Non-Combat magic?

[UngeheuerLich]

I liked it when spider climb made you unable to cast spells with material components...

 

[Cryptos]

May I refer you to the following list of 4E spells (official, ripped right from playtest): http://www.duke.edu/web/DRAGO/humor/useless_spells.html

jh

Off topic, but have I failed some sort of purity test if I go through that list and think "Hey, that actually could be useful if...." or "Actually, that doesn't sound too bad."

True, true. But then Fly is much more game changing than the ability to walk on walls/ceilings, at least IMO. If it was higher I wouldn't complain though.

Somewhere, a diehard Matrix fan is weeping because his favorite special effect is being dissed.

The problem with a Spiderclimb utility (I think) is that it's something of a joke if it's a Daily utility with a sustain minor:

"Um, could someone help me get down? I forgot to sustain my Spiderclimb / had to use my minor action for something else! No? Ok, well, you guys go ahead, I'll just rest up here for six hours."

Not to mention that any trap that would cause the wizard to become unable to sustain would then become a favorite to use in high places, and the silly wizard is again trapped.

But if it's an Encounter utility then you're going to have people who try to climb everything in sight every five minutes, and use it to go up walls past threatened areas or get up to an unreachable place and snipe every encounter.

There are a lot of abilities like this where if they make it a Daily in 4e it's not really all that great, but if they make it Encounter based it could get ridiculously abused.

Even something as simple as Feather Fall, for instance. Make it a Daily instant reaction to falling and the ability to save one person from falling damage once per day is... eh... okay, that's not terrible, but probably not nearly as good as some other utility powers of the same level. Make it an Encounter based power and intentionally dropping off things becomes a viable alternative to using the stairs, any pit traps or obstacles, taking the intended path through multi-level dungeons and caverns with open areas, etc. Spending five minutes per person to drop down to the lower levels would not be a major sacrifice in the minds of D&D players who were once used to fighting a couple of things and then resting for eight hours.

Now I don't like Vancian magic at all, and so I'm not trying to champion it... but the lack of a middle ground between once per day and every five minutes in 4.0 is going to result in some weirdness. At least with the Vancian system, each individual wizard could decide how often they wanted an effect, at the cost of their other spells (yes, that was horribly unbalanced in a lot of ways but at least it wasn't "every five minutes" or "once.") If they had a plan to become Feather Fall paratroopers on the kobold camp at the bottom of the cliff, he'd rest early and rememorize his spells accordingly. Now, it's either going to be "save one person per day from falling as an instant action" or "ignore falling damage every five minutes." The lack of a middle ground makes me very concerned over how some utilties will be handled.

Edit: To 4e's credit, this is the first and only thing that really bothers me. But it is starting to bother me now, looking at things useful out-of-combat, that powers are only used either: At-Will (144,000 times per day if we were going with six second rounds), Encounter or every five minutes (288 times per day), or Once. 144,000 > 288 > 1. Those are pretty big jumps with nothing in between. For a roleplaying game, both 144,000 and 288 per day are pretty large numbers, too big to really worry about... it's better for a DM just to keep in mind that players can use it almost whenever they want. But then it goes straight down from "virtually whenever they want" to "once." It didn't seem like an issue when I was just looking at powers used in combat, and the usage scale made a lot of sense. Thinking about utility powers, though, it gives me a bit of a headache.

The possibilities for making some of the better known utility spells from D&D into 4e powers is either yawn-inducing if they're Daily, or "ooh, that seems too good" if they're per encounter.

I'd assume that they would err on the side of making most of them Daily, risking the perception of being too limited over the perception of "game breaking."

But as once per day only powers, instead of looking for the advantage of climbing something once, or mitigating falling damage once, or trying to make a roll to cause one summoning spell per day go *poof*, I think most gamers would choose the utility that has the biggest combat advantage in almost any typical combat encounter for that level, versus something that might be useful if only there is a pit trap on that day, or if only there is an enemy spellcaster with area of effect or summoning spell on that day.

