Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9825735" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/afb77a2fa041.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 602px" /> Chapter 12: Magic<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1f6g49a/ocart_wizards_duel/" target="_blank">Image is Wizard's Duel by Phill-Art</a>A relatively short chapter, Magic is composed of both new rules and general essays on the state of affairs in D&D 3.5 as they stand.The essays vary in subject, with some of them not even being about magic at all. The chapter starts out strongly with the discussion of Easter Egg Class Features, where higher-level D&D has expectations that PCs will have access to certain magic items or similar features in order to function. For example, around 9th level Rogues need a way to remain hidden from enemies who can auto-detect their presence regardless of their Hide/Move Silently roll, while past 7th level characters specializing in mounted combat need a sufficiently powerful mount to reasonably survive.Thoughts: Largely I agree with this, as the authors are noting some very common shortcomings of 3rd Edition that many groups have dealt with in actual play. Unlike other essays here it doesn't provide a bunch of new rules to fix it, but rather highlights common levels of power where such things will crop up during a campaign.The next several essays cover perceived shortcomings in magic and magic items, such as giving level 6+ PCs the ability to cast Greater Magic Weapon once per day so they can "power up" existing magic weapons rather than trading out their +1 flaming swords for +3 swords, or complaining about how most material components are bad jokes (bat guano being used for Fireball and Tongues constructing a miniature tower of Babel) but don't offer up a solution for this last part. One notable essay talks about how supplement bloat exponentially increases the powers of Clerics and Druids, for they effectively have access to all spells when preparing them. The Tomes' proposed house rule limits such classes to 1 non-PHB spell per class level.One essay is quite the edge case: pointing out how the Outsider monster type gives proficiency with all martial weapons, and that said type encompasses everything from slaadi to yeth hounds. The authors propose a fix where PCs don't gain new weapon proficiencies for changing type and that monsters are proficient with whatever weapons they happen to be holding. The authors note that the DM "ruling by common sense" isn't a viable solution as "I'm pretty sure my gut tells me different things that your gut tells you," but acknowledges that it's better than no solution at all. I'm honestly surprised they didn't bring up the fact that Aasimar and Tieflings are Outsiders and thus eligible for martial weapon proficiency; the latter race is a very popular choice even with the Level Adjustment! It's something I'd honestly see come up in play a lot more often than say, someone who has 10 levels in the Alienist Prestige Class, which is one cited example.There's another essay about how the rules for stealth (Hide skill in particular) requiring the sneaker to always have either cover or concealment actually harms Rogues and similar archetypes, as most enemies have darkvision and opens up "technically right but is counterintuitive" rules such as using tower shields to Hide. While hitting on some good points, I am a bit surprised that the authors didn't note how the splitting up of stealth and perception into 2 skills each further weighs things against the people doing the sneaking. The more rolls you have to make in order to remain undetected, the higher the chance for overall failure. There's a reason why Pathfinder and 4e/5e combined them together.Thoughts: I honestly don't think most gamers give much thought to material components, so the complaints about them being "MacGyver technology disguised as magic" or jokes don't really concern me. The Outsider weapon proficiency feels super-situational, and between it and the Hide rules don't really address what I see as more common problems arising in games even if they are noting problems in the rules.But perhaps the most significant change in game design are Variants for the Polymorph Spell, spells which in 3.5 were notoriously wordy and unintuitive. The authors propose two fixes: the first is where the caster effectively vanishes and is replaced by a monster who shares the caster's alignment, personality, and goals (albeit an altered intellect can impact how they express this), where damage to the monster is carried over to the caster. The second fix more or less keeps the caster's default stat block intact, and the spells automatically grant certain features by default and the caster can choose from a list of abilities in line with the monster's theme. There are multiple spells for both fixes, with the former being split between "polymorph self/other/mass" and the latter being five spells in line with broad species of human/lycanthropy/monstrous/fiend/dragon forms.Beyond the Polymorph fixes, the chapter provides us with outright new magic in the Necromantic Spells entry. The authors note that the necromancy school is heavily stacked in favor of high-level play, with the lower levels having rather unimpressive and situational uses. We get 9 new spells, all but 1 of which are 1st to 3rd level and 1 being 4th. Most are appropriately thematic such as Form of Death (2nd level, creature touched is treated as