The Forty-Five (EDIT: Seventy-Five) Theses on the Design and Brokenness of Spells

**Vadskye** · 2013-08-04, 05:56 PM (ISO 8601)

D&D's spell system is one of the most unique things about the game. It allows the game to encompass a great variety of magical phenomena, and it it can make being a magic user uniquely enjoyable, in the right circumstances.

It is also poorly designed and incredibly broken.

Here I present the most important problems with the spell system as currently written. Soon, I will present my proposed Spell Reformation, where I attempt to address all of these problems.

Spells Are Complex, Unintuitive, and Hard to Use

Spells vary wildly in power and utility, even at the same level.
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Sleep is vastly superior to Cause Fear. Daylight does not deserve to be at the same level as Fireball. Crushing Despair is trivial compared to Fear or Slow. Placing Haste at the same level as Rage is ludicrous. There is no shortage of similar examples.
Spell damage scaling makes no sense.
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How much damage does a 5th level spell do at caster level 10 (chosen for easy math)? That depends. Let's take a look. First, AOE spells:
- 4d6: Mass Inflict Light Wounds
- 10d6: Cone of Cold, Twinned Burning Hands
- 15d6: Empowered Fireball
Now single-target spells:
- 7d6: Maximized Inflict Moderate Wounds
- 9d6: Maximized Acid Arrow
- 10d6: Twinned Magic Missile, Empowered Inflict Serious Wounds, Empowered Searing Light
- 14d6: Maximized Scorching Ray
This is absolutely terrible.
Many spells are too trivial to be worth including.
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Does Helping Hand really need to be a spell? Has anyone actually needed Animal Trance, Calm Animals, Charm Animal, or Hide from Animals?
Spells are used where class features belong.
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What separates a spell from a class feature is that a spell is an optional choice, while a class feature is an inherent part of a class. All of the various "animal control" spells are not strong or useful enough to exist as spells; in order for them to be lowered in level to the point that they would be chosen, they would be overpowered. Instead, they should be redesigned into class features for the druid so that the druid's spells can be interesting and useful.
Many spells are poorly worded, making it difficult to understand their purpose.
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What does Magic Jar do anyway?
Many spells have overly detailed mechanics, requiring excessive amounts of text to clarify their usage.
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Consider the text of Knock:

Originally Posted by SRD

The knock spell opens stuck, barred, locked, held, or arcane locked doors. It opens secret doors, as well as locked or trick-opening boxes or chests. It also loosens welds, shackles, or chains (provided they serve to hold closures shut). If used to open a arcane locked door, the spell does not remove the arcane lock but simply suspends its functioning for 10 minutes. In all other cases, the door does not relock itself or become stuck again on its own. Knock does not raise barred gates or similar impediments (such as a portcullis), nor does it affect ropes, vines, and the like. The effect is limited by the area. Each spell can undo as many as two means of preventing egress.

Consider the following rewording:

The knock spell opens a locked or otherwise forcibly closed door or container within the area. The spell can undo up to two obstacles on the same object per casting. If used on an arcane locked door, the arcane lock is suppressed for 10 minutes.

