The main mechanica difference between Divine & Arcane spellcasting is the Armored spellcasting penalty... An Arcane spellcaster cannot cast spels effectively while armored, unless they belong to a select few classes or have a certain feat, but even then they only get access to Light armor. Divine spellcasters on the otherhand may cast spells in practically any class of armor at no penalty.
I know that's a rule that exist. I just don't consider it to be relevant to the matter because... well... it isn't! Besides the fact that it has no weight in gameplay almost at all. It also does not give any color, feel or thema to arcane or divine casting. Take for example the augment sub-mechanic for the psionics casters. It is something that is very core to them, appears in almost every play style and define them.
I don't know if I mentioned it once already in this thread... but a system my group uses for sorcerers to make them actually feel different is to have Sorcerers run on the Spellpoint system. Sorcerers are supposed to be masters of their magic so having them use spellpoints instead of spell slots gives the class more flavor and makes them actually feel more like sorcerers and less like crippled wizards.
I think you already did. Although, truth be told, Sorcerer and Wizard already seem to be carbon copies of each other. What with the spell lists being the same, Summon Familiar and the like. I never understood the reason for a whole class that had just one change from the classic.
You can google Malazan and Warrens and find oodles of information for it.
That's the problem, oodles.
I don't think you detest me or wish harm upon me. It's just that I find the answer of "Just google for it" quite irritating. There's a lot of items for what we discuss. And they are not organized by any order what so ever. I found the dedicated wiki, some posts and another 12K results. I can't, in good time, read all of them. So, I'm sorry, if you can't be more helpful or cannot direct me to a more specific location then I'll have to give your suggestion (as lovely as it sounds) a pass.
As a general matter I'm agnostic as to divine v. arcane. D&D has a sort of default meta-setting that implies a division of powers between these two things, and a division of character roles.
The rules/dice/math suggest that there is no difference between the two. Even if the fluff is different, it makes no impact whatsoever.
I would happily call everything magic, in some form or another, and leave the rest to some combination of game mechanics and fluff.
One solution could certainly be that all spellcasters be merged into one. It's... a possibility.
Again, lazy designers putting a bunch of spells in the wrong schools does not mean the school system itself is flawed when we're talking about how schools should be handled. It's like say that the iPhone app store is a terrible idea because app developers put terrible apps and adware in it--the app store itself is a fine idea, it's the fault of Apple for not policing it better, and under more rigorous guidance it would work just fine.
Unfortunately, in this game you simply
do not have power over the players once you hand them the framework. Most people will use what exist because it's the easy route. Some will house rule. Only a few will create their own game. But there will always be those who mock up spells and switch things around which breaks the rules. You can finetune the RAW. You can't enforce RAI.
...D&D wizards implies a rigorous scientific magic setup...
Can we change shape the scientific feel? The only attemp close enought, IMO, is the Wild Mage because of his unpredictability. Even then he is still confined by a list that was pre-written, a dice that must be rolled and base cases for spells. How would one approach eliminating the "scientificism"?
If you're not planning to present spells to the players as attack/buff/BFC/etc. spells, then why are you talking about replacing schools with those classifications? You just said yourself that we already talk about certain kinds of spells based on their usage, so having spell schools obviously doesn't prevent that at all.
Because, if every school had spells with different names, flavors, special effects and colors but would still do the same thing across the board - then schools would be meaningless.
Since the schools are a way to create different kind of mages, then they need an obvious separation. The number of spells in each school's list won't do it. The name or description won't do it. Only (in my eyes) different ruling or benefits will do it. For me it's easy to group them by field of bonus. I'm open to suggestion.
Giving different mechanics to different kinds of casting is historically something D&D has done just fine, it's all the noncasters that all use the same general mechanics and blur together too much.
true dat