undead for mechanics purposes for the next 24 hours) and Congealing Consumption (2nd level, close-range AoE that nauseates creatures who fail a Will save). But some are not exactly death or undeath-related but have sinister applications, such as Curse of Crumbling Conviction (4th level, instantaneously cause a creature who fails their save to become apathetic and Neutral-aligned, and will willfully adopt the alignment of the next creature who makes them Helpful) and Puppet Dance (3rd level, creature with a physical body who fails a Reflex save cannot voluntarily move, and the caster can spend a standard action to have the victim take a standard action that isn't a spell). This latter examples are actually in line with 3.5 Necromancy, which tended to be a broad-purpose "dark magic" label for non-necromancy stuff such as the Fear spell.Three spells deserve calling out, for they make use of a new type of location known as a Tomb. Detailed in the 14th Chapter, a Tomb is a location that is highly attuned to the Negative Energy Plane, which grants undead within it fast healing 1 and cannot be turned or rebuked, but undead also cannot be created within a Tomb by spell or by monstrous ability. Tasha's Tomb Transport is akin to a highly-situational Teleport that can only be cast and used to travel between Tombs; Tomb Tile Tessellation can be used to gradually turn an area into a Tomb with each casting applying to a 10 foot cube; and Tasha's Tomb Tainting can remove various supernatural effects (consecration, desecration, etc) property from an area, albeit this last spell requires a costly material component worth 500 gold pieces.Thoughts: Polymorph can indeed use simplification, and the proposed spell fixes more or less do the job. I also agree with the observation that necromancy spells are quite top-heavy. One thing the Tome authors didn't directly address is that Clerics make better necromancers than arcane casters. However, all of the new spells are exclusive to Sorcerers and Wizards, so I believe the authors were aware of this and designed them with this in mind.The next significant section of this chapter concerns Fiendish Spheres and Other Spheres. We talked about those in length back in the Character Base Classes chapter, so no need to go over them again. But our last significant section is Optional Rules for Friends, covering a broad amount of material such as greater restrictions on the Wish spell to close up exploits (notably how casting it as a spell-like ability such as via a djinni noble or efreet can obviate the need to pay XP costs); alteration to Damage Reduction so that certain materials can overlap for DR purposes or silver weapons having no damage penalty; and why fiends would care so much about mortal souls and the Material Plane rather than the infinite amount of other planes out there. For this last one, the primary reason is that creatures on the Material Plane cannot be called or summoned against their will, and is thus a highly desirable location to take refuge from the oppressive fiendish hierarchies. The last themed essay is a detailed write-up for Planar Ally and Planar Binding, providing advice for what orders and services a summoned creature is willing to do, whether for a price or for free, and what they will never do even on threat of destruction.Thoughts: I believe that the "can only call/summon creatures against their will on the Material Plane" is a house rule the Tomes inserted, as I don't see any such restrictions in the Core Rules on where such spells can be cast. It does provide a good explanation as to why Outsiders are so interested in the Material Plane, although one could argue that it being the highest concentration of mortal souls in most settings is another reason.The write-ups for being more specific and restrictive on what Wish and higher-level summon spells can do can cut down on some exploits, although there are still loopholes. For example, Wishes that are free and have no XP cost include magic items costing 15,000 gold or less. But using Wish to raise the dead (even if an undead, construct, or soul is utterly destroyed) requires the expenditure of 3,000 XP. However, a Scroll of Raise Dead or Resurrection falls within the 15k or less confines of a "Free Wish," and while less powerful in that it doesn't cover the earlier parenthetical examples, it does obviate the XP cost for making such scrolls and casting such spells in the first place. This is just what I spotted, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were other such exploits out there. I do like the more detailed write-up on reasonable behavior and services for called and bound outsiders, although I feel that its wordy entry may make a lot of players go "this isn't worth it" and pass on it.Thoughts So Far: My favorite parts of this chapter are the Easter Egg Class Features, new Necromancy spells, and the Polymorph fix. The other essays and house rules I'm more ambivalent on, with the Spheres being perhaps my least favorite on account of how I pointed out in Chapter 5 how easy they are to abuse via the "take a Sphere 3 times to gain all its spells at-will." Some of the essays are to a more personal taste, like with material components, or correctly identify a problem but cover more niche cases instead of what I see are the more common causes of said problem, like with Aasimar/Tiefling weapon proficiencies.Join us next time as we go dungeon-delving in Chapter 13: Adventuring!</blockquote>

Verification