D&D (2024) Playtest 6: Spells

[Chaosmancer]

The "Ethereal Plane" is ether in the same way that the "Plane of Fire" is fire. Unlike the other elements, ether is an immaterial substance. Ether is the fifth element.

Except nothing in 5e says that the Ethereal plane is made of Ether, or that it is the fifth element. It is not part of the elemental planes at all, actually.

Again, I'm not saying you are wrong for making this connection, this is one possible interpretation for the Ethereal plane. What I am saying is that you are ADDING this information, and then making determinations based off your additions. And this will create disconnects with other people's ideas.

For example, I've started conceiving of the Ethereal as the Dream Plane, because otherwise it is too empty and pointless, just being a place you can go to go places that you could otherwise go to directly.

Of course, there are different methods for flying. Wings are bodily shapeshifting (Transmutation). One can effectively hover, glide, and sail via elemental air (Evocation). When I say "flight", I mean the ignore-gravity variety of flight. Actually, I exactly mean the Fly spell, but keep the door open for other spells like it. Sometimes I refer to this as telekinetic flight.

Why can I not flavor the fly spell as spectral wings or channeling the winds? I actually literally did that with my storm sorcerer, his flight spell was wind manipulation. This is the sort of thing that I am talking about when I mention that making these things too specific can be a problem. It is better to be more generic and more flexible, to allow people to use the mechanics to tell the story they want to tell.

Healing, by definition, is altering the body. Not sure how one can dispute this.

Regarding various methodologies to effect the change, each concept can be considered. The "soul" healing relates to ki and psionic psychometabolism, thus is still identical bodily shapeshifting, whence Transmutation.

However, the manipulation of time, whether the past or a parallel timeline, would be Divination − and might come with its own kinds of special considerations or side effects, perhaps such as lacking memory about recent events.

That might be the best reason to make Healing its own spell school. Then a player who wants bodily healing themes, can include it with shapeshifting magic. A player who wants miraculous faith healing, can include it with Conjuration magic. A person who wants life-and-death themes can include it with Necromancy, and so on. Siloing out the Healing into its own category is probably the most helpful for the most number of players.

Very likely, siloing healing might be the most effective choice. It may lead to a desire to split things even more generically than the current spell schools, which might be useful.

Heh, that is because, so far, the D&D official spell schools are inconsistent meaningless mishmash.

But if the schools become actually informative categories, players will use schools to build their character concepts.

I doubt it. I've played other games with more defined spell schools... and I've still looked for specific effects and names, rather than broad schools.

About the only three that ever seem to be truly useful school names are "Necromancy" (Death and Undeath), "Illusion", and "Enchantment" (mind powers and charms). Everything else is generally just added to the back end.

The schools and the school descriptions need tweaking, but they can be very useful to players.

Just like having a taxonomy system that is clear and useful can help a person find various related animals, having a spell school sytem that is clear and useful can help a person find various related spells.

Potentially, a game can have hundreds − even thousands! − of spells. There must be a functional spell school system to track all of these.

I disagree. And lets take a simple example.

I'm building a pyromancer. Looking for "evocation" gives me ice spells, lightning spells, acid spells... I don't need any of those. So what I actually do is look at the spell names, to find things like Flaming Sphere (conjuration), Produce Flame (Conjuration), Heat Metal (Transmutation)

And if I want to wrap my character in flames and fly like the human torch, again, looking at evocation spells doesn't help me, that spell isn't there. I need a spell that gives a flight speed, and just looking for "fly" or "flight" is easier than figuring out that flight is gravity manipulation and looking for the gravity school of magic, if it even exists.

Now, that isn't to say that divisions aren't useful. I agree they can be, but it depends on the situation. When I'm dealing with new players, I don't ask them if they want a conjuration or an evocation spell. I ask if they want an offensive, defensive, healing or utility spell. Then I'll say things like "this spell gives a buff to your allies, and this one summons a monster to fight for you, which sounds more like what you want?" Because that is the first step. The only reason spell schools CAN be useful is things like knowing most evocation spells deal damage, so that's where to look for damage spells. But then you may miss damage spells that are not evocation, but fit the style you want better.

