A Take on Conjuration

[wayfare]

I'm working on a series of Tier 3 Mage classes, and I've developed guidelines on Conjuration for my campaign. Tell me if I am crazy for adopting these ideas:

Note: These ideas are intended to be more fluff intensive than rules intensive. Thats not to say that the rules shouldn't apply, but so much stuff gets thrown under Conjuration that I'd like to thin out the list using fluff rather than "balance concerns" or "arbitrary DM intercession.

1) Conjuration should summon objects not energy.
This is pretty basic. The Orb ox X spells are the best blasting spells in the game, and yet they don't fall under evocation, which seems silly to me. Thus, acts of creating or manipulating energy fall under evocation and conjuration gets to create physical things instead. As far as I can see, this has a few immediate consequences:

A) Conjuration shouldn't get to summon elementals. That Should fall under Evocation, with a series of "Summon Elemental Servitor I-IX" spells.

B) Conjuration can get attack spells that involve summoning things -- a spell that drops objects from a great height would still be viable, as would a spell that fills the air with razor-sharp flakes of adamantine. These attack spells wouldn't be subject to SR, as the magic occurs in the moment of creation -- the object that hits you is quite real.

C) To avoid cheese, all conjurations should have a limited shelf-life. As in, they stop being real after a pre-determined time.

2) Outsiders can only exist on the material plane in bodies crafted for that purpose. The Summon Monster spells automatically create this body out of ectoplasm for an outsider to possess. The actual conjuration that occurs is two-fold -- a) You create an ectoplasmic body to be possessed and b) you create a pathway for an outsider to possess this body. The primary consequence is that calling spells no longer function in this setting.

3) Healing is no longer Conjuration. Spells that channel positive or negative energy to heal or hurt should probably fall under Evocation, or better yet, necromancy.

The game in question only goes up to level 10, so I'm ignoring the consequences that this might have on higher level spells. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

--Wayfare

[Amnestic]

2) Outsiders can only exist on the material plane in bodies crafted for that purpose. The Summon Monster spells automatically create this body out of ectoplasm for an outsider to possess. The actual conjuration that occurs is two-fold -- a) You create an ectoplasmic body to be possessed and b) you create a pathway for an outsider to possess this body. The primary consequence is that calling spells no longer function in this setting.


Probably want to create a notable exception for Outsider (Native) peoples like Tieflings, Aasimar and Genasi.

[Kantolin]

3) Healing is no longer Conjuration. Spells that channel positive or negative energy to heal or hurt should probably fall under Evocation, or better yet, necromancy.

While I'm less sure about the other changes, this one is unlikely to matter too much from a mechanical basis, unless there are other changes to the classes I'm unaware of. After all, among other things... schools only really matter to the wizard, who can choose to specialize/drop them, and the wizard doesn't get access to healing spells minus some shenanigans.

Whereas the cleric, who doesn't care and cannot ban necromancy, won't care. (Although I suppose if the cleric went for augment summoning via the two-feat method, she could apply her spell focus conjuration to her healing spells if she used them against undead, but that's a highly niche scenario).

Now that said, healing being necromancy makes more sense to me anyway, so hey. :P

[bloodtide]

1)This is mostly fine and it's the way I do it in my game. If you in any way summon energy, the spell is an evocation.

A)What? Why? An elemental is a creature that lives on another plane, so it makes sense that it's summoned.

B)Nope, this will be a problem! If you say that conjuration can have attack spells that ignore SR, then why would not all attack spells be conjuration spells? Why have fireball, when I know shards of stone will bypass SR? And you get all the cross over problems. If you summon lava, an 'object' not 'energy', then you get a SR free attack spell? So lava ball would do fire damage and avoid SR? What about summoning acid, water, ice, air and so forth...they are all 'objects' and not 'energy'.

The way I solve this is conjuration can not make any 'attack energy' (what we would call kinetic energy). For example a conjuration can't make a bunch of chunks of sharp ice and have them fly through the air to strike targets. The 'flying through the air to strike targets' is evocation magic, that creates energy(kinetic energy). So a conjuration could make razor-sharp flakes of adamantine, but they would just lay on the ground and not fly and zip through the air.

C)I guess so...but most already do. Where do you see the problem with this?

