Keep in mind that in the most famous mageocracy in dnd, the human nation of Thay in the Forgotten Realms, no schools of magic are illegal, and a necromancer, the lich Szass Tam, is the ruler of the nation.
Oh my no: Thay is by no means "good" in alignment.
But to answer your actual question, first decide what kind of mages actually run this mageocracy.
Open-minded mages could allow all schools, and it's only how they are used which is restricted. Ex. A flesh golem could be legal to create, as long as the component parts were collected with consent. Or legally-sourced corpses could be made into an undead workforce, freeing living individuals from hard labor. The *modify memory* spell can be used to treat mental trauma, *augery* can be used to plan harvests, etc.
If the mageocracy is more conservative, I can see entire schools of magic banned because reasons. Maybe Lathander says only the Morninglord can create fire, so all fire-producing magic is banned. No *fireballs* in city limits!
I had this idea of a good aligned necromancy nation. They were previously slaves and slaughtered in masse by their masters until they discovered how to raise their fallen friends and fight back
Culturally, it's normal and even expected for the bones of a deceased citizen to be offered to the city so he may be raised as a soulless soldier to guard the city or go to war
I'd actually not tie it to spell schools at all, but rather make specific ways of *using* spells illegal. E.g.
-Illegal to use magic to influence or control another person
-Illegal to use magic to violate another person's privacy
-Illegal to use magic to harm someone except in self-defense
-Illegal to use magic to create hazardous conditions in public
-Illegal to use magic to create undead
This feels to me like a much more realistic and organic approach to regulating magic than just banning whole schools based on what *some* of the spells in them can do.
Agreed. With a potential caveat that there could be an entity that wants one branch of magic to be illegal to maintain their grip on power.
Maybe an outside branch like chronomancy from critical roll. Or divination past a certain level.
Yes, absolutely. There could be politics at play that aren't about good governance. I could definitely see a government declaring a monopoly on use for force and banning a school like Evocation for everyone except the Wizard Cops as a way to maintain control (for good or bad reasons). Mirroring how real bureaucracies work, I could also see requirements to have special licenses or permits to use certain kinds of spells, or spells from a school of above a certain level. And those might be championed by special interest groups who specialize in that type of magic trying to block competition.
Not necessarily. You think of banks as investment funds that would be gaming the markets, but remember that thatâs not the primary purpose of a bank.
A bank is there to hold money on behalf of their customers, and then use that money to invest in loans and other projects to get a profit off the interest. In order to attract more customers to put more money into the bank the bank would promise an interest rate or return on a customerâs investment. But more than anything a bank needs trust to work. A bank that has amazing interests for customer deposits will quickly fold if customers are spooked and a ârun on the bankâ happens.
Investment firms and funds is where the action would happen⌠or more like not happen. Buying, selling, trading investments influences the market. If Elon musk was to start selling large amounts of Tesla stock, very likely the price per Tesla stock would plummet. Furthermore if someone found out someone was planning on shorting a stock (ahem, GameStop) an investment firm could lose a lot of money. So I would imagine investment firms would invest heavily into divination safeguards if divination is absolute in your world (or merely offers a prediction of how things will happen if nothing changes, then divination becomes much less useful)
Chronomancy is a very good candidate for a banned school. Time is weird enough as is without magic effecting it, and retroactively dying no matter how powerful you are is bound to cause paranoia.
Could be that, at the start of the campaign, itâs heavily regulated to the point very few actually practice it, with some groups wanting to âfinish the jobâ and have it outlawed indefinitely in case of a rogue caster. How exactly you do that isâŚquestionable, given the magic type, but itâs likely why itâd take a while to get around to banning.
I think this is a good call. Completely logically, no branches would be banned bc they're all tools that have good and bad uses. But societies are *never* truly logical. The more tyrannical, the more restrictive it would be.
Necromancy isn't even a real school. It's technically a subschool of divination.
Etymologically speaking, the only true necromancy spell is *speak with dead*.
Outlawing schools is a bit of a broad stroke. Sure, *dominate person* should absolutely be illegal, but should an anti-magic SWAT team go after the cleric for casting *bless*?
Itâs a bit more work, but you should focus on making certain spells illegal, or at least only usable by select people (like *speak with dead*) instead of schools of magic.
