Good point about the [call] and [summon]. These are the working versions of those seeds, right?
[sblock=Current Call][Call]
Conjuration (Calling) [see text]
Root Spell: Greater planar ally
Preferred Mitigation: Extended Casting Time, Ritual, Power Components
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 1200ft.
Effect: Called elementals or outsiders of CR 6 or less
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
A spell incorporating this seed calls extraplanar creatures to serve you. If you know an individual creature’s name, you may request that individual by speaking the name during the spell. Otherwise, you call an average specimen of the extraplanar creature.
Creatures called by use of the [call] seed serve you initially for up to 20 minutes, and will perform tasks which you assign to them. Few, if any, creatures will accept a task that seems suicidal (remember, a called creature actually dies when it is killed, unlike a summoned creature). If you wish to extend the creature's service beyond this time, you must negotiate an additional payment with it (see below).
At the end of its task, or when a duration bargained for expires, the creature returns to you. At this time, you may renegotiate its service with you, or dismiss it back to its home plane at your option.
Note: When you use a calling spell that calls an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type.
Factors: For each additional +1CR of the called creature, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2.
Special: If you wish to extend the period of the creatures' service beyond 20 minutes, you must must negotiate with it to ensure its subsequent loyalty to you. For each additional 20 days of service rendered, a creature requires 1000gp in goods and magic items for each hit die which it possesses. Such a contract is renewable; when you choose to finally end the contract, the creature returns to its home plane. If you require the creature to undertake especially hazardous tasks, the payment doubles. If you require it to undertake mundane tasks, or tasks to which it is philosophically sympathetic, the payment is halved. Called creatures will act at their own discretion within the limits of the instructions which you give them: evil creatures will seek to interpret the letter of any contract literally, twisting it for their own ends.
Relevant half-factors: reduce casting time 3 steps (+6), reduce target CR by 10 (-20), extend range by 2 increments (+4), almost-sweeping flexibility from planar ally (+8), incorporate native XP cost (+2), predicted 10th-level benefit (open-ended [call]) (+4).[/sblock]
[sblock=Current Summon][Summon]
Conjuration (Summoning)
Root Spell: Summon monster suite, elemental swarm
Preferred Mitigation: Backlash, XP Burn
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 1200 ft.
Effect: Summoned creature or creatures no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart, whose combined CR does not exceed 15
Duration: 200 minutes (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
This seed can summon one or more outsiders or elementals whose combined CR is 15 or less: it is recommended that the challenge method is used when determining the combined CR of a group creatures. They appear where the caster designates and act immediately, on his or her turn. They attack the caster’s opponents to the best of their ability. If the caster can communicate with the creatures, he or she can direct them not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions. The exact type of creatures are determined in the spell development process, or the appropriate flexibility factor included (see below).
When the spell that summoned a creature ends, and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast which remain in effect expire. A summoned creature may not use any innate summoning abilities it may have or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any innate planar travel or teleportation abilities that it might possess. It cannot cast any spells that would cost it XP, or use any spell-like abilites which would cost it XP if they were spells. When a caster develops a spell with the [summon] seed that summons an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, the completed spell is also of that type.
Factor: For each +1 CR of the summoned outsiders or elementals, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2. To summon a creature from another monster type (such as dragons or aberrations) increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4.
Major Flexibility: To create a spell which allows the caster to choose from a pool of up to any 12 predetermined individual creatures who otherwise fit the spell's criteria; or alternatively to choose from any number of closely-related creatures (such as demons or angels) within the CR limit, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +6.
Sweeping Flexibility: To create a spell which allows the caster to summon any creature of up to CR 15 at the moment the spell is cast, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +10.
Special: A character with any summon nature's ally spell on his or her class spell list may summon animals, plant creatures, feys and magical beasts without incurring the normal surcharge for summoning a monster from a type other than outsider or elemental.[/sblock]
A fiendish beholder (CR 15) would be a perfect example of what you could summon; reduce the range by two steps (-4) and extend it twice (+4) for a total of 600 minutes; there's your mile long tunnel.
