Conjuration/Necromancy

[meritamas]

You know, if Create Item is linked to Mysticism, while its closest analogue in future games is part of Conjuration, I'd say that Conjuration is part of Mysticism during the events of TES2: Daggerfall (Lore wise, I think the designations are actually arbitrary categories used to better understand magic anyway, something that Skyrim's lore supports by the fact the mages guild post-oblivion actually abolished the entire mysticism school and integrated its elements into the other five schools!)

This means you don't even need to add a new school.

Just have a "Conjure Item" effect that summons and equips more potent, but also temporary items of a specific type set during spellmaking, a "Conjure Creature" effect that does the same thing with creature types, matching levels to the player character and going up a list of enemy types, and an "Imbue Unlife" spell that lets you turn a corpse into an appropriate level undead.

The conjured item vanishes at the end of the spell, the conjured creatures vanish if killed or the spell ends, the conjured undead "die" if their hit points become zero, and will trigger a mysticism check at the end of the duration (Success=undead becomes just dead, failure=undead remains, but it becomes hostile to both you and any other non-undead creatures in the dungeon)

All of these could be Mysticism spells without screwing the lore up as of TES2 in the timeline.

I like this way of reasoning.
If we take out the 'new school' which means 'new skill' part, it all beings to seem doable. I'm like: "Why didn't I think of that?"

There could and probably should be a distinction made between 'creation', 'summoning' and 're-animating' (necromancy).
If something is 'created' by a spell effect, there should be a lot of flexibility as to what happens next (like after the spell or when the duration runs out), but if something is 'summoned', it should mean something like the following.

That given creature existed before you cast the spell, only somewhere else. Your casting the spell has somehow (mystically? ) made it change it's position in space. After this change is made, the given creature is there until it leaves of its own accord or something makes it change its position in space again (like a banish spell). Similar to player teleportation. You exert magicka to make the journey, not to stay there for some time and then automatically go back to where you were.

Where should we draw the line. What should be deemed 'created' and what 'summoned'? An easy rule of thumb could be: does it have a soul? If it has a soul, it cannot be created by normal magic, becasue any magic that 'creates' a soul is akin to those of the gods (in this world like Aedra or Daedra Princes). If it doesn't have a soul, then it can be 'created' by the player via 'normal' magic.

Another question would be how to get the summoned creature to serve/protect/follow you. There are questions of how the AI system works but also of design - like we can make a decision on whether the summoned creature should automatically be bound to its summoner or you need a separate spell for that.

If something (a dead body) is 're-animated', that opens up some more possibilities.

There is definitely a lot of thinking needed...

I like this idea enough to imagine myself working on implementing it one day. Not in the next few months though - I'm not nearly as good at modding the magic system as I'd like to be and like I think it is needed to pull off something like a conjuration/necromancy mod.

[Ah_Ftagn]

Oh, that last bit you recommended with the distinction of teleporting versus creating the conjured creature? Just make it not leave a corpse if the spell ends... the teleported creature goes away with a whoosh and a fancy effect instead of dying, just getting despawned instead. Alternatively, cause the creature summoned to go hostile instead when the spell ends, barring an appropriate check to pacify (as if it were "wild") at the end of the spell's effect.