2)Summoning spells already do this...creating 'false bodies'. The loss of calling is not so big, but you might want to keep it for special things.

3)Anything that directly effects life force, positive or negative is necromancy.

[wayfare]

1)This is mostly fine and it's the way I do it in my game. If you in any way summon energy, the spell is an evocation.

A)What? Why? An elemental is a creature that lives on another plane, so it makes sense that it's summoned.

B)Nope, this will be a problem! If you say that conjuration can have attack spells that ignore SR, then why would not all attack spells be conjuration spells? Why have fireball, when I know shards of stone will bypass SR? And you get all the cross over problems. If you summon lava, an 'object' not 'energy', then you get a SR free attack spell? So lava ball would do fire damage and avoid SR? What about summoning acid, water, ice, air and so forth...they are all 'objects' and not 'energy'.

The way I solve this is conjuration can not make any 'attack energy' (what we would call kinetic energy). For example a conjuration can't make a bunch of chunks of sharp ice and have them fly through the air to strike targets. The 'flying through the air to strike targets' is evocation magic, that creates energy(kinetic energy). So a conjuration could make razor-sharp flakes of adamantine, but they would just lay on the ground and not fly and zip through the air.

C)I guess so...but most already do. Where do you see the problem with this?

2)Summoning spells already do this...creating 'false bodies'. The loss of calling is not so big, but you might want to keep it for special things.

3)Anything that directly effects life force, positive or negative is necromancy.

Thanks for the input, everybody!

In response to your points:

A) I just wanted to give evocation some nice things: most elementals don't really track compared to demons and angels and celestial dire hedgehogs and the like. Elementals tend to be combat brutes rather than those nifty casting monsters that basically turn you into two mages.
Fluff wise, I think it meshes with my idea that Conjuration creates objects and not energy: the Evocator creates a burst of energy for the elemental to possess much like a Conjurer creates an ectoplasmic body for an outsider to possess. I think the biggest flaw in the reasoning is "how does the outsider get the elemental body?" As in, evocation =/= teleportation.

B) My idea was to make most of these spells terrain based things (as in stone spikes and thorns) or to make them Reflex Negates -- a boulder falling out of the sky either hits you or it doesn't.
I do think your point about lava is spot on. The best response I can think of would be a line stating that Conjurations cannot create elemental damage, period. As the Game only goes up to 10th level, I don't think it would be too much to say that those effects, while technically possible via conjuration, are of a much higher level.

3) Glad you agree! This just makes very basic sense to me.

[bloodtide]

B) My idea was to make most of these spells terrain based things (as in stone spikes and thorns) or to make them Reflex Negates -- a boulder falling out of the sky either hits you or it doesn't.
I do think your point about lava is spot on. The best response I can think of would be a line stating that Conjurations cannot create elemental damage, period. As the Game only goes up to 10th level, I don't think it would be too much to say that those effects, while technically possible via conjuration, are of a much higher level.

Elemental damage is only have of the problem. You don't want conjuration doing massive SR ignoring damage. You don't want 'steel ball' that does 1d6 bludgeoning damage a level, or a boulder or anvil doing crushing damage or wood spikes or such. They will all cause problems.

Conjuration works best when it just creates things, not when it does crazy SR avoiding damage. So you could conjure a pool of lava, but to animate the lava and telekineticaly hurl it away from you in a massive directed target stream, would be an evocation.

After all if conjuration has two dozen attack spells that ignore SR, then why would any spellcaster take any other type of attack spell? Magic Missile might get stopped by SR, but Falling Anvil won't ever, so why won't everyone pick that spell?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. I mostly agree with this, but there's one exception: Acid. There are currently zero official evocation spells that deal with acid, because it's a material that's conjured and not an energy. Even the psionic powers that deal with energy are incapable of creating acid. I'd leave the Acid spells in the conjuration school, but switch the others out to evocation.

A. Evocation deals with energy, but this should not encompass elements as well. Earth, Water, and Air are not energy, they are material things, and should still fall under conjuration. I would give evocation some spells to create elemental creatures of cold, electricity, and fire (stat them like fire elementals but change the energy type) and remove fire elementals from the summon monster lists. I'd give these spells access to elemental sizes at the levels summon nature's ally allows (small at 2nd, medium at 4th, large at 5th). Maybe give these spells a longer duration, but limit them to only one creature at any given time, just so they're different from the summoning spells.

