The Giant reduced Durkon's level to prevent him from accessing a specific spell.

[RatElemental]

For 5k XP, "Swinging the tide of a battle in your favor by raising fallen allies to continue fighting" always seemed ridiculously overpowered to me.

Miracle can already happily duplicate raise dead or resurrection. It still costs diamond dust to do it but you can do it without even eating up your entire turn and for no exp cost. Going by the rules on hiring spellcasters to cast spells for you, the 5000 exp you burn on the given miracle is worth 25000 gold, enough to cast raise dead five times or resurrection twice. Getting a party's worth (minus cleric) of corpses back on their feet is actually pretty in line with the cost.

[Goblin_Priest]

Miracle can already happily duplicate raise dead or resurrection. It still costs diamond dust to do it but you can do it without even eating up your entire turn and for no exp cost. Going by the rules on hiring spellcasters to cast spells for you, the 5000 exp you burn on the given miracle is worth 25000 gold, enough to cast raise dead five times or resurrection twice. Getting a party's worth (minus cleric) of corpses back on their feet is actually pretty in line with the cost.

Heh, I guess that's just terribly written. Because without any numbers in there, well... the first thing that comes to mind is always bringing back a ridiculous number of dudes back. Because as you said, it can already duplicate these spells, why would you pay extra XP to do so?

[Reboot]

Heh, I guess that's just terribly written. Because without any numbers in there, well... the first thing that comes to mind is always bringing back a ridiculous number of dudes back. Because as you said, it can already duplicate these spells, why would you pay extra XP to do so?

Well, it's basically Mass Raise Dead, and other spells have Mass versions to do the same thing multiple times with one higher-level casting.

But, yeah, RAW (but maybe not RAI) it has no limit, so you could raise an entire army as long as you could consider them "fallen allies". Hell, a sufficiently long-lived character could raise an entire ancient graveyard... (it also doesn't say anything about the dead characters having the opportunity to reject being raised. Or level loss)

[Goblin_Priest]

Well, it's basically Mass Raise Dead, and other spells have Mass versions to do the same thing multiple times with one higher-level casting.

But, yeah, RAW (but maybe not RAI) it has no limit, so you could raise an entire army as long as you could consider them "fallen allies". Hell, a sufficiently long-lived character could raise an entire ancient graveyard... (it also doesn't say anything about the dead characters having the opportunity to reject being raised. Or level loss)

Every sentence there just made me further facepalm at how horridly written that spell is. What on earth were they thinking...

[zimmerwald1915]

Every sentence there just made me further facepalm at how horridly written that spell is. What on earth were they thinking...

"It's a 9th-level spell, balance is long out the window at this point, might as well double down on making it as awesome as possible."

[Reboot]

Is that how that works? That sounds silly.
What about creatures who are born with level adjustments (or RHD, for that matter)? Do they need to gain several thousand additional XP before they can start getting class levels? (Is that why monsters with class levels are so rare?)

Well, racial hit dice are directly equivalent to levels, no? (I believe PC monsters need to level up to get their full RHD)

And the idea with level adjustment is similar - L15 Vampire Durkon is treated as a L23 character for levelling purposes on the basis that the vampire template is equivalent to eight levels worth of power (so, he's effectively L15 Cleric/L8 Vampire). The alternative approach would be to take away eight levels of (in this case) Cleric and replace them with eight vampire RHD, and if you don't have eight levels to lose, you become either a lesser vampire (like a vampire spawn) who needs to level up to get full vampire powers, or just plain can't become a vamp and die instead.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Every sentence there just made me further facepalm at how horridly written that spell is. What on earth were they thinking...

"This is a freeform do-something-awesome spell".

Well, racial hit dice are directly equivalent to levels, no? (I believe PC monsters need to level up to get their full RHD)

And the idea with level adjustment is similar - L15 Vampire Durkon is treated as a L23 character for levelling purposes on the basis that the vampire template is equivalent to eight levels worth of power (so, he's effectively L15 Cleric/L8 Vampire). The alternative approach would be to take away eight levels of (in this case) Cleric and replace them with eight vampire RHD, and if you don't have eight levels to lose, you become either a lesser vampire (like a vampire spawn) who needs to level up to get full vampire powers, or just plain can't become a vamp and die instead.

The vampire template adds level adjustment, not hit dice.

[Reboot]

The vampire template adds level adjustment, not hit dice.

Which is why I said "L15 Vampire Durkon is treated as a L23 character for levelling purposes". Talking about RHD was in the context of an "alternative approach" where the LA stayed at 0, and instead eight vampire RHD replaced eight class levels.

[rferries]

Re: miracle - it can do very powerful things, but explicitly only with your deity's approval (read: DM fiat). "Raising fallen allies" could be interpreted as raising as few as 2 allies, or raising creatures only for the remainder of an encounter (after which they die again), or some other limitation.

[tyckspoon]

Every sentence there just made me further facepalm at how horridly written that spell is. What on earth were they thinking...

