PHB II - the new kinds of spell

[I'm A Banana]

I think you're right, my good Doctor.

I think 4e is already here. It's right under our noses. New stat block formats, swift and immediate actions, the polymorph subschool...

4e has arrived like the pod people, stealing rules and replacing them with updates and no one is the wiser.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm starting to think that there is one of two things going on here. Either:
1. D&D 4E is just around the corner, and so the designers have been given the green light to mess with 3.5 as much as they like to try out new ideas, test things, and generally brainstorm the hell out of the system while there's still time.
2. D&D 4E is being held off by the realization that they don't need to release a new edition in order to make major changes to the system, because the system is already flexible and modular enough that you can pick and choose the rule sets you're using. Books like Incarnum, Tome of Magic, and the various innovative parts of more recent books are sneaking in a 3.5.5 edition that leaves the core alone and provides "plug and play" supplements that bring packaged rules updates to the table.

And I suspect it's #1. Really, where do they go from here? We're down to the Complete Mage and the Complete Scoundrel. I'm seeing serious shades of the Necromancer's Handbook (which was a rockin' good accessory, btw) and Spells & Powers. Now, I also hope, or suspect, that 4e may be alot closer to 3.5 than 3e was to 2e - 3.75, if you will. That would decrease development time and keep some measure of backwards compatibility with everything that's getting pumped out right now.

Actually, that makes the most sense to me. Pump out the variants while you're reworking the core, but don't change the core so much that the variants are unworkable.

 

[Felon]

I think you're right, my good Doctor.

I think 4e is already here. It's right under our noses. New stat block formats, swift and immediate actions, the polymorph subschool...

4e has arrived like the pod people, stealing rules and replacing them with updates and no one is the wiser.

You know, a couple months back I started a thread offering that very notion, that 4th edition wouldn't actually have to be called 4th edition--that it would just come in the form of rulebook sequels presenting new classes and variant rulesets. And not a single damn person agreed with me on that point. The response was blanket dismissal along the lines "no no no, that would be the poorest marketing move ever".

To be honest, I thought you were one of those people, KM

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You know, a couple months back I started a thread offering that very notion, that 4th edition wouldn't actually have to be called 4th edition--that it would just come in the form of rulebook sequels presenting new classes and variant rulesets. And not a single damn person agreed with me on that point. The response was blanket dismissal along the lines "no no no, that would be the poorest marketing move ever".

To be honest, I thought you were one of those people, KM

Heh. No way to prove that now...

To be clear, I don't think that 4E is going to be a stealth edition. I just think that they'll keep pushing it back until they've milked all they can out of the dried husk of 3.5. That we're seeing books that take the rules in new directions is, in my opinion, evidence that they're trying to keep the 3.5 boat afloat as long as they can before they have to reboot.

3.5: 3 years of uptime so far.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Thus, the spell attacks indirectly and SR does not apply. The spell is just the gun. The thing that's summoned (be it acid, lightening, fire, ice, a knife, or--to use Frank's example--a boulder) is the bullet.

Or Force! Can't forget the Orb of Force... the instantaneous conjuration spell that flings a non-magical orb of force at your target

-Hyp.

 

[Felon]

Or Force! Can't forget the Orb of Force... the instantaneous conjuration spell that flings a non-magical orb of force at your target

Force is kind of a nebulous thing in D&D. When it's a wall or shield it's invisibile, when it's fired at someone it's suddenlty colorful (can't go letting wizards fire invisible missiles at people, now can we?). A cage or wall of force can't be dispelled even though one would think it's a sustained magical effect, but it can be disintegrated as easily as a slab of stone. When we get an official explanation of what "force" is exactly, then we can start to debate the magic theory behind summoning balls of force from some nook in the cosoms.

Now, note that you use the word "non-magical", a word I avoided using. I would not describe the things summoned with a conjuration spell as mundane; a summoned celestial hawk or fiendish viper is magical. But SR doesn't offer protection from their attacks. Why? Because they're not spells, right? They're magical creatures summoned by a conjuration spell.

Likewise, the acid of a melf's acid arrow may be magical acid conjured from the plane of elemental earth, and the fire from a blast of flame may be magical fire summoned from the plane of elemental fire. It's magical, but it's not a spell, so SR doesn't apply--it's a "magic bullet" so to speak.

Of course, it helps to delete the old-edition term "magic resistance" from one's mental glossary. Golems can't walk blithely through magical webs or beholder rays anymore.

 

[Staffan]

Conjuration spells are generally less potent than evocation spells, but have the advantage of bypassing SR. This seems like a reasonable and balanced design.

This was "reasonable and balanced" in the PHB (compare Melf's acid arrow to scorching ray), but has become less so with the addition of potent conjuration spells (notably the orbs from Complete Arcane).

 

[Soel]

I saw at least one spell with an optional component add-on that improves the spell, ala Philip Reed's 101 Spell Components. Really cool stuff.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Conjuration spells are generally less potent than evocation spells, but have the advantage of bypassing SR. This seems like a reasonable and balanced design.

In the 3e PHB it was a reasonable design - the designers of that day were pretty clear that conjuration spells didn't do damage that scaled with the caster level, but could do smaller amounts of damage that continued over time (acid arrow, acid cloud, incendiary cloud).

Subsequent designers in subsequent books either didn't know this or couldn't be bothered, leading to all manner of abominations (such as orb spells) where big blasty spells were put into conjuration to give them the 'no SR' tag, without any due consideration to why the conjuration spells had the 'no SR' tag in the first place.

The idea was OK originally, but current implementation is just silly.

SR (or the original magic resistance, which was more powerful) was what made certain foes especially terrifying enemies. Nowadays any DM that allows all the spellbook supplements will see wizards walking all over his golems and mind flayers with tons of spells that just ignore spell resistance. Sillyness.

Cheers

 

[glass]

I also loved the idea of spells that are part of more than one school of magic, even though there's only one example that I noticed on my first pass through. Anything that expands the design and options of the game, even in small ways, is great.

I always wondered why 3e did away with multi-schooled spells in the first place. Some spells just scream more than one school to me.


glass.