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Schools of Sorcery

This new magic, which we call sorcery, seems to me much like a dragon's riddle. On the surface it appears simple and intuitive, but once you delve into it, you find it twists around itself, creating knots and snags which may never be unraveled. The harder you fight the complications, the more confusing it gets. If you simply let yourself flow with the twists, follow this turning path, discordant though it may seem, the true pattern is revealed at last - and then it all makes perfect sense.

- From Palin Majere's journal

Sorcery has confused and befuddled even the greatest minds on Krynn. It is so basic an energy that those who were trained in the High Sorcery often have trouble accepting its simplicity. Everything on Krynn contains sorcerous energy. The secret that sorcerers must master is the ability to find that power and unlock it. Once the energy has been tapped, manipulating it is merely a matter of practice.

Still, there are a few simple rules which sorcerers must obey. Sorcerous energy is not an all-purpose power to use any way the caster sees fit. The source of the energy determines how it may be used; power derived from the earth must be used to influence the earth, energy drawn from the River of Time can power only spells that spy on other places and times.

Most former practitioners of High Sorcery have more trouble accepting that there are some spells they can no longer wield than understanding the principles behind sorcery. They remember the days when they could cast powerful charm spells, transform themselves into other forms, and even improve some of their own attributes. The truth that sorcery simply cannot do these things, no matter how skilled the mage, sticks in their craws. Some of these effects may be achieved through mysticism, and some are completely beyond the abilities of modern magic users.

As Palin Majere and a number of the more accomplished sorcerers of the Fifth Age have observed, the secret seems to lie in accepting things for what they are. Instead of trying to force sorcery to work in the same ways that High Sorcery did, students should cooperate with the energies they are releasing, allowing them to flow in natural patterns. The students at the Academy of Sorcery have become quite enamored or the dwarvish saying, "No matter how sharp your pick is, you'll never tunnel through a river."

The potential uses for sorcery in many ways far outstrip those of High Sorcery. They are not bound by convention or ritual; they are restrained only by the limits of a sorcerer's imagination.

As the scholars at the Academy of Sorcery explore the limitations of the various magical schools, they create a greater wealth of information for sorcerers everywhere to draw upon. Sorcerers are learning more each day about what is and isn't possible within each individual school, but one fact remains: The schools of sorcery each achieve a specific effect. In some cases, these effects can be combined to create a greater effect, but there is little actual overlap between the schools. What one school does, no other school duplicates exactly. Recently, though, there have been significant developments in successfully combining two or more schools to create effects that otherwise would be impossible.

In the school descriptions that follow, optional rules or applications of each school's powers appear set off from the rest of the text in shaded sidebars.

Aeromancy

Aeromancy is one of the first schools that scholars believed they had "mastered." It seemed pretty straightforward: creating and controlling winds, regulating air quality, and limited weather control. But experimentation proved that there was more to it than that.

Summoning and controlling winds is the most basic function of this school. Sorcerers draw on the power that moves the air above Krynn and can use it to make the winds function at their command. They can use these winds as weapons, creating blasts of air which impact forcefully enough to cause physical damage to the target. When taken to its extreme, this ability creates terrible wind storms that can damage even the sturdiest of structures. With enough sorcerous energy focused in such a spell, an aeromancer can generate a cyclone which will destroy practically anything in its path. Only the most powerful of aeromancers can do this, however, and they reserve such an effect for only the most desperate of circumstances. A cyclone is a force so powerful that very few sorcerers have the strength both to create and control one; once one has been called into existence, it generally runs a natural course of destruction which often includes the exhausted sorcerer's vicinity.

Some aeromancers have reported success at using their abilities to create winds that can actually lift them off the ground. This skill relies on the ability to create sustained winds strong enough to batter a body mercilessly, and control these winds so that they lift a hero rather than buffet him. Spells of this nature are best used as safeguards against damage from falls, or to lift a hero a short vertical distance. While it is possible to use them to levitate or fly over longer distances, such efforts require great willpower and finesse. Sorcerers who become distracted in the midst of these spells rarely live to learn from their mistake.

The control of air quality is another basic ability for sorcerers skilled in aeromancy. While they cannot simply create noxious clouds using this school alone, they can call winds to gather any loose material nearby (particularly powders and dusts) and whirl it into a blinding and sometimes poisonous fog. This power of aeromancers actually increases indoors. They may not have natural winds to control, but it is easy enough for them to create small whirlwinds, and most small or medium sized objects in a typical dwelling can be easily blown around for use as impromptu missile weapons.

