D&D 5E Anyone else feel like the distinction between conjuration and evocation is really muddy?

[Mouseferatu]

I kind of love that. The definitions and series of dichotomies are fantastic.

Have you found any spells that don't fit with that altered paradigm? Where would you put--for example--color spray or chill touch?

 

[Staffan]

They used to in AD&D. I wonder 5E does not. What problems do you see?

One of the issues in 2e was the interaction between specialization schools and opposition schools. For example, avoidance was both Abjuration and Alteration (now known as Transmutation), and those schools were opposition schools. Could an abjurer learn this spell? Would they get specialization bonuses with it? At the time of the 2e core rules, this was not a huge problem (avoidance, at 5th level, was the first spell I could find that belonged to opposing schools), but as more spells, and particularly "parallel schools" (e.g. Artifice from Spells & Magic) were added it became bigger. I believe the ruling was that opposition schools overruled specialization schools (so neither an abjurer nor a transmuter could learn avoidance, but it's not exactly obvious.

This particular issue does not exist in 5e since specialists no longer have opposition schools, but similar issues do, or at least could do. For example, a demiplane created by a master of illusions may have an "ephemereal" trait that makes illusions harder to distinguish (disadvantage on saves vs illusions) but energies less intense (advantage on saves vs evocations). In a dual-school world, you could easily argue that color spray ought to be both illusion and evocation (on account of dazzling lights) - so would you get advantage or disadvantage on it? Or would they cancel out? Again, not an insurmountable problem, but keeping each spell to a single school solves it before it happens.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I kind of love that. The definitions and series of dichotomies are fantastic.

Have you found any spells that don't fit with that altered paradigm? Where would you put--for example--color spray or chill touch?

Thanks!

The short answer is that color spray = evocation, and chill touch (maybe) = transmutation. But it's debatable and a judgement call.

Part of what this does is make schools more thematic, but it's still based largely in "fluff text," and doesn't take "school balance" into account. So Transmutation and Evocation actually wind up eating other schools' stuff much of the time (the only reason Invisiblity is illusion instead of transmutation is based in the fact that it hides you from sight - it isn't any less "transmutation" for that, but "illusion" is a narrower scope).

That's part of why it's only been toyed with. If I were to apply this to D&D, I'd kind of like the freedom to burn the spell list to the ground and rebuild it in this image, to ensure variety within a school and to prevent lop-sided school choices. I'd like to cut a lot of spells that are a little redundant and dilute the flavor of the school, and add some depth to schools that might feel a little anemic. Maybe even jettison schools from non-wizard spells. If I was just to go through and re-assign the existing spell list to my vision of the schools, it wouldn't create the play-effect that I'm looking for (that is, players of spellcasters choosing schools based on the tight flavor of the school) - someone would see the big list of effects and spells in, say, Transmutation, and be like "I'm a transmuter!" without much thought to the flavor. In some ways, the best way to do this would be to forgo spells entirely and rely on other class features....

So while I think about D&D and my characters in these terms, presenting it "right" in a way that anyone could use would require too much time to do it for free.

 

[Fralex]

Despite what you might think from the hidden text in the first post, I actually like the fact that necromancy seems so out-of-place next to all the other schools. It tells a fascinating story about the implied history of necromantic magic. The way I see it, certain kinds of magic were just considered taboo, and no wizard wanted those spells to be considered a part of their school. So they lumped them all together in a single school so that they could just keep all the dark magic in one place. Choosing to specialize in necromancy says a lot about a person. Your interests are not with a certain magical process, like altering matter or manipulating the mind. You want to specialize in the forbidden. Unlike all other specialist wizards, the specific kind of magic isn't important; what's important is that other people viewed it with fear and hatred at one point. Some necromantic spells, like clone, are still controversial even in real life! Necromancy probably has some of the best roleplaying opportunities, simply because it doesn't fit in. That's cool!

 

[Celebrim]

Acid is cosmologically linked with mud/ooze in D&D, which traditionally the boundary between earth and water. But acids power of erosion makes much more sense linked with water than with earth.

Earth evocation wizards should be blasting things with shards of rock, columns of sand, catapult stones, and so forth IMO. D&D typically doesn't like that because it doesn't like evoked rock, because intuitively it should take up space after being used and not be transient. But to heck with intuition.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Can't different schools reflect differently similar spell lists? In real life the closest thing we have to schools of magic are branches of religion. Catholicism and Protestantism are fundamentally the same religion, same god, same book...different interpretations.
So an Evoker and a Conjurer get the same effect through different methodologies. The conjurer summons stone from the surrounding area. The Evoker summons earth energy from the plane of elemental earth to create the wall.
Of course that thinking would mean a whole reworking at the spell lists.
Get an Evoker and a Conjurer in a pub talking about this stuff, you'll get a 'heated debate' alright. Both walls of stone do the exact same job, but whereas the One wall uses local materials the other may be more 'perfect' looking but not necessarily matching. The merits of each can be debated by sages for years.
Maybe I'll get some time to go through the spell lists one day!

 

[The Human Target]

Yes, but then spell schools have always been pretty odd.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Some else it also sounds like is Shadowrun. Every mage can learn every spell but there are a heap of different traditions (Hermetic, Druidic, Shamanism, Black magic, etc.) that cast spells in different ways. Mainly the only real differences are the stats used to cast spells and which spirits are summoned for which purpose.

Yeah, but some traditions also changed how many dice you had to cast spells from certain categories, and spells still suffered the same nonsensical categorization issues. Mind control and turning people to goo are both manipulation spells, while making someone run faster or think better is a health spell, and making someone simply die is a combat spell.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

I had a look at wall of stone in 2e and it is listed as an evocation. So is wall of iron and all the rest of the walls.

I thought this was strange so I looked up spells and magic and the distinction seem to be that conjuration/Summoning brings something from elsewhere so that it already exists. With invocation/evocation it says "Invocation/Evocation spells channel magical energy to create specific effects or materials" So I guess this means that the walls are magically brought into existence as you cast the spell.

Having a look back through my books...yes, you seem to be correct. And in (1e) AD&D as well. Guess I was mistaken. Blegh, could have sworn it was otherwise. Guess it's been....decades.

 

[seebs]

I think 3E reshuffled a ton of things. In 1e, healing was necromancy, for instance. I think the "conjuration for creating matter" thing was a 3E change.