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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 1432651" data-attributes="member: 15999">The idea for your spell itself - warping space itself to damage an opponent - is really quite neat.  The implementation (mechanics) is what I disagree with.I think it should be evocation (keeping it in the school that does such effects), and do d4/level with a Fort save or d6/level with a Reflex save.  I also think it should not affect incorporeal opponents (is that also true of disintegrate?  It should be.)Does it really matter *how* the spell accomplishes its task?  I could make up a conjuration spell that brings a mass of flaming hot gases from the sun to a point I designate, and specify that it does d6/level fire damage in a 20' radius with a reflex save for half.  The DM would look at me, laugh, and say "Nice try, but you picked evocation as one of your forbidden schools.  Don't try to get around that."  You could lawyer your way into making almost any spell fit any school, which would make the concept of schools meaningless.Magic Bolts is absolutely not weak.  It compares quite well to an Empowered Magic Missile (also a 3rd-level spell, but MM itself really should be 2nd-level) and it is better than Polar Ray (an 8th-level spell that requires a hit roll).  It probably will be better in most circumstances than disintegrate (2d6/level, but requires a hit roll *and* allows a save for less-than-half damage).  I still think that area-of-effect versus single-target is a wash.  No real reason to give one more damage than the other.Look, I'm not trying to be a stickler for the rules for the sake of the existing rules.  I am trying to get you to think about the concepts behind the rules.  Why are certain spells the way they are?  Why are there no spells that are "Reflex Save or be Helpless"? (because it would provide a super-easy way to kill a party's cleric - and, no, Merlion doesn't have such a spell)  Why doesn't transmutation have the mass-damage spells that evocation has? (because it already has the most versatile and best spell list in the game)  If a rule is simply arbitrary and does no good, feel free to change it.  But if a rule balances the game, keeps it fresh by preventing any one option from being the "The Best," and otherwise makes the game more fun, think carefully before discarding it.  If you want to ditch the theories behind the rules, then come out and say that.  But I didn't think that was what Merlion was pitching.Comments on ideas are NOT inherently worth more than comments on the rules.  This is, as the name says, the House Rules forum.  It's about rules.  Part of the point of this forum is for other players to make suggestions and comments on the impact of your house rules on the game.  As a player and as a DM I've come up with hundreds of ideas of things that would be cool in my mind but that could just possibly have the effect of making the game less fun for some players in some way I hadn't thought of.  That's the hard part.  Coming up with good ideas, while challenging, is far easier than determining what the impact of those ideas will be.  How does a change to this spell affect that class?  Does a spell render a given class obselete?  Does a spell make wizards much more powerful against many more foes than they were before?  That's the hard part.  You need a lot of opinions on "How will this change affect my game" because there are so many factors to consider.  It's taken TSR/WOTC many years to design a halfway balanced game in which there isn't One Best Weapon and One Most Powerful Class.  This isn't simple.</blockquote>

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