Yeah. 4e remixed Shadow and Ethereal to create Fey and Shadow. The 5e kept Fey and Shadow and returned Ether. They are all intertwining.

Right, so in 5e Ether doesn't exist. You keep trying to organize things based on aspects that do not exist in the game.

Yet. Wait till the spell comes.

The Phantasmal Force spell keeps the tradition of being strictly mental and personally subjective. This spell in particular could be the Enchantment school. And if not. There needs to be a why not.

But the spell isn't going to come. They have no reason to make a second invisibility spell. There is no need for it. And yes, Phantasmal Force could be argued to be enchantment, it is currently illusion. It could fit in both places, and there isn't a solid reason to put it in one and not the other.

I take it for granted that different settings can and will (and should) flavor the cosmology in a way that is appropriate for the setting, including its magic theory.

So the most useful approach is to group spells into the most useful units. Then each setting and each character can build the groups in ways appropriate to the concept.

Right, but you aren't doing that. You are enforcing a cosmology into the divisions, and then expecting people to alter the divisions to reshape the cosmology. Which can be fine for homebrew, but as a written ruleset? That is very difficult. And yes, to a degree, DnD has already done that. But that also brings the added challenge of you attempting to ALTER the established cosmology of DnD.

Which again, for homebrew is fine. But for a rewrite of DnD would be much harder.

The ghosts of the Shadowfell and the spirits of the Feywild are immaterial. They are spirit worlds. They are not part of the "Material" Plane because they lack matter.

And yet every fey creature in the game is physical and can be touched, in or out of the feywild. Additionally, while Ghosts and Wraiths are immaterial, the skeletons, zombies, Sorrowsworn and Nightwalkers of the Shadowfell are equally solid and physical.

You are assuming they are spirit worlds, but they are no more spirit worlds than any other planar location. Personally, I think the Material Plane is a bad name. I usually call it The Mortal World.

Nevertheless, themes of the cosmology and the themes of the spells often relate to each other.

Only if you insist they do. Most spells have nothing to do with the cosmology.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I never explained why I like Elden Ring spell schools so much. Let me cook.
View attachment 289799
Look at this image. Every single image here is a different school of magic in Elden Ring. Many of them are similar, which is on purpose, because it shows how one magic study evolves into new magic studies over time, giving you a great lever to manipulate arcane events and history in your world.

All magic in Elden Ring is split into one of three categories: Sorcery (based on Intelligence), Incantations (based on Faith), and everything else (different blends of Intelligence, Faith, and sometimes other stats like Strength or Arcane). These three categories are mutable; we usually have Sorcery, but sometimes we have Miracles and Pyromancy instead of the others, and so on and so forth.

By taking all 500 spells and splitting them into some 25+ spell schools based on theme, you give DMs far more control over the magic in their world. Now you can pick and choose which spell schools to introduce into your world, you have more narrative space to flavor these spell schools into different things, and you can theorycraft new spells or new spell schools pretty easily. It'd basically be like giving people a bunch of legos, only the legos retain the inherent variability D&D magic is known for.

Elden Ring is my specific reference for this because a lot of people half-ass the amount of spell schools. They don't play the idea to the hilt, really show what all that concept can do. Elden Ring does. The sigils become factions become history become contemporary events. When you have so many pieces to inspire you, you can build ideas and stories quicker, start with a higher level of detail than you may otherwise, and really add a personal flare to the magic that represents your world. All this because you need a lot of these things. A lot.

Right... this is a terrible way to do it for a game like DnD.

Yes, in terms of lore it is incredibly cool to see that various studies of magic lead to factions which have a history. Very neat for world-building. But the moment you don't know what those factions are? It becomes gibberish.

If I want a spell to freeze a person in place, do I look in Night & Bubbles? I don't think so, I'm not sure what I would look there for other than soap bubbles and shadow magic. And Demihuman Queen seems like it would be just "whatever magic that Queen wants me to have" which can be anything or nothing, so it might have what I want. But Two Fingers is just nonsense phrasing that means nothing.