The reworded spell is identical, but far clearer, in 95% of all situations. It gained the ability to open gates and portcullises. Is that minor detail worth adding so much complexity to the spell? I would argue absolutely not. There are many spells like this which would benefit from a rewording and clarification.
Many spells have trivial effects which are not worth the time investment to track.
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The attack bonus from Aid, the miscellanous +1 bonuses from Haste, and so on are trivial. It is unlikely that they will make any difference, but they force players to recalculate attack bonuses and other attributes anyway. This is particularly bad if the bonus is typed, since it forces the player to ensure that he does not have any other bonuses of that specific type - an unnecessarily large amount of mental investment for a +1 bonus.
There are too many bonus types.
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Using such a wide variety of bonus types is unnecessary and makes it much more difficult to keep track of whether a particular effect will apply at full strength or not. Compressing the number of bonus types would make buffing spells much simpler.
Buffing before combat is time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated.
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Tracking durations for a variety of spells and making sure that bonus types match up properly is obnoxious. This slows down the game. The more time you spend buffing before combat, the less time you spend actually enjoying the combat.
1 round/level durations scale strangely.
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1 round/level durations are terribly inconvenient. They are unusable at low levels (Touch of Fatigue and Summon Monster I being the worst offenders), and not worth the significant bookkeeping to keep track of precise spell durations at any level after about 8th, when they tend to last for a full encounter. Combat duration doesn't get longer as level increases, so why should duration?
Level-scaling ranges and durations increase complexity substantially for little gain.
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Keeping track of precise ranges and durations is time-consuming. In the vast majority of cases, it does not substantially change outcomes or increase enjoyment in any way, but it is still technically necessary. Flat durations and ranges are much easier to use.
Some spells are terribly designed.
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Scare is just a 2nd-level Cause Fear when first acquired. By the time it can affect multiple creatures, any creatures worth affecting are already immune to its effect.
Spell casting times and components are confusingly formatted.
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Including "Casting Time: 1 standard action" and "Components: V, S" on 95% of all spells just makes it difficult to notice when the casting time or components are different from the norm.
Spell ranges are confusingly formatted on area spells.
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Does "Range" refer to the distance away from you that a spell can be cast, or the distance from you that the spell's area extends? It depends! A spell like Bless is fairly specific; it indicates that the area originates from the caster. Bane, however, is completely ambiguous. The area is "All enemies within 50 ft". Within 50 feet of what? Is this a burst, a spread, or something different? The only spells to use a similar format are Circle of Death / Undeath to Death, which affect "Several living creatures within a 40 ft. radius burst". From context - primarily by comparison to Bless - we can determine that Bane is intended to affect a 50 ft. burst centered on the caster, while Circle of Death is intended to affect a burst within the range. However, this is unnecessarily ambiguous. A reasonable and intelligent person might easily read Bane and conclude that it affects a 50 ft. radius centered on a point within the (50 ft.) range.
Area spells affect arbitrarily chosen and difficult to remember areas.
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Quick - how large of an area do Chaos Hammer, Confusion, and Sound Burst affect? If you guessed 20 ft., 15 ft., and 10 ft, congratulations - you're really good at memorizing random numbers. Spells that hit a radius can range from anywhere from a 5 ft. radius to an 80 ft. radius, with no particular patterns. Cones extend out either 15 ft., 30 ft., or 60 ft. from you. Wouldn't spells be so much easier to use if their areas were predictable and easy to remember?
Spells which affect multiple targets have inconsistent limitations.
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Why do most multiple target spells, like Mass Bull's Strength, affect creatures "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart", while others, like Holy Aura, affect creatures "within a 20 ft. radius"? Come to think of it, why do any spells use the "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart" wording? I don't see any way for that to be easier to work with than "within a 15 ft. radius". Which, of course, raises the question of why we are working with a 15 ft. radius, which is one of the least used values for spell radii.
Spells which affect cylinders can pass through walls.
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A cylinder-shaped spell is explicitly stated to "ignore any obstructions within its area", PHB p. 175.
Spell descriptions are inconsistently formatted.
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Too many cases to list here. Just trust me - they are.
1-round casting time spells are terribly designed.
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I can't count how many times my players have gotten this particular mechanic wrong. The distinction between a "full-round action" and a "1-round action" is absolutely terribly worded, and makes little sense even when you know which one you are talking about. It feels like getting no actions on the turn you do the casting and two actions on the next turn, and it is incredibly easy to disrupt. There is nothing that a "1-round action" casting time contributes to fluff and enjoyment that couldn't be done better with "Full-round action" casting time.
Spell schools and subschools are poorly and inconsistently defined.
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For more on this, see this entertaining thread. And by "entertaining" I mean "incredibly long and complicated". Though I enjoy it...
EDIT: Radius spells cast at the limit of their range have very odd and unintuitive shapes.
EDIT: Line spells are confusing.
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How many squares does a 50 ft. line spell affect? That depends - if you aim it in any of the four cardinal directions, it affects 20 squares. If you aim it very slightly to the left or right of that, it affects about 10 squares. This is, frankly, stupid.
EDIT: Calculating saving throw DC individually for every level of spells adds an unnecessary level of complexity to the game.
EDIT: Effects which improve spellcasting by only improving DCs arbitrarily help some kinds of spellcasters substantially while providing no benefit to others.
EDIT: Most effects which improve spellcasting improve only DCs, contributing to the imbalance between damage spells and nondamaging spells.
EDIT: Not enough effects improve spellcasting in interesting and consistent ways.
EDIT: It takes too long for a creature to lower its own spell resistance.
EDIT: Metamagic level reduction effects are generally broken.
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This is a completely noncore issue, so I'm not inclined to get into this too much, but poorly worded and badly designed effects like Arcane Thesis do terrible harm to perfectly reasonable metamagic designs.

