Spell Compendium - Spell Name Changes

[Lonely Tylenol]

According to the coypright section of the book in the front, under the credits, none of the book is OGL.

I'm going to stick with the whole 'Its annoying ot have vageuly related spells alphebetized together.)

Stuff.

It says the same thing at the beginning of the Expanded Psionics Handbook. If they later add it to the SRD, it will become OGL by virtue of being added to the SRD, which is an open document. You can always open closed content after you publish it. You just can't close it again once it's open.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The point is that Mordenkainen is a poineer of magic in Greyhawk. Elminster should not be able to cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction since he's from an entirely different universe. Giving a spell a person's name assumes a history that is not generic. There is no Melf in the Forgotten Realms. In my campaign what's the point of having Bigby spells? There was no wizard named Bigby! And if Bigby did exist, why the heck would EVERY wizard and sorcerer have access to his spells?

Adding people's names to spells do not give them a unique flavor, in my opinion. What possible "flavor" does adding "Melf" to "acid arrow" give if you have no idea who Melf is? It's just a funny, distracting word in my mind. And why stop with these few spells? Why not call fireball "Froodle's Fireball" and "Mage Armor" "Z'p'tee D'oo'Dah's Armor"?

Right, but if you take the personal names out of these spells, you get Elminster casting Disjunction and Interposing Hand and Acid Arrow. How is that any weirder than him casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction or Bigby's Interposing Hand, or Melf's Acid Arrow? If you have the Spell Compendium (SC), you won't know which of the spells are world-specific and which are not, since the SC doesn't list the names or worlds of origin. If you have been excluding PHB Greyhawk spells from an FR game, you'll end up with people casting Greater Floating Disk unless you go through the book with a fine-toothed comb looking for spells that were previously confined to a certain world.

So I can see at least one advantage to having named spells: maintaining world-specific continuity.

 

[Blaque]

I'm going to still vouch for the reason they did it wasn't for anything to genericize it as much as to make it easier to organize.

Slapping Hand is an S spell now, not a B spell. A better example is that now Elistraee's (really annoying name btw) Grace, Elistraee's Eflugent Epuration, and Elistraee's Evasion would look like this on the summary list of spells:

Elistraee's Eflugent Epuration
Elistraee's Evasion
Elistraee's Grace

Now it looks like this:
Elfugent Uperation
Grace
Instant Refuge

These spells aren't related to one another other then some random person's har dot pronounce and spell name. And I'm more likely to remember what Grace does, then who's name is before it.

Flavor is all nice and good. But when you want to be able to find stuff easily, as little superfulous stuff as possible helps. ANd since a lot of these spells had peoples name in them, that made it harder ot organize more likely, since a lot of people simply don't know who the hell the spells are talking about, and it clutters things. Its like they did the whole thing where things like Lesser Restoration became Restoration, Lesser. Its easier to lay-out. And with names, i tlooks nicer to just cut them then to do the indexing thing.

I will note, though, that I do think Curse of Petty Falling is cooler sounding then Curse of Ill Fortune, but ah well.

Stuff.

EDIT - On rereading, it was Elenster for the second and third spells ti seems. Though, my point still stands. The naems are close and just simming htem, they seemed liek the same guy. That'd of been a frustrating case if I had to deal ith it in the book.

Ummm, more stuff.

 

[lukelightning]

Because neither Mordenkainen nor Bigby exist in the Forgotten realms. I'm not suggesting we get rid of the PHB names, but only because they have already been stuck in there, but I hope that in the next edition they will remove the few remaining names.

I don't see how putting world-specific spells in a non-world-specific book is useful.

Right, but if you take the personal names out of these spells, you get Elminster casting Disjunction and Interposing Hand and Acid Arrow. How is that any weirder than him casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction or Bigby's Interposing Hand, or Melf's Acid Arrow? If you have the Spell Compendium (SC), you won't know which of the spells are world-specific and which are not, since the SC doesn't list the names or worlds of origin. If you have been excluding PHB Greyhawk spells from an FR game, you'll end up with people casting Greater Floating Disk unless you go through the book with a fine-toothed comb looking for spells that were previously confined to a certain world.

So I can see at least one advantage to having named spells: maintaining world-specific continuity.

 

[GrayLinnorm]

It says the same thing at the beginning of the Expanded Psionics Handbook. If they later add it to the SRD, it will become OGL by virtue of being added to the SRD, which is an open document. You can always open closed content after you publish it. You just can't close it again once it's open.

You shouldn't be able to close open game material, but they have before (Beholder, carrion crawler, slaadi, etc.), although it's in bad faith.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You shouldn't be able to close open game material, but they have before (Beholder, carrion crawler, slaadi, etc.), although it's in bad faith.

Actually, they didn't. Those were never "officially" open.

The very first version of the SRD was very clearly (at least for those who speak Legal) a tentative document, a "gentleman's agreement." WotC's lawyers and/or management staff hadn't yet had time to make some final determinations, and they made it very clear from the beginning that some of that material was subject to change.

So while it's certainly frustrating that they declared those monsters closed, they really didn't do anything wrong in doing so.

 

[Chairman7w]

So call it Mordy's Buzzin' Bee for cryin' out loud. Why the heck does it matter what the book says? LOL

 

[BOZ]

maybe there was an apprentice once named Mordenkainen, and he stole his master's spell formulae, making the spells famous with his name on them instead.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Because neither Mordenkainen nor Bigby exist in the Forgotten realms.

And if they don't exist in the Forgotten Realms, then neither should Mage's Disjunction or Interposing Hand, no matter what they're called. I think you misunderstood. I'm sympathetic to keeping the Greyhawk spells in Greyhawk and the FR spells in FR. I happen to like continuity.

But how are you going to do that if you don't know which spells are from which world? When someone casts Acid Arrow, you know it's really Melf's Acid Arrow, even if you drop the name. That spell has no reason to be in any spellbooks in FR, and it's easy enough to ban it in an FR campaign. It's the same with other PHB and spells that have been given generic names in the SRD. But how do you know whether a spell is an FR spell or a Greyhawk spell based on the Spell Compendium listing? You don't, unless you also have the original source.

That's why I say that including the setting-specific names would help preserve continuity. It's because you can exclude spells that shouldn't be in a particular world. A spell created by Mordenkainen shouldn't be in FR. But if it doesn't say that Mordenkainen wrote it, you might include it in an FR campaign by accident, only to find out later that you're crossing genres.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You shouldn't be able to close open game material, but they have before (Beholder, carrion crawler, slaadi, etc.), although it's in bad faith.

It says in the OGL that you can't close anything that has been released under the OGL. Those monsters were never released as open content. If they had been, they couldn't be closed retroactively. The early SRD was more like a "sneak preview" of what the "real" SRD would look like.