If you could rewrite the magic system...

[SixOfSpades]

Arcane magic, that is. Wizard stuff, with its cryptic scribblings and spell components and whatnot.

It has always bugged me that Illusion has as its Opposition School, not Divination, but Necromancy. I mean, when you look up the word "conceal" in a dictionary, you're not going to find the word "kill" listed as an antonym. Yes, for some freaky-ass reason, this opposition school has lasted through, what, thirty years of fundamental revisions to the game? And nobody ever thought to pair off Illusion and Divination as being opposed to one another? I mean, DUH!!!

I'm curious to learn what arrangements other people might have made with the 8 schools. What should be opposed to what, and why? I'm not really concerned with the specific spells available in BG, I'm more interested in the basic fundamentals of each branch of magic. Note that each school may have more than 1 Opposition school, though each must have at least 1.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

That's always bothered me, too.

Off the top of my head...

Abjuration-Necromancy
Illusion-Divination
Evocation-Alteration
Enchantment-Conjuration

I think the first two sets speak for themselves, while the latter two sets represent two different ways of going about a problem. "I need allies," quoth the enchanter, "So I will charm these existing creatures." "I, on the other hand," said the conjurer, "Will conjure mine from scratch." Let us also consider the problem of a boulder blocking a path. An evoker would blast it into smithereens, while a transmuter would reshape it.

Alternatively, we could have
Evocation-Enchantment
Conjuration-Alteration

The grounds for this would be that evocation is loud and flashy, while enchantment is subtle. I'm not sure how I feel about Conjuration and Alteration being at odds, however... They both deal with tangible things, after all, but I suppose we could justify it by saing that one creates matter while the other manipulates existing matter.

Just my two cents.

Edit- Upon contemplation, I decided that we could also pair Abjuration with Enchantment. Abjuration could oppose either Necromancy or Enchantment, I think, so in the context of this particular exercise (give each school an opposite), we could switch Enchantment and Necromancy.

However, I think this works only in the second scenario (where Enchantment and Evocation are opposed). Evocation and Necromancy seem to be more opposite than Conjuration and Necromancy. The general "feel" of the school of Evocation is "hot", I feel. I realize that most elemental spells fall under Evocation, but the school calls to mind fireballs and sunlight, while Necromancy feels cold. The coldness of the grave and all that fun stuff. I realize healing spells also fall under Necromancy, but we can explain that we need Necromancy healing spells after the evoker lays waste with fireballs. Anyway, I ramble.

That gives us three options in our format:

Option 1:
Illusion-Divination
Abjuration-Necromancy
Evocation-Alteration
Enchantment-Conjuration

Option 2:
Illusion-Divination
Abjuration-Necromancy
Evocation-Conjuration
Enchantment-Alteration

Option 3:
Illusion-Divination
Abjuration-Enchantment
Evocation-Necromancy
Conjuration-Alteration

[ 02-12-2007, 02:34 AM: Message edited by: Illumina Drathiran'ar ]

[Shard]

I think there is a clue to how I would rework it in the names of the spell schools.

I don't think Invocation/Evocation belong together, and neither do Enchantment/Charm, and for that matter you could make a case for splitting Conjuration (of inanimate matter) and Summoning (of living things) as well.

I think that summoning should be in opposition to necromancy, as one works specifically with the living and one with the dead.

I see Wild Mages as a type of Invoker (of Wild Magic) and Sorcerers as Evokers (chanelling magic through themselves) and I would like to see both classes brought into the school system with opposition schools as well. I also reckon that Invocation (getting someone else to do it for you) and Evocation (channeling it through yourself) are opposites.

I guess you could make a case for wild magic being a separate 'school' of magic. It would be opposed to anything that requires the mage to exercise control over their magic (e.g. the elemental conjuration spells should be beyond a wild mage, as they wouldn't be able to exercise control over a sufficient period of time), so maybe wild magic should be in opposition to conjuration (although not necessarily summoning).

With charm changing the behavior of something while leaving it's properties unchanged and alteration changing it's properties I think these two can be in opposition. Enchantment bestows magical properties on something and Abjuration prevent or banishes some magical or nonmagical effect, so these two could oppose each other as well.

So this is my proposal:

Illusion-Divination
Summoning-Necromancy
Evocation-Invocation
Wild-Conjuration
Charm-Alteration
Enchantment-Abjuration

[ 02-12-2007, 03:39 AM: Message edited by: Shard ]

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Hmm, I like where this is going. I had difficulty doing it because, like you said, Enchantment and Charm are different. If we're splitting things, however, we could make an argument for splitting Necromancy into Life and Death, yes? Or, if we wanted to be elegant, we could keep Necromancy with spells like Animate Dead, Horrid Wilting, Chill Touch (very mage-y Necromancy spells) in the Necromancy category, while putting the Cure spells, Raise Dead, et cetera, into a new category... What if we had a Planar category? This all depends on how thinly we want to classify things, but in the context of this discussion the Cure spells don't belong with Necromancy. I think we could make an argument for putting the Cure spells in a planar-type category (Channeling energy from the Positive Energy plane), as well as spells like Holy Smite/Unholy Blight, Holy Word, Sunray, Teleport Field, and the demon-related spells into that category. Maybe that's a bit too insane, but it's food for thought. I'm not sure where it would all go for opposition schools, but I need sleep now. I'll be back tomorrow and we can reconsider it all.

