Time to bring back the prose?

Bedrockgames said:

Personally i like all the info in one section. Someimes it is unavoidable, but i wouldn't want to have to look up both the spell and the fire effect.

And again, this example really lacks the kind of text i want. Really want something like 2-8 paragraphs of info depending on the spell.

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While I don't think spells will be as "MTG-esque" as I'd like, I think that much text is equally unrealistic. Nobody's going to read through ~avg 5 paragraphs when they've got anywhere from 5-20 spells. Not to mention how much space that'd take up in a book.

shidaku said:

While I don't think spells will be as "MTG-esque" as I'd like, I think that much text is equally unrealistic. Nobody's going to read through ~avg 5 paragraphs when they've got anywhere from 5-20 spells. Not to mention how much space that'd take up in a book.

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In previous editions you had 2-8 paragraphs for spells (some being less others more), most seemed to clock in at 2-3. Yet people still read the spell entries (a spell like wish almost demands a lengthy entry). So I think you underestimate the number of people willing to read 2-8 paragraphs.

Re: Reflavoring spells

Incenjucar said:

This is the kind of stuff that happens when you encourage reflavoring things. I could go on for pages on the various great flavor tweaks I've seen in the two groups I'm involved in.

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If you have that much material available, have you given any thought to writing some of it up and pitching articles to Dragon magazine? I think that there might be quite an audience out there interested in reading how some of the more creative players use the existing rules to play in ways that some other players might not have thought of.

(The writing example that sticks in my mind is that of Jared von Hindman, who writes the "D&D Outsider" columns for Dragon: he started by satirizing D&D monsters on his own web pages, then later got involved in Dragon and is now a regular columnist. Depending on how many pages of examples you have available, that sounds like the sort of pitch that Dragon might not get very often.)

Tallifer said:

That makes no sense at all to me.

If I want to play a Paladin in basic Labyrinth Lord, I just roll a cleric and write Paladin on the top of the sheet. Better that than be forced to roleplay a class (the armoured mace-wielding cleric) which I personally consider completely alien to mediaeval fantasy.

If want to play a hard-hitting Friar in D&D with a heavy shod staff and some light healing (just like from my favourite on-line game dark Age of Camelot), I can just roll a Hybrid Avenger Cleric and refluff the Greataxe into a Heavy Shod Staff. No rule changes necessary, no hassles for me or the dungeon master.

Reskinning is elegant and solves all the problems of artificial mechanical and meta-gaming restraints.

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I don't have any issues with this sort of reskinning. If the group wants to adjust some of the game objects (fluff OR mechanics) to emulate a different setting or genre, sure that's fine and may be worth some advice spent on it in the DMG. Not the PHB though, imo. Making changes to the game's default imagery should be something that the whole group agrees to, even if it's a character ability.

I was more responding to shidaku criticizing descriptive spells for removing an important avenue of player creativity from the game. That I thought was hogwash.

I'm sure Incenjucar and others have examples of fantastic and interesting spell/ability reflavorings. I'm not saying you can't get very creative with it; people can be creative with anything. What strikes me as sort of sad about it is it just feels so meaningless and compartmentalized away from the rest of the game system. Something about it feels...cynical.

Bedrockgames said:

In previous editions you had 2-8 paragraphs for spells (some being less others more), most seemed to clock in at 2-3. Yet people still read the spell entries (a spell like wish almost demands a lengthy entry). So I think you underestimate the number of people willing to read 2-8 paragraphs.

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"Must spread XP blah blah blah"

You hit it. Nobody had a problem with this before. The terse write-ups of powers/spells/etc was a solution in search of a problem.

shidaku said:

That aside, is there really anything wrong with changing Fireball from "fire" to "cold" and calling it "Iceball"? There's no need to alter the spell mechanics, there's no need to alter the way the entire system works, you just replace "fire" with "cold" and you're done.

Instead of having a million duplicated spells for every power type, or creating Themes/Backgrounds/PP/PrCs that change the damage type, just provide one spell that is an example of a certain type of spell. Fireball is a ranged blast. Ray of Frost is a ray. Cone of Cold is a close-burst, Orb of Acid is a ranged touch orb. The game doesn't change from all of these being radiant damage. It will keep the bloat down will allowing greater spell diversity(not having duplicates wasting page space), and increasing player customization.

As long as the rules are clear on how and when a player can pick the damage type, then what's the problem?

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I totally agree with you. Completely. But you can't do this in D&D. If you do, it's not D&D. D&D is fireball and cone of cold. It's not energy ball and energy burst (as in the XPH).

