malchus
First Post
Hi. First post and all that.
Apologies if this has been discussed before - I couldn't find anything directly related on these boards.
I was think about a campaign / world idea, and as a sort of mental side track had a proper look at the Shadow Foo family of spells. I couldn't help thinking they were pretty low value-for-spell level.
It looks like a hold-over from previous editions where specialist mages simply didn't have access to some types of spells (2nd ed. had forbidden schools, while the 1st ed Illusionist had a very thematic spell list). That just isn't relevant any more to the 3.x editions - any specialist mage can have access to both Conjuration and Evocation if they want it.
Which leaves me wondering who these Shadow Foo spells are used by any more. People who want to be able to cast these spells already can, and people who can't are unlikely to want to. Remember these spells allow an extra save (so targets either get a save where they wouldn't normally, or they get two saves instead of one), which reduces their effectiveness quite remarkably. And even so, in many instances they just aren't as good (regardless of the result of your Will save, creatures summoned by Shadow Conjuration have only a fifth of the normal hit points, for example).
I'm thinking of taking these down a spell level. In fact, I'd like to take them down 2 spell levels, but that would be too much of a bargain for sorcerors to ignore, I suspect.
I'm basing these observations off 3.0. I've had a look over the 3.5 SRD, however, and the situation doesn't appear to have changed much with regards to these spells (Shades has jumped in power, but the basic problem remains). I note that 3.5 allows access to (some? all?) of these spells to bards, and the spell level seems about right there (in keeping with the ephemeral nature of bardic magic).
Has anyone else had a problem with these spells?
Apologies if this has been discussed before - I couldn't find anything directly related on these boards.
I was think about a campaign / world idea, and as a sort of mental side track had a proper look at the Shadow Foo family of spells. I couldn't help thinking they were pretty low value-for-spell level.
It looks like a hold-over from previous editions where specialist mages simply didn't have access to some types of spells (2nd ed. had forbidden schools, while the 1st ed Illusionist had a very thematic spell list). That just isn't relevant any more to the 3.x editions - any specialist mage can have access to both Conjuration and Evocation if they want it.
Which leaves me wondering who these Shadow Foo spells are used by any more. People who want to be able to cast these spells already can, and people who can't are unlikely to want to. Remember these spells allow an extra save (so targets either get a save where they wouldn't normally, or they get two saves instead of one), which reduces their effectiveness quite remarkably. And even so, in many instances they just aren't as good (regardless of the result of your Will save, creatures summoned by Shadow Conjuration have only a fifth of the normal hit points, for example).
I'm thinking of taking these down a spell level. In fact, I'd like to take them down 2 spell levels, but that would be too much of a bargain for sorcerors to ignore, I suspect.
I'm basing these observations off 3.0. I've had a look over the 3.5 SRD, however, and the situation doesn't appear to have changed much with regards to these spells (Shades has jumped in power, but the basic problem remains). I note that 3.5 allows access to (some? all?) of these spells to bards, and the spell level seems about right there (in keeping with the ephemeral nature of bardic magic).
Has anyone else had a problem with these spells?
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