[Iron Greasel]

I think the whole idea of opposing schools of magic was stupid to begin with. There are several ways of doing stuff, but they don't need to be opposite. How about just letting the player choose the schools he wants, from all schools, and making mages with a lot of schools gain experience slower than mages with only a few schools?

Illumina: I think a planar category would also span fireballs and cold cones and similar things that can be channeled from the elemental planes.

Eh, I ever wrote a magic system, it would consist only of the "real world" magic of summoning demons to do your bidding and calling upon dark evil gods.

[Legolas]

I don't think I'd use divination to oppose illusion, since it's fairly safe to assume that anyone with an understanding of illusions must also have an understanding of how to detect and see through them. Alteration, real, versus illusion, false, is a poor choice too since together they can make reality even more confounding.
I also don't see rivalries as good material for opposing schools - illusion and enchantment magics, for example, are both about manipulating the actions of others in subtly different ways.
Enchantment and alteration can both be used to change something's properties.
The third category are schools which neither serve to negate the other (abjuration vs everything else) nor to complement eachother, but it makes no sense to have those oppose one another since they have no real link.
Thus, I'd either remove opposing schools, or force people to pick a major school and learn only a little of the rest, possibly gaining minor improved access later on.

[Bozos of Bones]

I wouldn't just change the opposing schools, I'd totally axe the current system. The spells/day is the thing I absolutely hate, the source of all grief, imbalance, boredom and stupidity. I much prefer the point system like psionics, but it would have to recover naturally over time somehow, without sleep. Meta-magic would increase the point cost of spells, and with some feats you could willingly decrease the effectiveness of a spell to save up on points.
As for schools, I agree with Illumina and the idea of Planar schools for Divine Casters.

[SixOfSpades]

Sheesh . . . yeah, in an ideal world, all spells would have a direct mana cost and that's it, and there would be something like 50 different schools and sub-schools of magic, both Arcane and Divine, and the all-knowing GMs at Wizards of the Coast would have set up a very intricate (but extremely logical and well-reasoned) system of which types of magic would be off limits to which types of casters. In an ideal world, Specialist Mages would be judged on the strengths of their own school, rather than the weakness of their opposition school. And finally, in an ideal world, I would have the brainpower to process this kind of stuff after I get home from work. But really, I was just hoping for a more logical setup of the 8 schools than the current system uses.

Here's what I scribbled down:
Divination is opposed to Illusion. Obviously.
Abjuration is opposed to Evocation, classic attack and defense. "I will kill you!" "Oh no you won't!"
Conjuration is opposed to Necromancy, both because of the "Ha! Eat my summons! Oh no! Death Spell!" factor, and because of the Living Minions / Dead Minions dichotomy that Shard mentioned.
And lastly, Enchantment is opposed to Alteration. Partly because they're the only two left, yes, but also because Enchantment deals with temporary surface effects on the target creature/object, while Alteration affects the very core of the target's being. Similar results can often be achieved using very different methods.

A word must be said about those spells that fall under more than one school. Under the current setup, there are only 2 spells in BG that belong to 2 schools directly opposed to one another: Lower Magic Resistance and Spellstrike fall under both Abjuration and Alteration simultaneously. I just went through the spell list, and was pleased to find out that there isn't a single BG spell that would contradict itself like that, if the schools followed the Opposition setup I listed above. Not that I think my way's perfect, of course, I'm just looking for opinions/feedback.

[Shard]

Six - a few points.

With a stroke the Illusionist would become easily the most powerful mage specialist. The only spell of any note they don't get is True Sight. Go Jan!

Who would play an Abjurer or an Evoker if they can play anything else and get both all the abjuration and all the evocation spells?

I think this exercise has to include moving a few half decent spells to Divination.

I hadn't realised that Abjuration was the biggest spell school. I would suggest moving a few decent spells from Abjuration to Divination, to at least give people a moments pause before choosing to play a Gnome. I suggest Dispel Magic, Remove Magic, Khelben's Warding Whip, Freedom and Imprisonment go to Divination (maybe Pierce Magic and Pierce Shield too). This leaves Abjuration with all the 'protection from/shield/immunity/invulnerability' spells and Breach, but also gives the Evoker a chance of actually removing some spell/weapon protections using divination.

I also think that Conjuration/Summoning has too many spells, so I would be very tempted to move Power Word Stun, Power Word Sleep and Symbol Stun to Enchantment/Charm. These all include effects that are already found in the Enchantment/Charm school. There's an argument to be made for moving Power Word Blind to Illusion, and Symbols Fear and Death to Necromancy as well (neither of these spell schools are particularly big anyway).

What did you think of the idea of making a Sorcerer an Evoker? It would at least put some limits on the abilities of the class. I would quite like the Wild Mage to be an Evoker too, although you'd have to move the Chaos Shields from Abjuration to somewhere else!

[ 02-13-2007, 03:58 AM: Message edited by: Shard ]

[Shard]

Thinking about it, the Transmuter (Alteration) would also be overpowered, losing only Greater Malaison (the only spell of any real note currently in Enchantment/Charm).

I'm not sure why Chaos is in Enchantment/Charm and Sphere of Chaos in in alteration. Sphere should be in Enchantment/Charm I think.