Well, we can discuss Evocation from a variety of directions. It's dictionary term refers to the act that brings or calls a feeling, memory or image to the conscious mind. Or the act of invoking a spirit or deity.
According to DND5, it is the focus of study on magic that creates powerful elemental effects such as cold, flames, thunder, lightning, or even natural acid. The evocation school includes spells that manipulate energy to tap an unseen source of power in order to produce a desired end. Basically creating something out of nothing.
Oddly enough, healing spells were conjuration based in 3rd, and moved to evocation in 5th. Wizards who specialize in in this school are known as necromancers. Healing falls under the manipulation of life energy, which is why prior to 3rd, they were tied to the Necromancy School. As you can see there is a lot of back and forth over this depending on the development team who makes the final call. The current team feels that the evocation school is a good way to fit literally everything they can't explain away. But the claims that to heal requires you to summon positive energy. Hence linking positive energy to elemental energy found in nature. You are pulling energy out of thin air to create an effect more or less. After all these are the geniuses who changed burning hands from evocation to transmutation, even though your are channeling natural heat energy through your touch! Think of it as politics! And be careful when you call someone's baby, Ugly!
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I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
It's Evocation because the spell schools are a backwards-looking categorization system. In other words, the spells come first, the categories come after. They've never really held back a spell just because it doesn't fit a category, and for what I assume to be branding reasons they've never radically reinvented the spell schools to better fit the canon of spells they've accumulated, either. It's a system that loosely fits, but has a strong Identity.
You could justify it through fiction if you wanted. It's creating life energy, whereas necromancy is channeling death energy. Maybe evocation is transferring energy into the plane you're on, whereas necromancy transfers it out, to the negative energy plane. Whatever works for ya.
Necromancy in D&D has pretty much always had evil connotations, to my knowledge. Not only that, but the primary users of healing magic are clerics, who are diametrically opposed to evil, at least throughout most of the game's lifespan. You don't want to put a label on the most iconic good guy tool that says it's a bad guy tool.
In 5E healing is evocation because such school spell typically manipulate magical energy to produce desired effect and thus can include a large variety of effects while necromancy is more about manipulating energy of life and death which often involve temporary hit points.
Evocation spells manipulate magical energy to produce a desired effect. Some call up blasts of fire or lightning. Others channel positive energy to heal wounds.
Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force, drain the life energy from another creature, create the undead, or even bring the dead back to life.
Necromancy might have once denoted spells which mess with the forces of life and death, but nowadays, it has been watered down to basically just be a way for D&D to say dark magic. Because healing spells are not generally "evil" I guess, they are not necromancy spells.
Why is it that Healing is evocation and not necromancy wich is more fitting to Healing spell ??
Well, we can discuss Evocation from a variety of directions. It's dictionary term refers to the act that brings or calls a feeling, memory or image to the conscious mind. Or the act of invoking a spirit or deity.
According to DND5, it is the focus of study on magic that creates powerful elemental effects such as cold, flames, thunder, lightning, or even natural acid. The evocation school includes spells that manipulate energy to tap an unseen source of power in order to produce a desired end. Basically creating something out of nothing.
Oddly enough, healing spells were conjuration based in 3rd, and moved to evocation in 5th. Wizards who specialize in in this school are known as necromancers. Healing falls under the manipulation of life energy, which is why prior to 3rd, they were tied to the Necromancy School. As you can see there is a lot of back and forth over this depending on the development team who makes the final call. The current team feels that the evocation school is a good way to fit literally everything they can't explain away. But the claims that to heal requires you to summon positive energy. Hence linking positive energy to elemental energy found in nature. You are pulling energy out of thin air to create an effect more or less. After all these are the geniuses who changed burning hands from evocation to transmutation, even though your are channeling natural heat energy through your touch! Think of it as politics! And be careful when you call someone's baby, Ugly!
I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
It's Evocation because the spell schools are a backwards-looking categorization system. In other words, the spells come first, the categories come after. They've never really held back a spell just because it doesn't fit a category, and for what I assume to be branding reasons they've never radically reinvented the spell schools to better fit the canon of spells they've accumulated, either. It's a system that loosely fits, but has a strong Identity.
You could justify it through fiction if you wanted. It's creating life energy, whereas necromancy is channeling death energy. Maybe evocation is transferring energy into the plane you're on, whereas necromancy transfers it out, to the negative energy plane. Whatever works for ya.
Necromancy in D&D has pretty much always had evil connotations, to my knowledge. Not only that, but the primary users of healing magic are clerics, who are diametrically opposed to evil, at least throughout most of the game's lifespan. You don't want to put a label on the most iconic good guy tool that says it's a bad guy tool.
In OneD&D healing spells have been moved to Abjuration. For now at least.
In 5E healing is evocation because such school spell typically manipulate magical energy to produce desired effect and thus can include a large variety of effects while necromancy is more about manipulating energy of life and death which often involve temporary hit points.
Necromancy might have once denoted spells which mess with the forces of life and death, but nowadays, it has been watered down to basically just be a way for D&D to say dark magic. Because healing spells are not generally "evil" I guess, they are not necromancy spells.
Nice! I think they should keep them there, those spells really fit way better in Abjuration, I've always thought.