Would it hurt anything mechanically to let players decide their damage type when they cast a spell? No. Would it hurt D&D as a whole to do so? Absolutely.

tuxgeo said:

If you have that much material available, have you given any thought to writing some of it up and pitching articles to Dragon magazine? I think that there might be quite an audience out there interested in reading how some of the more creative players use the existing rules to play in ways that some other players might not have thought of.

(The writing example that sticks in my mind is that of Jared von Hindman, who writes the "D&D Outsider" columns for Dragon: he started by satirizing D&D monsters on his own web pages, then later got involved in Dragon and is now a regular columnist. Depending on how many pages of examples you have available, that sounds like the sort of pitch that Dragon might not get very often.)

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Unfortunately, I'm still focused working on my elemental classes - the second of the four is currently in the editing stage! That said, it's certainly something someone could write. You could easily make category lists of creative options and character themes; that Invoker of mine, for example, has themes of Love and Angel Summoning, so his arsenal also includes an Angel of Passion and an Angel of Affection. As a bonus, such lists are just as useful for a DM who wants to reflavor NPCs and monsters.

--

Libramarian: I find D&D's default flavor to be bland. Without creative options to break out of that, or things like Planescape and Dark Sun, I wouldn't be able to get into the game that much. Creative flavor options expand D&D's atmosphere in a way that lets people find something that they find interesting, and apply it to a fun game that otherwise might not be that interesting for them. I've been involved in Encounters for quite awhile now, and I've noticed a lot of players have a hard time really getting into the game until they start getting creative with their characters, so it's not just me - I've seen luchadors and lawyers.

Just like DM ownership, which some designers feel is so important that they muse about bad rules helping to increase ownership, Player ownership is vital to the enjoyment of the game for many people, and reflavoring is a simple way to obtain this.

Libramarian said:

I don't have any issues with this sort of reskinning. If the group wants to adjust some of the game objects (fluff OR mechanics) to emulate a different setting or genre, sure that's fine and may be worth some advice spent on it in the DMG. Not the PHB though, imo. Making changes to the game's default imagery should be something that the whole group agrees to, even if it's a character ability.

I was more responding to shidaku criticizing descriptive spells for removing an important avenue of player creativity from the game. That I thought was hogwash.

I'm sure Incenjucar and others have examples of fantastic and interesting spell/ability reflavorings. I'm not saying you can't get very creative with it; people can be creative with anything. What strikes me as sort of sad about it is it just feels so meaningless and compartmentalized away from the rest of the game system. Something about it feels...cynical.

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I can see your point, but Rolemaster was a good (awful) example of a system wherein the lack of reskinning led to lists upon lists of spells which had no purpose other than to provide parallel spells of damage and effect for different elemental sources. Page upon page was dedicated to spells for waterball, airball, earthball, gasball, lightningball, steamball, plasmaball, iceball... Fortunately I have never seen that kind of lameness in Pathfinder or AD&D.

Bedrockgames said:

In previous editions you had 2-8 paragraphs for spells (some being less others more)

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Looking through the AD&D PHB, most spells are one paragraph in explanation/description, generally of 10 or so lines.

The longest descriptions that I noticed are for Find Familiar, Identify, Spiritwrack, Cacodemon and Antipathy/Sympathy. And that long description is not a sign of great flavour or fiction, it's a sign primarily of mechanical complexity (unnecessary in the case of Identify, in my view) - Cacodemon being an exception here, as one of the more flavourful f the AD&D MU spells, although I would guess one of the least frequently used.

Bedrockgames said:

a spell like wish almost demands a lengthy entry

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AD&D PHB, p 94:


Limited Wish adds the following relevant information (the bits I've cut out all pertain to the limited nature of a limited wish (PHB p 88:



These could be combined together to create a fairly succinct spell description:

Wish

Level:9
Range: Unlimited
Duration: Special
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V
Casting Time: Special
Saving Throw: Special

Explanation/Description: Wish is a very potent but difficult spells. It will fulfill literally the utterance of the spell caster. Thus, the actuality of the past, present or future might be altered.

Casting wish will cause the caster to be weak (-3 on strength) and require 2 to 8 days of bed rest due to the stresses the wish places on his or her body, unless the wish is used to alter reality with respect to hit points sustained by a party, to bring a dead character back to life, or to escape from a difficult situation by lifiting the spell caster (and his or her party) from one place to another.

