D&D (2024) Playtest 6: Spells

[Yaarel]

I myself have a perspective on abjuration and necromancy being polarized opposites that others don't agree with.

If "necromancy" meant "death" it would be perfect for the opposite of "abjuration". Offense versus defense.

But necromancy means "corpse", which is something different.


To be fair, the school names are opaque. For example, someone wouldnt necessarily know that "Enchantment" means "mind magic". And why does "Evocation" mean "elemental energies"? And the literal meaning of "Abjuration" means to make a solemn oath that one renounces and disowns something − what does this have to do with "protective magic"?

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.

In the context of the reallife history of D&D cosmology, it helps to understand that the Shadowfell and the Feywild are illusory worlds, ultimately deriving from the 1e illusory Plane of Shadow.

That said, I agree that according to 5E lore, the Astral Sea is the realm of thought and dreams.

Yes.

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):

Yeah, sometimes clarification helps much.

Are dreams and nightmares considered thought or emotion? Are thought and emotion related or separate?

The astral realm includes logic and emotion. Celestial love and Fiend malice are often emotional.

Does a realm of Dreams exist in the Astral or the Feywild?

Dreams are explicitly Astral. That said, a Feywild Domain might behave in dreamlike ways, if the mind that shapes it is dreaming or dreamlike.

Does a realm of Nightmares exist in the Astral or Shadowfell?

I consider nightmares the same thing as dreams. In a shared dreamscape, nightmares might be a region.

Is the Ethereal purely a transitive plane that connects the "Inner" planes like the Elemental planes, Feywild, and Shadowfell?

The cosmology map depicts the Ethereal Plane encompassing and overlapping Fey, Shadow, and Matter. Importantly, Fey and Shadow overlap the material plane. For example, one can see actual locations in the Material Plane. From the perspective of the Fey Positivity it appears heightened. From the perspective of the Shadow Negativity it appears gloomy.

The 5e Elemental Planes are weird. They exist between the ether and aster. By implication, they might not be matter, but rather the "forms" of matter. But lately, I consider them to be "exclaves" of the Material Plane. They are matter, but have no connection to the Material Plane. Relatedly, despite the use of the term "Planes", the descriptions and depictions of the Elemental Planes are more like "regions" within the Elemental Chaos, where a particular state of matter starts to aggregate. (I would prefer to call it the Elemental Flux to avoid alignment implications.) These Elemental regions actually intermingle with each other freely.

Does the Ethereal also connect to alternate realities and Prime Material worlds (like portrayed in the Radiant Citadel?)

Heh, your use of the "Prime" Material Plane is dating you.

It depends on the setting. Some settings might be other planets, far far away. So despite the fact that same Ethereal Plane overlaps both planets, they would be unable to visit each other.

However, the setting is an "alternate reality" of the same planet, that would be more like parallel timelines, and involving lateral time travel. The same ether would be present in both, but "alternate" versions of it.

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?

The Ethereal Plane includes a "Border Ether" that is actually part of the Material Plane. Compare how gravity is part of the Material Plane. There is also a "Deep Ether" that has little or no connection to the Material Plane. There are gradations between. As one planeshifts from the Border Ether deeper and deeper into the Deep Ether, the view of the Material Plane increasingly distorts until vanishing altogether. The Border Ether entangles matter. The Deep Ether is more responsive to the influences of a mind.

A Ghost is made out of immaterial shadow, in other words, Negative ether. To get to the Material Plane to haunt it, it planeshifts to the Border Ether that overlaps the Material Plane. In locales where the "veil is thin" sotospeak where the Negative influence is stronger, the planeshifting occurs naturally, and the Ghost translates effortlessly into the Material Plane.

Similarly a Fey creature can shift from the Positive Feywild into the Border Ether of the Material Plane.

If there are ghosts in the ethereal (but not other undead spirits), why?

The actual answer is "tradition" − that is how earlier editions of D&D did it that didnt have a 5e Shadowfell yet.

Nevertheless, the "Ether" is a mixture of Positive Fey and Negative Shadow. So one can encounter both Shadow spirits and Fey spirits within the Border Ether. That said, the Material Plane tends to have specific locations that are Positive Matter or Negative Matter, where the corresponding ether is more likely. (Compare Darksun that emphasizes this aspect of the cosmology.)

And why not other types of spirits, whether elemental, fey, undead, or other?

If I recall correctly, according to Radiant Citadel, one is likely to encounter Fey and Shadow within the Ether.

Elemental is weird. Suppose an Elemental wants to planeshift into the Material Plane. Presumbably, the Elemental shifts thru the Ethereal Plane, becoming ethereal then rematerializing in the Material Plane. The map location of the Elemental Planes creates odd scenarios. In any case, there is no direct connection between the 5e Elemental Planes and the 5e Material Plane.

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).

Often the D&D default setting supplies all of the information, but scatters it here and there, and doesnt put it all together to help the reader understand how it all fits together.

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.

There is a difference between finding and piecing together what the official rules actually do say.

Versus.

Disregarding the default setting and creating a new setting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

I talked about a few spells, not all spells. I talked about exactly what you had proposed, spells with multiple schools.

And the "it was done before and it worked" is a very weak argument when they decided to stop doing it.

But now we are at the stage where we argue that you were right to argue with me because I was wrong about arguing. Which is really a pointless discussion.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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?

Yes, I did read your post. But here's the problem. If the schools can be reflavored but are still presented as organizations, as literal schools, then it doesn't matter. The same problem exists.

Unless you are doing something RADICALLY different from Elden Ring, you are proposing things that would look like philosophies and religions. You could say they are the Lorehold, the Prismari, the Quandrix, the Witherbloom, and the Silverquill, or you could say they are the Way of the Nature Maiden, the Way of the Sea Crone and the Way of the Starry Voice. In the end, it is the same problem.

