Spell Schools and Spellcasting

Magic! Anything can be magic and magic can be everything. Even so, magic must be restrained to become useful. Raw magic is just energy, and you cannot do anything with just raw energy. You need something to transform energy into motion. Like the tungsten filaments in helium ambient become light when you supply the right amount of energy, the act of transform magic into some tangible and useful is called science. As so, there are various schools that focus in various ways to transform magic, sometimes achieving the same results. It’s the method that matters in magic, not the result. Sometimes a desired result is difficult to achieve through a method (or school) but easily by other. The successfulness of casting a spell depends of 2 factors: the complexity of a spell. An complex spell can be simple to a high Intellect mind. The second is your body magic pool. It is proved that strong Willed mind can cast more spells in a row. It seems that training your body and increasing one Constitution helps increase the body magic regeneration.

Many Magic Schools are still being discovered in the actual times. They help understand the method used to create a determined effect. To a type of magic be called a magic school, that method must be universal in matter manipulation and take in consideration the fabric of the universes.

Abjuration - Spells from the abjuration school transform magic energy in solid and physical barriers. Abjuration is the materialization and manipulation of magic energies into delimited shapes to create invisible walls and barriers. One specialty of abjuration magic is the creation of glyphs. Glyphs are magic-concentrated fields that activate upon entering the field. The effect may change with the glyph type. The most common result in a non-elemental explosion or the capturing of creatures in a energy (not electric) temporarily cage. Experts of this school of magic can even combine abjuration with primal or other kinds of magic for added results. One of the most common spells of abjuration magic is the dispel spell. This spell allow to disrupt any spell being or already casted, even another dispel spell.

Examples of Abjuration spells are Magic Missile, Barrier, Dispel Magic, Magic Nullifier and Recharge Magic.


Conjuration - This school heavily depends on the visualization and imaging capabilities of the caster. Unlike abjuration, conjuration materializes magic into delimited shapes. Be them weapons, arrows or creatures. Creations of this school are made from magic, and has such, need a steady supply of it to keep its shape. If the caster losses his concentration, it might interrupt the flow of magic ending the spell. The same can be said if the caster moves too far away from the conjured. Wizards recently created imbued cristals with this kind of magic. When the crystal breaks, it will conjuge a specific spell for a limited time. This time is limited by the amount of magic imbued within the crystal and will not affect the user magic pool.

Examples of Conjuration spells are Conjure greataxe, Invoke servant and Instant Armor.


Divination - Divination is not the usual high class magic school, and is often frown upon by high class mages. This magic school studies not the manipulation of time but its observation. See events of the past, look into a distant place in the present or anticipate the future are the most common uses for divination spells. Even though some might find this useful, prediction of the pass and future is not 100% accurate. Even the observation becomes less detailed as the distance increase. Although divination limited usefulness, any spells from this school are incredibly complex and most of the time, not worth.

Examples of Divination spells include Premonition, Far Observer and Future Seeing.


Enchantment - Enchantment is a crafter's school of magic. Although not having direct effect spells, this school allows anyone to create magic items and also, safely destroy them. This school works in combination with other schools. Enchantment forges the spell in the object so it can be used anytime, anywere. All magic objects created by this school have their own magic pool, that refills over time by absorbing environmental magic. This means that spells imbued can be cast with using ones magic, and that even the object can run out of magic if overused.


Enhancement - Enhancing is to magically improve one's characteristics. These are simple and straightforward spells. Increasing a adventurer stat, increasing an armour resistence or a blade durability. There are simple examples of enhancement spells. Enhancement truly shines when combined to another schools, adding properties instead of just increasing. Spells of the enhancement school have 2 diferent methods of magic consumption. First, one can simply add an amount of mana to the spell giving it a time limit. Secondly, one can redirect the strain of the spell direcly to the body, reducing its magic pool for the duration of the spell, removing the time limit. The second one is more used by robust spellswords that lack in will.

Examples of Enhancement spells are Giant's Strength, Iron Skin and Improved Vision.


Elemental - Who doesn't know the fireball spell? The spell school that everyone want to master when they are kids. Elemental spells are crude, simple, shapeless spells that control and direct the most primal forms of nature. Fire, Ice, Water, Lightning, Cold in the palm of your hand or the tip of our staff. Even with its direct uses for destroying things, Elemental is best used as a secondary spell school when combining with other schools. For example, if one combines conjuration and elemental schools, it is possible to create artificial elementals for a limited time. If combined with abjuration, one can cast elemental protective wards. Due to the simple nature of this school, most students just master other schools and fuse their spells with elemental magic.

Examples of Elemental spells are Fireball, Iceshard and Lighting bolt.


Illusion - Illusion, the trickster school of magic. This school bends and manipulate light to create visual shapes from thin air. Rogue mages have been using this school to escape the guards with the infamous invisibility spells. Other than that, illusion is often used for presentations in academic magic schools. Since a high perceptive adventurer can spot a illusion spell easily, this spell school doesn't have much use.

The most known Illusion spells are Invisibility, Cast Image and Lure.

