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<blockquote data-quote="jmartkdr2" data-source="post: 8311841" data-attributes="member: 7017304">I think it's likely they dropped any attempt at that; too many spells have unique effects, so creating general scaling rules would create more problems than it solves. If you want to have upcasting increase the number of targets that get a condition, you have to either balance all the conditions or accept that some spells scale a lot better than others. If each condition has it's own scaling, you need to have those rules somewhere other than the spell or repeat them in each spell description - and if you're doing special cases for each condition you now need to do special cases for every spell that creates a unique effect, which is a lot of them. In other words, you don't really save page count by generalizing unless you throw what little balance there is and include a bunch pf trap options. On top of that, there was a general trend of getting away from 'hidden rules&quot; that plagued 3e. Stuff like creature-type-based immunities, special size modifiers, and general secondary effects to changes in general concepts. No more size modifiers, no more creature-type or other tag-based traits not found in the stat block. Spell descriptions should tell you everything you need to know about how to use a spell in the game, aside form some jargon (eg spellcasting ability modifier) or really general rules like action types. This is, I think, a good thing. Exception-based rules shouldn't spread the exceptions that apply to a case across the books.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jmartkdr2, post: 8311841, member: 7017304"] I think it's likely they dropped any attempt at that; too many spells have unique effects, so creating general scaling rules would create more problems than it solves. If you want to have upcasting increase the number of targets that get a condition, you have to either balance all the conditions or accept that some spells scale a lot better than others. If each condition has it's own scaling, you need to have those rules somewhere other than the spell or repeat them in each spell description - and if you're doing special cases for each condition you now need to do special cases for every spell that creates a unique effect, which is a lot of them. In other words, you don't really save page count by generalizing unless you throw what little balance there is and include a bunch pf trap options. On top of that, there was a general trend of getting away from 'hidden rules" that plagued 3e. Stuff like creature-type-based immunities, special size modifiers, and general secondary effects to changes in general concepts. No more size modifiers, no more creature-type or other tag-based traits not found in the stat block. Spell descriptions should tell you everything you need to know about how to use a spell in the game, aside form some jargon (eg spellcasting ability modifier) or [I]really[/I] general rules like action types. This is, I think, a good thing. Exception-based rules shouldn't spread the exceptions that apply to a case across the books. [/QUOTE]

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