A History of Magic: The History of Evocation (D&D)

Contents

Previously: Necromancy Subschools and Selected Spells

The outer path, while later to arise than the inner path, developed much more quickly. Focused on elemental energies the result was an abundance of relatively safe power. In comparison to practitioners of the inner path these outer path students were able to simply seek out larger fonts of their desired energy and channel it with near abandon. In fact, the popularity of fire as an easily constructed, drawn, and enlarged source of energy is influential in the thoughts of evokers even today. While they risked physical and metaphysical injury doing so, such concerns were nothing compared to the violent reactions of positive and negative energy to the mortal form and spirit. The result was swift access to still greater flows of energy through channels to the elemental planes.

The rise of outer path practice quickly overwhelmed the use of the original, inner path, among diviners to a broad degree, and it is at this time that I believe we see the earliest signs of divination spells reaching the second and third levels in power. Among some students this was manifest evidence of the superiority of the outer path approach. As a result it became a focus of study unto itself for some, swiftly developing into various elementalist sub-schools.

The early power manipulations of the outer path are the evolutionary roots to centerpieces of evocation even today. The production of force energy most clearly demonstrates these origins. Decoupled from their original spells the invocations became cataclysmic intersections between elemental energies which produced raw, semi-directed magical power. Where this tradition remains focused on barely restrained invocation of these prime elements in their various forms other schools bend that power to their varied ends. Though, much like the initial increase in potential for diviners, throughout history increases in power for other schools have largely been preceded or accompanied by breakthroughs in evocation.

Next: Evocation Subschools and Selected Spells

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Evocation, elemental power. Not a lot to see here. We’ve already seen that I persist at shifting positive energy to necromancy. The other half of the equation is that it doesn’t fit comfortably with evocation. At least, it doesn’t with necromancy sitting in the background. If negative energy shifted over to evocation then it’d be one big happy family. But, as it is, you’ve got these six, theoretically equal, types of energy but one school manipulates 5 of them while the 6th breaks out into its own, entirely separate school. This nags persistently at my willing suspension of disbelief like a ragged fingernail or a splinter under the skin. What makes negative energy special? It’s the bad apple that we had to kick out of evocation school? As a balance thing, even rejecting the long standing prohibition on arcane healing, the location of positive energy in the grand scheme isn’t a huge shift. Even clerics don’t have an enormous number of these spells. Thematically, though, it makes necromancers more interesting by greying them out and giving them “white magic” options that fit very closely with their larger “power of life and death” shtick. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing about the evoker has ever said “that healing magic guy.” Really, negative energy would fit better with the general sense of evocation than positive energy, but I’m not sure that’s flashy enough.

Meanwhile, I added flight... well, telekenisis and its various expressions (feather fall, levitation, etc). This is one of those subschools that got broken off of its original home in my efforts to redefine schools with coherent, clear boundaries (I’ll talk more about this with transmutation), and then it sat aside for a while trying to find a new home. Nowhere I was going to put these spells would be as radically redefined as what I would ultimately do to divination. However, the entire purpose was for things to have homes where they made sense in ways that didn’t make the definition accepting of all magic (looking at you, transmutation).

I’ve already discussed how time/space magic came to be part of divination, but before that it was almost its own school with these spells. However, where what I was originally looking at as a unified temporal (sub)school which was blatantly manipulation of time and space, I could justify these spells other ways. Which is how they came to live with evocation. Coincidentally, this gives ultra-specialist evoker some level of broader utility beyond “blow it up,” though that was not nearly the intent. I also find amusement in playing into the concept of a wizard so filled with their own elemental power that they rise up off the ground on raw energy. I would have concerns about encouraging the specialist ranged-blaster to be able to position themselves out of physical reach, but an honest reading of the state of play says that this isn’t any more likely this way than it was before.