What ever happened to spell research?

[DragonLancer]

In all my time playing D&D, regardless of edition, I have never had a player bother to research their own spells. This is especially true of 3.X where there are so many potential spells out there that researching a new one is unnessecary.

 

[satori01]

I can not say I have seen a drop in spell research compared to 1e. It was a rarely used option back then, and still seems to be a rarely used option now.

3.X edition has a huge amount of spell resources, more than probably any other edition. PHB, PHB II, Spell Compendium, Complete Arcane, Races of the Dragon, Dragon Magic; from those WOTC books a Wizard has hundreds of different spells to chose from, many of them quite good . The environment books by WOTC probably have other spells that did not make it into Spell Compendium, so the list of potential spells is huge.

Add in third party company's products like Sword & Sorceries Relics & Rituals and the spell list gets even bigger.
Given the aging of the audience, the increasing hours of most workers in industrial societies, is their a need to re-create the wheel given the product out there?

 

[Ashardalon]

They aren't in the DMG. The first place I know of them to be published was in Tome & Blood, I don't know if they have been reprinted.

In the 3.0 DMG at least, they are on page 42 (the character chapter, not the running the game chapter). I'm not sure about the 3.5 DMG, but I imagine it's in a similar place there.
*checks the ToC and Index on amazon.com*
I'd suggest checking page 198.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Let's face it, there's no need to research a cold version of the Fireball spell when you can simply take Energy Substitution.

That's exactly what I did for my last wizard char, a necromancer. I wanted spells that felt 'evil' - ray of enfeeblement, spider climb, web, cold fireball, evard's black tentacles - no poncey stuff like glitterdust or mirror image. I really loved cold fireball, it was my signature spell.

The only time I considered researching a new spell was for something to avoid getting pregnant after she fell magically in love with a pastry chief but I never got round to it.

 

[danzig138]

Mark me as another one who has not once seen a player worry about researching spells back in the older editions. Never. Not a single time. So IME, spell research hasn't dwindled at all. It hasn't moved at all. No one did it then, and no one does it now.

 

[Set]

Just about every wizard I ever played more than one time ended up researching a signature spell (or a few). It was a huge part of the game for me, and what differentiated one wizard from another.

We played in the Realms back then, and if you showed up to a Mage Fair, you had to cast a spell of some sort in front of the wardens at the gate to be allowed in. A mage who cast a 'common' spell like magic missile or dancing lights was admitted, but the mage who cast a spell that the wardens (and other wizards in line) had never seen before got attention and status and a built-in market for his shiny new incantation, if he wanted to sell the secret. The one time the party entered such an event, my wizard had researched an extremely long range fire-based 1st level magic missile. Only one missile, doing 1d6 damage plus 1 hp / level, but the range was line of sight, and it made a keen shrieking noise as it rocketed towards it's target. The warden gestured that it was his turn, and he pointed at the 'fireball range' across the field (a half mile away) and cast his signature spell. The entire mage-fair
saw the missile arc over a half-mile to hit it's target.

The best reaction was if you surprised the wardens / onlookers by doing something that *looked* common but turned out to be special, like cast a variation of dancing lights that suddenly rocketed towards a target and burst into dazzling explosions, like fireworks.

It was like getting into one of those 'spy' themed bars, where you have to do something interesting in front of the camera, and the people already in the bar vote on whether or not you should be allowed in. The more interesting the presentation, the better your chances of 'getting in.'

[Darn Red Wizards cheated. They had apprentices whip up 1st level spells that looked flashy but didn't really do anything special, like make a rumble of thunder, or create a glassful of spicy glow-in-the-dark phosphorescent wine, just so that they always had an assortment of 'unique' spells to show off.]

These days, I can't even keep up with the published spells.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I've seen signature spells in every edition, but never using the published spell creation rules.

In a 2e-era issue of Dragon, they suggested allowing 'flavor substitutions' for themed spellcasters (i.e., 'ice strands' in place of 'web,' 'coldball' in place of 'fireball,' or 'breathfreeze' instead of 'cloudkill') free of charge, and I saw a lot of players (myself included) use that option.

In 3e, Energy Substitution has always been a popular feat IMX.

No PC has ever outright researched a spell, however, and if they did, I would vet it for balance and either change or admit it free of extra charge.

 

[jonesy]

I'm actually surprised that people here are talking about spell research starting from AD&D.

Our group had a lot of Red Box era mages making new spells for themselves.

We only stopped when 3e came around. Most likely because of, like has already been said, the abundance of existing spells and abilities.

 

[Thedrimos]

At least in my experience, there has been a drop in custom spell research (by PCs, at least) in 3e games, and it seems largely due to a shift in the default pacing of the game. In the 2e Forgotten Realms game I ran, the players generally controlled the pacing of the game...they went out exploring when they had some spare time or needed money, and took time to research spells or craft items as appropriate. (There were enough Harpers and other NPCs around to handle lesser threats, and big threats generally took time to come to a head...the BBEGs needed time to prepare, too.) At the higher levels they weren't levelling very quickly even when actively adventuring, so researching new spells tailored to their specific circumstances was a productive use of time.

In the 3e Greyhawk campaign I'm currently playing in, events transpire very quickly...there are always several villainous schemes afoot, and neglecting to follow up on them leads to dire consequences within a week. Admittedly much of this is due to a difference in DM style, but a major contributing factor is the pace of levelling...our characters are well into epic levels, and we still manage to level once every few days when actively adventuring. Given that our opponents are assumed to progress at the same pace, taking weeks off to research even one mid-level spell can put us at a crippling disadvantage. There are custom spells in the game, but they were all developed by NPCs (who either researched them during a rare period of boredom many years ago, or were ordered to research them by a boss in whatever organization they belong to).

The epic rules, if in use, even further discourage normal spell research. Why would you spend 45 days researching a 9th-level spell when you could research an epic spell in 5 days or make a 9th-level Pearl of Power in 9 days using Efficient Item Creation? Yes, those activities cost experience, but the rapid pace of levelling ensures that you can gain the necessary experience in just a few days. There is a list of spells that my wizard would love to research, and some of them are in fact already written out in detail and have DM approval, but my character simply hasn't had time to research them...

 

[RFisher]

The biggest reason my PCs have done less spell research in 3e is the greater comprehesiveness of the 3e spell list. (& the fact that DMs seems more likely to let me pick what spells my MU gets.) The few spells I have created for 3e have really been slight tweaks on existing spells.