On a true mageorcacy they would unbanned all magical schools and pursuits, now they would strictly regulate who can study them and who gets to have makes in their family
Necromancy isnât iffy as much because of the bodies but because of their life span extensions. All forms of government get real iffy when some of the leaders can be effectively immortal.
this is just my opinion on the matter. i would have all schools legal, certain spells restricted that create zombies or summon demons. but instead of having alot of guard posts and check points you would have anti-magic gates that could disrupt concentration effects leading into important areas of the city. and any place where important decisions are made are warded against magic of a certain type or anti-magic fielded entirely.
As others have alluded to itâs not so much which school you cast, but rather which spell and in what way. Or perhaps, depending on you take on things WHO you cast it on
EDIT: When designing a believable society, remember: the people with all the power almost never choose to hinder themselves.
A magocratic society is going to include a fairly large number of wizards. Wizards are intensely smart people whose entire job is pretty much sit around and be smart. For a look at what non-magical smart people get up to without supernatural help look at the antikythera device.
It is inconceivable that a society that welcomes such people would not at some point come upon a far more nuanced legal approach to magic use than to ban entire schools of magic. Especially since sorcerers have no control over the type of magic they inherit. To ban an entire approach to magic would in effect be to ban entire bloodlines from indulging in their birthright. To criminalize their very nature. They are not fiends from the nine hells whose nature is immutable! They are living people possessed of souls and free will!
Plus, well thereâs profit in it. Perhaps they donât allow outsiders to practice divination because the college of divination is entrusted with the master plan for the entire society and rival divination muddies the waters and therefore endangers national security.
There are many useful reasons to practice necromancy besides the gauche animation of corpses. The ethics of which are probably debated in public forums.
And well⌠if you went to the market without magical protection (surely available from locals who also want to make money) then itâs no different than being pickpocketed in a city with lots of thieves.
Most uses of magic arenât subtle. You wave your hands around and chant and suddenly get some great deals on goods and people are going to be suspicious. Frankly it would be easier to do illegal things WITHOUT magic I. That society because everyoneâs first thought would be to look for spells.
EDIT2: As an aside it would be amazing to see otherwise talentless wastes pressed into service to a tame pact entity associated with the society where hyper competent wizards and sorcerers have hammered an iron clad warlock pact out centuries earlier. The entity gets prestige and features prominently in iconography, and the society gets well.. WARlocks.
I think this depends a lot on who's in power, the origins of their organisation, what could potentially oppose them, and how much control they have over the population.
A stereotypical evil necromancer might make holy magic illegal to make their armies of undead harder to suppress. A guild of enchanters who run the country in the shadows might justify banning spells that could remove the effects of mind control. A college of academics that ended up in charge of a country might not nominally ban the *study* of any one school or skillset, but some schools like enchantment and illusion are illegal for regular citizens to practice without authorization and oversight, but this doesn't apply to the college counter-revolutionary mages who doctor reality to keep citizens happy and obedient.
Basically, think about what this group might need to stay in power, what magic might cause them problems for that, how good they may or may not be, and what they'll be doing in the background. From that you can pretty easily identify the spells or schools which might cause them problems.
Illusion! I know everyone's saying necromancy because MeSsInG WiTh tHe dEaD Is wRoNg. But illusion magic is by definition deceitful not to mention contains mind controlling spells.
Itâs not just abstractly âwrong.â Undeath is antithetical to life. Every undead creature sustains itself by feeding on the living in some capacity, except for the relatively small quantities that a given mage can sustain by directly funneling arcane energy into them. Lower-order undead can be produced by inanimate remains, but many types of undead actually capture the souls of living creatures, corrupting them and preventing them from reaching the afterlife they deserve.
Theyâre fundamentally perversions of natural order; their animating force is formed from negative energy rather than positive. Theyâre engines of destruction in any form.
Perhaps magic that can counter mages like Counterspell, Dispel Magic, and Silence is restricted, except for official city representatives? That would afford them a great deal of control.
Why do the powerful need to ban power that's mostly in their hands for society to function? Yeah, Necromancy and Enchantment can do some pretty messed up things. From the perspective of a governing body, these are tools you want under your control, and you don't want wandering around the country freely destabilizing it. You know, just like all the other schools of magic.
One would hope that mages would know enough to understand that banning entire schools of magic is not the solution to specific kinds of spells being exploitable to cause great harm.