They will have beliefs, groups, and relationships. You seem to be proposing organizations. But that, even if you somehow made them perfectly reorganizable and reflavorable, you are not creating something that can fit in a toolkit. The Way of the Sorcerer-Kings makes perfect sense on Athas. You might be able to reflavor it to fit Greyhawk. But it might not work for Theros, and would need completely abandoned for an entirely different thing... which in the end would have to either look exactly the same (because it organizes a group of spells) or it would be so different that you can't tell that the two things were once the same thing. And at that point... how is someone supposed to use that in their game? It is a philosophy that doesn't fit, so it can't be generic.

Again, as a world building tool for a single world, it is powerful and brilliant. For an organizational tool for a tool-kit used by thousands of worlds... it doesn't.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.


Ether is ether.

Nothing in 5e states that. And, frankly, not all real life elemental traditions have a fifth element, nor do all of them have ether. You are just declaring a truth irrespective of the source material. Which is bad practice for integrating with the source material.

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.)

Which can work... except the Astral is the home of the Gods. So it doesn't fit neatly for me. Now, I agree, my viewpoint here ALSO doesn't match with 5e. But this is my point. You want to organize spells based on a view of DnD cosmology that is unique to you... and then declare that this will be universally useful to everyone because everyone agrees with your view.

It is an effort doomed to failure.

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.

This is a fun interpretation. It also ignores that the Deep Ethereal connects to the Astral, the Lower Planes, and the Upper Planes, and the Ethereal is reachable in all of them. So the Ethereal pervades all the realms and planes of reality.

And again, this is just your interpretation. Trying to make a universal magic system based on your unique viewpoint of the cosmology is not going to create something everyone agrees with.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Right, but this being something to your DMing style means that it isn't universal. Most DMs don't allow the rewriting of the mechanical aspects of the spell, including the spell school. And if not everyone will rewrite the school, then by making the flavor stricter, you are creating bindings that are not easy to remove.

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.



"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.



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.

Right, you are just splitting into more and more granularity. Now we aren't just going to have evocation, but it will be Arcane, Evocation, Elementalism, Fire

When really all people are looking for is Fire.

And then you are expecting people to share your view that Dunomancy is ether and force, and realize that that is going to cover both Wall of Force, Reverse Gravity, and Mirage Arcane. You are getting specific to a level that isn't useful.

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.

And I was talking about Fly. See, your plan only works if you suddenly start taking every general spell and breaking it into component spells. Conjure Minor Elementals is going to have to become Conjure Minor Earth Elementals, Conjure Minor Fire Elementals, Conjure Minor Water Elementals, Conjure Minor Wind Elementals, Conjure Minor Para-Elementals, and then someone who wants to do all of those, is going to need to learn multiple spells. Or you will create multiple different types of spells that make someone invisible, by making all of the mechanism subtly different.

It is too complex, too specific.

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.

As long as someone learned that and knew what it meant. You realize you have now taken a spell having two to three tags, to spells having upwards of 6 to 8 tags?

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".



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

Except it just adds more jargon. It isn't needed.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Creating a spell that does exactly what another spell does, but with different tags is just pointlessly confusing.

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.

A remedy might be possible. Your remedy will cause more pain.

Material people can walk thru the Fey creatures in the Feywild without even realizing they are there.

No they can't.

Likewise walk thru ghosts in the Shadowfell without realizing they are there. They pass thru each other.

They can walk through ghosts in the Material plane too. That's due to the nature of ghosts, not the nature of the plane the ghost is on.

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.

None of this is true in 5e

Yes, ghosts and wraiths and the entirety of the Shadowfell are immaterial.

Right, right, wrong. The Shadowfell is not 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.

No it doesn't. Souls do not go to the Shadowfell.

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.

And yet the Shadowfell creates zombies and skeletons. Which are material beings.

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.

The name is misleading, because the majority of the planes are made of material, and you can physically move from the material "wildspace" to the immaterial "Astral Sea" which makes no sense if the Astral Sea is non-material.

 

[codo]

If "necromancy" meant "death" it would be perfect for the opposite of "abjuration". Offense versus defense.

But necromancy means "corpse", which is something different.

The Necro prefix can mean corpse, but it doesn't only mean corpse. It can also mean death or rot and decay. The word originally comes from ancient Greek, where Nekros means corpse. However over thousands of years the word has been used by hundreds of different languages in subtlety different ways.

Language evolves and words can take on new shades of meaning over time. Language isn't as clear cut and defined as I think you want it to be. I often see you disagreeing with people on this site about the definition of words, You use one esoteric definition, and then you insist that everyone else is using the word wrong. That is just not how language works. Words often have more than one meaning, or can take on different shades of mean based on context. You just can't insist that since originally Nekros meant corpse in ancient Greek, that everyone in the world for the last several thousand years, who have been using it in a different way is wrong.

 

[Maxperson]

I talked about a few spells, not all spells. I talked about exactly what you had proposed, spells with multiple schools.

This is you in response to my saying a spell can have more than one school.

"If every spell has multiple tags, it has to have the spell list it is from, correct?"

And the "it was done before and it worked" is a very weak argument when they decided to stop doing it.

That's arbitrary and wrong. TSR did it. WotC never did it and just because they decided to differ from TSR doesn't make it poor option or a weak option. People and companies make bad decisions all the time.

What is a strong argument is that it was done before and caused no confusion. That absolutely demolishes your "But it would cause confusion" rebuttal.

 

[Shardstone]

Some people just can't see the vision until its made.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Some people just can't see the vision until its made.

And some people can see just fine and disagree with you.