Ghostform Update from 3.0 to 3.5

[mashlagoo1982]

Long story short, a player in my party is playing a class that had access to the 3.0 Ghostform spell in Tomb of Blood.
His spell selection is very limited because he is playing as a Necromancer from Secret College of Necromancy.

The Ghostform spell has since been updated in the Spell Compendium with some major changes.

The most notable changes which stand out to me are as follows.

- Changed from 5th level to 8th level spell
- Changed to allow magic attack rolls (ray and touch) while in ghostform
- Changed to have a shorter duration (rounds per level instead of minutes per level)

Was there any released reason why the spell was changed?

Or, can anyone help me determine a reason if nothing was released?

If I go with the updated 8th level spell, that denies my player access to a 5th level spell.
He has requested that I allow him Blink as a substitute for the Ghostform spell.

I am considering allowing both versions of the Ghostform spell, except rename the 3.0 version as Lesser Ghostform.

Suggestions?

[Psyren]

Because incorporeal is an extremely powerful defense (just look at any Tarrasque thread) and 3.0 magic was even more broken than it is now, basically.

If you don't mind him not having a necromancy spell, Blink is a fine option, as is Greater Invis.

[mashlagoo1982]

Because incorporeal is an extremely powerful defense (just look at any Tarrasque thread) and 3.0 magic was even more broken than it is now, basically.

If you don't mind him not having a necromancy spell, Blink is a fine option, as is Greater Invis.

Just some background, the character is currently level 8.

This is where I get confused. Judging from the various effects, it would seem that Blink is actually a stronger spell then 5th level Ghostform once said caster becomes high enough level to cast the Ghostform spell. I will be honest, I never really bothered to learn much about Blink because it has never come up in our game before. So my understanding could be very wrong.

Most opponents that pose any threat to a party that high (10th level) will have magic weapons anyhow. So the 50% miss chance balances out in a sense as the 5% chance to be hit with a mundane weapon vs Ghostform will not be encountered often.

With Blink you are incorporeal and invisible, while with Ghostform you are incorporeal but visible. This provides bonuses to melee attacks while using Blink (+2 and no Dex AC for opponent).

The biggest disadvantage to Blink seems to be the caster is constantly shifting between being the material and ethereal plane.
- Additional chance to miss with attacks and spells
- Slower speed
- Dangers from environment while blinking back to material plane
But even this has benefits.
- Attack both ethereal and material opponents
- Half damage from falling

This brings up Ghostform's strength. Because there is no shifting between material and ethereal, the caster can pass through solid objects on the material plane and basically fly around in any direction. Blink allows this to some extent, but to a limited degree and a minor danger to harming ones-self. I feel these dangers are really very little and probably wouldn't be much of a concern to the caster as healing belts could negate the damage.

So, the 5th level Ghostform is great for bypassing obstacles and just getting around areas in general while avoiding the material plane. Where-as Blink seems to be more effective for combat.

If I did allow the 5th level version of Ghostform, I would probably reduce the duration to keep it from being overpowered.

Any other thoughts?

[peacenlove]

The tactical advantages (combined with a good move speed, easily achievable with haste), innate perfect flight speed and defenses of the incorporeal subtype (can't be affected by extraordinary effects such as grapples, poisons and many many other deadly stuff) have immeasurable value. The number of benefits you gain from this spell are comparable only to polymorph (and only if you do a LOT of book diving), a spell that shouldn't be 4th level, and only from high hit die forms.

One less stat to worry about (Strength) and one more stat to empower your defenses and your attacks (Charisma and Dexterity) are just icing on the cake

[ZamielVanWeber]

With Blink you are neither incorporeal not invisible. Also randomly losing actions sucks. Badly. Greater Blink is awesome for a reason. I would take 3.0 ghostform over blink any time, and here is why:
Incorporeal they need MAGIC weapons to even be allowed to try to hit you. Blink they merely need weapons.
Incorporeal gives you a fly speed. Blink does not.
Incorporeal allows you to fly through solid objects, turning you into a scout/surprise hitter, or just letting you retreat into an area of 100% safety. Blink does not.
Incorporeal gives you an extra defense against touch attacks (deflection bonus). Blink does not.
Incorporeal lets you use your typically higher Dex to make melee touch attacks. Blink does not.
Incorporeal will not randomly nom on actions. Blink does.
Anything that that hits incorporeal can hit a blinking creature, with the exception of ghost touch weapons, but, as I noted, the reverse is not true. Ghost Form is a powerful defensive spell with scouting options added on because why not?

[Fax Celestis]

Bolding reasons incorporeal is the most badass of subtypes:

An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source (except for positive energy, negative energy, force effects such as magic missile, or attacks made with ghost touch weapons). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead, but a hit with holy water has a 50% chance of not affecting an incorporeal creature.

An incorporeal creature has no natural armor bonus but has a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma bonus (always at least +1, even if the creature’s Charisma score does not normally provide a bonus).