Regardless of what is wished for, the exact terminology of he wish spell is likely to be carried through. Greedy desires will usually end in disaster for the wisher. (This discretionary power of the referee is necessary to maintain game balance. As wishing another dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spell caster to a future period where the object is no longer alive, i.e. putting the wishing character out of the campaign.)

Casting time is the actual number of seconds - at six per segment - to phrase the wish.​

Looking at this, we could then:

*delete the first line, which is somewhat redundant (in particular, the claim that the spell is difficult is not borne out by the actual mechanics, which make it easier to cast than many spells because it has only a verbal compoenent);

*clarify the disability clause - is the weakness permament and in addition to the bed rest, or is it cured by the bed rest? Most players eeem to assume the latter.

So here is a revised spell description:

Wish

Level:9
Range: Unlimited
Duration: Special
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V
Casting Time: Special
Saving Throw: Special

Explanation/Description: Speaking a wish will fulfill literally the utterance of the spell caster, altering the past, present or future.

Casting wish will cause the caster to be weak (-3 on strength) due to the stresses the wish places on his or her body, unless the wish is used to alter reality with respect to hit points sustained by a party, to bring a dead character back to life, or to escape from a difficult situation by lifiting the spell caster (and his or her party) from one place to another. Recovering from such weakness will require 2 to 8 days of bed rest.

Regardless of what is wished for, the exact terminology of he wish spell is likely to be carried through. Greedy desires will usually end in disaster for the wisher. (This discretionary power of the referee is necessary to maintain game balance. As wishing another dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spell caster to a future period where the object is no longer alive, i.e. putting the wishing character out of the campaign.)

Casting time is the actual number of seconds - at six per segment - to phrase the wish.​

Suppose we had a general mechanic for being weakened by casting a spell, and for spoken word casting times, we could abbreviate the stat block like so:

Wish

Level:9
Range: Unlimited
Duration: Special
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, weakening (but see below)
Casting Time: Special
Saving Throw: Spoken word

Explanation/Description: Speaking a wish will fulfill literally the utterance of the spell caster, altering the past, present or future.

Casting wish will weaken the caster unless the wish is used to directly aid the caster and/or one or more members of his or her party against harm (without thereby directly harming or hindering any other person).

Regardless of what is wished for, the exact terminology of he wish spell is likely to be carried through. Greedy desires will usually end in disaster for the wisher. (This discretionary power of the referee is necessary to maintain game balance. As wishing another dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spell caster to a future period where the object is no longer alive, i.e. putting the wishing character out of the campaign.)​

That seems a respectable sort of spell description, comparable to some of the more complex of the 4e spells. The idea that Wish needs a long description seems to be a later thing. I don't have a 2nd ed AD&D PHB, but in the Rules Cyclopedia the description of the spell is about 2 columns on a 3-column page.

Bedrockgames said:

I think this sliver of an example you provide is a straw man so I won't comment on it directly.

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I don't think it's a straw man at all. It's the example that's been given in the thread, and multiple posters have said that the sort of prose that it exemplifies helps with prep/expressing the spirit of the game.

If that is not an example of prose in a spell description that helps with prep, and with expressing the spirit of the game, then what is?

Bedrockgames said:

Whether I am making an evil wizard and want to choose his spells carefully or deciding on some clever uses for spells or wards in the game (or finding a spell that could itself provide an adventure) reading the descriptions, and having more than a single line of text is important to me.

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This is in part a function of the monster and encounter build rules. Should I be reading through the description of PC-building resource in order to find story elements and motivation for my evil wizards at all?

billd91 said:

Moreover, once the special effect in Champions is selected... it remains selected. It's not like using Come and Get It in which it might be posturing and strutting to make an orc rush you and then emphasizing how tasty you are to make the ooze come your way.

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This sort of "fortune in the middle" narration has been with us at least since Gygax's AD&D. It is the canonical way of narrating saving throws in AD&D, as described by Gygax. And there is a strong implication that it is also key to hit point narration: 8 points of damage from a sword mean something different to a high level figher at full hp (a scratch or graze, or perhaps tiring dodging), a high level fighter on 8 hp (a solid blow that the fighter is too dired to duck/avoid, and that therefore knocks the fighter unconscious) and a 1st level magic-user on his/her full 4 hp (a blow that the MU is to unskiled to avoid, and that kills him/her outright - in AD&D death occuring on any blow that reduces you to -4 in a single hit).

Come and Get It just shifts this style of narration from the game's passive/defence mechanics to its active mecanics also.