Combat Spells are Broken

Low-level spellcasters have two modes: "useless" and "broken".
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A single Sleep or Color Spray spell can end an encounter instantly. However, a low-level spellcaster has only a very small number of those spells, forcing her to do various non-magical tasks like pointlessly firing a crossbow in any situation that does not involve an serious threat. This is not a healthy game dynamic.
Moderately optimized D&D quickly devolves into "rocket tag".
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"Rocket tag" refers to the way high-level D&D characters can essentially all kill each other instantly. For example, a wizard would die if the fighter got a single full attack (or with some builds, a single charge attack), but the fighter would usually die or be rendered irrelevant if the wizard succesfully affected the fighter with a single spell.
The "rocket tag" phenomenon is severely detrimental to the game.
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When everyone is perpetually one bad roll or poor decision away from death, combat has to be fast, efficient, and brutal. There is no room for finesse or subtlety. This promotes highly technical, tactical play and discourages role-playing.
Spells can end combat far too quickly, promoting rocket tag.
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This is caused by a small army of problems. I will let the subproblems speak for themselves.
Spells can kill opponents instantly.
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Save or die spells prevent any sort of sane combat from taking place. Since these effects start at 1st level, with Color Spray and Sleep, this is a problem throughout the game.
Spells can render opponents irrelevant instantly.
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Total action denial spells like Hold Person and Confusion perform the same function and have the same effect as save-or-die spells.
Spells do too much damage relative to HP.
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Scorching Ray dals roughly 1d6 damage per level. Wizards have a d4 hit die. It is trivially easy for a spellcaster to kill another spellcaster with a single spell. (See point 1.) When you take into account Empower and Maximize, a single spell can take down a cleric or even a fighter.
Buffing before combat yields massive swings in party capability.
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A party that chooses to buff before a combat can easily go up multiple ECLs relative to an unbuffed party. This makes it extremely difficult for a DM to plan party-appropriate combat encounters. If the party goes in unbuffed against a monster designed for a buffed party, they can easily be killed or routed. If they go in buffed against a monster designed for an unbuffed party, the encounter will often be trivially easy. Limiting the power and usefulness of precombat buffs would significantly even out gameplay.
Many buffs are just too good.
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Haste is the biggest offender here as a mass spell that gives everyone significant bonuses for a mere 3rd level spell. Enlarge Person is also amazingly strong for a 1st level spell.
Some buffs can render entire encounters irrelevant.
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A dire bear's grappling abilities are nearly unbeatable - unless the fighter has Freedom of Movement, in which case the fight will be a breeze. A vampire can be a terrifying foe - but against a party with Death Ward and Magic Circle against Evil, a vampire is just a pale human without a Con score. (Okay, not literally.) The problem is not merely that these spells exist, but rather that they have such a long duration. This means that it is easy to cast the spell on everyone in the party that might need it, and infeasible for an enemy to wait for the spells to expire.
Spells can make the subjects effectively invincible to non-spellcasters.
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Flight effects and Greater Invisibility are the most prominent offenders here.
Many multiple target spells that lack single-target versions are vastly more powerful than they should be relative to single-target spells.
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What level would Haste or Slow be as a single-target spell? What about Confusion or Fear? These spells have effects that would be roughly level-appropriate as single-target spells, but they affect multiple creatures. This makes them significantly better than they should be.
Area of effect spells affect too large of an area.
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At 5th level, when first aquired, Fireball can deal anywhere from 5d6 to 250d6 damage, depending on how many targets are in the 20 ft. radius. An Empowered Fireball from a 10th level caster can deal anywhere from 15d6 to 750d6 damage. A 20 ft. radius is huge.
Area of effect and multiple target spells are too powerful relative to single-target spells.
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If area spells do equivalent damage to single-target spells, why would I use a single-target spell? Just so that I don't hit my allies? But the large radius of area spells is itself a problem. If that problem is fixed, the supremacy of area spells over targeted spells becomes assured. Buff and debuff spells are (usually) significantly penalized for affecting multiple targets - why shouldn't damage spells be the same?
Polymorph.
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Does this really need explanation? Also, Polymorph any Object and Shapechange.
EDIT: High-level casters can cast spells at unnecessarily long ranges.
EDIT: Any low-level spells which depend on a saving throw are useless at mid to high levels.
EDIT: Low-level spells that do not depend on saving throws are very powerful at mid to high levels, thanks to metamagic.
EDIT: This dichotomy is unnecessary and harmful to game balance.
EDIT: As has been said many times, Quicken Spell breaks the action economy like crazy.
EDIT: Casters should generally be limited to one major action per round, just like everyone else in the game.
EDIT: Quickening is essentially useless (without metamagic level reduction abuse) until very high levels, at which point it is overpowered.
EDIT: Quicken Spell should scale more appropriately with level, being useless at many levels but never becoming game-breaking.

Noncombat Spells Are Also Broken

Spells can make make social interactions trivially easy.
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Glibness, Charm Person, and Suggestion can all turn a challenging social encounter into a cakewalk. The problem is not that those spells exist, but that they are so easily accessible.
Spells can make dungeon delving trivially easy.
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Find Traps, Knock, and Summon Monster can all deal with traps and obstacles easily. These are particularly problematic because they are generally non-interactive. Disabling a trap or opening a door can be tricky, particularly if there is a battle ongoing. These spells do it faster, better, and more consistently than any mundane alternatives.
Spells can make stealth and detection irrelevant easily.
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Invisibility and Silence are nearly unbeatable together.
Spellcasters can perform any of these feats with too little investment.
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The problem with the above examples is not that magic is theoretically capable of performing these feats. It is magic, after all! That is what magic is for. The problem is that every single example above is done with 3rd level or lower spells. In fact, everything except Suggestion and Glibness can be accomplished by 3rd level!
Given time to prepare, a spellcaster can perform all of these feats.
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It would be bad enough if a spellcaster was capable of overriding a single other area of the game at 3rd level. However, because prepared casters can change spells daily, they can actually override any and all other aspects of the game.
Spells can exert control over the game world that nothing else can compete with.
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A well-placed Dominate Person or Suggestion can turn a city on its head. Scrying and Teleport can dramatically rewrite the whole concept of adventuring and travel when acquired. Spells give almost DM-level control of the game to players - but only to some players. That is not a good system.
Free, permanent duration spells are easily abusable.
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Explosive Runes is the archetypal example here, but any multiday spell can cause these sorts of problems. Any spell which lasts for multiple days should impose some sort of cost beyond the initial spell slot, since that will be recovered by the time the spell is actually relevant - thus making the spell effectively free.
EDIT: Some spells have effects that are not worth a spell slot of their level, yet are difficult to reduce in level.
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Consider a spell like Consecrate. Is it a magical effect? Absolutely. However, its effects are fairly minor - notable only for their duration. I have a hard time justifying spending a 2nd or 3rd level spell slot on this effect; it's just not worth it.

