Still Mind vs. Gibbering Mouther

[AuraSeer]

Actually, there can't be.

That's only your assertion; you have yet to prove it. Please cite a book passage explicitly stating that every compulsion is necessarily also an enchantment.

Repeating that compulsion is a subschool is not proof. I've gone over that PH section again, and I don't agree that it means what you say.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

That's only your assertion; you have yet to prove it. Please cite a book passage explicitly stating that every compulsion is necessarily also an enchantment.

Fine. It doesn't exist, because it's blindingly obvious to anyone who wants to see it, but I'll construct a proof - feel free to let me know which step(s) you disagree with.

The Monk's Still Mind ability exists in the 3.5 CORE rules set (PHB, DMG, MM). Therefore, this ability can be adjudicated using only the 3.5 CORE rules set.

You are positing that it is possible to create spells of multiple schools which are Compulsions. Therefore, you are arguing that (Compulsion) is a spell descriptor, rather than a subschool.

This cannot be true:

Appearing on the same line as the school and subschool, when applicable, is a descriptor that further categorizes the spell in some way. Some spells have more than one descriptor.
The descriptors are acid, air, chaotic, cold, darkness, death, earth, electricity, evil, fear, fire, force, good, language-dependent, lawful, light, mind-affecting, sonic, and water.

Compulsion is not on the list of descriptors. Therefore, Compulsion is not a spell descriptor. Therefore, the only place in a spell or effect's description it may appear is in the School and Subschool section.

Compulsion is not a school of magic:

Abjuration
Conjuration
Divination
Enchantment
Evocation
Illusion
Necromancy
Transmutation

Rather, Compulsion is a sub-school of the Enchantment school of magic.

Read that carefully.

The set of all Compulsion effects is a subset of the set of all Enchantment effects.

Therefore, you cannot create a spell or effect which is a (Compulsion) which is not also an Enchantment.

Similarly, all (Compulsion)s are [Mind Affecting]. Not all [Mind Affecting] are (Compulsion)s.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The set of all Compulsion effects is a subset of the set of all Enchantment effects.

No. There's nothing in the rules, nothing that you've quoted, that precludes me creating a spell that is Necromancy (Calling). Perhaps I'm calling the spirit of a dead creature back into the Prime to fight for me. A ghost-calling spell that actually brings back the spirit of a departed creature, which is then destroyed permanently if it dies in combat.

You're assuming that because there's a (Calling) subschool of Conjuration, all Calling effects must be Conjuration effects, and the same regarding Compulsion/Enchantment. I don't see where the rules support you on this. This is a faulty assumption, as far as I can tell.

 

[Felix]

I don't see where the rules support you on this.

I'd say there's a fairly good pattern to support him.

All (Glamer), (Pattern), (Figment), (Phantasm), (Shadow) spells are in the Illusion school.

All (Healing), (Calling), (Summoning), (Teleportation) spells are from the Conjuration school.

All (Scrying) spells are in the Divination school.

All (Compulsion) spells are in the Enchantment school.



You are right that it never does say explicitly "Subschool spells may never be a part of a different superschool", but then why would it be a (subschool) instead of a [descriptor]? I looked at the pattern the spells set and think: "A subschool is a subset of a larger school. As such, an element of the subschool is necessarily part of the superschool."

You fellas are right in that nowhere does it say "you can't do that", but given the precident all those PHB spells set, it seems to me that something labeled a (Compulsion) [Mind-affecting] effect would most definitely be an Enchantment effect.

 

[RithTheAwakener]

I completely agree with Patryn and Felix, and the monks save bonus should apply.

1+1 still equals 2 in my book.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

You are right that it never does say explicitly "Subschool spells may never be a part of a different superschool", but then why would it be a (subschool) instead of a [descriptor]? I looked at the pattern the spells set and think: "A subschool is a subset of a larger school. As such, an element of the subschool is necessarily part of the superschool."

I don't, because I don't see any reason why two superschools can't have identical subschools. Such as my proposed Necromancy spell. A subschool is merely a subset of the school. But the fact that one school has a subset which share certain characteristics doesn't mean that another school can't have a subset that are also grouped by the same characteristics. A Necromancy (Calling) spell would be a Necromancy spell, further subdivided among Necromancy spells by the fact that it calls something. And though there's no precedent for such a spell, that doesn't mean there's a restriction against it.

You fellas are right in that nowhere does it say "you can't do that", but given the precident all those PHB spells set, it seems to me that something labeled a (Compulsion) [Mind-affecting] effect would most definitely be an Enchantment effect.

I disagree. Otherwise, the effect would be labeled as a (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting] Enchantment effect. Why isn't it labeled as an enchantment?

 

[dcollins]

Because all compulsions in all published rules are enchantments, so it's redundant. In addition, it has the effect of the confusion ability, which itself is an enchantment. So it's even doubly redundant.

In order to make your ridiculous argument, you have to ignore the very meaning in English of the word "subschool". You also have to ignore the PHB Spells chapter where it lists:

Subschools: Conjuration: creation, healing, and summoning; Enchantment: charm and compulsion; Illusion: figment, glamer, pattern, phantasm, and shadow.

Those are the subschools and their hierarchy. So a hypothetical Necromancy (Compulsion) is not legitimate under the core rules.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Why isn't it labeled as an enchantment?

Because it's sufficient to label it as a (Compulsion).

Heck, they didn't even really need to put mind-affecting, either - all compulsions are mind-affecting.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well, it's a helpful reminder for those characters who might be immune to all effects with the mind-affecting descriptor, but not to effects from the enchantment school specifically, even though all enchantment effects have that descriptor, since there are effects from other schools that also have that descriptor.

As far as creating a Necromancy (calling) spell, take notice of the fact that there is no official spell anywhere that mixes up subschools from different schools, owing to the definition of the notion of subschool. Take, for example, Summon Undead (Libris Mortis). While you might think that this would be a Necromancy (summoning) spell, it's not. Since summoning is a subschool of Conjuration, the spell must be a Conjuration (summoning) spell. And it is. There are no Necromancy (summoning) spells, because summoning is not a subschool of Necromancy. If there were a single spell in the entire lexicon of official spells that had a subschool assigned to a school to which it doesn't belong, there might be an argument against this point. But there's not, so there isn't.

You might also notice that aside from the description of the subschool, there is nowhere else in the rules where the word "compulsion" is defined. Since the only game term definition is the name of the subschool, it can be assumed that all use of the term refers to that definition, unless otherwise noted.

 

[Felix]

I don't see any reason why two superschools can't have identical subschools.

There isn't.

There also isn't any rule against a 1st level paladin having a holy avenger, +5 heavy fortification full plate, a helm of brilliance, and the Talisman of the Sphere. There are a lot of things that the core books don't say you can't do, particularly what with the 3e emphasis on options.

And even so, there are a lot of things we as gamers generally don't do... and when we generally don't do them a whole lot, it sets up precident. The game designers kept subschools within "superschools", and all official material that has come out has followed that pattern.

You are, of course, free to break from that pattern and create Necromancy (Calling) spells to your hearts content, just as you are free to allow a player to create a 1st level paladin with 300,000gp worth of equipment; but even then, at least do a kindness and recognize that there is a pattern you are breaking away from.

Why isn't it labeled as an enchantment?

I don't know. It could have been. But as far as this is concerned, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck... well, I'm going to call it a duck.