Editing Magic (section)

==Magic in D&D==
===D&D's Schools of Magic===
* '''Abjuration'''  - protection, prevention, barriers, wards, your "Protection From Evil" and "Dispel Magic" type spells.
* '''Conjuration''' - creating (temporary) things out of nothing, summoning far-away things to here.  Summon a monster to fight for a minute, or teleport your target to here. Also covers personal teleportation, which is like summoning yourself to over there.
* '''Divination'''  - see the invisible, know the unknowable (row row fight the powah). "Detect Evil" goes here.
* '''Enchantment''' - charm, dominate, antipathy, mind control stuff that clobbers free-will.
* '''Evocation'''   - KABOOM! Like conjuration, but you're creating energy out of nowhere and venting it at a target. [[Awesome|Fireballs, lightning bolts, and laser blasts.]]
* '''Illusion'''    - make people see/hear/sense things that aren't there, or the exact opposite in the case of invisibility spells. Unlike Enchantment, you don't have to target a person, just the place or thing you want to look/smell/sound different.
* '''Necromancy'''  - mucking with dead things, or life-force stuff. "Speak With Dead" and "Create Undead" go here, as does all-star "Enervation".
* '''Transmutation''' - change one thing into another thing. "Polymorph Other" goes here, along with those very very valuable buff spells for your meatshields.

For some reason, healing spells in D&D are considered "conjuration" spells, not "transmutation," despite changing a broken bone into a not-broken bone, and it's not "necromancy" despite mucking with life-force stuff. In older versions of D&D, healing was considered Necromancy, so, whatever. This has changed in 5th edition, in which "insta-heal" spells like Cure Wounds and Healing Word are considered Evocation, spells like Regenerate and Goodberry are part of the Transmutation school, Restoration and similar are Abjurations, and the Raise Dead type spells are Necromancies. Basically, the healing-related spells are assigned a school as appropriate, rather than lumping all of them into a single school of magic.

=== Magic in D&D 3.5e ===
Magic in [[Dungeons and Dragons]] 3.5e is called the ''art'' by elves and other such nonsense by other such nonsensical creatures. It is similar to the [[weeaboo]] idea of chi/ki where magic is all around us like the force from Star Wars, like the holy Gandalf in religion and the.... yeah you get the picture. Magic in 3.5e is everywhere like pedobear.

To cast spells you first need to know the spell (if it is an '''arcane''' spell) which makes sense - you can't differentiate an integral if you don't haz mathz. '''Divine''' spell casters have it easy though, their god/deity/imaginary friend lets them cast any spell if they have enough levels and if they ask ''really'' nicely in the morning.

Casting the spell takes "a lot" of effort (seriously, magic users in D&D are physically weak) so they can only cast a certain number of spells from a certain casting difficulty per day. Except for Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts, who cheat by not actually being wizards themselves and begging for power from something else without even putting in the personal effort a Cleric does to prepare spells. They just kinda channel someone else's power and use supernatural abilities that look a lot like spells but somehow technically aren't. This became more and more of a thing as splatbooks increased, with new magic systems being released that operated by different <s>awesome and cool</s> <s>terrible and weird</s> rules.
Examples include:
* Psionics, a very old system that was even included in the SRD, is pretty much reflavored spellcasting, except with a mana reserve referred to as power points and the potential to seem massively overpowered to people who don't read the rules carefuly.
* Binding, a thing that [[Binder]]s do to temporarily graft weird spirit-bits to themselves to get at-will abilities and bonuses that technically aren't spells but that do allow monster summoning, Wall of Stone, and the ability to rebuke undead.
* [[Shadowcaster]]s had a thing. It was terrible, and basically involved using their own magic system to pretend to be inferior versions of an illusionist.
* Truenamers existed, but they were so incredibly terrible and badly written that no-one ever played them and they never got any support - not even web enhancement stuff like Binders and Incarnum users got! They could say magic words and do magic that wasn't actually involve spellcasting, but was instead at-will and based on skill checks with weirdly scaling DCs.
* [[Incarnum]], a very confusing system that was released during Dread Cthulhu's brief employment at WoTC
* [[The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic]], which refuses to call itself magic but still allows teleportation, fireballs and the ability to stop time. But you're holding a katana so it can't be pussy Vancian magic, right?

=== Magic in D&D 4e ===
Perhaps the closest thing that one can get to [[skub]] concentrate is how magic changed in D&D 4th edition. With this edition having been designed around the concept of eliminating the [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]] issue, which required both buffing martial classes and [s]nerfing[/s] '''altering''' how magic works.

Firstly, the idea of magical classes running on [[Vancian Casting]] and its subsystems whilst martial classes just rolled to hit stuff was replaced with the universal [[AEDU System]]; every class has a pool (size determined by level) of in-combat tricks and special attacks, which are divided into being usable either at will, once per combat encounter, or once per day. This is the source behind the negative meme that "all classes in 4e are spellcasters".