Weather control is one of the trickier abilities associated with aeromancy. Sorcerers skilled only in aeromancy cannot control the weather. They can, however, create winds which will cause local weather patterns to change more rapidly or slowly. In essence, aeromancers can't create rain, but they can cause a storm to arrive faster, or linger longer than it normally would. They can also affect the general severity of existing weather conditions, turning a heavy storm into a severe thunderstorm, or creating a cooling breeze to lessen the oppressiveness of a summer's day. True weather controlling spells have been created using combinations of aeromancy and other schools; for instance, aeromancers with knowledge of hydromancy have created rain even in completely arid conditions. Those with cryomancy have summoned impenetrable fogs from nowhere, while sorcerers skilled in all three schools have devised ways to create and control raging blizzards and summon hail large enough to crush a man. Perhaps the most deadly weather effect, however, belongs to sorcerers who combine aeromancy, hydromancy, and electromancy. They can create howling thunderstorms, striking with lightning whichever targets they choose.

Cryomancy

While cryomancy may seem to be a school that is effective only when used in combination with other schools (such as aeromancy or hydromancy), it actually proves quite powerful on its own. Sorcerers researching spells in this school have found a number of effective uses for it, including creating blasts of frigid air which cause severe frostbite damage to a target, lowering unbearably high temperatures to more tolerable levels (or plunging them to the point that living creatures cannot remain in the area), freezing bodies of water solid, and covering surfaces with thin, practically invisible layers of ice to make movement nearly impossible. Perhaps the most interesting use, though, is to lower the temperature of an object such as a sword, club, or other unliving item to the point that it becomes brittle and shatters when soundly struck.

As long as there is a ready supply of water, which includes free standing bodies (such as lakes and rivers) as well as atmospheric conditions (like rain, fog, or even high humidity), a cryomancer can create huge quantities of ice literally out of thin air. These can be used as weapons (to be hurled at opponents), defenses (walls or shields of ice), barriers (blocking doors or hallways), means of constraint (shackles of almost any description), or in any other way that a clever sorcerer devises.

This is not to diminish the effect cryomancy has when combined with other schools. When used with aeromancy, cryomancy can turn a slight drizzle into driving sleet or hail; adding hydromancy into this combination allows the sorcerer to create and control snow storms which can bury a city in a day.

Divination

It is said that a true understanding of the past is the best tool for planning for the future. The school of divination makes it possible to examine both the past and the future. Diviners use their sorcery to spy on events both elsewhere and elsewhen. Perhaps the hardest part of mastering this school is learning how to interpret the visions that it reveals. Images of the past show events exactly as they occurred with no regard for how misleading they may be outside the proper context. Experienced diviners realize that figures in history were just as apt to he for their own convenience as modern day folk. Visions of the future, of course, are completely malleable.

One curious diviner spent months viewing future events until he came to what he considered a significant moment: a meeting between representatives of the three great chivalric Orders in a last-ditch effort to prevent bloody war.


Divination Spell Points

The basic sorcery roles in Chapter Five of the Book of the Fifth Age provided an "Area of Effect" chart for determining the difficulty and spell point cost of divination spells (chart IVc on the FIFTH ACE reference card). However, that chart only covers spells spying on times a month or less in the future (or past). Since heroes may want to look farther along the River of Time, Narrators can use the following extended chart (or generate one of their own):

IVc
Area    Difficulty
Minute 1
Hour 2
Day 3
Week 4
Month 5
Year 6
10 years 7
100 years 8
1000 years 9

Narrators may decide it is harder to divine future events than past ones. In that case, they may choose to use the above chart as it stands for spells that examine past events, but double the difficulty numbers for spells that look into the future.


For weeks he cast and recast a spell to spy on this pivotal conference over and over again, taking detailed notes each time. In twenty-eight viewings over the course of seventeen days, the events of the meeting never played out exactly the same way twice. In most cases the Legion of Steel sided with the Knights of Solamnia, resulting in a war with the Knights of Takhisis. Interestingly, though, in some cases the Legionnaires remained neutral, and in one instance they formed a temporary alliance with the Knights of Takhisis. Likewise, in a few of the visions the war was averted, while in one open hostilities broke out at the negotiating table.

