What other schools of magic or names for magic can you guys think of? I'm trying to make my own system...

What other schools of magic or names for magic can you guys think of? I'm trying to make my own system, but a lot of these words are used over and over again in different games and things and I don't want to appear too derivative.

You need to have some fundamental structure behind the split. Otherwise, you might as well get an infinite number of school by picking a random domain and adding '-mancy' at the end. Like Unknown Armies does.

Look at how Ars Magica does it.
Each spell requires two magical skills: one for the object and one for the action.

This is the big one.

D&D's schools are shitty because some are defined by method (Conjuration, Transmutation), others by end result (Abjuration, Illusion), which is how you get schools that can cover vast swathes of actions and some that can barely put their pants on in the morning.

>D&D's schools are shitty because some are defined by method (Conjuration, Transmutation), others by end result (Abjuration, Illusion)
Elaborate on this. I was planning on having 12 (the game is primarily about magic) and all of these were making the cut in some way shape or form so far.

This is useful just for help in naming things alone. Thanks!

>I'm trying to make my own system, but a lot of these words are used over and over again in different games and things and I don't want to appear too derivative.
Stop. Just stop.

Novelty for the sake of novelty is foolishness, and only leads to bad games.

If you have a thematic split you like, use it, and fuck anyone who cares if the names have been used a lot. Don't make something new for the sake of making something new; make something new because *you like it and you want to share it with people*.

And, yeah, what said, and . Structure is more important than nomenclature.

>D&D's schools are shitty because some are defined by method (Conjuration, Transmutation), others by end result (Abjuration, Illusion)
>Elaborate on this. I was planning on having 12 (the game is primarily about magic) and all of these were making the cut in some way shape or form so far.

I'm not that user, but what he's getting at is that the difference in the way the schools are set up makes certain schools (notably Conjuration and Transmutation) excessively broad. For instance, Abjuration is supposedly the school for defenses and wards -- but Transmutation can do that too, with spells like Magic Vestment, Blink, and Iron Body falling under its purview. The methods-based schools are much broader, because it's easy to justify all kinds of things within the context of a given method, and the designers never bothered to restrict any of that on the basis of protecting other schools' niches. So you have a situation where just having Conjuration and Transmutation alone can cover just about all of your bases, whereas a different pair of schools (say, Abjuration and Evocation) leaves you vastly more limited.

I'm not necessarily trying to do novelty for the sake of novelty, but I don't want to use exactly what D&D uses or exactly what Mage uses or whatever. A list of magical words would be useful.

Would something like
>Conjuration: the summoning of physical magic and creatures
>Transmutation: the altering of physical properties
>Abjuration: the use of magic for defense and healing
>Evocation: the manipulation of elemental forces
Be clear definitions?

The Elder Scrolls has a pretty concise setup for their magical schools.

>don't want to appear derivative
>not worried about whether or not you're actually derivative
And that's the heart of the problem

Theoretically, but the main thing is that you're consistent with the breadth of each school.

There's nothing inherently wrong with schools overlapping somewhat with the sorts of things other schools can do. For instance, it's not unreasonable for Conjuration, Transmutation, and Evocation to each have some protective effects -- just in their own way, and more limited or less efficient than Abjuration's defensive spells. The main thing is to avoid having some schools that are very broad and versatile, while others are fairly limited and specific. For example, Fantasy Craft divides up spell schools in such a way that each school has a fairly broad range of effects, but each one does it a bit differently and not all are as good as the others. For example, most schools have some manner of buff spells, but the sorts of buffs they can provide vary, and some schools (like the Preserver and Prophet) have a greater range of buffs than others. This approach is good for a system where specialists might be strictly limited to only one or two schools.

Alternatively, you can divide them up into very clean schools with minimal overlap. The Elder Scrolls system is a good example of this, as suggests. All your direct attacks and debuffs are in Destruction, all your healing and stat buffs are in Restoration, all your physical manipulation is in Alteration, etc. This is best done when even specialist casters can dabble extensively in schools outside their specialty. If you're using this system, a caster limited to only one or two schools will be something of a one-trick pony.