What possible different spells would the Dragon cult have over the Dragon communion, and why should I care, and why am I guaranteeing that my Greek-Themed campaign without dragons now has a rivalry between a dragon cult and a dragon communion?

The reason this works for Elden Ring is that it is a single, contained world. You can build a narrative by having older magics changed into newer magics, and factions build up around that. But DnD isn't a single contained world. It is a multiverse. It needs a generic tool kit that can flexible enough to fit a million and a half vastly different worlds. Once your magic categories become in world factions... all of that shatters. You'd need hundreds of millions of schools.

 

[Maxperson]

I wasn't complaining about it, I was using it as an example to point out that the idea that all of the spell schools are clear and distinct with no overlap was wrong. You then proposed this multi-school solution, and when I tried showing why that could be confusing for people...

Except that you didn't. You shot off on tangents that weren't at all what I was talking about, claiming that all spells would have multiple schools and that somehow spell schools would put spells on multiple lists and/or be written differently for each list they were on. The confusion you were pointing out was fictitious.

Besides, since it has already been done in the past and wasn't confusing, we already know that it won't be confusing if they do it again.

 

[Maxperson]

Except nothing in 5e says that the Ethereal plane is made of Ether, or that it is the fifth element. It is not part of the elemental planes at all, actually.

Again, I'm not saying you are wrong for making this connection, this is one possible interpretation for the Ethereal plane. What I am saying is that you are ADDING this information, and then making determinations based off your additions. And this will create disconnects with other people's ideas.

It's not that I don't agree with you here, but why are his additions creating disconnects and your additions somehow part of RAW? You added turning(transmutation) someone to ice(evocation) to the Protection from Elements spell, expecting that to be okay and not create a disconnect. What you did is no different than what he is doing above.

 

[Yaarel]

Except nothing in 5e says that the Ethereal plane is made of Ether, or that it is the fifth element. It is not part of the elemental planes at all, actually.

I am sure you know this, but in reallife elemental traditions, the fifth element is called "ether".

In D&D, the Ethereal Plane comprises an immaterial substance. One can call this D&D ether whatever one wants, including quintessence (literally the "fifth substance"), it is ether. Namely, the ether of the Ethereal Plane.

Again, I'm not saying you are wrong for making this connection, this is one possible interpretation for the Ethereal plane. What I am saying is that you are ADDING this information, and then making determinations based off your additions. And this will create disconnects with other people's ideas.

Ether is ether.

For example, I've started conceiving of the Ethereal as the Dream Plane, because otherwise it is too empty and pointless, just being a place you can go to go places that you could otherwise go to directly.

According the 5e 2014 DMs Guide, the Astral Plane is realm of "thought" and "dream". So, officially, the Dream Plane is astral, made out of "aster" sotospeak, the stuff that thoughts and dreams are made out of. The Dream Plane either is the Astral Plane itself, or else is somewhere in the Astral Plane. (However, it is unclear to me how the dreamscapes of individual dreamers in the Material Plane relate to the Wildspace where the Astral Plane overlaps the Material Plane.)

That said. Both the Feywild and the Shadowfell have "Domains", where the local ethereal forces respond to the will of a powerful mind, forming the realities that cohere with this particular mind. In my view, this is exactly what "illusions" are. Thus the Fey and the Shadow are a kind of dreamscape in this way, namely the will of a particular mind. There might be some Domains that respond to several minds. But unlike an Astral dreamscape, the Domain is physical. Force is immaterial, but is physical. it can push objects of mass around. Gravity is immaterial but physical. So these Domains are physical manifestations of forms.

In the 5e cosmology, the Ethereal Plane encompasses and pervades the Feywild and Shadowfell, as well as the central Material Plane. I read this mapping as the Feywild and the Shadowfell are aspects of the ether. In parallel, the Celestial and Fiend are aspects of the thought and dream of the Astral Plane. Their map locations imply, the Celestial and the Feywild have overflowing abundance by Positive Energy, while the Fiend and the Shadowfell have unraveling diminishment by Negative Void. The Feywild is a higher frequency of ether, sotospeak, where the physical forms are vibrant and heightened. The Shadowfell is a lower frequency of ether, where the physical forms are disintegrating and gloomy. Vampirism is an attempt to prey on other sources of energy to fight against the Void. Meanwhile the abundance of Positivity from the Feywild can invigorate various locales in the natural world of the Material Plane.