Upon reading the results of this experiment, many of the sorcerer's colleagues concluded that the practice of divining the future should be abandoned; clearly one can glean no salient information in this manner. The sorcerer himself, however, felt that while the experiment proved that the future was unknowable, scrying was still eminently useful. He hypothesized that, with the number of variables which might occur, truly anything was possible in any situation. An individual divination spell, however, would show the most probable future at the time of the casting. Multiple castings were not helpful, though, because they would only provide a scale of probability. In the end, repeated divinations would only reveal the relative likelihood of the different outcomes. They would do nothing to pin down exactly what would happen, just give a very dear indication of what should (which was revealed in the initial divination anyway).

Electromancy

While electromancy is one of the most powerful schools of sorcery in terms of sheer damage it can wreak, it has been paradoxically one of the weakest in terms of its range of applicability. Other than creating electrical charges to damage or imprison a foe, sorcerers have found little use for the school. In some instances electromancers can mimic the most basic abilities of spectramancers (creating charges which give off a dim, blue light), but until recently even the most creative sorcerers at the Academy had been unable to come up with practical uses for this awesome power. Perhaps electricity was simply too primal a force to be put to work for people, they speculated.

Not long ago, however, an aged itinerant mage proved conclusively to the instructors at the Academy of Sorcery that the power of magnetism falls within the realm of this school. He had a ballista set up to fire its huge bolts at a target. As soon as the bolts left the ballista, an unseen force pulled them to the ground, rotating them point - downward in the process. They were buried half the length of their shafts. The old man, a former Wizard of the Red Robes named Melsinyk, remained at the Academy and taught this aspect of electromancy for a few months before moving on. Students of the Academy continue to explore this power, often to the chagrin of metal-clad guards.

Of course, the raw power of electromancy makes sorcerers who practice it greatly sought after by military commanders. Many battle mages specialize in this school. It is also one of the great magical deterrents: people facing a mage bristling with energy, lightning arcing from his fingers, usually seem much less willing to rush into battle against him. In many cases, an electromancer with a flair for the dramatic can intimidate a foe (or even a group of foes) into inaction or possibly even surrender simply by making sufficiently impressive electrical displays.

Electromancy becomes most powerful when combined with aeromancy and hydromancy. With this terrible combination, a sorcerer can create and control mighty thunderstorms, blocking out the sun and causing explosive bolts of lighting to strike specific targets. Without knowledge of electromancy, these sorcerers would still be powerful, to be sure, but they would be merely rain makers, summoning storms whose electric wrath played out in uncontrolled patterns.

Enchantment

Enchantment's one of the schools on which little agreement exists. No gathering of Academy students is complete without at least one voices-raised, red-in-the-face argument about exactly how enchantment works.

The conservative view is that the school of enchantment by itself is capable only of increasing or decreasing the effectiveness of a given object at the function it was designed to perform. Enchantment can be used to make swords cut better, shields offer greater protection, and many more common items simply function more efficiently (brighter lamps, warmer blankets, etc.). Supporters of this position believe that, while enchantment is the medium through which magical effects may be impressed into mundane objects, in order to attain such an effect a sorcerer must be skilled in another school related to the effect being created; in other words, in order to enchant an item to glow with light, a sorcerer must be skilled in both enchantment and spectramancy. They maintain that it is impossible for a sorcerer who knows only enchantment to imbue objects with abilities other than those they already possess.

The more radical view considers enchantment the school which ties all others together. Supporters of this view maintain that all sorcerous energy is fundamentally the same (still a fairly progressive notion) and that sorcerers need to specialize in specific schools only if they cannot see this overall connection. Those who study the school of enchantment use the intrinsic sorcerous energy found in all objects to enhance the effectiveness of items. Sorcerers who do not allow themselves to be constrained by the teachings of academics with a predilection for classification, they claim, can use this intrinsic energy to create sorcerous effects from any school. Although no one has yet succeeded in mastering this unified approach to sorcery, supporters of this position point to several novice-level students of enchantment who have created objects which exhibit properties of pyromancy and spectramancy as proof that their theories are correct.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. In most instances, it seems necessary for an enchanter to be skilled in another school in order to imbue an item with any effect beyond enhancing the item's natural function. However, there are a number of documented cases where students who had studied only enchantment produced effects normally associated with other schools. In every case, though, these students were later found to have a natural affinity toward these schools and went on to excel in them as well. There has never been a documented case of a sorcerer already specialized in several schools being able to use enchantment to produce effects from outside his areas of expertise.

