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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6145425" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 322: August 2004part 5/8Patterns of shadow and light: We've had a magical item collection. Now for a spell one. This is also only partially in theme, with light-based spells as well as darkness ones. I suppose we need the contrast, just to make the darkness seem a little deeper. Let's see if these are worth adding to the many existing flavours of D&D magic.Cone of dimness makes people believe everything has gone black instead of just extinguishing the lights. Since it's way higher level than regular Light and Darkness, that seems a little pointless at first. I guess this way, your side can be prepared and attack normally by using illusion countering spells, which definitely has it's upside. Ebon Eyes let you see in the dark, and also look obviously sinister, which may or may not be a plus depending on your character. I'm sure you can finagle at least a +2 bonus to intimidation rolls for the synergy effect with a nice DM. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Lightwall illuminates the area and dazzles anyone who passes through it except the caster, making it good for setting up ambushes. Still, I don't think it's as good as wall of fire, and at the same level, you'd only want to use this if you know the enemy is resistant to fire. Lucent Lance absorbs all the light around you into a single focussed blinding blast that'll leave some serious afterimages. But if you're lost in the dark, that's no use at all. Seems like a fairly exploitable weakness, since you're already in trouble when the lights go out. Luminous Gaze gives you eyes that glow so brightly anyone meeting them is dazzled. This is both handy for combat and seeing in the dark, but not for subtlety. A really arrogant god-king will make the effect permanent, and relish the fact that all must avert their gaze. Radiant Assault is similar to Prismatic Spray, only not as interesting, as all it's different colours merely do different types of damage. How tedious. At levels where this comes into play, you should be able to deal with petrification or being teleported to another plane, even if it does divert the adventure for a little while. Rainbow Beam is basically a combo of colour spray and a low level attack spell like chill touch or burning hands, both dazzling and inflicting a random type of damage. Why wait until you have 5th level spells and quickening when you can effectively deliver a 2-in-one whammy at 3rd level with this? Rainbow Blast does a little bit of damage each from lots of energy types. If you're not sure exactly what a creature is resistant too, hedge your bets and at least you won't waste your efforts entirely. Shadow Phase is kind of the reverse of those annoying shadow monster spells, making an existing creature slightly unreal, and thus able to ignore attacks some of the time. Like Blink or Blur, this makes them lengthy and frustrating to fight. And since it's twice their level, it shows this collection is definitely being overconservative in terms of power levels. I guess you can get twinky stacking them.</blockquote>

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