Where both the Feywild and Shadowfell have Domains. The Ethereal Plane proper is the admixture between the Feywild and the Shadowfell. One can encounter Fey and Shadow creature venturing there, they each other. Likely, the Ethereal Plane has its own Domains as well.

In the 5e map, there are narrow regions of ether between the Fey and Matter, and between Shadow and Matter. These regions seem to represent the areas where "the veil is thin". Effectively, there are a Border Fey and a Border Shadow that overlap and intermingle the Material Plane. These are locations where those who can see ether can see Fey spirits and Shadow ghosts interacting with the plants and haunting houses in the Material Plane. The spirit worlds entangle and echo the material world.

 

[Shardstone]

Right... this is a terrible way to do it for a game like DnD.

Yes, in terms of lore it is incredibly cool to see that various studies of magic lead to factions which have a history. Very neat for world-building. But the moment you don't know what those factions are? It becomes gibberish.

If I want a spell to freeze a person in place, do I look in Night & Bubbles? I don't think so, I'm not sure what I would look there for other than soap bubbles and shadow magic. And Demihuman Queen seems like it would be just "whatever magic that Queen wants me to have" which can be anything or nothing, so it might have what I want. But Two Fingers is just nonsense phrasing that means nothing.

What possible different spells would the Dragon cult have over the Dragon communion, and why should I care, and why am I guaranteeing that my Greek-Themed campaign without dragons now has a rivalry between a dragon cult and a dragon communion?

The reason this works for Elden Ring is that it is a single, contained world. You can build a narrative by having older magics changed into newer magics, and factions build up around that. But DnD isn't a single contained world. It is a multiverse. It needs a generic tool kit that can flexible enough to fit a million and a half vastly different worlds. Once your magic categories become in world factions... all of that shatters. You'd need hundreds of millions of schools.

Why are you trying to disprove my point by using Elden Ring's exact line up? I wouldn't use that. I specifically said I want spell schools that can be reflavored. Did you even read my post?

 

[Yaarel]

Why can I not flavor the fly spell as spectral wings or channeling the winds? I actually literally did that with my storm sorcerer, his flight spell was wind manipulation.

According to Tashas, your character can reflavor any spell thematically. You absolutely can have spectral wings or channel winds. According to the rules, the thematics can only alter the appearance, but cannot alter the mechanics. Most of the time that is sufficient.

However, my DM style adjudicates narratively. So whether the Fly spell has spectral wings or elemental air, might actually matter in certain scenarios that happen during the storytelling. Because of this, when my players tweak a spell, I ask them to rewrite the spell for me, according to how they want it. For example, if this Fly spell evokes an encircling of elemental Air, I would want it to be the Evocation school. (Currently, the official spell is Transmutation. Which I find unhelpful for organizational purposes.) There might even be "spell stunts" because of this shift in flavor. For example, a player might make an Arcane check to keep breathable air around oneself, despite poison gas, being underwater, or in vacuum. Most of the time, the change of spell flavor doenst matter. But sometimes it does matter.

This is the sort of thing that I am talking about when I mention that making these things too specific can be a problem. It is better to be more generic and more flexible, to allow people to use the mechanics to tell the story they want to tell.

Players can do what they want. But as DM, I need to understand what that is, exactly.

Very likely, siloing healing might be the most effective choice. It may lead to a desire to split things even more generically than the current spell schools, which might be useful.

I think so too.

Then it becomes the dilemma of "lumping versus splitting", and deciding on what amount of granularity is as useful as possible to the most players possible.

I've played other games with more defined spell schools... and I've still looked for specific effects and names, rather than broad schools.

If a player wants to be a "illusionist", they would first look at the Illusion spell school list, no?