With that said, it doesn't seem fair to let a 1st level caster Consecrate an area, either. This is a significant magical effect - it's just not a useful one.

As a further example, consider Remove Disease. It's an effect that a an archetypal cleric should be able to create, provided that she is sufficiently powerful. However, it's hard to justify spending a 3rd level spell slot on an effect like that. It's even worse if you look at it from the perspective of spending a whole spell known just to get the ability to remove diseases. Spellcasters who have specific lists of spells known (Favored Souls in vanilla, or a variety of homebrew classes) should be able to remove diseases without having to lose spells known.
EDIT: Some spells can are fine in small doses, but can dramatically alter the nature of the world when they are freely usable without permanent cost.
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Do you know the easiest way to get through the Tomb of Horrors? Just cast Clairaudience/Clairvoyance every day for weeks until you've mapped out the entire area. Need to get information on an enemy? Just cast Scrying ad infinitum until they fail a save. Then cast Scrying on every single person you see in the first Scrying. Most campaigns don't run into these issues for for one of two reasons: either the players and the DM have a gentleman's agreement not to actually use the spell system as written, or they haven't thought of it yet. I have yet to see any campaign actually run in the Tippyverse. However, I think we deserve a spell system that isn't painfully abusable.
EDIT: Some spells provide benefits to the entire party, yet extract resources from only the caster.
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Divination, Restoration, Scrying, and Teleport are all important effects that everyone in the party benefits from. However, they all require the caster to expend spell slots (and even more painfully, spells known, in systems that use spells known) to get these results. This amounts to a hidden tax on the caster's capacity, forcing them to choose between having personal power and contributing necessary effects. Now, casters have historically been so powerful that this is not a serious detriment to their utility. However, if casters were balanced against the other classes, this tax would be a problem. It would be better if party gain came from party resources.

Other Comments

Spell resistance is crude and noninteractive.
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The default SR for a CR-appropriate monster is designed such that a spellcaster will fail 50% of the time. Futhermore, caster level is one of the statistics that a typical spellcaster is least able to modify, and changes comparatively little over a caster's career. This means that spell resistance, when it applies, simply acts like a flat chance of failure. That is not a healthy balancing mechanism. That's like taking a fully optimized Ubercharger build and calling it "balanced" by slapping a 50% chance to miss onto all of its attacks. Spell resistance should be interactive and more sensitive to character development.
Spellcasters are unnecessarily penalized for devoting their resources into spells which the whole party requires.
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Divine Power and Wall of Stone are a lot more fun to cast - and often more appropriate for a character - then Restoration or Teleport. However, the latter spells can be essential in certain circumstances, so the spellcaster is obligated to spend personal resources to memorize and cast these utility spells.
Broken spells affect everyone, not just spellcasters.
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Magic items are constructed based on spells, and virtually every character has magic items. Poorly designed spells yield poorly designed magic items. In addition, NPCs use spells and monster abilities are often based on spells. If spells are broken, so too is the D&D world as a whole.

EDIT: Now with 20% more theses! Some are listed in new categories here; others belong to categories discussed above, and it would be confusing to separate them here, so they are added where they belong with a big "EDIT:" in front.
Interactivity

Many spells are unconditional, allowing little opportunity for resistance or interaction.
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A level 100 fighter with infinite saves and SR can still be trapped in a Solid Fog just as easily as a commoner. (Credit to eggynack for the example and problem description)
Non-interactive spells are bad for the game - both for casters and for noncasters.
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Interactivity - the interplay of attack and defense, and the adjustment to various circumstances - is the core of a game like D&D. Spells which ignore defenses just skip right past that, and it makes the game less fun. Noncasters get screwed over by spells they can do nothing about, and casters don't have to make tactical decision and adapt to circumstances - they can just do the same things every encounter.
Magic can interact freely with both magical and mundane effects, but mundane effects can generally only interact with other mundane effects.
Noncasters should have more opportunity to interact with magic.
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This is edging into some of my class rewrites for Rise, so I'll leave this mostly alone for now. This thread is already overly broad.

Design Goals
An ideal spell rewrite will decrease the overall power level of spells and spellcasters.
It is possible to reduce the power level of spellcasters while actually making them more fun to play.
An ideal spell rewrite will be as modular as possible, allowing changes to be applied individually.
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It is unreasonable to think that one system perfectly fits everyone's game. Everyone has different ideas of what makes D&D fun. I would hate to see someone throw the 95% of the revisions that they like because the other 5% changes something that they regard as essential.
The problem with magic in D&D lies with the spells, and not with the casting system itself.
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This is not to say that I endorse the Vancian prepared casting sytem. I personally think the "spells known and spell slots" method that the sorcerer uses is the best casting system, followed by the "spells known and power points" method, and finally followed by prepared casting. However, the casting system used isn't the problem by itself. Whether mages use prepared casting, power points, or spell slots, they are still broken if the spells they cast are broken.
An ideal spell rewrite would work regardless of which casting system is used.
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All of the changes here are designed to be system-agnostic, and compatible with whatever your favorite method of casting is. Note that this also means changing some spells that only work under a Vancian prepared casting system. See the Rituals section for more detail.
While perfection is impossible, it should still be the goal.
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Some problems with the spell system are game-breaking. Some problems are trivial - but they are still problems. The Spell Reformation strives for perfection, rewriting or removing every single spell in the game. Insane? Perhaps. But I think that the outcome is better for it.
Players must never be forced to choose between the interesting and the powerful.

