D&D 5E (2014) Should D&D Have a 9th School of Magic (Restoration)?

[TheSword]

I don’t think there are anywhere near enough spells for a school of restoration.

 

[TwoSix]

You’re basically describing Mage: the Awakening’s magic system (sans Paradox).

Or Spheres of Power, which is already 5e compliant.

 

[TwoSix]

We need only 6 schools: (options for mage colors)


Life school - Gray mage(combination of white and black for healing and necromancy); radiant and necrotic damage, healing, resurrecting, animating dead, ability draining,

Elemental school - Red mage; elemental forces, acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder damage

Nature/matter school - Green mage; polymorphing, changing size, ability boosts, manipulating nature and weather, poison damage, summoning plants and animals,

Primal school - Blue mage; manipulation of magic, dispelling, enchanting, force damage, detection

Mind school - Orange mage, telepathy, mind control, illusions,

Summoning school - Yellow mage; Teleportation, astral travel, summoning outsiders

It’s hard to do a color magic system without seeming like you’re ripping off M:tG.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It’s hard to do a color magic system without seeming like you’re ripping off M:tG.

Or Final Fantasy.
No, we should stick to schools mainly, and the Idea of healing spells that are not in a school of magic, because they are never available to wizards and thus need no school at all is charming.
Maybe bless or spiritual hammer might go into the same category and just be called divine spells.

 

[TwoSix]

Or Final Fantasy.
No, we should stick to schools mainly, and the Idea of healing spells that are not in a school of magic, because they are never available to wizards and thus need no school at all is charming.
Maybe bless or spiritual hammer might go into the same category and just be called divine spells.

Yea, but the thing is the schools of magic in 5e aren't really specific to wizards. Every spell belongs to one of the 8 schools, even spells not on the wizard list. And the schools of magic have a in-universe existence, thanks to detect magic; just about every caster is able to detect the school of magic a spell belongs to. Some tweaking around the edges of the schools' definitions can make sense even without involving wizards. Just because there's a Restoration school of magic doesn't mean Wizards need a subclass of it.

 

[Horwath]

It’s hard to do a color magic system without seeming like you’re ripping off M:tG.

that is why I stated, color optional

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yea, but the thing is the schools of magic in 5e aren't really specific to wizards. Every spell belongs to one of the 8 schools, even spells not on the wizard list. And the schools of magic have a in-universe existence, thanks to detect magic; just about every caster is able to detect the school of magic a spell belongs to. Some tweaking around the edges of the schools' definitions can make sense even without involving wizards. Just because there's a Restoration school of magic doesn't mean Wizards need a subclass of it.

I think restoration is to narrow and instead offered divine.

Im my opinion Schools of magic lost their flavour with 3.5. Before that, there were damage spells in trasmutation (burning hands) and conjuration (fire arrow) and other oddities.
That was necessary/helpful because of the inability to cast spells of opposite schools if you were a specialist.

Schools of spells were divided by the way you casted and not by the effect:

A fireball created fire (evocation)
A burning hand spell increased the temperature of the are (alteration)
Fire arrow conjured fire from the elemental plane of fire (conjuration)

I really loved that. Nowadays schools are only flavour anyway and it does not really matter if you heal by necromantic means or if you transmute the leg to be healthy again. Or if you conjure flesh from wherever.

 

[Bolares]

I've always loved restorative magic as necromancy...

 

[TwoSix]

Im my opinion Schools of magic lost their flavour with 3.5. Before that, there were damage spells in trasmutation (burning hands) and conjuration (fire arrow) and other oddities.
That was necessary/helpful because of the inability to cast spells of opposite schools if you were a specialist.

Schools of spells were divided by the way you casted and not by the effect:

A fireball created fire (evocation)
A burning hand spell increased the temperature of the are (alteration)
Fire arrow conjured fire from the elemental plane of fire (conjuration)

That hasn't really changed much. There are plenty of damage spells in Conjuration and Transmutation, and even some of the other schools.

The schools are still primarily divided by their "flavor method" rather than by their actual function or utility.

If the argument is that "Restoration" is too centered around utility function that method, I can see that. But I've always preferred narrow casters with spells divided by utility. I don't really like jack-of-all-trades caster.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's not a bug, that's a feature!

Correspondence=Conjuration
Life, Entropy, Spirit=Necromancy or Alteration (for some spells in older editions)
Forces=Evocation
Mind=Enchantment
Prime=[metamagic] or Abjuration
Matter=Transmutation
low-level spheres=Divination ('sense' is often the first level)
Time doesn't fit all that well.

But overall it fits better than one might expect.

If I had more time I'd produce 1e stats for Voormas, Grand Harvester of Souls. Or, heck, Caine.

In the system that I'm building, the magic skills are a bit more complex due to each having 3 specializations. Each character ends up with a lot of skills, and then the game gets incredibly simple from there. Basically, each skill and specialization does a lot of work but skills don't have their own rules generally. Anyway, as follows;

Aeromancy (Gale, Whisper, Wind-Walk) - air magic, moving air, creating sound, using air to move yourself or another creature.
Alchemy (Preparations, Sigils, Transmutation) - making stuff, symbolic magic, changing elements
Beguile (Charm, Empathy, Glamours) - Fairly self-explanatory, Glamours are illusions and other mental tricks.
Divination (Augury, Sight, Psychometry) - Reading signs, seeing through glamours and/or seeing truth, and seeing through objects and places, into their past present and future.
Echomancy (Echokenisis, Echolocation, Resonance) - manipulation of sound and vibration, navigating by sound,
Electromancy (Conductivity, Lightning, Signal) - manipulation of electricity, including messing with electronics
Enchantment (Meta-Magic, Imbuing, Place Magic) - Manipulation of existing magic, enchanting items, creating magical effects in a place or enchanting a location
Geomancy (Earthsense, Stone-skin, Inertia) - nav by vibration, defensive stuff, and moving stuff around, including teleportation
Hex (Bind, Curse, Invoke) - deeply personal magic, invoke is using a name as leverage against a creature
Hydromancy (Biomancy, Hydrokenisis, Cryokenisis) - manipulating water, including healing creatures and making things of ice
Pyromancy (Combustion, Convection, Luminance) - Manipulation of fire, heat, and light
Sacramancy (Bless, Cleanse, Rebuke) - channeling of the divine, or sacred articles, etc
Sombramancy (Shadow-Walk, Sombrakenisis, Vitiate) - manipulation of shadows, internal and external, including effective teleportation
Shamanism (Commune, Restoration, Spirit-Walk) - dealing with spirits and the spirit world