If a player wants to be a "healer", they would first look at the Healing spell school list. Etcetera.

They might have an idea of how to blend the themes of two schools together as a single concept. Well organized spell lists help here too.

About the only three that ever seem to be truly useful school names are "Necromancy" (Death and Undeath), "Illusion", and "Enchantment" (mind powers and charms). Everything else is generally just added to the back end.

"Elementalism" would be useful. And "Evocation" as elemental "energies" is useful enough.

Dunomancy to mean force aka ether would be useful.

Divination as spacetime is useful.

Conjuration as astral planeshifting and summoning is useful.

Etcetera.

I disagree. And lets take a simple example.

I'm building a pyromancer. Looking for "evocation" gives me ice spells, lightning spells, acid spells... I don't need any of those. So what I actually do is look at the spell names, to find things like Flaming Sphere (conjuration), Produce Flame (Conjuration), Heat Metal (Transmutation)

In a revamping of the spell schools that becomes actually useful:

Every spell that most prominently features Fire and Radiant damage, as well as mundane fire, light, and darkness, becomes the Fire (or Pyromantic subset) of the Evocation spell school.

The Evocation spell school happens to divide neatly into subsets: Air (Lightning-Thunder), Water (Cold), and Fire (Fire, Radiance, light, darkness). I also add the "Primordial" subset. This is for the surprisingly many spells that feature some or all of the elemental energies, where these amalgamating themes correspond to the cosmological Elemental Chaos, rather than a particular Elemental Plane. These subsets can be "tags". These tags are there for convenience to help find the related spells.

And if I want to wrap my character in flames and fly like the human torch, again, looking at evocation spells doesn't help me, that spell isn't there.

Fire Shield actually is an Evocation spell, slot 4.

As spell that flies by evoking oneself into a Fire Elemental or to be carried aloft by Elemental Fire seems like a new spell that might be popular. One would look for such as spell in the Evocation school, perhaps with the Pyromancy tag.

I need a spell that gives a flight speed, and just looking for "fly" or "flight" is easier than figuring out that flight is gravity manipulation and looking for the gravity school of magic, if it even exists.

Marshalcy would be a spell tag, paralleling the Abjuration tag. Marshalcy would correspond to any spell that emphasizes mobility, whether heightening it or hindering it. This tag would help narrow down the search for flight by various means, whether wings, elemental air, rocket propulsion, telekinetic flight, spacetime distortion, or whatever.

Now, that isn't to say that divisions aren't useful. I agree they can be, but it depends on the situation. When I'm dealing with new players, I don't ask them if they want a conjuration or an evocation spell. I ask if they want an offensive, defensive, healing or utility spell.

I ask players what kind of characters from tv shows, movies, or books might you want to play. When they decide on one, I help them build it. So knowing where to find the relevant spell concept helps.

For your process. Any spell that has the Abjuration tag would be "defensive" or "healing, any spell with the Execration tag would be "offensive", any spell with the Marshalcy or Apparence tag would be "utility".

Then I'll say things like "this spell gives a buff to your allies, and this one summons a monster to fight for you, which sounds more like what you want?" Because that is the first step. The only reason spell schools CAN be useful is things like knowing most evocation spells deal damage, so that's where to look for damage spells. But then you may miss damage spells that are not evocation, but fit the style you want better.

It seems like these tags − Abjuration, Execration, Marshalcy, and Apparence − or something like those, would help alot.

 

[Yaarel]

Right, so in 5e Ether doesn't exist. You keep trying to organize things based on aspects that do not exist in the game.

In the game, the Ethereal Plane is made out of an immaterial substance. Call it whatever you want. It is what the Ethereal Plane and the ethereal creatures are made out of. To call the stuff of the Ethereal Plane "ether" is clear enough.

But the spell isn't going to come. They have no reason to make a second invisibility spell. There is no need for it.

Creating a means of invisibility for the Enchantment school is something that some settings might do, and that indy publishers might do. It is of interest to psionic fans as well.

Across the editions of D&D, there are thousands of spells that continue to inspire new 5e spells.

