Forgotten Realms Wiki:Help-Categorizing spells

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A spell is any sort of magical incantation, charms, etc, whether arcane, divine, or otherwise that, is used or mentioned within the Forgotten Realms.

Categorization Example[]

By their very nature, spells have a lot more crunch to them than most other articles, and the edition of the spell has a lot to do with the spell's categorization. Spells have changed over the years from 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e (and soon, 5e) and the {{Spell}} template has been updated to accept info from all editions and present it organized by edition. (Note: for this template, 3.5 edition is considered 3rd edition because few if any changes were made to spells between 3e and 3.5.) For most spells, this helps prevent multiple nearly-identical articles being written, one for each edition of the spell, but it does require the author to explain the changes between editions in the article. An example spell infobox is shown to the right. Here is how you would go about categorizing this spell:

Automatic Categories[]

The template will automatically generate some of the categories for you, so let's go over these first. Fourth edition has a different name for each class's powers. So far, the names are Discipline, Evocation, Exploit, Hex, Prayer, Channel Divinity Prayer, and Spell. The template automatically generates these categories based on the type and variant:

Since this Evocation is also a spell in older editions, the template will also be put it in:

Category:Spells

Some subtemplates also generate categories. See below.

Spell Level and User Class, by Edition[]

This is the listed power level of the spell, as per the D&D rules, and the spell casting classes that use the spell. A new {{spell table}} template is available to create a neat list of classes and levels, plus automatically generate the corresponding categories. The example shows "Druid 2" for 4e, "Cleric 1, Druid 1, and Wizard 1" for 3e (don't worry about Air, Water, and Weather, we'll come back to that), "Druid 2" for 2e, and "Druid 2" for 1e. So this spell will be put in the following categories by the spell table templates:

Notice the use of the variant parameter in the {{spell table}} for the 4th edition level list.

Magic Schools[]

In each edition except 4th, all spells have a type of magic that it uses, called a school, which should be listed in the infobox. You would add the following categories:

We only categorize major schools and not subschools, so do not put this in a "Creation spells" category.

Spheres and Domains[]

For divine spells, 2e uses spheres for organizing spells by the deity that grants them and/or spells that a character class may access. In 3e, these are called domains. Note that all 2e divine spells have one or more spheres, but not all 3e divine spells belong to a domain. For the example, the {{spell table}} will add the following categories for you:

We do not bother categorizing domain and sphere spells by level since the 3e domains typically only have one spell per level (1–9) and are summarized quite nicely on their domain pages (Air domain, Water domain). The 2e sourcebooks have several optional changes and outright contradictions about which spells belong to which spheres and these are also summarized on their own pages (Weather sphere, Creation sphere).

Keywords and Descriptors[]

Fourth edition has keywords that are used to categorize the various powers. They are usually set off by a diamond (♦) in the description. Third edition has descriptors which do much the same thing. They are put in square brackets in the spell description, e.g., [Cold]. Note: not all 3e spells have descriptors and they do not always correspond to a domain. If the {{Desc}} template is used to add these keywords and descriptors to the infobox, they will automatically generate categories. For 4e, the variant parameter must be set to get the proper category. For this example, the following categories would automatically be generated:

User Race[]

A handful of spells are secrets only known among members of a particular race, or are rarely used by anyone not of that race. For example, a spell might be given the category Category:Drow spells

User Organization[]

A handful of spells are secrets only known among members of a particular organization, or are rarely used by anyone not of that organization. For example, a spell might be given the category Category:Cyricist spells.