This great debate aside, there has been one significant advancement in the school of enchantment. Several researchers have claimed to have discovered the secret to creating spells with extremely long, possibly even permanent durations (see "Long-Term Durations" in Chapter Four). If this proves true, enchanters may find themselves the most sought after group sorcerers as knights, warriors, and adventurers of all types try to revive or replace magical items that became inert after the Second Cataclysm.

Geomancy

Some call geomancers the most powerful of all sorcerers, and they may very well be correct. After all, those who specialize in this school can command the very ground beneath one's feet. Powerful geomancers can cause towers of stone to rise from fertile plains or desert sands and create great earthquakes which crack the earth and spew molten lava over the land. These are, of course, very difficult effects to create, and geomancers talk mysteriously about plates and steaming fissures beneath the ground which must align properly before they can accomplish such feats. More common applications of geomancy include whipping loose soil and pebbles into abrasive sprays, creating shelters and permanent structures out of natural rock formations, bolstering (or breaching) the integrity of castles and walls made of stone, and affecting the shape and consistency of metals such as steel.

While geomancy controls the earth, stone, and ore in an area, it cannot by itself change the state of these materials. A geomancer is not able to turn coal to diamonds or solid ground to quicksand unless he is also skilled in other schools. However, a clever geomancer can garner many of the same effects through clever manipulations of the materials present. He might not be able to produce quicksand, but he can still cause the ground in a certain area to thin out to a silty consistency that cannot support the weight of any passersby. He may not be able to create diamonds, but by forcing a handful of dirt or rocks to compress more tightly than naturally possible he can make a substance as dense and strong as any gem. Creative use of this school can be as destructive as electromancy and as supportive as enchantment.

Perhaps the most feared power of the geomancer, however, is his control over steel. The most precious of alloys falls completely under the sway of geomancy. Spells from this school can cause swords to lose their edge, break on impact, or even become pliable and wrap around anything they strike. With three different Orders of chivalry both arming and defending themselves with material that geomancers can control, sorcerers trained in this school will be both venerated and greatly feared.

In combination with other types of sorcery, geomancy is not as versatile as other schools. However, when combined with aeromancy it can create great dust storms which can bury people, houses, and sometimes even whole towns. The combination of geomancy and hydromancy is also a powerful pairing, allowing a sorcerer to create mud slides, swamps, and cause solid stone structures to sag and collapse under their own weight.

Hydromancy

Considering merely the number of adventurers, explorers, and even whole armies who have perished for lack of fresh water, it should be clear why hydromancy is so popular among sorcerers who spend long periods of time in the wilderness or at sea. Often hydromancers are more prized for their ability to supply drinking water than for any other magical abilities they have.

Still, hydromancy has significant potential for use as offensive magic. Hydromancers can cause floods, influence the ebb and flow of the tides in a limited area, and significantly aid or hinder boat traffic. Many sea captains seek the aid of sorcerers capable of using hydromancy and aeromancy.

Sorcerers have discovered certain natural limits to what they can accomplish with this school. While it gives nearly complete control to open bodies of water, hydromancy is not nearly as useful when dealing with fine manipulations of liquid. It is every bit as difficult for a hydromancer to form a miniature water sculpture as it is for him to make a river overflow its banks. This is not the result of the volume of water affected. If it were, the river would certainly be harder to affect. Rather, it is more difficult to achieve fine manipulation than it is to bring about a relatively crude effect. Furthermore, once water has been swallowed, it has moved beyond the hydromancer's power to control.

When used in combination with aeromancy, hydromancy can affect local weather patterns. A beautiful, sunny day can turn instantly overcast or even into a drenching storm or a blinding blizzard thanks to sorcerers who know the correct combination of schools. The manipulation of weather, however, is not easy, and it is best done cooperatively with other sorcerers.

Pyromancy

Next to electromancy, pyromancy is the single most destructive school of sorcery. Pyromancy, however, has a much wider range of applications and a more exact, more manageable effect. Perhaps the single biggest advantage pyromancy has over electromancy is that fire can be found practically everywhere that a sorcerer is likely to go.

