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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mirrorrorrim" data-source="post: 9140586" data-attributes="member: 7040132">Trust me, I played around with pairing off schools as well. But after all is said and done, it's a Thesaurus search trying to find words that can be twisted to mean the combining of two things. That's a fun project, but they aren't strong themes with evocative identities that actually match the breadth of spells within the schools. Also, Wizards don't get a lot of subclass abilities. How are 3 class abilities supposed to capture 2 schools?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">War Mage is probably the best thematic grouping of the 4, but it already means something else. Also, Abjurers aren't necessarily about "war" as they could be protectors on a much smaller scale.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dark Summoner doesn't capture Necromancy at all. "Dark" is just a descriptor, "Summon" is the active word. Most necromancy isn't about summoning.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reality Bender suggests an action to shape reality, and Transmuter sounds more appropriate to shaping reality.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Alteration Specialist? Just words without identity. We're scraping the Thesaurus on this one. I've been there buddy.</li> </ul>In the past we've played with repurposing older-edition class names for these gestalt themes, like "Beguiler" for an Enchanter/Illusionist, or "War Mage" for the Evoker/Abjurer, like you did. At that point we're left trying to figure out which of the remaining 4 can be best distilled into 2 themes. Conjuration, Divination, Necromancy, and Transmutation.We'd be watering down 8 full themes for a goal to "fit 8 schools into 4 subclasses for a book". I don't think that is the right goal. I think the better goal is "make each school specialist feel like they embody the journey to master of that school of magic."I think we're stuck with the 8 schools. People know what they mean (in general) despite the slight shifting they do from edition to edition (I'm looking at you healing, light/positive energy, dark/negative energy, and elemental energy spells).</blockquote>

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