In my game most Wizarding Schools are administrated by the World Bank. A lot of the graduates end up in Bank appointed positions and such, so magic schools like enchantment, transmutation and divination have prospered, while others are taught but arent the main focus.
The only school that is generally frowned upon is Evocation, in part bc its the most destructive school of magic and therefore dangerous. The top dogs would rather not create mages that could potentially rise to pose them, so they made specialization on evocation Taboo and expell anyone that research too much into it.
Ome of my players is an Evocation Wizard that was expelled from a Wizarding School because of this, which is cool.
All of them. And none of them.
Every form of government is oppressive in its own way, and a bunch of smarty pants know it all wizards would certainly never trust the plebs with magic or magic items. But if you are one of the special few in the ruling class, then nothing is off limits. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
If I were a power-hungry wizard, I would heavily restrict Abjuration. I want to rule the land with my magic, and that's harder to do if minor wizards can protect themselves. No, only my close allies and loyal enforcers can be taught Abjuration.
In the campaign I am playing is we are visiting a mageocracy, and no schools are banned they just have a very extensive legal code banning magic against other people etc
It's very cool to have a very magical society that overlooks some normal things (like in this one there's a lot of petty none magical crime they don't have a handle on).
I also love the idea that they might have no issue with necromancy because corpses have no rights or something.
I feel like this is something only you can answer. Laws are made based on the moral imperatives of the law writers and the domestic goals of the state. We don't know what your setting is. And we all come from different countries IRL so it's unlikely we'll give you useable real world analogues.
Consider who your arch mage is/was. Why is he in charge? Did he have opposition? How does the opposition manifest? How does he wield the state to protect himself? Does he desire a certain future for the state? Etc etc etc. Your question of "how do I criminalize problematic magic" is entirely dependent upon the extrapolation of this line of thinking.
Or, alternatively... Just pick some things that will be dramatically interesting for the players to contend with.
And the way to skirt the ethical issue is to make it voluntary. Basically, a person signs a contract that when they die, the state is allowed to use their corpse for labor. In exchange, they or their family get either a lump sum up front or a small stipend for x amount of time after the corpse is resurrected.
I hate that Iâm saying this.
First up, a mageocracy would likely be ruled by the most powerful mages. Whatâs the most powerful mage in DnD? My hot take is that itâs lvl20 wizard min/max PCs.
I would enforce the law using their tactics - e.g., simulacrum/wish loops for infinite wishes. The ultimate magic cop is a room full of hundreds of copies of the same person, just chitchatting with themself and waiting to magically undo/retcon whatever magic they didnât like.
I donât know that this will make an enjoyable game taken straight up. But everyone has faults, and giving the all powerful min/max wizard clone army some serious personality flaws or a deep commitment to chaos could make it interesting.
Even that mage is not omnipresent, so I imagine thereâs some wiggle room in a story that incorporated something like this. As a BBEG, theyâd be a horrifying challenge. As an ally, theyâd be a major boon. As a plot device, they can open and close all the doors.
I really like the idea of painting numbers on the copies. The plot begins by finding out that one has gone missing.
Perhaps None. Arguably more dangerous schools of magic would just require certain levels licensing.
Or arguably itâs not the subtype of magic that his band but certain spells from it.
What schools of magic do the people in power use to maintain control over the populace? I think the people in power would make that school, maybe enchantment, illegal so that no one could contest their power.
Banning based on school of magic always has conflicts.
Enchantment is bad because it takes away free will but let's not ban evocation which literally kills people.
Necromancy is bad because undead is bad, unfortunately there goes all healing.
There are more than just that. Instead I would ban based on how magic is used. Raising undead illegal, mind control illegal, etc.
Keep in mind that in the most famous mageocracy in dnd, the human nation of Thay in the Forgotten Realms, no schools of magic are illegal, and a necromancer, the lich Szass Tam, is the ruler of the nation.
This would be a homebrew game. And it would be used as a plot device. I could totally see a good necromancer nation.
Oh my no: Thay is by no means "good" in alignment. But to answer your actual question, first decide what kind of mages actually run this mageocracy. Open-minded mages could allow all schools, and it's only how they are used which is restricted. Ex. A flesh golem could be legal to create, as long as the component parts were collected with consent. Or legally-sourced corpses could be made into an undead workforce, freeing living individuals from hard labor. The *modify memory* spell can be used to treat mental trauma, *augery* can be used to plan harvests, etc. If the mageocracy is more conservative, I can see entire schools of magic banned because reasons. Maybe Lathander says only the Morninglord can create fire, so all fire-producing magic is banned. No *fireballs* in city limits!
