Displacement - a bit wussy eh? Mirror image too...

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Why should magic be more risky than anything else?

Why not? Adventuring is a risky business.

Off course, the risk of this 5 % off-chance that something worse happens is probably the maximum I'd go.

 

[BryonD]

Because it's magic.

So all magic in D&D is risky now? I haven't seen evidence of that.

 

[Jack99]

Oh I agree that casters (not just Wizards) needed to be toned down a bit, but I think they may be going a bit too far. The pendulum can swing too far the other way.

I agree with you. However, I do want to point out that it is easier buffing a wizard class after release, than nerfing it, at least spell-wise. So while I don't hope, I rather have them go a bit too far, than not far enough.

 

[Simon Marks]

So all magic in D&D is risky now? I haven't seen evidence of that.

No, but in my opinion, it should be.

Obviously, D&D has never really had risky magic. But when asked "Why should magic be riskier?" the answer is "because it's magic".

 

[Plane Sailing]

Fine by me. The spell did what it was meant to do: force a reroll.

Although you are not answering the implied question of whether that is a reasonable thing for a 16th level power to do.

OK, I suppose by implication you think that is a reasonable thing for a 16th level power.

For me, I'll wait until I can see the whole nine yards, but it certainly seems a pretty feeble spell.

(Then again, considering the "greater invisibility" on that page is significantly weaker than the traditional 2nd level invisibility spell, perhaps it says something about the whole range of utility spells that we can expect to see)

Cheers

 

[Leatherhead]

Why not? Adventuring is a risky business.

Off course, the risk of this 5 % off-chance that something worse happens is probably the maximum I'd go.

No, but in my opinion, it should be.

Obviously, D&D has never really had risky magic. But when asked "Why should magic be riskier?" the answer is "because it's magic".

From a mechanical point of view, if all power sources are of equivalent power (as they seem to be pushing for in 4th edition), and if magic is the only thing that can backfire, then magic would be less desirable than the other sources of power that won't literally blow up in your face when you use them.

 

[jtrowell]

Doesn't displacement force the attacker to keep the *lower* roll ?

And about mirror image, I expect that it was an error, and that you lose an image only if it is a miss *because of the power* (so if it miss by more than 6 you don't lose an image).

About the targeting effect, I would like the "bonus defence versus attacks on AC or Ref" to be changed into "bonus defence against targeted attacks (melee or ranged, but not burst or blast)", and maybe it has since, as it was only a preview exemple from a beta version, not the final one.

 

[Voss]

The attacker swings. You perceive that your ally will be struck, and create a displacing image that makes it hard for the enemy to strike. Tadaa.

Look, if this is going to be a problem, every reroll ability is going to be a problem. No one seems to think that Elvish Accuracy means you shoot an arrow, miss your target, rewind time complete with a backwards traveling arrow returning to your quiver and a shpshpshpshp noise, and try again. No one thinks a halfling using his luck power pulls an orc's ax out of his own skull, hands it back to the orc, and asks for a do-over.

This is true. But neither of those powers involve someone else *taking an actual action*. The actual wizard character is actually doing something, right *after* the attack, using up his one immediate action for the round. The elf and halfling abilities are in a real way, part of the attack, they're happening with player knowledge, sure, but unlike the displacement spell, there is nothing that says the character is aware or actively doing something- he's just unusually focused for that attack.

The halfling and elf powers work within the narrative. Displacement actively restructures the game world- and is a very meta-game spell. Its either rolling back time, or its always on (effecting everyone!), but irrelevant except for once an encounter, or its cast in negative time in order to save a party memeber. None of these make me happy, particularly with the descriptive text, because the target *wasn't* 'appearing to be standing slightly to the left or right of his actual position, making it harder for enemies to hit him'. until after the spell is used. It actually looks like the original version lasted for the whole encounter (which would have made sense with the description), and when the spell got changed to this version, no one bothered to changed the descriptive text.

Interestingly, if the name was changed and the flavor was something like 'With a gesture, you teleport an ally out of the way of an attack', it wouldn't bother me so much. It would at least be consistent with the effect.

 

[Simon Marks]

From a mechanical point of view, if all power sources are of equivalent power (as they seem to be pushing for in 4th edition), and if magic is the only thing that can backfire, then magic would be less desirable than the other sources of power that won't literally blow up in your face when you use them.

All power sources, as seen, appear to have differing risk/reward qualities associated with them.
Martial Daily attacks are 'Reliable', Arcane looks riskier, divine appears to be in the middle.

Displacement, for example, as an encounter power could be riskier than using (say) "Roll with the blow" martial exploit (made up here and now) but have a much better effect with a 5% chance of a worse one.

I'm not saying that this is the way it is going, but I'd like it to be. To me it's a better way of showing that Martial is more reliable than magic but less flashy than the Vancian system.

 

[KarinsDad]

As Wizards have already said that some text on that page was incorrect or has been changed, I wouldn't assume all those abilities will be in the same form when the PHB comes out in June.

This might be true, but there is a more fundamental issue here.

It's a problem that these spells got written the way PS listed them in the first place.

It's one thing to playtest and find out that "Opps, this power is too weak or too strong and we have to adjust it.".

It's another thing to write down lame (or inadequately written) higher level powers in the first place that NOBODY caught as lame right away. Not a single designer said "Opps" when it was first written.

Sorry, but a re-roll is a low level power when compared to some of the abilities that we have seen so far.

The only time that this power is significantly useful is if the PC got criticaled. Then, 95-% of the time, less damage would occur (the same damage could occur if the critical is re-rolled or if the damage dice on a normal hit maxed out).

Sure, we do not know all of the rules yet. Sure, the entire game might have been nerfed so that Wizards cannot do squat in combat except Magic Missile "the Darkness" every round.

But if the game is not nerfed to that extent, then it really does not bode well that a designer wrote these two spells down the way they are written at all. Even if they are fixed now, it means that whomever wrote these spells down did not know game balance and total rules requirements from a hole in the ground and shouldn't be designing this stuff in the first place. It means that with the entire model re-design of 4E spells, we might be seeing a lot of issues here. That's not a good thing for the consumers, for WotC, or for the DND franchise.

Even if some generic rule corrects some of this stuff (which is not likely), WotC should not be releasing this type of "poorly written spells" to the general public anyway.

One or more WotC employees made the decision to allow this half baked looking stuff out to the public. That's not good. It doesn't really matter if it's fixed in the final version (and it might not be), the version that we got to see gives the impression of an inferior product.