EDIT: Parts I and II of the Spell Reformation has been posted. They describe how I change spells to correct these problems.

**Cheiromancer** · 2013-08-04, 06:16 PM (ISO 8601)

I'm very excited about this thread! I have no idea how you can fix all these things without publishing your own game system, but I am eager to see the attempt.

Good luck!

**Jormengand** · 2013-08-04, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Cheiromancer

I'm very excited about this thread! I have no idea how you can fix all these things without publishing your own game system, but I am eager to see the attempt.

Good luck!

Rewrite most of the spells, while removing a lot of them. Ban Irresistible Spell. Restrict numbers of high level spells per day.

**Grinner** · 2013-08-04, 06:35 PM (ISO 8601)

Wow. That is...quite thorough.

Have an internet.

From a non-mechanical perspective, one thing I dislike about the Vancian casting system is that there's mounds and mounds of spells that all do the same thing. It's strange that the spell responsible for a fireball can't be scaled back to light campfires.

Also, point #6 under "Noncombat Spells Are Also Broken" illustrates something very important. I think D&D is built on the assumption that the game world is a fairly mundane land of castles and kings. Then, it drops people with posthuman sci-fi abilities into the middle with no regard for the consequences.

**TuggyNE** · 2013-08-05, 02:52 AM (ISO 8601)

I love the title reference.

Spell durations and schools are things I'd already marked down on my mental list of "should come up with a sane and fairly complete houserule idea some time", but hadn't gotten around to yet.

I would disagree on one of your points, though; very few spells actually do "too much" damage, unless you're assuming that enemies have average or low Con scores essentially all the time, rather than accepting that they will probably not dump Con much. Sure, a d4 hit die scales slower than d6/level, but if the target has at least 12 Con, suddenly they scale at the same speed, and if they have 14 Con or more, the target is at an advantage. Now consider that there are enemies with d12 HD, more HD than CR, and high racial Con scores (the only monsters that fit all of those are the dragons, but quite a few fit one or two of them, such as Barbarians).

Generally speaking, blastomancy is workable only by action economy/multi-target (ab)use (such as fireball, which hits multiple targets for mediocre damage), truly substantial optimization effort going into raw damage (i.e., the mailman), or both.

Other than that, this seems quite correct, and fairly comprehensive.

**Eldan** · 2013-08-05, 06:10 AM (ISO 8601)

Technically, different spells dealing different amounts of damage is not a problem. Or I don't see it as one. Because they deal damage of different kinds, that affects different kinds of creatures, damage with additional effects, damage in different areas, to more or less targets, etc. The pure damage is not the only metric.

And can I just say that rocket tag is my favourite form of combat? I don't like drawn out battles. They are boring. I like battles where everyone is one bad tactical decision away from destruction. You plan, you execute your plan, you win or you lose. No boring slog where you have probably already won but first have to wear down the enemy for eight rounds of combat and two hours in real life. "Fast, efficient and brutal" is everything I want from a combat system. Because slow combat is just not interesting.

Also, 1-round casting time spells are fantastic. Why? Because they are easy to interrupt. Spellcasting in general should be easier to interrupt. It gives the mundanes a chance to rush in and ram a sword through the wizard's chest before he loosens his demons on them.

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 07:09 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by TuggyNE

I would disagree on one of your points, though; very few spells actually do "too much" damage, unless you're assuming that enemies have average or low Con scores essentially all the time, rather than accepting that they will probably not dump Con much. Sure, a d4 hit die scales slower than d6/level, but if the target has at least 12 Con, suddenly they scale at the same speed, and if they have 14 Con or more, the target is at an advantage. Now consider that there are enemies with d12 HD, more HD than CR, and high racial Con scores (the only monsters that fit all of those are the dragons, but quite a few fit one or two of them, such as Barbarians).

Generally speaking, blastomancy is workable only by action economy/multi-target (ab)use (such as fireball, which hits multiple targets for mediocre damage), truly substantial optimization effort going into raw damage (i.e., the mailman), or both.

I agree with this a lot. For the most part, a spell that only deals damage can be put in the unbroken category. I'd advise removing any claims that involve them, because they're just not nearly as good as you're making them out to be. Also, you're missing one of the points that I think is most important. This point is how unconditional many spells are. Like, you're walking around with infinite saves and infinite SR, and the wizard casts a solid fog at you, and those defenses are absolutely meaningless. You send a golem who's surrounded by a permanent antimagic field, and the wizard shoots an orb of fire your way, and the golem might as well be any other enemy. You use a character with perfect defenses, all of the ones I listed before, as well as infinite touch AC, and the wizard creates a wall of stone, and you've just got nothing. You mentioned that SR is basically a flat failure chance, but to a wizard who knows his stuff, that is completely untrue.