So, what DO you want to do, exactly, besides just "not exactly what another system uses"?

You say you're planning on 12 schools; how do you intend to divide those up? Speaking purely descriptively, no need to attach names to them yet. What thematic concepts and/or gameplay roles do you want each school to emphasize? Why?

What are your design goals for this magic system?

Think of a new color.

I'm trying to do a new system, but pretty much every way I can think of saying these things has already been said. I can change the words around to suit my tastes, but at the end of the day, Necromancy is still Dark Arts is still Death Magic.

I like magic systems where it's all just defined by the effect or thematic connection. There's healing magic, there's protection magic, there's battle magic, and so on. I think AD&D's spheres for divine magic were better than its schools for arcane magic.

some of the systems I like are defined consistently by what the caster is actually doing. as in, when classifying two spells it doesn't matter what the difference in the end result is if the methodology between them is relatively similar. so abjuration becomes, rather than 'defenses and wards', something like 'anchoring mana/aether/od/magic-buzzword to spaces for continuous effects', and enchantment is 'anchoring magic-buzzword to objects for continuous effects', making them more related schools to each other than to, say, evocation's '(hopefully) controlled release of mana for one-time effects' or transmutation's 'release of mana into change objects once'.

maybe the different methods lend themselves to different effects more easily, or maybe they can accomplish similar things with caveats. that's up to you.

I've stuck to D&D's schools in my examples for the sake of simplicity, but these redefinitions would have fairly far-reaching consequences for the use and classification of magic. in particular in this 'redefinition', transmutation could be a subschool of evocation and enchantment a subschool of abjuration (or vice-versa). the limited duration of transmutation effects could be through a different mechanism than the magic simply running out, or maybe transmutation doesn't have a limited duration, or maybe the effect needs tempering and anchoring using abjurative or enchanting "principles", so to say, or...lots of ways to think about magic. so just use some sense and be consistent in the application of whatever decisions you make and you'll be fine.

In the system I'm working on, I'm trying to get magic to work sort of like renaissance era science. You have a bunch of things that can happen and are trying to explain them using a system that's as consistent as possible.

So in my setting, in the prevailing theory, things work in triangles. There are three basic elemental arts - Earth, Water and Fire, which correspond to the three aspects of humanity, Body, Mind and Soul respectively, and there is a type of magic that is associated with each of these. Earth represents artifice, the creation of objects with extraordinary and properties, and the transmutation of mundane objects into rare ones (think iron into gold etc). Water resents alchemy and the creation of potions that can affect a person from extending your life to putting someone into a deep slumber to killing them. Fire represents traditional blasty sorcery. Now, things get interesting when you combine those three. At the intersection of Water and Fire (mind and soul), you get illusionary magic, creation of images messing with people's heads etc. Similarly, at the intersection of Fire and Earth (Body and Soul), you get the creation of golems and constructs. And finally at the intersection of Earth and Water (Body and Mind), you have druidism, or the shaping of the natural earthly world in trees and animals. Note how each complex art interacts wit to their missing basic element. It's great to have a tree elemental until somebody casts a fireball, illusions always fail when somebody swings a sword through it, etc.

The existence of other magical disciplines (necromancy being the prime example) that don't fit within this paradigm is proof that the theory isn't complete, but the dangers and stigma associated with practicing necromancy make academic research difficult.

The D&D schools are possibly the dumbest magic categorization system I have ever seen in any work of fiction. The 8 categories aren't even the same type of categories. Evocation (creating and manipulating energy) and transmutation (changing things) are broad, thematic ways to classify the mechanism behind a spell. On the other hand, abjuration (protecting things), divination (learning things), enchantment (messing with people's minds, except for creating illusions), and illusion (illusions) are all about the final result. But these are entirely different ways of classifying things; they're not mutually exclusive. Every single enchantment spell should also be transmutation since enchantment is ultimately all about changing things (specifically how people think). Most abjuration would probably also fit into evocation or transmutation. And on top of that, enchantment and especially illusion are ridiculously specific sub-categories compared to something as broad as "protecting" or "learning".