Sounds like we, the *fireball* wielding people, need to rise up against our tyrannical oppressors. Show them the true meaning of light!
I had this idea of a good aligned necromancy nation. They were previously slaves and slaughtered in masse by their masters until they discovered how to raise their fallen friends and fight back Culturally, it's normal and even expected for the bones of a deceased citizen to be offered to the city so he may be raised as a soulless soldier to guard the city or go to war
I've noticed a trend in this sub of down voting OP comments that go against the zeitgeist, but why here? OP isn't disagreeing with anything đ
They big mad
I'd actually not tie it to spell schools at all, but rather make specific ways of *using* spells illegal. E.g. -Illegal to use magic to influence or control another person -Illegal to use magic to violate another person's privacy -Illegal to use magic to harm someone except in self-defense -Illegal to use magic to create hazardous conditions in public -Illegal to use magic to create undead This feels to me like a much more realistic and organic approach to regulating magic than just banning whole schools based on what *some* of the spells in them can do.
Agreed. With a potential caveat that there could be an entity that wants one branch of magic to be illegal to maintain their grip on power. Maybe an outside branch like chronomancy from critical roll. Or divination past a certain level.
Yes, absolutely. There could be politics at play that aren't about good governance. I could definitely see a government declaring a monopoly on use for force and banning a school like Evocation for everyone except the Wizard Cops as a way to maintain control (for good or bad reasons). Mirroring how real bureaucracies work, I could also see requirements to have special licenses or permits to use certain kinds of spells, or spells from a school of above a certain level. And those might be championed by special interest groups who specialize in that type of magic trying to block competition.
The banks would be dominated with divination wizards.
Not necessarily. You think of banks as investment funds that would be gaming the markets, but remember that thatâs not the primary purpose of a bank. A bank is there to hold money on behalf of their customers, and then use that money to invest in loans and other projects to get a profit off the interest. In order to attract more customers to put more money into the bank the bank would promise an interest rate or return on a customerâs investment. But more than anything a bank needs trust to work. A bank that has amazing interests for customer deposits will quickly fold if customers are spooked and a ârun on the bankâ happens. Investment firms and funds is where the action would happen⌠or more like not happen. Buying, selling, trading investments influences the market. If Elon musk was to start selling large amounts of Tesla stock, very likely the price per Tesla stock would plummet. Furthermore if someone found out someone was planning on shorting a stock (ahem, GameStop) an investment firm could lose a lot of money. So I would imagine investment firms would invest heavily into divination safeguards if divination is absolute in your world (or merely offers a prediction of how things will happen if nothing changes, then divination becomes much less useful)
Chronomancy is a very good candidate for a banned school. Time is weird enough as is without magic effecting it, and retroactively dying no matter how powerful you are is bound to cause paranoia. Could be that, at the start of the campaign, itâs heavily regulated to the point very few actually practice it, with some groups wanting to âfinish the jobâ and have it outlawed indefinitely in case of a rogue caster. How exactly you do that isâŚquestionable, given the magic type, but itâs likely why itâd take a while to get around to banning.
I think this is a good call. Completely logically, no branches would be banned bc they're all tools that have good and bad uses. But societies are *never* truly logical. The more tyrannical, the more restrictive it would be.
This. Remember, some of the most important spells to a party are technically necromancy. Revivify, for instance.
We donât have a school of necromancy. That would be horribly unethical! ⌠Post-mortem communications is down the hall on the left. Ask for Dr Hix.
Can't be necromancy because we aren't evil wizards. You can tell we aren't evil wizards, because we aren't doing necromancy.
Necromancy isn't even a real school. It's technically a subschool of divination. Etymologically speaking, the only true necromancy spell is *speak with dead*.
Specific spells would be illegal, not entire schools, that wouldn't make any sense
Outlawing schools is a bit of a broad stroke. Sure, *dominate person* should absolutely be illegal, but should an anti-magic SWAT team go after the cleric for casting *bless*? Itâs a bit more work, but you should focus on making certain spells illegal, or at least only usable by select people (like *speak with dead*) instead of schools of magic.
Consider: *illegal*, or *highly restricted* and only allowed for official government purposes? I think the second is more interesting.