The problem is mostly with conjuration, because of how many instantaneous effects it has (as well as summoning type spells, which just don't care that you're a golem), and transmutation spells, because they target the wizard and his allies, rather than the enemies. You can't defend against a buff. Wizard spells just shouldn't be this unconditional. With a fighter, basically anything you do is a defense. With a wizard, basically nothing you do is a defense. Wizards also get all the best defenses, so if any character is going to have the freedom of movement necessary to make the unconditional solid fog a bit less unconditional, it's going to be the wizard.

**Yitzi** · 2013-08-05, 07:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Jormengand

Ban Irresistible Spell.

As an unofficial source, I believe it is banned by default unless explicitly permitted (something no sane DM should do).

**Jormengand** · 2013-08-05, 08:18 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Yitzi

As an unofficial source, I believe it is banned by default unless explicitly permitted (something no sane DM should do).

Ban Irresistible spell, burn all references to it and feed its creator to a few wolves.

**Eldan** · 2013-08-05, 08:27 AM (ISO 8601)

Is that the one which removes the save from spells or the one that removes spell resistance? Probably the first, from the reactions. **** that.

**sreservoir** · 2013-08-05, 09:03 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Vadskye

Spells which affect multiple targets have inconsistent limitations.
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Why do most multiple target spells, like Mass Bull's Strength, affect creatures "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart", while others, like Holy Aura, affect creatures "within a 20 ft. radius"? Come to think of it, why do any spells use the "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart" wording? I don't see any way for that to be easier to work with than "within a 15 ft. radius". Which, of course, raises the question of why we are working with a 15 ft. radius, which is one of the least used values for spell radii.

the two are not equivalent. consider that we can place four creatures on the vertices of a regular tetrahedron with side lengths 30 ft..

(it's still silly, though.)

**Jormengand** · 2013-08-05, 11:21 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Eldan

Is that the one which removes the save from spells or the one that removes spell resistance? Probably the first, from the reactions. **** that.

It removes the save. Penetrating Spell gives you a crazy bonus to SR penetration checks, though.

**Carl** · 2013-08-05, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)

You do al realise that the whole argument "con makes blasty not so silly as he makes out" is a logical fallacy.

I mean surely your not all so dumb as to not see the inherent issue in con being an impossible to dump stat and how that affects possible character customisation. Particularly for attempts to create classes that heavily focus 2 stats instead of one when one of those stats isn't Con?

Obviously it's not just blasty spells that are an issue, but still.

**Hanuman** · 2013-08-05, 12:47 PM (ISO 8601)

I'd start a thread like this by asking questions, if the question is resolved with the consensus that the mechanic is broken, suggest a fix, and start compiling, mail to Paizo in a big hardcopy book and wait for pathfinder2.

4d6: Mass Inflict Light Wounds
10d6: Cone of Cold, Twinned Burning Hands
15d6: Empowered Fireball

-Inflict wounds is a divine spell, it's not supposed to be a blaster. It also does negative energy damage, which puts it in a "special damage" category. The reason it's scaled to 1d8+1/lvl is because it's classified as a healing spell as well, because negative energy heals undead.
-Twin and Empower are feats, that's why they have damage increases, and it's more about how powerful the feat is than the spell at that point. Exotic had a damage die increase due to the feat investment, ect.
-Cone and Fireball do 1d6/level elemental damage, seems pretty standard.

Fix:
I'd tweak metamagic feats, they break the system quite a bit actually and need some additional downsides, like how wilders have wild surge.

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Carl

You do al realise that the whole argument "con makes blasty not so silly as he makes out" is a logical fallacy.

I mean surely your not all so dumb as to not see the inherent issue in con being an impossible to dump stat and how that affects possible character customisation. Particularly for attempts to create classes that heavily focus 2 stats instead of one when one of those stats isn't Con?

Obviously it's not just blasty spells that are an issue, but still.

Well, it's not a logical fallacy at all, so you're pretty much wrong on this one. The reason a scorching ray appears to deal as much damage as a wizard has HP is because a wizard doesn't natively have much HP. Any wizard worth his slots is going to have at least 14 constitution, so not accounting for that is ridiculous. That amount of constitution is nearly doubling the wizard's hit points, so it's something that wizards really like to do. In general, the sheer percentage of HP that comes from constitution means that most folks are going to be pushing it as high as it can go. If a character does get a lot of HP from hit dice, they still usually raise constitution a lot because they expect to defend against monsters with their blood.

Either way, the amount of a certain spell required to kill a wizard is a really poor metric of overpoweredness, because by that metric barbarians are insanely overpowered. They can generally overcome these damage totals at any level, unless the wizard is particularly built for mailman action. This is not indicative of damage spells being overpowered. On the contrary, it just shows that the game is built towards offense rather than defense. If wizards have any advantage in terms of their blasting spells, it is derived from their unconditional nature. A chargebarian can be defended against incredibly easily, but it's far harder to get away from a searing spell orb of fire. In conclusion, I'd argue that incorporating constitution into the discussion of blasting spells is neither misleading nor fallacious, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't connect perfectly reasonable arguments with being dumb.

