Chaosmancer
Legend
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.