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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felix" data-source="post: 3249377" data-attributes="member: 3929">Ah, that would be the sticky wicket then. For what it's worth I like the idea that magic has something of a life of its own. If you've ever read Pratchett's Discworld novels the wizards there "don't use magic so much as they don't use it, but in a dynamic way, like the atomic bomb". The idea being that you might think you know what you're doing, but magic has its way of twisting what you've done to its own ends.Not that I would go that far, but I like that magic is a vibrant force in and of itself. And so when an apprentice is studying his first cantrips, Illusion finds that his head is quite comfy and invites itself in to stay; the magic pairs itself with the wizard as much as the wizard chooses the school of magic. Similarly, some schools find wizards' souls (or personalties, or whatever) anaethma; the wizard doesn't choose to eschew schools of magic, he simply is unable to use the spell energies of that school."Why can't you cast Daze?" one apprentice asks another; "I don't know, but nor can you cast Flare, right?"Mechanically, all I have done is ban generalists and enforce limitations on the chosen barred schools. The "cardinal" business is flavor; it is the application of human definitions on observed phenomena. But I don think that some schools enjoy an advantage in terms of power over other schools, and this does go some way to limit that power.As it stands in 3.5e, a Conjurer with Evocation and Transmutation barred will be considered equal in power mechanically speaking as a Enchanter with Illusion and Necromancy barred, and this arrangement is possible in my game as well. What won't be possible is a Conjurer with Illusion and Necromancy barred who would be widely considered (and in my campaign setting, unanimously considered <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) to be more powerful than an Enchanter with the same schools unavailable, and that is just fine with me.What I would like the most would be a balanced system of magical schools wherin the schools have an opposite they practicioner may not use. As if Enchaters could never use Conjuration and vice-versa. I very much like that flavor. Magic: the Gathering, for all its faults, is elegant in that White is opposed by Black and Red, Blue by Red and Green, et cetera. Unfortunately, I don't feel the 8 schools of magic work well like that, nor do I want to apply the D.U.S.K.'s changes to the magic system to my own.</blockquote>

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