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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jalkain" data-source="post: 936747" data-attributes="member: 2473">Hmmm, just thinking about it for a moment.  A lot of the spells that have been reduced in power in 3.5e are transmutations.  Buff spells, haste, disintegrate, polymorph... So that school is weaker now, while still being pretty desirable.And there's also been talk of how evocation spells are going to be less effective, due to the higher HP monsters, so that school has arguably been toned down a bit too.Plus, the DC bonuses from spell focus have been reduced, which primarily affects evocation, illusion, enchantment, necromancy, plus some transmutation, a few conjuration.  Abjuration and divination are scarcely affected.  So that looks about right.Of the schools that contain many save spells, necromancy is perhaps the one that doesn't need weakening.  But we've already seen some new necromancy spells - Waves of Fatigue and Waves of Exhaustion (yeah, I know not everyone likes them!).  There might be other new spells in the PHB, added to balance out the schools.So, a tentative conclusion is that WotC are trying to balance the schools.  If they get it right, they will have killed several birds with one stone:1. They can correct the existing problems with some transmutation spells being overpowered. I know that while people generally are happy with changes to haste, some are less happy with other changes.  Please let's not start that debate up again, and please try to look at the changes in light of the school balance issue.2. They will reduce the problem of spells from supplements throwing out the balance of the schools.3. If each school now has a better spell selection at each level, it provides more choice for specialist wizards, seeing as when you level up, you have to choose one spell from your specialist school when adding spells to your spellbook.Makes for a pretty flexible system of school specialisation, apart from the fact that you must always have access to divination.  The only thing I can think of is that it's pretty difficult to make divination as combat effective as the other schools, by it's nature, so they made it an exception, otherwise it creates a loophole for possible abuse.  It's not as if there were that many combinations that permitted you to lose divination under 3e anyway.Sorry this analysis is taking so long, but it quite an interesting development, and might go a long way to explaining some of the more controversial spell changes in 3.5e</blockquote>

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