And yes, Phantasmal Force could be argued to be enchantment, it is currently illusion. It could fit in both places, and there isn't a solid reason to put it in one and not the other.

But for each school to be clear and useful, there needs to be reasons why it includes the spells it does. These spell school descriptions that are clear are how a player knows which school to look into to find relevant spells. For example, there might be many spells that are also phantasms. It helps to know whether to look for them in the Illusion school or the Enchantment school.

Right, but you aren't doing that. You are enforcing a cosmology into the divisions, and then expecting people to alter the divisions to reshape the cosmology. Which can be fine for homebrew, but as a written ruleset? That is very difficult. And yes, to a degree, DnD has already done that. But that also brings the added challenge of you attempting to ALTER the established cosmology of DnD.

Which again, for homebrew is fine. But for a rewrite of DnD would be much harder.

The default is what the default is.

If the default causes "pain points". The default deserves a doublecheck to see if a remedy is possible.

And yet every fey creature in the game is physical and can be touched, in or out of the feywild.

Material people can walk thru the Fey creatures in the Feywild without even realizing they are there. Likewise walk thru ghosts in the Shadowfell without realizing they are there. They pass thru each other.

In order for the Material and the Ethereal to interact, the Material must use Force effects, have a way of seeing the ether, Planeshift into the Ethereal or its Fey and Shadow, or reciprocally, the Fey and Shadow spirits have a means to "manifest" within the Material Plane. Even then, the manifestation might be Incorporeal.

The difference between a Humanoid Elf and a Fey Elf is, the Humanoid by means of magic became a creature of flesh and blood. The Humanoid Elf has a material body. The Fey Elf is only an immaterial spirit.

Now within the spirit world, the various forms of force behave virtually like matter. In other words, they are living illusions. But there is no actual matter. The spirits are immaterial.

Additionally, while Ghosts and Wraiths are immaterial,

Yes, ghosts and wraiths and the entirety of the Shadowfell are immaterial. When a Humanoid dies, their immaterial ghost leaves the body of matter behind in the Material Plane, and the immaterial ghost ventures off to an immaterial Shadowfell. The immaterial soul might also go to the nonphysical and immaterial thoughts and dreams of the Astral Plane to one of the immaterial alignment planes there as a "disembodied mind". There is no matter in the Astral Plane. Nor in the Ethereal Plane. The traveling between planes is planeshifting between different modes of existence. The planeshifter is "translating" from one way of existing to an other.

the skeletons, zombies, Sorrowsworn and Nightwalkers of the Shadowfell are equally solid and physical.

Only the Skeletons, Zombies, et al, that are part of the Material Plane are "material". When there is a corpse of matter in the Material Plane that animates, then that material body is what the Skeleton or Zombie is.

You are assuming they are spirit worlds, but they are no more spirit worlds than any other planar location. Personally, I think the Material Plane is a bad name. I usually call it The Mortal World.

The Material Plane has this name because it is what it is.

The soul is immaterial. The body is material. The body is an aspect of the Material Plane. The body is matter. The soul isnt.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

In the game, the Ethereal Plane is made out of an immaterial substance. Call it whatever you want. It is what the Ethereal Plane and the ethereal creatures are made out of. To call the stuff of the Ethereal Plane "ether" is clear enough.



Creating a means of invisibility for the Enchantment school is something that some settings might do, and that indy publishers might do. It is of interest to psionic fans as well.

Across the editions of D&D, there are thousands of spells that continue to inspire new 5e spells.



But for each school to be clear and useful, there needs to be reasons why it includes the spells it does. These spell school descriptions that are clear are how a player knows which school to look into to find relevant spells. For example, there might be many spells that are also phantasms. It helps to know whether to look for them in the Illusion school or the Enchantment school.



The default is what the default is.

If the default causes "pain points". The default deserves a doublecheck to see if a remedy is possible.



Material people can walk thru the Fey creatures in the Feywild without even realizing they are there. Likewise walk thru ghosts in the Shadowfell without realizing they are there. They pass thru each other.