B. There's an acid spell at every spell level you'd be using that I'd recommend keeping (Lesser Orb, Acid Arrow, Acid Breath, Orb of Acid, Vitriolic Sphere), so keep those as-is. For a physical damage spell at each level, you could modify existing spells to deal physical damage instead of their current energy damage, for example:
-Hail of Stone (1st, SC), maybe make the material component optional and allow a Reflex save for half if it's not used.
-Ice Knife (2nd, SC), change it to slashing damage and say the Dex damage is due to shards of metal lodged into the victim; damage from spells ignores DR by default, maybe make it count as Magic and Slashing but otherwise get reduced by DR. Maybe allow silver (at -1 damage per die) or adamantine (costly spell component or focus) to overcome those types of DR.
-Icelance (3rd, SC), change it to piercing damage and change the costly spell focus to an adamantine pin with the same value. It should count as magic, piercing, and adamantine for DR.
-Blast of Flame (4th, SC), change it to Hail of Steel and make it deal slashing and piercing damage and count as magic for overcoming DR.
-Cometfall (SC), it's normally Cleric/Druid 6th and doesn't even appear on the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list, but you could just add it on as the 5th level physical damage Conjuration without any issues apart from not being usable indoors.

C. I'd say any metal conjured for a physical damage spell would corrode into dust within a round. Acid would evaporate as appropriate for the spell's duration. Spells like Wall of Stone should probably be left unchanged, and Hail of Stone doesn't create anything of value.

2. Just say that Calling spells don't work and leave everything else alone?

3. I'll agree that making both fall under Necromancy should work just fine.

[Gavinfoxx]

Woah woah -- you have to be careful here. Are you going to say a spell *is subject to DR*?

That is a very, very significant step to take. By default, NONE of those spells that deal slashing/bludgeoning/etc. damage is subject to DR...

[wayfare]

Woah woah -- you have to be careful here. Are you going to say a spell *is subject to DR*?

That is a very, very significant step to take. By default, NONE of those spells that deal slashing/bludgeoning/etc. damage is subject to DR...

They're not?

Well, I've been doing that wrong for a while.

Also, the system I'm using has the UA armor as damage reduction thing going on, so that might help a bit with the SR issues.

[Redshirt Army]

Damage Reduction

A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective).The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction)


By RAW, even spells that do slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning damage are not subject to DR.

EDIT: Unless they specifically say so, of course.

[Big Fau]

They're not?

Well, I've been doing that wrong for a while.

Also, the system I'm using has the UA armor as damage reduction thing going on, so that might help a bit with the SR issues.

Some of them are. Those spells explicitly state this in their text.

If it deals Energy damage (like Fireball or Scorching Ray) however, it does not care about DR.

[Kantolin]

Huh, I've been doing that wrong myself then. I thought spells that did slashing, bludgeoning, or piercing damage were effected by damage reduction.

I guess you learn. That rule, however, makes those spells essentially non-elemental, which seems a little mean.

[ericgrau]

1) Ya makes more sense
A) I always that making and summoning things from other dimensions was the defining thing of conjuration, but I can see the thought behind considering elementals to be more energy than material.
B) Agreed, same logic as A
C) I'd change permanent to hours so it's still "permanent" but you can't sell it.

2) Weird, but I never had many legitimate uses for calling spells anyway.

3) That always did strike me as a bit odd ya. Not that it makes any difference to clerics.


B)Nope, this will be a problem! If you say that conjuration can have attack spells that ignore SR, then why would not all attack spells be conjuration spells? Why have fireball, when I know shards of stone will bypass SR? And you get all the cross over problems. If you summon lava, an 'object' not 'energy', then you get a SR free attack spell? So lava ball would do fire damage and avoid SR? What about summoning acid, water, ice, air and so forth...they are all 'objects' and not 'energy'.
The core spells handle this by making the conjuration damage horribly weak. But at least it bypasses SR.

@Biffoniacus_Furiou: Agreed that acid should be conjuration. All the other ice and fire spells listed look to me like they should be evocation though. And SC tends to give too much damage on secondary energy types. In line with my previous comment I'd keep acid damage low.