Which might mean that iconic D&D staples like Feather Fall, Spiderclimb, and yes, even Dispel Magic, are going to take a back seat. Maybe they'll even get put in the trunk. It also means that there will probably be only one or two powers that are seen frequently among the utility spells (whatever the wizard's equivalent of Tumble would be - something that could almost definitely be used in any situation, if needed.)

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

^ this is why the only problem I have with 4E is how to manage Encounter and Daily powers. Sure enough, it's far superior to 3.x in terms of game balance, but I'm guessing I'll have to home rule is up so that it makes more logical sense to me.
I'll have to wait to see an excerpt on rituals to really form an opinion though.

 

[The Little Raven]

"The PCs are the good guys"

Making paladins capable of being evil instead of just Lawful Good is a direct contradiction to this false claim.

NPCs don't follow rules

Also false. NPCs follow rules. It's simply ridiculous to claim otherwise.

 

[Serendipity]

You raise a very interesting point - if the Wizard spell/slot/widget/utility thingie is comprised entirely of combat and directly combat related ability, a LOT of the flavor gets lost.

What *about* Spider Climb? But also what about Rope Trick, Feign Death, Knock - is knock (or similar) functionality being tossed so as to not get in the Rogue's way?
I get the idea behind rituals and I (in general, sight unseen) are really in favor of this, but surely there should be *something* outside the realm of combat for Wizards to do.

Unless they've changed the class name to Battle Mage or some such nonsense....

 

[DandD]

Rope trick should only return as a level 20 spell or something like that. It was completely moronic to create a ultra-low-level spell that granted you a perfectly safe miniature pocket dimension.
Also, the existence of minor tricks like mage hand is proof that really minor abilities not too unbalanced can and will be part of the wizard's repertoire.

It just stands that what isn't unbalanced needs to be redefined by the game designers.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Every body gets utility powers. And powers for wizards are called spells. But whether these utility powers/spells are useful out of combat I cannot say, we need more examples. hint hint WotC.
IMO I reckon they will all have a direct use in combat (not damaging but nerfing/buffing/etc) but that does not necessarily mean they also won't be useful out of combat. As one of the stated design aims is to make every class as equally good in combat that says to me that class powers are combat powers. The things that everybody can do regardless of class (rituals, maybe other things?) are going to be useful or aimed at out of combat situations.
I, for one, are happy with the idea that your class is your combat class. I would be happy if they went even further and totally divorced combat class features from skills etc. Therefore you choose your class and design your combat usage. then everybody gets access to the same amount of skills, feats, powers (all from the same list) of out of combat stuff. But I don't think WotC has gone quite that far. If you wanted to play a non combatant type then use 'normal man' ala previous editions as your class....I digress.

In summary: powers and classes are aimed at combat, utility powers (and even main combat powers) may have some excellent uses out side of combat but that is not their raison d'etre. rituals, skills (and maybe other things?) are what defines characters (rules wise) out of combat.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Knock - is knock (or similar) functionality being tossed so as to not get in the Rogue's way?

I hope not. After all, in 4e anyone can take Thievery as a skill with a single feat. So I really don't see how a utility power that allows a Wizard to open locks would be a problem.

 

[Derren]

Making paladins capable of being evil instead of just Lawful Good is a direct contradiction to this false claim.

Ah, thats the reason why WotC said over and over again that many good creatures are left out from the MM or changed into unaligned creatures because the PCs don't fight good creatures and therefore they are wasted pages....

Also false. NPCs follow rules. It's simply ridiculous to claim otherwise.

Considering that your first sentence was false its not surprising that your are again wrong. It was said time and again that the only stats for NPCs which are interesting in 4E are combat stats. Everything else, like for example how the necromancer raises his undead army will be left out so that the DM can make it up by himself. And guess what, "make it up" means "follows no rule".

 

[WhatGravitas]

Utility spells, as I have seen them, apparently always have a direct combat application and just don't require an attack roll. I don't think Spider Climb would fit that.

Like fly?

Cheers, LT.