An incorporeal creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than its own. It can sense the presence of creatures or objects within a square adjacent to its current location, but enemies have total concealment (50% miss chance) from an incorporeal creature that is inside an object. In order to see farther from the object it is in and attack normally, the incorporeal creature must emerge. An incorporeal creature inside an object has total cover, but when it attacks a creature outside the object it only has cover, so a creature outside with a readied action could strike at it as it attacks. An incorporeal creature cannot pass through a force effect.

An incorporeal creature’s attacks pass through (ignore) natural armor, armor, and shields, although deflection bonuses and force effects (such as mage armor) work normally against it. Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air. Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage. Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled. In fact, they cannot take any physical action that would move or manipulate an opponent or its equipment, nor are they subject to such actions. Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight.

An incorporeal creature moves silently and cannot be heard with Listen checks if it doesn’t wish to be. It has no Strength score, so its Dexterity modifier applies to both its melee attacks and its ranged attacks. Nonvisual senses, such as scent and blindsight, are either ineffective or only partly effective with regard to incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures have an innate sense of direction and can move at full speed even when they cannot see.

And from the Condition Summary:

Incorporeality
Spectres, wraiths, and a few other creatures lack physical bodies. Such creatures are insubstantial and can’t be touched by nonmagical matter or energy. Likewise, they cannot manipulate objects or exert physical force on objects. However, incorporeal beings have a tangible presence that sometimes seems like a physical attack against a corporeal creature.

Incorporeal creatures are present on the same plane as the characters, and characters have some chance to affect them.

Incorporeal creatures can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, by magic weapons, or by spells, spell-like effects, or supernatural effects. They are immune to all nonmagical attack forms. They are not burned by normal fires, affected by natural cold, or harmed by mundane acids.

Even when struck by magic or magic weapons, an incorporeal creature has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source—except for a force effect or damage dealt by a ghost touch weapon.

Incorporeal creatures are immune to critical hits, extra damage from being favored enemies, and from sneak attacks. They move in any direction (including up or down) at will. They do not need to walk on the ground. They can pass through solid objects at will, although they cannot see when their eyes are within solid matter.

Incorporeal creatures hiding inside solid objects get a +2 circumstance bonus on Listen checks, because solid objects carry sound well. Pinpointing an opponent from inside a solid object uses the same rules as pinpointing invisible opponents (see Invisibility, below).

Incorporeal creatures are inaudible unless they decide to make noise.

The physical attacks of incorporeal creatures ignore material armor, even magic armor, unless it is made of force (such as mage armor or bracers of armor) or has the ghost touch ability.

Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air.

Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage.

Corporeal creatures cannot trip or grapple incorporeal creatures.

Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight.

Incorporeal creatures do not leave footprints, have no scent, and make no noise unless they manifest, and even then they only make noise intentionally.

A summary:

• Immunity to nonmagical damage
• Obstacle immunity
• Ignore several layers of Armor Class, effectively getting brilliant energy on all their attacks for free
• No need to breathe.
• Immune to grapple, entangling, caltrops, traps
• +Yes to Move Silently
• Free Weapon Finesse feat
• Free Darkstalker feat
• Immunity to the biggest downside of blindness
• Immunity to crits and precision damage
• 50% resistance to anything that comes from a corporeal source (such as a touch spell, a weapon attack, or a beesting, even if they have ghost touch), unless it's a Force effect or deals with positive/negative energy.

The Tome and Blood version also grants you a perfect fly speed equal to your land speed.

That is a significantly huge buff. It is a big enough buff that I would consider several levels of LA to pick it up.

In comparison, blink gives you:

You “blink” back and forth between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. You look as though you’re winking in and out of reality very quickly and at random.

Blinking has several effects, as follows.

Physical attacks against you have a 50% miss chance, and the Blind-Fight feat doesn’t help opponents, since you’re ethereal and not merely invisible. If the attack is capable of striking ethereal creatures, the miss chance is only 20% (for concealment).

If the attacker can see invisible creatures, the miss chance is also only 20%. (For an attacker who can both see and strike ethereal creatures, there is no miss chance.) Likewise, your own attacks have a 20% miss chance, since you sometimes go ethereal just as you are about to strike.

Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you’re blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures. Your own spells have a 20% chance to activate just as you go ethereal, in which case they typically do not affect the Material Plane.

While blinking, you take only half damage from area attacks (but full damage from those that extend onto the Ethereal Plane). You strike as an invisible creature (with a +2 bonus on attack rolls), denying your target any Dexterity bonus to AC.

You take only half damage from falling, since you fall only while you are material.

While blinking, you can step through (but not see through) solid objects. For each 5 feet of solid material you walk through, there is a 50% chance that you become material. If this occurs, you are shunted off to the nearest open space and take 1d6 points of damage per 5 feet so traveled. You can move at only three-quarters speed (because movement on the Ethereal Plane is at half speed, and you spend about half your time there and half your time material.)

Since you spend about half your time on the Ethereal Plane, you can see and even attack ethereal creatures. You interact with ethereal creatures roughly the same way you interact with material ones.

An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.

An ethereal creature can see and hear the Material Plane, but everything looks gray and insubstantial. Sight and hearing on the Material Plane are limited to 60 feet.