And that's without mentioning necromancy, which is a school for anything that seems edgy without having any other common theme to it, or conjuration, which is just a catch-all for anything that didn't seem to fit in the other schools.

I love this categorization.

The problem is that the "schools" basically accreted over time during AD&D 1e - it's why divination was split into "minor" and "major" sets of spells, and illusion, transmutation and conjuration tend to reproduce each others "domains" in various ways (not to mention the mess that was the exact distinction between alteration and enchanting, which differed based on who was writing the spells for a particular splat book or campaign system).

(also why the entire concept of a "specialist" vs. a "mage" was dropped in 3e... but because it was 3e it had to do something retarded so it just reproduced the arcane schools without alteration even though they needed heavy reworking and balancing so as not to be a giant mess of overlapping bullshit)

Actually I find that Evocation, Illusion, Transmutation and Enchantment could easily fit together as one type of category. Evocation is the manipulation of energies, while Illusion is the manipulation of perceptions. Transmutation is the alteration of the physical, while Enchantment is the alteration of the mental.

That said, the rest I agree with. D&D's schools are a nasty hodge-podge of things that are unrelated. I don't think Gygax was trying very hard to make a concise magic system, but was trying to portray it as people in said fantasy world might see it (and they won't have thoughts as refined as we might in the modern day; remember that he occasionally dipped into lolrealism territory).

bump

well no, what you want is to rope off a chunk of the arcane schools in such a way that arcane magic has it's own niche compared to psionics, nature shit and divine magic.

Mage does theirs by category, but some are broader than others they use fairly plain terms.

Abjuration. Negating and preventing cause and effect.
Evocation. Summoning energy or entities from elsewhere to do your bidding.
Transmutation. Changing matter that already exists, whether from one state of matter to another or giving a material properties of another.
Illusion. Pretty self-explanatory.
Biomancy. The manipulation of life. Uses range from healing and destroying undead to buffing, debuffing, and creation of monsters.
Physiomancy. The manipulation of natural laws, such as the behavior of objects in a vacuum or of time-space.

None of these are meant to be mutually exclusive. In fact, this is only a structure enforced by the Mage Colleges to make certification and teaching easier. The best wizards are equally familiar with all schools.

>None of these are meant to be mutually exclusive. In fact, this is only a structure enforced by the Mage Colleges to make certification and teaching easier. The best wizards are equally familiar with all schools.
That is a great line, and I'm going to write something like that in the magic section.

It actually is more realistic for that. Competing schools of understanding and education brought together under a single umbrella with little cohesion between them all?

...I would totally run a D&D Magic College game, where each player is the head of their school/department.

>A new teacher says there is a troll in the dungeon
>You must find that one troublemaker and prevent him and his two friends from trying to deal with it
>The troublemaker doesn't really understand magic
>One friend could probably teach a class on her own
>The third one is just thick and resents authority
>Wat do, mages?

> conspire for years to undermine the efforts of the resident Dark Lord while putting up with this shit and make the viewers cry.

In my setting, there are much fewer schools:

Biomancy: Manipulation of living things.

Blood Magic: Manipulation of the soul. Known as blood magic because blood is the conductor for its effects.

Divination: The ability to see the past or future. Effects which allow you to see things in special ways in the present are usually either sorceries or enchantment effects.

Enchantment: The creation and alteration of permanent magical effects, devices and objects.

Necromancy: Manipulation of dead things. One distinct trait in this setting is that it includes dead plant life and other such things as well. Necromancers can manipulate wood and other organic materials.

Sorcery: The creation of temporary magical effects.

All forms of magic basically fall into one of these categories.

Could always just go with Final Fantasy classes.

Ars Magica might help as inspiration. In that game, spells are split among different combinations of Techniques (what the spell does) and Forms (what the spell affects), known collectively as Arts.

There are 5 Techniques:
>Creo (I Create)
>Muto (I Transform)
>Rego (I Control)
>Perdo (I Destroy)
>Intellego (I Perceive)

And then there are 10 Forms:
>Animal: Affects non-human creatures and their derivatives (ie leather armour)
>Auram: Affects gases.
>Aquam: Affects liquids.
>Corpus: Affects human bodies.
>Herbam: Affects plants and their derivatives (ie wine)
>Ignem: Affects heat and light.
>Imagonem: Affects species (sensory input, such as sounds and smell)
>Mentem: Affects the human mind (animal minds are affected by Animal)
>Terram: Affects earth and minerals.
>Vim: Affects magic.