Do you think the flexibility provisions might be overpriced? It is very difficult to reconcile the pretentiously named form spells with shapechange if sweeping flexibility is priced so high (assuming the ability to take any initial form and to change it each round is close to two sweeping flexibility factors). Perhaps flexibility can be cheaper for [polymorph], but I'm wondering if for [summon] it should be +2 for major flexibility, and +4 for sweeping flexibility. Do you have any spell families in mind when you set up those factors?
Maybe flexibility is just cheaper for [polymorph], kinda like quicken is cheaper: I would suggest the following version for [polymorph], even if you don't change the flexibility factors for [summon].
[sblock= Suggestion for Polymorph]
[Polymorph]
Transmutation (Polymorph)
Root Spell: Dragonshape
Preferred Mitigation: Power Components, XP Burn
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 1200 ft.
Target: One corporeal creature; see text
Duration: 200 minutes
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (harmless) or Fortitude negates; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless) or yes; see text
Spells which use this seed can effect the transformation of one creature into some other creature - by including the relevant factors, incoporeal forms and creatures of the plant type are subject to this seed.
The caster can transform the subject into a specific corporeal creature of up to CR 14, the nature of which is determined during the spell development process. If the form is to be determined when the spell is cast, the appropriate flexibility factor must be included. The target of a spell developed with this seed takes on all the statistics and special abilities of an average member of the new form in place of its own except as follows:
• The target retains its own alignment (and personality, within the limits of the new form's ability scores).
• The target retains its own hit points, but gains a number of temporary hit points equal to the bonus hit points that the new form would normally have by virtue of its Constitution. These temporary hit points disappear at the end of the spell's duration.
• The target is treated has having its normal Hit Dice for purpose of adjudicating effects based on HD, such as the sleep spell, though it uses the new form's base attack bonus, base save bonuses, and all other statistics derived from Hit Dice.
• The target retains the ability to understand the languages it understands in its normal form. If the new form is normally capable of speech, the target retains the ability to speak these languages as well. It can write in the languages it understands, but only if the new form is capable of writing in some manner (even a primitive manner, such as drawing in the dirt with a paw).
• The target does not gain any spellcasting ability of its new form, although it can use at will spell-like abilities if the new form possesses them. Spell-like abilities that have a restricted number of uses per day cannot be used.
In all other ways, the target's normal game statistics are effectively replaced by those of the new form. The target loses all of the special abilities it has in its normal form, including its class features (even if the new form would normally be able to use these class features).
If the new form's size is different from the target's normal size, its new space must share as much of the original form's space as possible, squeezing into the available space (see PH 148) if necessary. If insufficient space exists for the new form, the spell fails.
Any gear worn or carried by the target melds into the new form and becomes nonfunctional. When the target reverts to its true form, any objects previously melded into the new form reappear in the same location on its body they previously occupied and are once again functional. Any new items worn in the assumed form fall off and land at the target's feet.
The spellcaster can freely designate the new form's minor physical qualities (such as hair color and skin color) within the normal ranges for a creature of that kind. The new form's significant physical qualities (such as height, weight, and gender) are also under the spellcaster's control, but they must fall within the norms for the new form's kind. The target of a polymorph spell is effectively camouflaged as a creature of its new form, and gains a +10 bonus on Disguise checks if it uses this ability to create a disguise.
If the target of a polymorph spell is slain or rendered unconscious, the spell ends. Any part of the body that is separated from the whole remains polymorphed until the effect ends.
Incorporeal or gaseous creatures and creatures of the plant type are normally immune to polymorph spells. A creature with the shapechanger subtype (such as a lycanthrope or doppelganger) can revert to its natural form as a standard action.
Factors: For each additional +1 CR beyond CR 14 of the assumed form, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2.
Factor: To restrict the use of at will spell-like abilities to only one use each, reduce the Spellcraft Prerequisite by 4. To eliminate the use of spell-like abilities entirely, reduce the Spellcraft Prerequiste by 8.
