Another GWA thread! Just what the forum needs!
Actually, I think I can add something to the conversation. This is supposition, but I think the analysis is solid.
In 3e, spells were divided into schools based on what was primarily a distinction of fluff. Now, this fluff had some rules implications, so it wasn't strictly fluff related. But it was mostly fluff. As a result, there was a lot of overlap between the schools. For example, if you want to incinerate your foes with an area effect fire attack, you can do it with evocation, or you can do it with conjuration. If you want to debuff your foes, you could do it with transmutation, or you could do it with necromancy, and in some cases with even other schools. It wasn't quite chaos, cats and dogs living together, world-gonna-end stuff, but it wasn't the best. When a new spell was written, it could easily fit into multiple schools depending on the fluff attached to it. That had the mechanical implication of watering down the schools, and many people believed it wasn't really the best for the game- after all, it tended to make wizards who focused in different schools kind of the same.
In 4e, WOTC seems to have agreed with this assessment. Now "schools" are replaced with different categories, six of them, based around the manner in which the effect occurs in the game. A power which projects from the wizard is one school, and a power which manifests at a distance without traveling the route in between is another. This should conclusively put to rest the way that fluff caused mechanical slippage between the schools.
Except now there's a problem. The new schools mingle the old schools stuff. The older edition might have a spell which debuffs in a cone that functioned through sapping life force (necromancy), another which detrimentally augmented its targets (transmutation), another which mentally affected its targets (enchantment), another which creates a distracting illusion (illusion), another which summons distracting insects (conjuration), and so on and so on.
Now they're all just stuffed in the same "school that tosses out cones of stuff" school. And there's no obvious name for that school based on fluff that derives from common D&D history.
So, having divided the fluff and the mechanics of spellcasting so that the fluff couldn't interfere with the mechanics any further, they needed new names. No names directly lended themselves, so... they used arbitrary ones. And having given the schools arbitrary names, they game feats which augment that particular school names which directly mentioned that school. Its the logical thing to do at that point.
That's... kind of it. This isn't so much a post defending this particular name choice. I'm in the "don't care, its not a big deal" camp. But I think this might lend some clarity to how this all came about.
If you absolutely hate the present names, you should probably try to come up with some better ones. Some name of some sort is necessary. If you come up with good ones, who knows, maybe they'll use them.
It won't bother me either way.
Actually, I think I can add something to the conversation. This is supposition, but I think the analysis is solid.
In 3e, spells were divided into schools based on what was primarily a distinction of fluff. Now, this fluff had some rules implications, so it wasn't strictly fluff related. But it was mostly fluff. As a result, there was a lot of overlap between the schools. For example, if you want to incinerate your foes with an area effect fire attack, you can do it with evocation, or you can do it with conjuration. If you want to debuff your foes, you could do it with transmutation, or you could do it with necromancy, and in some cases with even other schools. It wasn't quite chaos, cats and dogs living together, world-gonna-end stuff, but it wasn't the best. When a new spell was written, it could easily fit into multiple schools depending on the fluff attached to it. That had the mechanical implication of watering down the schools, and many people believed it wasn't really the best for the game- after all, it tended to make wizards who focused in different schools kind of the same.
In 4e, WOTC seems to have agreed with this assessment. Now "schools" are replaced with different categories, six of them, based around the manner in which the effect occurs in the game. A power which projects from the wizard is one school, and a power which manifests at a distance without traveling the route in between is another. This should conclusively put to rest the way that fluff caused mechanical slippage between the schools.
Except now there's a problem. The new schools mingle the old schools stuff. The older edition might have a spell which debuffs in a cone that functioned through sapping life force (necromancy), another which detrimentally augmented its targets (transmutation), another which mentally affected its targets (enchantment), another which creates a distracting illusion (illusion), another which summons distracting insects (conjuration), and so on and so on.
Now they're all just stuffed in the same "school that tosses out cones of stuff" school. And there's no obvious name for that school based on fluff that derives from common D&D history.
So, having divided the fluff and the mechanics of spellcasting so that the fluff couldn't interfere with the mechanics any further, they needed new names. No names directly lended themselves, so... they used arbitrary ones. And having given the schools arbitrary names, they game feats which augment that particular school names which directly mentioned that school. Its the logical thing to do at that point.
That's... kind of it. This isn't so much a post defending this particular name choice. I'm in the "don't care, its not a big deal" camp. But I think this might lend some clarity to how this all came about.
If you absolutely hate the present names, you should probably try to come up with some better ones. Some name of some sort is necessary. If you come up with good ones, who knows, maybe they'll use them.
It won't bother me either way.
)