The most basic ability of pyromancers is to create fire. This skill can be used for kindling campfires, casting offensive spells (such as fireballs or gouts of flame), creating defensive effects (such as walls of flame), or setting fire to any flammable object within range. Even if a pyromancer could do no more than this, he would be a force to be feared, considering that one errant spark can mean the destruction of even the mightiest structure, but his powers make him more than merely a firestarter.

Pyromancy gives a sorcerer nearly complete control over all types of flames. Those skilled in this school can cause candles, bonfires, and even raging infernos to roar to greater heights or to snuff out instantly. Pyromancers can cause flames to continue to bum long after they have consumed all their fuel. As with hydromancy, however, pyromancy seems to be much better at creating crude effects than fine ones. It is significantly more difficult for a sorcerer to control and shape the flame in a lantern than it is for him to light a cooking fire.

Pyromancy is another school that does not easily combine with others to create complex spell effects. It is, though, one of the schools that enchanters prefer to learn when expanding their areas of expertise. A weapon that not only inflicts its normal damage but also has the possibility of setting its target aflame is greatly prized by warriors, and seeing such a weapon in the hands of an enemy can test the nerves of even the most battle-hardened veteran.

Spectramancy

Control over light, or spectramancy, gives a sorcerer an incredible amount of power, although very little in the way of offensive spell effects. Spectramancers have the ability to control what people see or don't see. How can a warrior be effective if he cannot believe what his eyes tell him? What good is subterfuge and camouflage if a rogue's clothes are suddenly turned bright pink?

Spectramancy is so versatile it can, at times, appear to dominate or supersede other schools, such as pyromancy and electromancy. These schools produce effects which have luminous elements (fire and lightning both produce light naturally), and those elements are subject to spectramancy. All this really means is that a spectramancer can take control of the visual aspect of spells from these schools, either warping the light they give off or making them invisible altogether. There are very few sights more frightening than a structure being consumed by a roaring, blistering, invisible fire! The air is distorted by heat, the building blackens and falls in on itself, ash and embers fly everywhere, but there is no visible flame. Furthermore, a bolt of jet black lightning has been known to give even a Knight of Takhisis pause.

The spectramancer's greatest defense is, of course, invisibility. This ability can also be used to create eerie and disturbing visual effects (making people appear headless, causing spears to look like mere walking sticks, etc.). It also can be an instrumental part of many illusion spells the sorcerer may cast; to disguise a centaur as an elf, one must make his hindquarters invisible.

The illusions cast by modern spectramancers are nowhere near as powerful as the ones cast by the wizards of High Sorcery. For one thing, they exist in no scope other than visual; anyone who tries to touch or directly interact with illusions quickly learns of the deception. However, combining spectramantic illusions with other schools (such as geomancy, cryomancy, or even transmutation) will allow a sorcerer at least some physical manifestation associated with his illusory creation. It has been reported by at least one sorcerer skilled in both spectramancy and enchantment that this combination can be used to turn very crude dolls and mannequins (such as scarecrows or dressmaker's dummies) into highly realistic illusionary people, although they always remain completely immobile.

Summoning

Summoning is perhaps the school least understood by nonsorcerers. It deals more with traversing distances, not ordering extra-dimensional beings to appear. Summoning is the art of bending space so that it is possible to move instantly between two locations separated by many miles. Occasionally it involves beckoning someone (or something) through this spatial distortion.


Summoning Spell Points

The basic sorcery rules in the Book of the Fifth Age provided charts for determining the difficulty and spell point cost of summoning spells. However, the "Range" chart covers only spells which summon over a very limited distance. Since it seems likely that heroes will want to travel (or summon creatures from) farther than that, Narrators may want to use this extended chart (or generate one of their own):

II
Range    Difficulty
Personal 1
Melee 2
Near missile 3
Far missile 4
Artillery 5
Visual 6
Region 7
Kingdom 8
Continental 9
Extra-planar Varies*

* An extra-planar range applies when summoning creatures from the elemental planes. It is impossible so far for summoners to create connections which mortals can use to travel to other planes. Still, creating connections that cross planar boundaries is both difficult and dangerous. It is up to the Narrator to decide exactly how hard this is, but a difficulty of no lower than 10 is recommended. The danger lies in the fact that, although the sorcerer mays not send himself across the boundary between planes, a summoned creature likewise skilled in summoning may magically draw the sorcerer to its plane of origin. No one has ever been known to survive this experience.


