In Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the spell cause fear was put into the school of necromancy even though it does nothing to manipulate the forces of life and death. If I had my way, it would be an enchantment spell. When it was introduced in UA, it was also a necromancy spell. Why so?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
The official school assignments of various spells (differing with each edition) have been wrong according to the definitions of each school for as long as there have been schools of magic (rather than just the "magic-user" spell list and the "illusionist" spell list).
Cause fear is a legacy case - back in 2nd edition fear-causing spells were usually illusion/phantasm school, and 3.5 put cause fear into necromancy (while making most things that were resistant or immune to typical enchantment spell effects also resistant or immune to it because of it's mind-affecting tag).
So with 5th edition there is this spell, and a few others, which have questionable school assignments. It is to be expected when the people in charge would rather add "Others channel positive energy to heal wounds." to the end of the Evocation school description to allow them to put healing spells there, rather than move them back to necromancy were they were before WotC bought the game and started inventing new places to put the healing spells for some reason (with 3.5 they made up a whole sub-school to attach to conjuration to stick healing spells under... because, for some reason, healing spells being Necromancy is just not something that WotC will let happen).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
In Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the spell cause fear was put into the school of necromancy even though it does nothing to manipulate the forces of life and death. If I had my way, it would be an enchantment spell. When it was introduced in UA, it was also a necromancy spell. Why so?
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
It seems to me they wanted the spell in Necromancy, and used that line to justify it.
The official school assignments of various spells (differing with each edition) have been wrong according to the definitions of each school for as long as there have been schools of magic (rather than just the "magic-user" spell list and the "illusionist" spell list).
Cause fear is a legacy case - back in 2nd edition fear-causing spells were usually illusion/phantasm school, and 3.5 put cause fear into necromancy (while making most things that were resistant or immune to typical enchantment spell effects also resistant or immune to it because of it's mind-affecting tag).
So with 5th edition there is this spell, and a few others, which have questionable school assignments. It is to be expected when the people in charge would rather add "Others channel positive energy to heal wounds." to the end of the Evocation school description to allow them to put healing spells there, rather than move them back to necromancy were they were before WotC bought the game and started inventing new places to put the healing spells for some reason (with 3.5 they made up a whole sub-school to attach to conjuration to stick healing spells under... because, for some reason, healing spells being Necromancy is just not something that WotC will let happen).