Flexibility: To develop a spell which allows the caster to assume the form of a creature with the incorporeal subtype, and to extend the [polymorph] seed to affect incorporeal creatures, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2. To similarly extend the seed to plant creatures, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2. To develop a spell which allows the caster to assume any form, or which can effect the change of any object or creature into any other object or creature from size fine to colossal, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4: the asumed form is still limited by a creature's CR, where appropriate.
Factor: To decrease the casting time from a standard action to a swift action, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4.
Flexibility: To develop a spell which allows the target or caster to choose a form at the moment it is cast, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4; to develop a spell which also allows the target to change its form once every round as a free action, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by a further +4: these factors are cumulative.
Special: If a spell is developed which affects unwilling targets, they are entitled to a Fortitude saving throw to negate the effect.[/sblock]
I'm pricing the kernel at CR*2 + 18.
So the kernel analysis for a CR 14 pretentiously named form spell would be 46 (kernel) +4 quicken +2 dismissible -4 limited SLAs = 48 = 8th level spell. (Note that the eye-beams of a beholder are being treated as SLAs. They are certainly spell-like, but are technically supernatural.) If you pretend that beholders and maruts are both CR 14 (which doesn't seem too much of a stretch) then each would have a PNF that's 8th level.
If the target form has no SLAs, you could have a CR 3 PNF spell (e.g. hell hound) with 24 (kernel) +4 quicken +2 dismissible -8 no SLAs = 22 = 3rd level spell (just barely). CR 5 (winter wolf) would be 26 (4th level spell) and CR 7 (chimera) would be 30 (5th level spell).
Dragonshape is almost OK; you get the SLAs (7 uses of locate object :\) and it is both quickened (+4) and dismissible (+2). If the dragon is CR 18 the total would be 60 - but probably it deserves a discount for the SLAs being so sucky. So it fits too.
Polymorph has touch (+2), a longer duration (+2), dismissable (+2), major flexibility (+2) no SLAs (-8) and no supernatural abilities either. Maybe another -8? That's 2*CR + 10 = 24, or CR of 7. Maybe CR 6 if you consider it sweeping flexibility. A 12 headed hydra is CR 11, which should make polymorph a 5th level spell. Pretty close; in this case the lack of spellcasting would still hurt, and spellcasting forms like an annis or troll would be within the CR limit. Hmmm. Do you lose your ability to cast spells when you use polymorph? The spell description doesn't say one way or other, but if the special rules for the polymorph subschool apply, then a human wizard can't polymorph into an elf without losing his class abilities. That seems wrong- I'll have to think about that some more.
If shapechange is restricted to CR 17 forms, then the kernel analysis would be 52 (kernel) +4 extra duration +2 dismissible -8 no SLAs +4 free choice of initial form +4 change form each round = 58 = 9th level spell. Just barely. But without SLAs and with a hit dice limit, it isn't too bad. Still, shapechange might be broken (big surprise!).
The kernel analysis for the [polymorph] seed comes to be 60, of course; a 10th level spell. (2*14 + 18) is 46 (kernel) +10 range +4 extra duration = 60.
The base formula for seeds is 36 less than the kernel formula; 2*CR - 18. With a base CR of 14 and +10 in range and duration factors, you get 24 SP; the base value of a seed.
So anyway, this version of [polymorph] encompasses the pretentiously named form suite of spells, pretty much, polymorph and shapechange. I suspect baleful polymorph is a curse with [polymorph] as a secondary seed.
But I think we are making progress, so I'm not unhappy. BTW, a small publisher friend of mine is trying to contact you - I don't know if the board's email is working, or if the email address the boards has is valid (the one I had didn't work when I tried it last), but I wanted to let you know. When we are done it would be nice to have this all nicely laid out, bound and illustrated, and it would be nice if neither of us had to do the work.
. Replicability is important, here. We need to get utilitarian. I'm looking for a set of guidelines which governs the way seeds interact, so the same rules can be brought to bear upon any combinations of seeds. The reason that I chose [destroy] and [blast] is because they're relatively simple, share lots of common parameters, and are in a state of development where we can begin to explore with them.
