Spell Variant- Spell Chains

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

This was something I had in mind for my Skillshop d20 variant, but it may or may not even need that.

Feats have prerequisites and progressions, so I had thought about the prospect of having spell progressions. They already have one prerequisite (Spell attribute 10+level, and some alignment ones), so I decided on this.

Any class with a limited amount of spells they can learn (Sorcerers and wizards, some divine classes work too but all the normal ones prepare from the whole list, rather than their own). As such, I thought it'd make sense that they would need to learn one before they can learn the other.

Ex:

Energy Drain -> Enervation
Lesser ~ -> ~ -> Greater ~
Phantasmal Killer -> Weird
~ -> Mass ~
Dispel Magic + Remove Curse -> Break Enchantment
Power Word Blind -> Stun -> Kill
All the symbols according to spell level

If there is a divine class that needs to learn spells rather than simply picking from a full level list, the following chains work too:

Cure Critical Wounds -> Reincarnation
Cure Critical Wounds -> Raise Dead -> Resurrection -> True Resurrection
Inflict Critical Wounds -> Slay Living -> Destruction -> Implosion
Slay Living -> Finger of Death
Slay Living -> Circle of Death -> Wail of the Banshee
Cure/Inflict Minor -> Light -> Moderate -> Serious -> Critical -> Heal
Cure/Inflict ~ -> Mass Cure ~
Heal -> Mass Heal

...and so on. The full list would take hundreds of lines, I would think. Spell levels and Vancian slots would still exist as a concept (except in Skillshop, which eschews levels), as would level prerequisites. To compensate, V, S, M, F or XP costs can be relaxed a bit.

What do you think?

 

[Ilium]

I think it's a great idea, but would require lots of work. I actually wanted to do something like this myself, but I'm too lazy.

 

[Jack Simth]

Poor Sorcerer. This'll kill 'em.

The Wizard doesn't care much - if it's a good spell line, he's been using the lower-level versions until the upper level version were available - Dimension Door before he had Teleport, and Teleport before the Greater version - he's not going to be bothered overly much, for the most part. Additionally, as Dimension Door and Teleport have different range uses, he's even likely to keep Dimension Door on hand once he's got Teleport - for escaping grapples. Occasionally, it'll mean buying a required spell before getting the big one (e.g., buying a scroll of Shadow Conjuration before being able to scribe the found scroll of Greater Shadow Conjuration) but it won't hurt the Wizard overly much, due to the infinite spells known (at a wealth cost, but still).

The Sorcerer (and most similar classes) has a problem - he's already hurting for spells known, and this makes it worse. Once a Sorcerer has Teleport, he has no need of Dimension Door ... and if it's in the requirement tree, that's fully half of his 4th level spells known for him to have the 5th level spell known he chose (at 10th, earliest the Sorcerer can get Teleport). This will power-down the Sorcerer fairly hard. It'll only power down the Wizard a little, and the Cleric or Druid not at all. And the Sorcerer is already the weakest of the core Primary Casters.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

Poor Sorcerer. This'll kill 'em.

The Wizard doesn't care much - if it's a good spell line, he's been using the lower-level versions until the upper level version were available - Dimension Door before he had Teleport, and Teleport before the Greater version - he's not going to be bothered overly much, for the most part. Additionally, as Dimension Door and Teleport have different range uses, he's even likely to keep Dimension Door on hand once he's got Teleport - for escaping grapples. Occasionally, it'll mean buying a required spell before getting the big one (e.g., buying a scroll of Shadow Conjuration before being able to scribe the found scroll of Greater Shadow Conjuration) but it won't hurt the Wizard overly much, due to the infinite spells known (at a wealth cost, but still).

The Sorcerer (and most similar classes) has a problem - he's already hurting for spells known, and this makes it worse. Once a Sorcerer has Teleport, he has no need of Dimension Door ... and if it's in the requirement tree, that's fully half of his 4th level spells known for him to have the 5th level spell known he chose (at 10th, earliest the Sorcerer can get Teleport). This will power-down the Sorcerer fairly hard. It'll only power down the Wizard a little, and the Cleric or Druid not at all. And the Sorcerer is already the weakest of the core Primary Casters.

