Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="zombusey" data-source="post: 9846005" data-attributes="member: 7037676">If you're ever looking for 3rd-party A5e content, I'm pretty sure almost all of it (if not all) can be found under the Level Up system filter on DriveThruRPG, alongside the official books: <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?ruleSystem=1000104-level-up-advanced-5th-edition&src=fid1000104" target="_blank">https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?ruleSystem=1000104-level-up-advanced-5th-edition&src=fid1000104</a>.There's also the A5e data sheet that is maintained by members of the community. It has pretty much everything you could possibly want in terms of raw data, including all of the spells currently available from both 1st- and 3rd-party sources: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pORzOkeY77e5cLt-hvROqyMvP7cSfTUgqngS3HHbtJw/edit?gid=1977718354#gid=1977718354" target="_blank">A5e Data Sheet</a>As far as designing spells, there's a host of factors that you need to take into consideration beyond damage type and the prevalence of a given resistance/immunity. Casting time, opportunity cost in the form of spell choice (this is a big deal on spontaneous casters and half-casters in particular), utility vs. damage, target(s) and area of effect, duration, whether it requires concentration or can be ritually cast, etc. all affect what spell gets assigned to what level. You also need to take into account which classes will have access to the spell, and how that spell could interact with class features like a sorcerer's metamagic or a wizard's Arcane Recovery.There unfortunately isn't a concrete rubric I can point you to like there is for monster creation, but I can give you the questions I ask myself as I'm coming up with new spells for publication:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What is the flavor? Your above examples are all obviously elemental in nature, but what about a particular element are you trying to evoke? Water and Air say movement moreso than damage to me, for example, so how do I incorporate that into what the spell does?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Am I Adding Something Meaningful? Is there already a spell out there that more or less accomplishes what I want out of the above? If so, what about the spell that I'm working on makes it different enough to warrant it existing alongside the preexisting one? If it's just a difference of flavor with no mechanical alterations, then I tend to stop here and abandon the idea. Players can always work with their Narrators to adjust the flavor of a spell to fit the character vibe. Or, if it's just a matter of changing fireball to ice ball, then that can be accomplished without further adjustment outside of damage type.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Could I Give It More? However, using the above example of fireball to ice ball, what if, on impact, the area of effect becomes difficult terrain? Or, instead, what if creatures who fail their DEX save are grappled as their feet are adhered to the floor by the ice? That gives it an additional layer of complexity that the original spell doesn't have. In this case, it would also certainly turn this into a higher-level spell because of the additional effects. I also would ask myself at this point if ice ball can be upcast like fireball, and if so, what about the spell changes if cast at a higher level?</li> </ul>After I ask myself all of those questions, I either go to the data sheet or the tools site and start rummaging around spells of various levels to get a feel for where it theoretically falls in the 1st-9th level spell progression. Character options only become over- or under-powered because they're out of line with everything else that is available at that level, so getting a general feel for what a 5th-level spell "does" helps keep everything in line with the other available options. This part of the process is extremely time-consuming, but it's crucial. Then, based on what the spell does and what its overall vibe is, I settle on it being available to X, Y, or Z class(es) and then double-check class features to make sure there's no conflicts there.Hopefully some of that at least helps!</blockquote>

Verification