In order for the Material and the Ethereal to interact, the Material must use Force effects, have a way of seeing the ether, Planeshift into the Ethereal or its Fey and Shadow, or reciprocally, the Fey and Shadow spirits have a means to "manifest" within the Material Plane. Even then, the manifestation might be Incorporeal.

The difference between a Humanoid Elf and a Fey Elf is, the Humanoid by means of magic became a creature of flesh and blood. The Humanoid Elf has material. The Fey Elf is an immaterial spirit.

Now within the spirit world, the various forms of force behave virtually like matter. In other words, they are living illusions. But there is no actual matter. The spirits are immaterial.



Yes, ghosts and wraiths and the entirety of the Shadowfell are immaterial. When a Humanoid dies, their immaterial ghost leaves the body of matter behind in the Material Plane, and the immaterial ghost ventures off to an immaterial Shadowfell. The immaterial soul might also go to the nonphysical and immaterial thoughts and dreams of the Astral Plane to one of the immaterial alignment planes there as a "disembodied mind". There is no matter in the Astral Plane. Nor in the Ethereal Plane. The traveling between planes is planeshifting between different modes of existence.


Only the Skeletons, Zombies, et al, that are part of the Material Plane are "material".



The Material Plane has this name because it is what it is.

The soul is immaterial. The body is material. The body is an aspect of the Material Plane. The body is matter. The soul isnt.

Love ya, Yaarel, but I've noticed a pattern of trying to pass of your homebew cosmology as fact. Like you, many of us have our own cosmological house rules for affinities between planar cosmology, energies, alignments, and spell schools. It can be fun to show off one's own cosmological affinity ideas in case others find them interesting as inspiration for their home games, but it doesn't mean they hold any water as justification for shaping the UA rules around them, because they are based on our personal homebew preferences, not official D&D lore.

I myself have a perspective on abjuration and necromancy being polarized opposites that others don't agree with. I think it is interesting for spell schools to have an affinity for (not origin of) alignments and planes. It doesn't make it D&D canon to base rule design on, though.

That said, I agree that according to 5E lore, the Astral Sea is the realm of thought and dreams. But that doesn't always jive with older edition lore. The designers are trying their best to offer an updated, codified, differentiated purpose to the different planes of the D&D Multiverse Cosmology, from the Material, Inner, Outer, Astral, Ethereal, Elemental, Feywild, and Shadowfell planes, to all kinds of other ideas. But they have a lot of old lore confusing things. Here are some rhetorical questions that I don't need answers to (but showcase some of the confusion):

Are dreams and nightmares considered thought or emotion? Are thought and emotion related or separate? Does a realm of Dreams exist in the Astral or the Feywild? Does a realm of Nightmares exist in the Astral or Shadowfell? Is the Ethereal purely a transitive plane that connects the "Inner" planes like the Elemental planes, Feywild, and Shadowfell? Does the Ethereal also connect to alternate realities and Prime Material worlds (like portrayed in the Radiant Citadel?) If it is a purely transitive plane with little ecology, why are ghosts in the Ethereal rather than the Shadowfell or an Outer Planar afterlife? If there are ghosts in the ethereal (but not other undead spirits), why? And why not other types of spirits, whether elemental, fey, undead, or other?

The Cosmology is a bit of a chaotic mess (to me it is because I expect a divinely-inspired cosmology to have balanced and recognizable purpose with balanced themes, patterns, and polarities, and we don't really have that). I suspect that you and I are people that want to make it make more sense for us. But I think that is for us to figure out for our home campaigns, rather than use as evidence to suggest changes to the core rules.

 

[Yaarel]

Love ya, Yaarel, but I've noticed a pattern of trying to pass of your homebew cosmology as fact.

Here, I am spelling out the implications and extrapolating from what the official 5e core rules actually do say.

For example, where 5e explicitly says, the Astral Plane is "thought and dream", and that "souls" go there as a "disembodied mind", these descriptions say something about the cosmology itself. Namely, the Astral Plane is immaterial.

In some ways, the immaterial Astral Plane is the opposite of the material Material Plane. They are different levels of existence. The body versus the soul relate to these different levels.