Spell Range Changes

[el-remmen]

I recently decided that I am cutting medium and long ranges for spells across the board.

Short range remains the same (25' + 5' / 2 levels)

Medium range becomes 50' + 5' / level

Long range becomes 100' + 10' / level

Unlimited remains the same.

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Basically, most encounter areas are not so big that range even matters (and I'd like it to matter more encouraging more movement and positioning to get a spell off) and outside I want to keep spells from being used as artillery support from great unseen distances (nor do I want to deal with the pain in the butt of determining or arguing line of sight for a target 400' away.

I plan to make some case by case rulings of spells as they come up in game play as to whether a spell that was previously medium might become long, for example.

Anyway, can anyone think of any possible consequences I am not considering?

Anyone ever do something similar?

 

[Nifft]

I've been thinking about the consequences of just making:
Short = 30
Medium = 60
Long = 120

That way every Extended range (except extended Long) is another familiar range.

Haven't tried it in play, though.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Celebrim]

I think this is well thought out. I'm looking through the spells and in a cursory glance I can't find many cases where the range is really needed. I'm not even sure you need to rule that any medium ranged spells become long ranged. Most cases where the spell needs to have a large range, it has its own special case range anyway.

The only spell I've seen so far where I think you are really nerfing it by decreasing its range is 'detect animals or plants'. And really, how often does that come up? You don't really nerf it, but Dimension door gets a good deal less useful with the reduced range.

If any other problem cases exist, they are certainly rare enough that you can deal with it on a case by case basis when it comes up.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Are you doing anything similar with the range of missile weapons? Longbows with a range of up to 1100ft and heavy crossbows up to 1200ft?

If not, why not, given the criteria above?

 

[Plane Sailing]

In fact what could be interesting would be to have range increments for spells rather than fixed ranges - e.g 50ft for Medium and 100ft for long, but give targets +2 to their save for every range increment they are beyond the first. (Or -2 to hit for ranged touch spells instead).

Thus spell artillery would still be possible, but it would suffer from the same inaccuracy problems as real artillery once you got to ranges about 500ft or so (unlike the current strange situation where a wizard can hit a foe with Acid Arrow with equal skill whether he is 15ft or 1000ft away)

Cheers

 

[el-remmen]

I think range increments adds a level of complication I don't want/need.

As for spell ranges vs. weapon ranges. . . a single arrow does not represent the destructive power or effect on a large-scale battle that a spell can. . . The whole idea is that if a wizard wants to get involved in a big fight or a seige, he or she will need to get closer to being in the mix than 400'

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think range increments adds a level of complication I don't want/need.

As for spell ranges vs. weapon ranges. . . a single arrow does not represent the destructive power or effect on a large-scale battle that a spell can. . . The whole idea is that if a wizard wants to get involved in a big fight or a seige, he or she will need to get closer to being in the mix than 400'

OK, fair enough.

I was thinking

a)Basically, most encounter areas are not so big that range even matters

(so it wouldn't come up very often)

b) and outside I want to keep spells from being used as artillery support from great unseen distances

(so when it did come up there was exactly the same penalty as archery fire has)

c) nor do I want to deal with the pain in the butt of determining or arguing line of sight for a target 400' away.

(This is presumably an issue for any archers anyway, of whom there are far more than fireball flingers - especially in a relatively low magic campaign as I think yours is)

So that was my rationale, anyway!

Cheers

 

[Celebrim]

Are you doing anything similar with the range of missile weapons? Longbows with a range of up to 1100ft and heavy crossbows up to 1200ft?

If not, why not, given the criteria above?

I've already halved the base ranges of most ranged weapons in my game. I don't know why I didn't think to reduce the ranges of spells.