So a spell to hurl a fireball might be Creo Ignem, while one to speak to a tree might be Intellego Herbam. The system uses a lot of Platonic and Augustinian philosophy, so a few spells might be counterintuitive at first (say, sharpening a sword requires Creo Terram, since while you are technically chipping away stuff from the blade, you are making it into a better version of itself, closer to its perfect form, hence you make rather than destroy), but the basis of the system could be useful to come up with new spell classifications.

stolen

You did reasonably, but fucked up with Abjuration there. Let me relist them, and you can see why:
>Conjuration: the summoning of
>Transmutation: the altering of
>Abjuration: the use of
>Evocation: the manipulation of

All three others are a Method of alteration (summoning stuff, changing stuff, manipulating stuff) , but abjuration is a Function (defenses). This means that the other disciplines will get to muscle in on Abjuration (eg, stone skin in Transmutation).

What if it's magic specifically to defend against magic? Stone skin can protect you from physical damage, but anything with mana breaks through, so you need abjuration to fight other wizards and things?

Interesting thought: perhaps all magical repulsion can fit in here. Whether it be counterspells, antimagic fields, or other such things, it'll count as a form of abjuration.

Of course, this means that prismatic sphere and ray must be multi-school spells.

Interesting idea, but it seems like a lot of the actual gameplay variance would only be in the water/fire thing. Making golems and being a druid (summoning, mostly) are basically the same thing to a player.

Seconded. I've always thought that divine should have abstract types of spells, magic that affects people but not the world around you. Psionic is the very opposite - it's very grounded in what's there, and that comes out in the whole ectoplasm subtheme that's very common among a lot of their powers. Im not quite as certain where arcane magic should sit, but I know that it definitely has to do with patterns and studying the world to learn how best to manipulate it.

This, wizards don't have to be all about actually doing magic to be interesting - a wizard college game done well could be great

Is there a method to making a simple magic based system? Thinning the schools of magic down to 3-5 categories. I'd like to see an example of this.

I`m working in a system based on the 7 metals of antiquity and the celestral bodies they were related to: Gold, Silver, Iron, Copper, tin, Mercury and Lead.

Each school has characteristics of the metal in the nature of the spells: Silver school spells, for example, would be healing and purifing spells, as well divination(silver was used in making mirrors) and efective against undead and evil (vampire and werewolf weakness)

The metal also represents the consequences of his missuse. For example, Mercury spells would be about illusions and transmutation and shapeshifting, but it`s abuse would, well, give you mercury poisoning and turn you into a bumbling madman. Iron is all about buffs and making things stronger and better, but you would first have a severe allergic reaction all over you body, and eventually your flesh starts to fucking rust. Lead magic is necromancy and venoms, but too much use and you get lead poisoning, with the add that the necromantic energies have radioactive atributes,so if you don`t shield yourself properly, well, you end up as a ghoul.

Most schoolls have a tendency to mix and have overlapping areas making subschools of "alloys", the most important being Tin and Copper creating the Bronze school. which are the ones i`m still working on, probably something about enchantment and summoning.

>I don't think Gygax was trying very hard to make a concise magic system, but was trying to portray it as people in said fantasy world might see it

Even with that spin, it doesn't do a very good job. Contrast, say, Fantasy Craft, which explicitly divides the spell schools up according to archetypal themes: Channeler for flashy blasty shit, Conjuror for fiddling with physical reality, Enchanter for what's basically white witchcraft (healing, nature magic, and mind-affecting charms), Preserver for paladin/cleric type stuff (lots of buffs and wards), Prophet for your Old Testament agents of the divine, Reaper for all manner of edgy dark magic, Seer for your sagely court wizard stuff, and Trickster for sneaky deceptive magic.

I dunno OP, I just put -mancy at the end and made them all really specific in what they do.

This is how I'm doing it.