**Eldan** · 2013-08-05, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)

You say a wizard worth his slots has 14 con, but, well. Look at the DMg sometime. It recommends point buy 25 for a normal campaign. I know a lot of people around here prefer 32, but that's technically not what the game accounts for.

If you want your 18 Int and 14 con, you don't get any other ability modifiers. No wisdom for will saves, no dexterity for initiative. If you roll, it becomes even harder.

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 01:12 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Eldan

You say a wizard worth his slots has 14 con, but, well. Look at the DMg sometime. It recommends point buy 25 for a normal campaign. I know a lot of people around here prefer 32, but that's technically not what the game accounts for.

If you want your 18 Int and 14 con, you don't get any other ability modifiers. No wisdom for will saves, no dexterity for initiative. If you roll, it becomes even harder.

That generally sounds fine. A wizard can do perfectly well with nothing but intelligence and constitution. He doesn't need dexterity, even if it's nice, and he doesn't even really want the other stats. A wizard needs constitution, and it has nothing to do with the damage dealt by a scorching ray. There are so many things in the game that deal absurd damage, and there are so many things that just plink away at your HP resources, that not pumping your constitution at all isn't really something that wizards do. Hell, I'd probably dump intelligence below an 18 before I'd drop constitution below a 14. 16 intelligence, 14 constitution, 14 dexterity, and then pumping the other stats by three points seems like a perfectly viable stat assignment to me.

**Siosilvar** · 2013-08-05, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)

The DMG recommends 25 points because that's what the Elite Array is. The Elite Array, however, is the rounded down average character. Realistically a character's stats run closer to 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 9 which is 29 points by itself.

**Vadskye** · 2013-08-05, 02:55 PM (ISO 8601)

First some individual responses (I care about what you all think!) and then I'll address the issue of damage spells.
Cheiromancer:

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Originally Posted by Cheiromancer

I'm very excited about this thread! I have no idea how you can fix all these things without publishing your own game system, but I am eager to see the attempt.

Good luck!

Thank you. I koff actually am planning on publishing my own game system, but the Spell Reformation is designed to be 100% compatible with 3.5/PF.

Jormengand:

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

Rewrite most of the spells, while removing a lot of them. Ban Irresistible Spell. Restrict numbers of high level spells per day.

That's essentially the plan. Though I actually don't plan on changing much about high level spells per day - of everything I change, that's something I'm fine with. I'd rather change the high level spells themselves.

Grinner:

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Originally Posted by Grinner

Wow. That is...quuite thorough.

Have an internet.

Thank you. (My first Internet! Yay!)

From a non-mechanical perspective, one thing I dislike about the Vancian casting system is that there's mounds and mounds of spells that all do the same thing. It's strange that the spell responsible for a fireball can't be scaled back to light campfires.

Actually... I didn't think about it from that perspective. If I added a simple rule that said that you can arbitrarily decrease the area of a spell (within the normal parameters of the spell - making Fireball a 5' radius is okay, but making it a hemisphere is not), that would solve that problem rather nicely. I'll just have to think about whether it would cause unintended consequences. Thanks for the idea.

Also, point #6 under "Noncombat Spells Are Also Broken" illustrates something very important. I think D&D is built on the assumption that the game world is a fairly mundane land of castles and kings. Then, it drops people with posthuman sci-fi abilities into the middle with no regard for the consequences.

Absolutely true (though some campaign settings, like Eberron, give magic due credence). Hence the Tippyverse.

Tuggy:

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Originally Posted by TuggyNE

I love the title reference.

Glad someone got it.

Spell durations and schools are things I'd already marked down on my mental list of "should come up with a sane and fairly complete houserule idea some time", but hadn't gotten around to yet.

Even if you end up disliking parts of the Spell Reformation, I hope you like the duration and school changes.

Eldan:

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Originally Posted by Eldan

And can I just say that rocket tag is my favourite form of combat? I don't like drawn out battles. They are boring. I like battles where everyone is one bad tactical decision away from destruction. You plan, you execute your plan, you win or you lose. No boring slog where you have probably already won but first have to wear down the enemy for eight rounds of combat and two hours in real life. "Fast, efficient and brutal" is everything I want from a combat system. Because slow combat is just not interesting.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that I prefer 4e-style slogs. You should always feel like you are in danger, and that your decisions matter. Even after my changes (which are coming soon), it is possible to 1-round an opponent - if the whole party works together. That's a huge difference between giving "I win" buttons to every caster. Right now, rocket tag D&D isn't so much about tactics as it is about winning initiative and not failing saves (if you're lucky enough to get one).

Also, 1-round casting time spells are fantastic. Why? Because they are easy to interrupt. Spellcasting in general should be easier to interrupt. It gives the mundanes a chance to rush in and ram a sword through the wizard's chest before he loosens his demons on them.

If spells should be more disruptible, then this idea should be applied broadly, not just to a handful of spells through a confusing mechanic. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the "disrupting spells" idea, and there are a lot of interesting ways that it can be done. However, using "1-round action" spells interspersed more or less arbitrarily into the existing spell system is the wrong way to achieve that goal.