Force effects and abjurations affect you normally. Their effects extend onto the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane, but not vice versa. An ethereal creature can’t attack material creatures, and spells you cast while ethereal affect only other ethereal things. Certain material creatures or objects have attacks or effects that work on the Ethereal Plane. Treat other ethereal creatures and objects as material.

In summary:

• 50% miss chance
• 20% failure chance on all your attacks and spells
• 50% resistance to single-target spells
• 50% damage reduction to AoEs
• Obstacle avoidance
• 3/4 speed
• Immunity to precision damage from creatures that can't affect ethereal and see invisible at the same time

So blink has fewer benefits and comes with a bunch of downsides.

It's fairly simple to see why they upped the level on ghostform in this case.

[Psyren]

As Fax so expertly summed up for me, incorporeal was very undercosted in 3.0. Also, there is your statement:

Most opponents that pose any threat to a party that high (10th level) will have magic weapons anyhow.

Which is unfortunately very false. There are many, many monsters above 10th level (such as the aforementioned Tarrasque) that will have an extremely hard time with incorporeal opponents. You hose almost all (dire) animals, magical beasts, aberrations, plants, oozes, vermin - even dragons, minus the slow breath weapon and mediocre spells. Anything that relies on natural weapons is almost totally hosed by an incorporeal attacker.

And finally, Blink has a number of disadvantages to balance it out, which Fax summed up as well.

[mashlagoo1982]

So, it seems my confusion with the Blink spell is that in the description it states the caster is ethereal and later it states all ethereal creatures are incorporeal as well as some other things. So I applied incorporeal to what the caster should receive.

I take it this is incorrect?

[Fax Celestis]

So, it seems my confusion with the Blink spell is that in the description it states the caster is ethereal and later it states all ethereal creatures are incorporeal as well as some other things. So I applied incorporeal to what the caster should receive.

I take it this is incorrect?

You're only ethereal 50% of the time, so the spell itself describes how it works.

[Psyren]

So, it seems my confusion with the Blink spell is that in the description it states the caster is ethereal and later it states all ethereal creatures are incorporeal as well as some other things. So I applied incorporeal to what the caster should receive.

I take it this is incorrect?

You're incorporeal while ethereal. Not all the time, and you don't gain the subtype (i.e. the Cha to AC and other benefits.) It simply means "you can walk through walls" - because ethereal creatures can do that - and "some weapons will pass through you" - because that happens to ethereal creatures too, etc.

[mashlagoo1982]

You're incorporeal while ethereal. Not all the time, and you don't gain the subtype (i.e. the Cha to AC and other benefits.) It simply means "you can walk through walls" - because ethereal creatures can do that - and "some weapons will pass through you" - because that happens to ethereal creatures too, etc.

So, then based off this, should the caster be able to fly while ethereal? I can already hear my player asking this question.

[Fax Celestis]

So, then based off this, should the caster be able to fly while ethereal? I can already hear my player asking this question.

Sure, but you can infer from this:

For each 5 feet of solid material you walk through, there is a 50% chance that you become material.

That the same would hold true of flying. So for every square he moves through, he's got a chance of dropping like a rock.

[mashlagoo1982]

You're only ethereal 50% of the time, so the spell itself describes how it works.

I prefer this...

Which support what you said earlier.

In summary:
•50% miss chance
•20% failure chance on all your attacks and spells
•50% resistance to single-target spells
•50% damage reduction to AoEs
•Obstacle avoidance
•3/4 speed
•Immunity to precision damage from creatures that can't affect ethereal and see invisible at the same time

[mashlagoo1982]

Sure, but you can infer from this:



That the same would hold true of flying. So for every square he moves through, he's got a chance of dropping like a rock.

That is how I thought the spell worked. Which is why the 50% fall damage was important.


EDIT:

With Blink you are neither incorporeal not invisible.

The wording "you are ethereal and not merely invisible" and "strike as an invisible creature" led me to believe that at some point the caster was invisible.

EDIT AGAIN:
So the caster isn't so much invisible as simply not existing on the same plane... this thread is slowing going toward OP hates Blink.


Any ideas regarding reworking the 5th level Ghostform spell. Because I am more concerned about addressing that issue and less about how confusing Blink can be.

[Psyren]

So, then based off this, should the caster be able to fly while ethereal? I can already hear my player asking this question.

I would actually say no, because you're blinking so fast that they you can't actually move "in between tugs" from gravity.

The wording "you are ethereal and not merely invisible" and "strike as an invisible creature" led me to believe that at some point the caster was invisible.

You are - ethereal creatures are invisible.

Basically the Blink spell reiterates a bunch of stuff from the ethereal condition, but it appears confusing because it sounds like you are getting more general access to those things because they didn't say "while ethereal..."

Any ideas regarding reworking the 5th level Ghostform spell. Because I am more concerned about addressing that issue and less about how confusing Blink can be.

Start with Gaseous Form and power it up a bit would be my suggestion. Starting from full incorporeal is far too strong.