Schools of Magic and Dark Souls Style Storytelling in D&D

In D&D, magic spells come in eight schools of magic: Abjuration, Evocation, Conjuration, Divination, Illusion, Enchantment, Transmutation, and Necromancy. As the folks at Web DM have discussed, there's a lot of overlap between them in both flavor and mechanics. For instance, they point out that one would think that Necromancy would be the magic most closely affiliated with the Shadowfell, given that it's the realm of darkness and death, but that it's actually Illusion that more explicitly draws upon the shadows of that place.

Still, for the most part magic schools are easy to ignore. They're really only important to Wizards, who specialize in certain types of spells, and to Arcane Trickster Rogues and Eldritch Knight Fighters, whose spell choices are generally limited to certain schools of magic.

But it occurs to me that magic schools have the potential to be a subtle storytelling device.

In Dark Souls, there are basically three kinds of magic. Miracles are the sort of Holy magic given to humanity through the Way of White, which was the religion that promoted devotion to Lord Gwyn. Pyromancy was considered dark and dangerous, as it originated with the Witch of Izalith, who, in an attempt to create a substitute for the First Flame, unleashed chaos and demons upon the world. Finally, Sorcery was pioneered by figures like Seath the Scaleless, and is the more intellectual breed of magic.

Dark Souls likes to tell its stories in very subtle ways, and part of the way it does that is by very carefully controlling what kind of spells or abilities an NPC or enemy has access to. Finding that a priestly character is using pyromancies is actually a big deal - suggesting that they are not so pious as they first appear and in fact have some connection to other parts of cosmos.

Good and evil are so ambiguous in the Souls series that the meaning of these spells being used or certain items being held by certain individuals is always going to be kind of open to interpretation.

But it strikes me that, when building a world, you could do some interesting things with spell schools.

For instance, you might establish that in a certain society, only certain types of magic are considered acceptable. Usually Necromancy is the first one banned, but you could have a society in which Divination is considered heretical - maybe a land governed by a strict interpretation of some prophecy. Or you could have some Fey court where the only acceptable magic forms are illusion or enchantment. Maybe the only place you can learn such magic is that fey court, and thus if you find an NPC or enemy who is using such magic, you know they have a connection to that area.

I often find "detective work" in D&D never winds up as satisfying as it seems like it should be. Mysteries either have to be so simple that the party will just stumble into the right solution or you run the risk of having the party get stumped and bored.

But by taking something like spell schools and giving them very clear and distinct meanings, you have the opportunity to be sort of subtle in an unsubtle way - you remind the players regularly of the meanings of these spell schools and then the clues become much clearer.