Necromancy - Necromancy spells manipulate, create or destroy life. Many priests are at least expert casters in these school, as it allows to heal the injured and the sick. This is the most difficult spell school know. The more gifted mages need 30 years of intensive study and practice to be able to heal small wounds. It is important to understand that is not possible o resurrect death creatures. Due to the laws of magic, even if one can fully heal a death body, its soul e permanently lost. Other than healing magic, creating magic is the most complex known magic, and destruction magic the least. Raising a zombie is a mixture of the life manipulation branch of necromancy and enchanting. Enchanting a body to cast healing spells on himself, while using environmental magic creates a husk. These husk feel the need to feed on living flesh o ease the burden of constant healing spellcasting. The longer the subject is dead, the harder is to create a zombie. Raising a skeleton is not necromancy due to the lack of living tissue, it is purely enchantment magic. A zombie can be even more dangerous if combined with Hex magic, turning anyone killed by them into a zombie. It is a myth that zombies are killed when their brain is destroyed. Zombies, like enchanted objects, lose its magic if its core is destroyed. This core may not be physical, so can be anywhere in the zombie body.

Examples of Necromancy spells are Heal hounds, Create Undead and Deterioration.


Alchemy - Alchemy is not a spell school but is a magic school. It doesn't require magic but it must obey magic rules. Its effect are mostly scientific but when combined with magic, it is possible to obtain results that magic alone can't. One good example of this is core forging for enchanted objects. Synthetic cores can contain larger mana pools than natural or non-physical cores. Even this school is not magic dependent, it's still one of the most complex and dificult schools of magic. It involves anything that don't consume mana or that enhances spells without increasing the need for magic. Technomagic, Engineering and Chemical Alchemy are some of the subtypes of the vast Alchemy School.


Hex - When we talk about magic of the Hex school, we talk about dark magic. Hex magic affects fate and luck of the recipient. Voodoo and Curses are the most common of hexes. Even if hexes can increase a person's luck, it is often used as a weapon. Hexes spells work just like the enhancement spells of the 2nd type. To cast curses or hex someone, one must sacrifice its own magic pool limit. Even though hexes don't have the other limitations of enhancement magic, the sacrifices are greater and are healed much slower. Experts in the Hex school often die much sooner and their bodies decay even before the death of the mage. Because of this, Hex school has been called in the past blood magic.

Examples of Hexes are Dead luck and Decay.


Planar - summoning magic, teleportation magic, invocation magic are all planar magic. Planar magic school studies the ability of magic to create dimensional holes between 2 point in space. This allows someone to travel great distances almost instantly. This spell school is very difficult, and some of its students give up before even be able to open a small portal. Due to the risk of opening a portal in a dangerous place, Planar magic is often combined with Astral magic. Masters in this school can create a pocket dimension and transverse to and from it at will. Although it is possible to jump between plane worlds with planar magic, astral and divination magic cannot be used to see the destination. All the known jumpers ended suffocating in empty space or burnt on a star surface.

Planar spells include Summon weapon, Portal and Create pocket dimension.


Astral - the more simple of magic school, Astral spells allow the perception of pure magic. A mage that studies this school can see magic residue from spells and even notice magical proprieties of objects. Astral magic is also used to tract specific targets as each living being has a slightly different magical trace. Great scholars of this school, and others, are blind. They resort to astral magic to study and live with a deeper perception of reality. Astral school is not limited to sense magic, observation of the magic pattern of a living being allows understanding its true intentions, determining persistent spells, detecting magic traps and even understanding a foreign and unknown language.

Examples of Astral magic are Seek Magic, Detect Magic and Identify Enchantment.


Transmutation - Transmutation is the spell school that studies how to change permanently the shape of objects. Although not a very difficult spell school, its spells consume very large amounts of magic. Transmutation rearranges atomic bonding of the recipient. If the appropriate atoms are not found, or are in insufficient quantities on the object, environmental molecules are used. Transmutation is not a very complex school but often uses large amounts of energy. Transmutation spells are not temporary but are reversible. Mages that use transmutation on themselves are known as shapeshifters. The eldest shifters can't return to their original form, not due to the extensive use of transmutation magic, but because they have forgotten it over the years. Transmutation students be warned, it's not possible to transform cooper or lead into gold! It is not forbidden, it is simply not possible.

Examples of Transmutation spells are Convert Element, Identify Mineral, Transmute Gold and Shapechange.


Field - Did you dreamt of being able to fly? Field school most common spell allows you to do just that: Levitation. Field school spells manipulate and change the magnetic field and gravitational forces between 2 objects. This being said, these spells allow you to levitate and control objects or yourself. It is also possible to create electromagnetic fields and conduit electricity though heavy metals. Field school is the magic school with the most destructive potential, even surpassing the elemental school. Non-initiated mages call this school, destruction school of magic.

Some known Field spells are Levitation, Metal Control, Gravity Blast and Implosion.


Some possible spell effectx are:

Damage, including shape and type;
Buffing, with each different stat buffed counting as an effect;
Increased duration, doubling its duration or making it permanent;
Instantaneous, this for travelling projectile spells reduces the Dex by 10 for the Dodge chance, otherwise it doesn't count;
Delayed, keeping the spell on a specific location until something triggers it;
Shield, creating a protective barrier;
Transmute, altering the chemical proprieties of materials.
Multiple Targets, this counts has an extra effect.
Unique Effects.