In this case, we can allow the Sorc to swap one known spell per his Charisma modifier per day.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Sounds kinda like the Paths of Power article out of Dragon Magazine 216 by Wolfgang Bauer and Steve Kurtz.

Sean Reynolds took a stab at this sort of thing: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/pathmagic.html

And it seems like Green Ronin might have also: http://home.gwi.net/~rdorman/frilond/rul/dm/weaver.htm

 

[Thanael]

It's been done before.

In 2e there was an excellent Dragon article by Wolfgang Baur and Steven Kurtz that introduced Spell Paths to add flavour and distinguish different spellcasters. A revised excertp can be seen here: http://hep-www.colorado.edu/~jladue/path.html

Sean K Reynolds adapted the basic system to 3E: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/pathmagic.html

EDIT: too slow and full of spelling mistakes...

 

[Ilium]

One way to keep from hurting the sorcerer is to let him swap out the earlier spells in the path when he takes the later ones. So when the sorcerer chooses teleport, he has the option of abandoning Dimension Door for a different 4th-level spell. That way, the character keeps the "teleporting flavor" throughout his career, but isn't crippled by having a bunch of redundant spells.

In some cases, the lower level spell will continue to be useful, and in some cases not.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

One way to keep from hurting the sorcerer is to let him swap out the earlier spells in the path when he takes the later ones. So when the sorcerer chooses teleport, he has the option of abandoning Dimension Door for a different 4th-level spell. That way, the character keeps the "teleporting flavor" throughout his career, but isn't crippled by having a bunch of redundant spells.

In some cases, the lower level spell will continue to be useful, and in some cases not.

OK. That and the path magic thing done by Sean Reynolds work well!

Alternatively, if you know a lesser spell on the path, you may gain a greater spell on that path without it counting against your "known spells", as long as you are of appropriate level to cast the spell at all.

Finally, to keep spellchains from being a restriction only, one may get a +1 Save DC bonus, or 1/2 caster level bonus (rounded down) to each spell on a path, for each spell on that path he or she knows.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Done it. An early version of it was posted here.

There were "Chain spells" that were listed as level X. You set the value of X when you memorized/cast it, and that determined the effects. Some spells were straightforward (the cure wounds spell would just heal more as X increased), while others allowed more flexibility (the planar jump spell could mimic the 3.5E spells dimension door, teleport, teleport without error, plane shift, teleport circle, and even gate; each piece to the spell added to its level.)

In practice, it went something like this:
Take the Sorcerers' "spells known" table, and subtract 1 from ALL of the numbers. Yes, this means that at your top level you'll often have 0 spells known.
But, at level 1, the Sorcerer picks a single Chain Spell within his specialized school (no generalists allowed). Effectively, he's gaining one spell at each spell level, although in a very limited way. At levels 5, 10, 15, and 20, he picks another Chain Spell within the same school.
Overall, this puts him far above the original class in number of spells known, although many of them are so similar to others he already knows that it's not worth as much. We also made a few other tweaks to keep it balanced (like requiring a "divine focus" sort of item).

The problem is, the D&D spell list isn't really set up for this sort of thing. There are too many gaps; for instance, while phantasmal killer and wierd should clearly be part of the same chain, there just aren't any other spells like that. The closest we get to true "chains" are the summon monster spells, or a couple of the domains. So, we later expanded this chain concept into part of our homebrew system, where we effectively rebuilt the spell lists from scratch.

 

[Thanael]

There's also the excellent Frilond site which compiled an alphabetical list of spells and their Spell Threads and Spell Threads with spells from the Spell Compendium for the Eldritch Weaver from Green Ronin's Advanced Player's Manual..

Eldritch Weaver Materials

The eldritch weaver is a variant 20-level base class from Green Ronin's Advanced Player's Manual, an arcane spellcaster that chooses and focuses on several different specialties, or threads, of magic. Each thread represents a narrow series of thematically related spells, such as the thread of Fire, or the thread of Smiting. Following a thread gives mastery over the spells in that thread and also conveys some supernatural powers associated with the thread's theme. This class realizes a nifty concept introduced into second edition by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Kurtz in a great article from Dragon 216, "Paths of Power." The one downside to this class is that with so much flexibility comes a certain amount of complexity.