Secondly, magic itself has been divided into two broad categories; Combat Magic and Ritual Magic. The intent behind this split is to let spellcasters still be able to do cool shit, but not at the expense of making other classes look like pointless [[meatshield]]s or just being flat-out useless.

Combat Magic refers to spells that are either offensive in nature, or which are utilitarian but simple enough that they can be cast in combat conditions. These latter spells thusly lack the "oomph" of utility spells of old - combat teleport spells are more along the lines of an old-school Dimension Door, whilst old-school Teleports or [[Plane Shift]]s are Ritual Magic. Every class has its own entirely unique arsenal of spells, designed to reinforce the themes of that class and its "archetypes" - the [[Invoker]] is big on curses and thunder/lightning/fire/radiant damage, the [[Sorcerer (Dungeons & Dragons)|Sorcerer]] is all about short-ranged bursts and blasts that often do multiple damage types, the [[Cleric]] heals and buffs, and the [[Wizard]] is a jack-of-all- trades. Another major change is that, due to the AEDU System's reliance on powers over level-gated class features, there are a lot more levels of spells than in previous editions - nearly 30 levels of distinct spells, rather than the 9 levels of 3e and the "9 wizard levels, 7 cleric/druid levels" of 2e. Because of this, players are expected to replace their lowest-leveled spells as they level up to remain competitive with the increasing power of their enemies, rather than having spell potency being determined by character level, as was the subsystem in [[Vancian Casting]]. Some spells associated with "older" classes retain their familiar names, but their mechanics can differ from the old school experience due to the new edition's paradigms - in addition to what we just talked about, there's also the design paradigm that [[Save or Die]] and [[Save or Suck]] powers don't exist in 4e (except for a few monster abilities). Thusly, Disintegrate doesn't insta-kill whoever you point it at, but instead does a pretty hefty chunk of necrotic damage and then continues to burn away at the target's HP for multiple rounds. Fireball isn't an insta-gib spell, but is instead built for clearing out groups of [[Mook]]s or weakening bunched-up enemies; you want that [[Slayers|Lina Inverse]] feel, you want to have your DM use minions - also, because it's a low level, you'll eventually give it up for bigger and more impressive fire-blast themed spells.

Ritual Magic refers to spells that aren't directly combat related. Any of the "pass a skill check or negate an obstacle" type spells are slotted in here, like Alarm, Magic Mouth, Sending, Knock, [[Plane Shift]], Teleport, etc. Rituals now take extended periods of time to cast (minutes to hours, typically) - which isn't actually new, as many of these kinds of spells tended to have casting times longer than "1 round" to begin with - and usually require the expenditure of resources (simplified as a money cost) combined with a skill check to pull off. This means it's actually worthwhile to try to pick the lock or do things the mundane way first, but keeping the Ritual on hand for emergencies is still a good idea. Ritual Magic also covers non-combat but still cool magic, like identifying or creating magic items, fashioning castles from nothing, reshaping the land around you, erecting flying islands, building your own [[demiplane]] or [[Chronomancy|opening time portals]].

Ironically, this new system means that 4e actually works really well for [[Low Fantasy]] or [[Sword & Sorcery]] themed games where combat magic goes against the grain; just bar classes that are "too magical" (running an all-Martial party in 4e is incredibly viable right out of the PHB) and restrict magic to Ritual Magic, and you have a world where magic can be done to achieve mysterious and mystical effects, but in combat you depend on a strong arm and sturdy steel to see the day.

===Magic in D&D 5e===
5th edition's magic is similar to what was seen in 2e and 3.5, with some notable differences. First, spells whose only difference were power level were consolidated into single spells. So instead of "''Cure Light Wounds''," "''Cure Moderate Wounds''," etc., there is a single "''Cure Wounds''" spell, which is more effective when cast using a higher level spell slot. By a similar token, the ''Bigsby's _____ing Hand'' line of spells and similar were reimagined as a single spell, whose effect is determined on every casting. There are still technically Arcane and Divine classes of spellcasters, but the difference between Arcane and Divine magic is largely fluff-based, with little mechanical effect.

Perhaps the most significant change is the return of [[Vancian]] Spellcasting, albeit in an altered form. Spellcasters in 5th edition are broadly divided into a pair of categories: prepared casters, or spontaneous casters. The former chooses spells from a greater list that it can cast each day, and the latter has a smaller repertoire of spells known, which it can always cast. In earlier systems, a character would have a certain number of spell slots, and prepare spells by assigning one for each slot (If you wanted to cast Fireball three times that day and Magic Missile twice, you would need to prepare three copies of Fireball and two copies of Magic Missile). 5th edition prepared casters only have to prepare spells that they wish to cast that day once, and may cast them as long as they have spell slots (A character with three 1st-level slots that had ''Burning Hands'' and ''Sleep'' prepared could cast ''Sleep'' twice and ''Burning Hands'' once, ''Burning Hands'' three times, or any other combination).