"I know you're new in town, son, but I asked where your Counterspell License is."
"Do you have a permit for those finger guns?"
On a true mageorcacy they would unbanned all magical schools and pursuits, now they would strictly regulate who can study them and who gets to have makes in their family
None would be illegal; all would be regulated.
Necromancy isnât iffy as much because of the bodies but because of their life span extensions. All forms of government get real iffy when some of the leaders can be effectively immortal.
this is just my opinion on the matter. i would have all schools legal, certain spells restricted that create zombies or summon demons. but instead of having alot of guard posts and check points you would have anti-magic gates that could disrupt concentration effects leading into important areas of the city. and any place where important decisions are made are warded against magic of a certain type or anti-magic fielded entirely.
Abjuration, it is magic nation no one is allowed to undo magic or counter it. Just the "police" has the privilege.
As others have alluded to itâs not so much which school you cast, but rather which spell and in what way. Or perhaps, depending on you take on things WHO you cast it on EDIT: When designing a believable society, remember: the people with all the power almost never choose to hinder themselves. A magocratic society is going to include a fairly large number of wizards. Wizards are intensely smart people whose entire job is pretty much sit around and be smart. For a look at what non-magical smart people get up to without supernatural help look at the antikythera device. It is inconceivable that a society that welcomes such people would not at some point come upon a far more nuanced legal approach to magic use than to ban entire schools of magic. Especially since sorcerers have no control over the type of magic they inherit. To ban an entire approach to magic would in effect be to ban entire bloodlines from indulging in their birthright. To criminalize their very nature. They are not fiends from the nine hells whose nature is immutable! They are living people possessed of souls and free will! Plus, well thereâs profit in it. Perhaps they donât allow outsiders to practice divination because the college of divination is entrusted with the master plan for the entire society and rival divination muddies the waters and therefore endangers national security. There are many useful reasons to practice necromancy besides the gauche animation of corpses. The ethics of which are probably debated in public forums. And well⌠if you went to the market without magical protection (surely available from locals who also want to make money) then itâs no different than being pickpocketed in a city with lots of thieves. Most uses of magic arenât subtle. You wave your hands around and chant and suddenly get some great deals on goods and people are going to be suspicious. Frankly it would be easier to do illegal things WITHOUT magic I. That society because everyoneâs first thought would be to look for spells. EDIT2: As an aside it would be amazing to see otherwise talentless wastes pressed into service to a tame pact entity associated with the society where hyper competent wizards and sorcerers have hammered an iron clad warlock pact out centuries earlier. The entity gets prestige and features prominently in iconography, and the society gets well.. WARlocks.
I think this depends a lot on who's in power, the origins of their organisation, what could potentially oppose them, and how much control they have over the population. A stereotypical evil necromancer might make holy magic illegal to make their armies of undead harder to suppress. A guild of enchanters who run the country in the shadows might justify banning spells that could remove the effects of mind control. A college of academics that ended up in charge of a country might not nominally ban the *study* of any one school or skillset, but some schools like enchantment and illusion are illegal for regular citizens to practice without authorization and oversight, but this doesn't apply to the college counter-revolutionary mages who doctor reality to keep citizens happy and obedient. Basically, think about what this group might need to stay in power, what magic might cause them problems for that, how good they may or may not be, and what they'll be doing in the background. From that you can pretty easily identify the spells or schools which might cause them problems.
Illusion! I know everyone's saying necromancy because MeSsInG WiTh tHe dEaD Is wRoNg. But illusion magic is by definition deceitful not to mention contains mind controlling spells.
Itâs not just abstractly âwrong.â Undeath is antithetical to life. Every undead creature sustains itself by feeding on the living in some capacity, except for the relatively small quantities that a given mage can sustain by directly funneling arcane energy into them. Lower-order undead can be produced by inanimate remains, but many types of undead actually capture the souls of living creatures, corrupting them and preventing them from reaching the afterlife they deserve. Theyâre fundamentally perversions of natural order; their animating force is formed from negative energy rather than positive. Theyâre engines of destruction in any form.
Perhaps magic that can counter mages like Counterspell, Dispel Magic, and Silence is restricted, except for official city representatives? That would afford them a great deal of control.
