Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6213128" data-attributes="member: 221">I'm not sure that I am disagreeing with you exactly on this point, except to disagree that the spell, as written, actually mandates that the simulacrum possess the same class as the original.  It does not. What it says is the simulacrum has half the levels of the original, but it does not specify the levels are of the same class. It is conceivably within the parameters of the spell that creating a simulacrum of a 14th level wizard gets you a 7th level creature that might be a fighter. I am not suggesting that this is necessarily the most natural use of the spell, but I don't think it would be a misuse of the spell either.  There is, indeed, in the literature (cf. Azure Bonds) a bit of a precedent for such a creation occurring (Alias was, iirc, a sort of clone or copy of a female spell-caster; I realize that the simulacrum spell was not exactly what was used, but the idea is very similar).I think I mentioned it before, but James Jacob notes that Simulacrum is primarily a DM spell for story-telling purposes and its open-ness should be understood in light of this fact.  If I, as a DM, want a Simulacrum of a fire-breathing dragon, then the spell allows for that. But if I want a sort of dwarvish doppleganger assassin, which tries to infiltrate a group of dwarves but does not have dark-vision, then the spell allows for that too. If I want a simulacrum to pretend to be a cleric (but deny the simulacrum divine spells), the spell allows for that too. The flexibility of the spell allows for great DM creativity when being used on the story-telling side of the screen.But with a player using it, then the DM needs to have some sort of clear ideas of what he will or will not allow the player to do with it.  My initial suggestion of allowing the player to determine what spell-like abilities the creature has through the use of additional spells was just one idea of how to do this without actually changing the spell. It would be superior, I think, to the DM telling the player what the creature did or did not have.  I do not think the player just arbitrarily picking the abilities he likes is the way to go however; indeed story-wise, it is better for the simulacrum to have some deviations from exactly what the player envisioned, potential flaws as it were.  But the more the player can pick and choose, the better for his side, which is why I think the inclusion of additional spells is not a bad way to go.  Alternatively, like I also said, a point system which allows the player to build in abilities would be a rather neat alteration to the spell and might prove superior play-wise, though more limiting from the DM side of the screen.</blockquote>

Verification