties of pigments, but that isnt really what the artist is doing with pigments. The artist is doing art. It is its own discipline, even its own mode of consciousness.
There is no way that being lucky allows a weapon to cut what it otherwise cannot cut. That is a function of being a magical item, not a lucky item.
There are stories where something breaks because of being struck "just right". Whence luck. The imagery reminds me of cutting diamonds.
But you are getting to my point, this a all messy and confusing and could go in multiple different directions. The more tightly you try and define "this magic means this" the more you are going to find those edge cases that don't make sense or challenge the entire structure you have built.
DnD's current system being very loosely defined is a strength here, because it largely... doesn't matter.
Organizing schools in a helpful and consistent way, matters.
Solid and salient organization helps in every aspect of D&D, just like in reallife.
Most spells are unambiguous and inflexible and belong to an obvious school.
Some spells are complex with moving parts that belong to more than one school.
Some schools depend on organizational decisions. For example, I intentionally make Divination include both precognition and teleportation. Conceptually they are inseparable because seeing remotely, being remotely present, and manifesting there via teleportation are related in principle. For example, one sends ones mind there, then once there, pulls the rest of body there. But the main reason for insisting on the link is for the purpose of the game: precognition is too passive (and boring), and teleportation is too much of a one-trick-pony (and boring). But together, they form a remarkably rich, powerful, diverse, and interesting spell list.
Transmutation combining the themes of Earth, Plant, and Beast, is arbitrary. But it can make sense, such as when creating objects from any or all of these. But the main reason for all three is, D&D has always done Transmutation this way, and this trio is one of the few things that is consistent about the Transmutation school.
The spell categories that I describe come from the bottom up.
I look at every spell that officially exists in D&D, especially 5e, but also earlier editions.
Every single spell that exists, fits well enough in one of these schools with these specific definitions.
The gist of these schools are solid, stable, and fun. I have been using them in my games for some years now. I continue to tinker with the school descriptions and the placement of a few specific spells. It proves useful.