Summoners are quick to point out that their school is more subject to resistance than others. Creating the path necessary to connect two points is one thing; getting a specific target to walk that path is another thing entirely. Even if this is successful, however, summoners have absolutely no control over those whom they transport. (Of course, if they are also skilled in the mystic sphere of mentalism, they may achieve control over them.)

Research in this school has proven it possible for someone to travel distances greater than the eye can see. Truly gifted summoners have been able to instantly transport themselves and others literally across the continent and back again. The only restriction on this power, other than casting the spell successfully, requires that the sorcerer be going to a place he has visited or seen before. Summoners working with only maps and second-hand descriptions have so far been unable to get enough of a sorcerous fix on a location to complete a spell. However, some students at the Academy of Sorcery are currently testing the theory that particular divination spells may be substituted for first-hand knowledge.

Through the use of summoning, it is possible to call elemental creatures to Krynn. However, these creatures are almost universally resistant to being called away from their native planes, and the sorcerer has absolutely no control over them, as observed above. Summoners who succeed in calling forth beings of great power without having something of great value to offer in return for their services do not generally live long enough to realize their mistake, let alone learn from it.

Summoning provides a sorcerer with the best defensive capabilities of all, better even than spectramancy's invisibility effect. While a lucky swing might hit an invisible target, no one can hit a target who is suddenly somewhere else.

Transmutation

Transmutation is the one school of sorcery in which a sorcerer displays a noticeable difference in the scope of his powers as he progresses in his studies. Novice transmuters can only change substances to other related substances (from one type of stone to another, for example). They cannot make radical changes in substance (from stone to air or water, for example), nor can they affect the shape of the object in any way. Well-trained transmuters, though, have a much more fundamental control over the form and substance of objects. They can transform one type of unliving matter into another; a common glass bead may be turned into a perfect diamond, a cloud of fog, or even a tiny dancing flame. The only real restriction on these transmutations seems to be that a sorcerer cannot create any kind of living material; affecting the living is the purview of the mystics.


Transmutation Notes

The Narrator may wish to give transmutation spells access to the optional rules allowing long-term durations (see page 62). This would make it possible for a sorcerer to change permanently the shape or substance of an object - a very powerful ability. The Narrator should carefully consider whether to allow this ability before reaching a conclusion.

Not every substance a transmuter hero tries to create will fall neatly into one of the eleven schools of sorcery. The Narrator should make a determination what schools (or combination of schools) are necessary for a hero to be able to transmute items into substances such as doth, glass, leather, fur, and wood (see "The Problem With Wood," page 45).


An experienced transmuter's abilities are defined by what other schools of sorcery he knows. If he knows geomancy, he may turn an item into any type of stone; one who knows aeromancy may turn an object into air, fog, or even churning wind. The item will, however, always retain its original shape. No matter how illogical this may seem, an object that is transmuted from stone to water will not run off into a pool, it will stay in exactly the same proportions that it originally held; it will merely be in liquid form. Anyone who touches the object will find it has no more resistance than water in a fountain, it simply is being held in place through sorcery. The object may be broken or disrupted as easily as anything else made of its current substance. Therefore, a stone wall which has been transmuted to paper may be breached without thought, and a crystal ball transmuted to iron can be thrown about like a shot put. Whatever condition the object is in when the spell's duration wears off is how it will appear in its original substance. A marble statue that is turned to air and then fanned about the room will become a liberal coating of marble dust when the transmutation spell expires.

Another skill available to an advanced transmuter is object shaping. Any item that a sorcerer has an affinity with (rocks and earth for geomancers, ice for cryomancers, etc.) can be warped and molded as he sees fit. The experts at the Academy say that it is impossible to perform a shape changing spell with a duration of less than one minute. Any period less than that and the object doesn't have enough time to undergo the full transformation. Objects can be made larger, smaller, or sculpted into completely new shapes, but they never increase or decrease their original weight. It is therefore possible to transmute a 1 lb. rock into either an incredibly light boulder or a surprisingly heavy pebble. Sculpting objects has become one of the most popular hobbies among transmutation students at the Academy of Sorcery as they turn their lessons into a mode of relaxation. In a few cases, their skill is as fine as that of any artist.

Multi-Schools Spells

Most of the descriptions above talk about combining specific schools to achieve complex spell effects. This is a new process which only a few months ago was thought practically impossible. One of the greatest frustrations of sorcery students - particularly those who used to practice High Sorcery - was that, while many aspects of their old spells remained at their command, these effects all came from different schools of sorcery. They could not be mixed freely to generate spell effects which, in the past, any half-competent apprentice could create.