It's the clerical equivalent of Wish; they're both supposed to be capable of things beyond any other spell with a degree of 'you can get anything you can think to ask for.' The main difference is that where Wish has explicit warnings and a long history of both myth and in-game tradition about how Wishes can backfire on the Wisher or otherwise not work as requested, Miracle is explicitly granted by something that is both positively inclined toward the caster and more powerful than mortals - it's a lot weirder to have that monkey-pawed or tell the caster 'your god isn't strong enough to do that, you get a reduced effect.'

[GreatWyrmGold]

Which is why I said "L15 Vampire Durkon is treated as a L23 character for levelling purposes". Talking about RHD was in the context of an "alternative approach" where the LA stayed at 0, and instead eight vampire RHD replaced eight class levels.

...I see. I don't get why you didn't just say that the LA replaced class levels, though.
And it still seems weird to me, however you cut it.

It's the clerical equivalent of Wish; they're both supposed to be capable of things beyond any other spell with a degree of 'you can get anything you can think to ask for.' The main difference is that where Wish has explicit warnings and a long history of both myth and in-game tradition about how Wishes can backfire on the Wisher or otherwise not work as requested, Miracle is explicitly granted by something that is both positively inclined toward the caster and more powerful than mortals - it's a lot weirder to have that monkey-pawed or tell the caster 'your god isn't strong enough to do that, you get a reduced effect.'

Pretty much.
The literary basis for wish is traced back to various legends and myths about mortals who asked for boons too great or ill-considered for mere mortals to handle, from King Midas to Faust. On the other hand, the literary basis for miracle is mostly traced back to the Bible, which tends not to have negative outcomes for its protagonists.

[zimmerwald1915]

On the other hand, the literary basis for miracle is mostly traced back to the Bible, which tends not to have negative outcomes for its protagonists.

Erm. . . *bites tongue*

[RatElemental]

...I see. I don't get why you didn't just say that the LA replaced class levels, though.
And it still seems weird to me, however you cut it.

It doesn't replace class levels. You take the creature's class levels, if any, add level adjustment to it, and use that number as the level's worth of exp they need to gain a level.

[Reboot]

It doesn't replace class levels. You take the creature's class levels, if any, add level adjustment to it, and use that number as the level's worth of exp they need to gain a level.

...is this a forum, or Telephone? It's just getting silly now :lol:

[Goblin_Priest]

"It's a 9th-level spell, balance is long out the window at this point, might as well double down on making it as awesome as possible."

Meanwhile, rogues, at lvl 20, get +1 BAB and +1 ref.

Well, racial hit dice are directly equivalent to levels, no? (I believe PC monsters need to level up to get their full RHD)

And the idea with level adjustment is similar - L15 Vampire Durkon is treated as a L23 character for levelling purposes on the basis that the vampire template is equivalent to eight levels worth of power (so, he's effectively L15 Cleric/L8 Vampire). The alternative approach would be to take away eight levels of (in this case) Cleric and replace them with eight vampire RHD, and if you don't have eight levels to lose, you become either a lesser vampire (like a vampire spawn) who needs to level up to get full vampire powers, or just plain can't become a vamp and die instead.

No, racial HD and LA are not the same. Sometimes they match, great, often they do not. Savage Species had a few examples of how to scale some monsters from "level 1". Creatures with LA usually had some RHD, but not always. Templates notably rarely add RHD, but almost always add LA.

"This is a freeform do-something-awesome spell".

Having free-form spells at lvl 9 completely invalidates the need to have any other spells at lvl 9, though.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Having free-form spells at lvl 9 completely invalidates the need to have any other spells at lvl 9, though.

I will never claim that D&D is a well-designed game. It consistently works well enough at low levels, but...high levels are hit-or-miss. Especially in editions where the designers went "Screw it, nobody's going to be playing anything at this level, let's just make it cool."

[RatElemental]

Having free-form spells at lvl 9 completely invalidates the need to have any other spells at lvl 9, though.

Their existence is justified when the freeform "do something awesome" spell costs 5000 exp no matter what you do with it and it can't duplicate effects equivalent or better than spells one level lower without opening the door for the DM to get to play a game of "Jackass Genie."

Even miracle doesn't completely invalidate it, it still costs EXP if you do something other than duplicate weaker spells with it and if you want something more you get to play "Mother may I" with the DM instead.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Their existence is justified when the freeform "do something awesome" spell costs 5000 exp no matter what you do with it and it can't duplicate effects equivalent or better than spells one level lower without opening the door for the DM to get to play a game of "Jackass Genie."

Even miracle doesn't completely invalidate it, it still costs EXP if you do something other than duplicate weaker spells with it and if you want something more you get to play "Mother may I" with the DM instead.

Which gets us back to the "questionable game design" I was talking about a post ago. If wish/miracle just let you duplicate lower-level spells and didn't have a steep XP cost, cool; it trades power for versatility. But they need to include a single spell (well, one arcane and one divine) to let characters do any kind of awesome stuff, because that's something D&d has always had.