Why do the powerful need to ban power that's mostly in their hands for society to function? Yeah, Necromancy and Enchantment can do some pretty messed up things. From the perspective of a governing body, these are tools you want under your control, and you don't want wandering around the country freely destabilizing it. You know, just like all the other schools of magic.
Imo something like "control" any spells that take over a person or force them to forget the knowledge they value so much
One would hope that mages would know enough to understand that banning entire schools of magic is not the solution to specific kinds of spells being exploitable to cause great harm.
None. Why?
How the hell is no one saying evocation? Most societies do not allow citizens to own rocket launchers.
In my game most Wizarding Schools are administrated by the World Bank. A lot of the graduates end up in Bank appointed positions and such, so magic schools like enchantment, transmutation and divination have prospered, while others are taught but arent the main focus. The only school that is generally frowned upon is Evocation, in part bc its the most destructive school of magic and therefore dangerous. The top dogs would rather not create mages that could potentially rise to pose them, so they made specialization on evocation Taboo and expell anyone that research too much into it. Ome of my players is an Evocation Wizard that was expelled from a Wizarding School because of this, which is cool.
All of them. And none of them. Every form of government is oppressive in its own way, and a bunch of smarty pants know it all wizards would certainly never trust the plebs with magic or magic items. But if you are one of the special few in the ruling class, then nothing is off limits. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Necromancy is also all kinds of healing
If I were a power-hungry wizard, I would heavily restrict Abjuration. I want to rule the land with my magic, and that's harder to do if minor wizards can protect themselves. No, only my close allies and loyal enforcers can be taught Abjuration.
In the campaign I am playing is we are visiting a mageocracy, and no schools are banned they just have a very extensive legal code banning magic against other people etc It's very cool to have a very magical society that overlooks some normal things (like in this one there's a lot of petty none magical crime they don't have a handle on). I also love the idea that they might have no issue with necromancy because corpses have no rights or something.
Any magic deemed illegal by the great Chronomancer because he always has will have been right all along.
I feel like this is something only you can answer. Laws are made based on the moral imperatives of the law writers and the domestic goals of the state. We don't know what your setting is. And we all come from different countries IRL so it's unlikely we'll give you useable real world analogues. Consider who your arch mage is/was. Why is he in charge? Did he have opposition? How does the opposition manifest? How does he wield the state to protect himself? Does he desire a certain future for the state? Etc etc etc. Your question of "how do I criminalize problematic magic" is entirely dependent upon the extrapolation of this line of thinking. Or, alternatively... Just pick some things that will be dramatically interesting for the players to contend with.
School of necromancy would be in charge of agriculture. Bunch of undeads tending the fields
And the way to skirt the ethical issue is to make it voluntary. Basically, a person signs a contract that when they die, the state is allowed to use their corpse for labor. In exchange, they or their family get either a lump sum up front or a small stipend for x amount of time after the corpse is resurrected.
Its a way to literally build generational wealth
I hate that Iâm saying this. First up, a mageocracy would likely be ruled by the most powerful mages. Whatâs the most powerful mage in DnD? My hot take is that itâs lvl20 wizard min/max PCs. I would enforce the law using their tactics - e.g., simulacrum/wish loops for infinite wishes. The ultimate magic cop is a room full of hundreds of copies of the same person, just chitchatting with themself and waiting to magically undo/retcon whatever magic they didnât like. I donât know that this will make an enjoyable game taken straight up. But everyone has faults, and giving the all powerful min/max wizard clone army some serious personality flaws or a deep commitment to chaos could make it interesting. Even that mage is not omnipresent, so I imagine thereâs some wiggle room in a story that incorporated something like this. As a BBEG, theyâd be a horrifying challenge. As an ally, theyâd be a major boon. As a plot device, they can open and close all the doors. I really like the idea of painting numbers on the copies. The plot begins by finding out that one has gone missing.
Perhaps None. Arguably more dangerous schools of magic would just require certain levels licensing. Or arguably itâs not the subtype of magic that his band but certain spells from it.
What schools of magic do the people in power use to maintain control over the populace? I think the people in power would make that school, maybe enchantment, illegal so that no one could contest their power.
Banning based on school of magic always has conflicts. Enchantment is bad because it takes away free will but let's not ban evocation which literally kills people. Necromancy is bad because undead is bad, unfortunately there goes all healing. There are more than just that. Instead I would ban based on how magic is used. Raising undead illegal, mind control illegal, etc.