This really is not so surprising. The art of sorcery may be based on the primordial magic that infuses all creations of the gods, but the knowledge of how to tap that power became widely known only after the Last Conclave, fewer than five years ago. One of the main reasons Palin Majere founded the Academy of Sorcery was to establish at least one place on Krynn where people could examine exactly how sorcery works, and where the abilities and limits of the different schools could be discovered, measured, and hopefully exceeded.


Multi-School Spells

The addition of multi-school spells to a campaign means that a Narrator must be familiar with the various schools of sorcery. He will be called upon to determine what schools are needed to create different advanced spell effects ranging from weather control to advanced illusions to all types of bizarre enchantments. Most of the school descriptions in this chapter contain a short paragraph telling what multi-school spells commonly require that school. The Narrator may use these as guidelines for his rulings. In many cases, however, the answer may ultimately be that an effect still cannot be produced. Sorcery deals only with nonliving materials. Any spells aimed at changing, controlling, or enchanting people, animals, plants, or even bacteria fall into the realm of mysticism, and there is as yet no way to combine mysticism and sorcery. (See "The Problem With Wood," page 45.) The Narrator should keep a record of any spellcasting decisions he makes, both for continuity and to aid future rulings.

Casting Spells of Multiply Schools

The technique used to create multi-school spells is exactly the same as for single-school effects. The only difference is that the caster must be skilled in all the schools necessary for the spell. Even with the knowledge of combined spellcasting (see Chapter Four), it is impossible for two sorcerers trained in different schools to cast a multi-school spell together. All sorcerers involved in the casting must be familiar with all the schools required.

For the purposes of determining how many spells a sorcerer is maintaining at any given time, a multi-school spell counts as one spell per school involved in the casting. In other words, a sorcerer with a Reason code of "A" can maintain only a single spell if it contains elements of three different schools.

Below are two common multi-school spells. They should provide a good example for players to use in constructing their own advanced magic.

Emma's Flame

The first multi-school spell ever cast is taught today even to Academy students who have studied neither of its required schools of sorcery. Although they might never learn to cast the spell, the theory behind it contains an important lesson in the basic theory of the new magic.

The pertinent schools are enchantment and pyromancy, and a target item is required (usually a type of weapon, preferably made of steel). The spell causes the item to ignite in sorcerous flame whenever a specific action is performed on it. This flame, being a product of pyromancy, will burn no matter what the conditions surrounding it, and will inflict 5 damage points and ignite any flammable material it touches.

In its original incarnation, the flame lit whenever a woman wielded the enchanted sword. Since that time, literally hundreds of variations have been successfully cast, causing an item to burst into flames whenever held by a man, taken underground, in the presence of a dragon, when night falls, and even when held underwater.

Because of the number of variations, it is impossible to give a single difficulty factor that would be true in all cases, but Emma Xela's original spell was:

Invocation (ten minutes) 3
Range (melee) 2
Area (individual) 1
Duration (one hour) 5
Spell effect (5 damage points) 2


Total Difficulty 13

Rolling Thunder

Most sorcerers with aeromancy, hydromancy, and electromancy know some variant of a complicated spell commonly known as "Rolling Thunder." This weather control spell takes a dear sky and turns it into a violent thunderstorm, from which the sorcerer may call down lightning to strike specific targets.

The spell itself merely creates the storm and holds it in existence. The storm produces lightning at a rate of approximately ten bolts per minute. A sorcerer may aim these lighting bolts at a specific target, but in order to actually hit it, he must succeed at a challenging Dexterity (Perception) action. To create additional lighting, he must pay 5 spell points (and difficulty points) for each extra bolt per minute.

Invocation (one minute) 4
Range (artillery) 5
Area (large house) 5*
Duration (one hour) 5
Spell effect (hindering) 3


Total Difficulty 22

* The size of a thunderstorm can be considerably larger than a house. The Narrator may increase this cost, but he must tell the player by how much.


Palin's hopes were not in vain. The discovery of how to combine schools came about quite by accident, and probably never would have occurred anywhere except an institute like the Academy.

