An Update on Necromancy

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't paying attention to OneD&D 5.5e D&D 5e 2024 (?) at all. I'm definitely not interested in playing the new version of 5e - I like the 2014 version of 5e just fine, know it very well, have already put considerable effort into house ruling it to my liking, and can simply take the very few bits and pieces that I like from the 2024 version and insert them into 5e without switching over entirely - but I'm plugged in enough to catch wind of some of the changes now and then.

One thing I found interesting was this Reddit thread compiling a list of spells whose school of magic has been changed in the transition from 2014 5e to the 2024 version.

The categorization of spells into schools of magic has always been fascinating - and at times, confounding - to me. I am particularly interested in how the categorization changes over time. I like to think about the fictional reasons for the changes as well. Does a spell get assigned to a new school because the fictional understanding of how these spells work or the most popular method of creating this magical effect has changed? Has some sort of world-altering event caused the realignment of the schools of magic?

The answer is, probably, no. There are "meta" motivations to these changes - that is, motivations the designers have, such as making a "better", more "balanced", or more consistent game. The game designers simply wanted fewer spells in the evocation school, or wanted spells which create a telepathic effect to be consistently in the school of divination. 

I'm particularly interested in those spells which were either moved into or out of the school of necromancy, since I wrote a good deal about necromancy and the type of magic it represents in the recent past. Here is a summary of the changes which pertain to that oft-discoursed school of magic:

• Poison spray has moved from conjuration to necromancy. Why? The spell creates a puff of poison gas, which is a conjured substance, so conjuration seemed fitting. Perhaps the spell now creates a burst of grave dust and does necrotic damage? No, it creates "toxic mist" and still does poison damage. Odd.
• Blindness/deafness has moved from necromancy to transmutation. This actually makes some sense. Instead of being a malign curse, the spell now alters the makeup of the target's ocular or auditory organs such that they cannot see or hear.
• Wrathful smite has moved from evocation to necromancy. This is a magical smite attack which induces fear in the target, so it fits right in with cause fear as an "Evil, scary" spell. Why this was evocation in the first place, and why are both fear-inducing spells not enchantment? That's anyone's guess.
• Reincarnate has moved from transmutation to necromancy. Rejoice! This is actually a spell which I called out in my previous post. The spell creates a new body for the target, rather than transforming their old one, so transmutation never made sense to me. It's more like a combination of conjuration (creating the body) and necromancy (binding a soul to that body), but since clone (which also creates a body) is necromancy, putting reincarnate into necromancy makes plenty sense to me.

That's all, except...what's this? Pretty much all of the healing spells (healing word, cure wounds, prayer of healing, mass healing word, aura of vitality, mass cure wounds, heal, and mass heal) are now abjuration spells. I bring this up only because my previous post touched on healing spells, how they used to be necromancy, and how they've changed pretty much every edition (from necromancy to conjuration, then evocation, and now abjuration).

I'm perplexed by this change. Abjuration is the magic of protection, counter-magic, and magic negation. I suppose one could argue that healing is a kind of protection, but it's not like these spells are creating a magical buffer against harm (which would probably be represented by temporary hit points) - they are healing damage that has already been done. Healing those wounds does not protect a creature from suffering additional wounds.

The oddball is power word heal, which is now an enchantment spell, along with all the other power words like fortify (which one could argue should be abjuration) and kill (which one could argue should be necromancy).

Ah well. This is all just a reminder that try as I might, there is not much fictional justification for these categorizations. It's indicative of a greater problem I have with the direction of the 2024 version of the game, which is that many rule changes are inexplicable, or are made in the name of "balance" without any regard for what those changes actually represent within the fiction. There are a few other changes listed in that thread which are similarly baffling to me, although I'm not interested in digging into each of them here.