A first-year student named Emma Xela noticed what she thought was a convenient study aid. Emma was studying both enchantment and pyromancy, two schools then considered almost completely unrelated. Her lessons taught that the sorcerous energy used in each school was unique, that energy used to create and control flames was different from that used to augment an item's capabilities; one was an ambient energy which tapped into the elemental plane of fire and the other was potential energy contained in every object on Krynn. To Emma, however, they were both abstract pools of energy that did not really need to be understood, simply tapped and shaped in a manner appropriate to their natures. As a shortcut in her studies, she began considering the energy she was using as "generic sorcerous energy" so that she could concentrate on the more delicate aspects of spell weaving. To her surprise, this change in approach had no effect on the quality of the spells she cast.

As Emma experimented, she found that, while there are differences in the type of energy generated by different objects and phenomena, the particular type of energy used in a spell is not nearly as important as her mentors had claimed. When she broached this subject before a Council of Peers, however, she was nearly laughed out of the hall. They told her that she was oversimplifying the complex nature of sorcerous energy, a common trait among new students, and that she should pay closer attention to her mentors. Emma answered these comments by casting a spell that every expert at the Academy had deemed impossible.

Before the Second Cataclysm, magical blades which ignited in flame under specific conditions, while not common, were a staple product of those specializing in enchanting weapons. Since the withdrawal of the gods, though, this effect had proven beyond the abilities of even the most advanced enchanters. Using her knowledge of pyromancy and skill in enchantment, Emma Xela became the first sorcerer in the Fifth Age to successfully create a burning blade.

The spell Emma cast was one that she claimed would cause a sword to burn with sorcerous flame whenever it was wielded by a woman. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the blade in her hand began to burn. At first, the council disregarded the flame-engulfed sword as a trick. After all, pyromancy can be used to make all sorts of nonflammable material appear to burn. The fact that the flame went out when Emma put it down also did nothing to soften their stance. However, when Emma was escorted from the room and other female members of the council picked it up, the flame reignited. No such effect manifested itself when the sword was laid down or held by a man. The spell faded after an hour, but Emma had no difficulty casting it again. Furthermore, she had no difficulty teaching her technique to other sorcerers skilled in both pyromancy and enchantment.

This spell, known as "Emma's Flame," marked the beginning of a flood of research into the practicality of combining schools of sorcery. It was found that the schools all worked together in combination to greater or lesser extent. This was the first great breakthrough in the art of sorcery, completely rewriting the basic conception of how this primordial magic works. It surely will not be the last.

The Problem With Wood

The advent of multi-school spells has not solved all the problems of spellcasting. Some very complicated spell effects have been mastered, but there are still a few relatively simple ones which prove troublesome to sorcerers. Most of these center around specific materials such as cloth, leather, and especially wood - all items which once were living. Among sorcerers, wood has become a symbol of difficulty and discord and is used as the generic term for any material with similar properties.

To put the problem succinctly, wood was once living but no longer is. On the one hand this would make it susceptible to mysticism, and on the other hand it would fall under sorcery's purview. In reality it seems to fall under both - and neither.

Sorcery can be used to affect wood, but not as effectively as other substances. Wood can be shaped through the use of transmutation, but it cannot easily be created using this school, for it was once living. It may be burned, frozen, electrified, and even enchanted the same way any other nonliving material can. However, to cast any spell on or involving wood is more difficult than it normally would be.

Wood also can be affected through mysticism. Because it was once living, mystics are able to work with most forms of wood through the sphere of necromancy. This raises the interesting question of how closely related mysticism and sorcery are. Some postulate that the energy channeled by the mystics is essentially the same as that used in casting sorcerous spells. This theory was initially disregarded entirely, but with the success of multi-school spells, it is being reexamined.

A group of Academy students have recently gone to Schallsea Island to conduct research with the mystics there. Both Palin and Goldmoon have publicly expressed their belief that a method will eventually be found to combine sorcerous schools and mystic spheres in a single spell.


Working With Wood

There are no specific rules for performing spells on or with wood (or any similar material). Narrators should bear in mind, however, that it ought to be unusually difficult to cast spells that directly affect such substances. Depending on the situation, a Narrator could simply describe a spell as being particularly tiring, subtract extra spell points from the caster, or add in secret difficulty modifiers.

Any wood which is still living cannot be affected by sorcery. Furthermore, wood which has only recently become nonliving often resists sorcery more strongly than wood which has been "dead" for some time. Wood that has been transmuted into another shape often proves brittle and easily broken. Petrified wood, which has actually become stone, is affected normally with geomancy.


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