Eggynack:

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Originally Posted by eggynack

Also, you're missing one of the points that I think is most important. This point is how unconditional many spells are. Like, you're walking around with infinite saves and infinite SR, and the wizard casts a solid fog at you, and those defenses are absolutely meaningless. You send a golem who's surrounded by a permanent antimagic field, and the wizard shoots an orb of fire your way, and the golem might as well be any other enemy. You use a character with perfect defenses, all of the ones I listed before, as well as infinite touch AC, and the wizard creates a wall of stone, and you've just got nothing. You mentioned that SR is basically a flat failure chance, but to a wizard who knows his stuff, that is completely untrue.

The problem is mostly with conjuration, because of how many instantaneous effects it has (as well as summoning type spells, which just don't care that you're a golem), and transmutation spells, because they target the wizard and his allies, rather than the enemies. You can't defend against a buff. Wizard spells just shouldn't be this unconditional. With a fighter, basically anything you do is a defense. With a wizard, basically nothing you do is a defense. Wizards also get all the best defenses, so if any character is going to have the freedom of movement necessary to make the unconditional solid fog a bit less unconditional, it's going to be the wizard.

Absolutely true. I would just add two things. First, the problem of spell unconditionality is not actually something I didn't think about - it just didn't make it onto the list. Not even 45 was enough, it seems.

Second, I decided to simplify the point about SR by not considering SR: No spells, since the existince of spells that ignore SR doesn't change the fact that SR uses a bad mechanic. However, it is completely true that SR does not seriously inhibit a well-built caster.

Mind if I edit your points about spell unconditionality and add them the list in the original post?

sreservoir:

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Originally Posted by sreservoir

the two are not equivalent. consider that we can place four creatures on the vertices of a regular tetrahedron with side lengths 30 ft..

(it's still silly, though.)

Haha. I didn't even think of that. I did some math - that would require a slightly greater than 18 ft. radius to affect the same area. Geometry is weird.

Now to address concerns about damage (or rather, concerns about my concerns about damage). I think this boils down to a key problem: spells don't do excessive amounts of damage relative to monster HP, but do massive amounts of damage relative to PC HP. To see the difference, let's consider the following table of average monster HP relative to CR. We'll use a 14 Con fighter of the same level for comparison, assuming average rolls at each level.

{table=head]CR|Monster HP|Character HP|Character HP As a % of Monster HP
3|26|27|104%
4|46|34.5|75%
5|55|42|76%
6|66|49.5|75%
7|87|57|66%
8|96|64.5|67%
9|131|72|55%
10|129|79.5|62%
11|165|87|53%
12|184|94.5|51%
13|166|102|61%
14|174|109.5|63%
15|214|117|55%
16|218|124.5|57%
17|248|132|53%
18|319|139.5|44%
19|392|147|38%
20|442|154.5|35%
21|444|162|36%[/table]

See how character HP drops off precipitously? Those are the numbers I'm looking at. When I note that a Maximized Scorching Ray deals 72 damage, I notice that that's about three quarters of a fighter's HP at that level. It outright kills from full health any rogues and wizards except the most impressively dwarven - and even clerics foolish enough to have 12 Con. I think that's too much damage. The real kicker, of course, is that it's extremely difficult to avoid this damage; the wizard doesn't have to get into melee range, doesn't have to hit full AC, and you don't get a save.

You're all saying that it's actually not that bad when compared to a monster's HP - and you're absolutely right. 40% of a level-appropriate monster's HP with no save is significant, but not exactly game-breaking when it costs a 6th level slot. (This is pre-optimization, of course.)

This brings us to a broader question. Should damage spells be designed so that they are designed for humanoid creatures or for monsters? On the one hand, in a typical campaign setting, humanoid characters comprise the vast majority of creatures in the world. Thus, it makes sense to balance the system for them. On the other hand, in many campaigns the majority of combats take place against monsters rather than humanoid creatures - while humanoids may be more common, they are not more common in combat, and the latter can be considered more important.

I suppose this is where we run into the limits of trying to fix one aspect of a system in isolation. I think that humanoid creatures should be the center of the balance of the system for philosophical reasons; therefore, I create spells for that balance point, and I plan on reducing monster HP and HD when I get around to it.

However, I appreciate that not everyone feels that way, and this is an issue which is somewhat tangential to my overall goals with the Spell Reformation: I want to make a spell fix that everyone can use, not just one which fits my personal ideal system. Therefore, when I introduce my proposed changes, I will make it clear what I expect from damage, and I will include a very simple variant rule to make blasting monsters easier - though that will, naturally, make those spells too good against humanoid opponents. Does that seem fair?

Note that I continue to feel strongly that AOE damage spells like Fireball are too powerful relative to single target spells; that's not something that changes based on which scaling system is used.

Lastly, some damage-related individual comments. Tuggy:

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Originally Posted by TuggyNE

Now consider that there are enemies with d12 HD, more HD than CR, and high racial Con scores (the only monsters that fit all of those are the dragons, but quite a few fit one or two of them, such as Barbarians).

I think that it's perfectly acceptable - even desirable - if blasting is a poor decision when fighting those monsters. Spells should not be universally useful; that's one of the key problems with the original spell system. You shouldn't Finger of Death a giant, you shouldn't Suggestion a mind flayer, you shouldn't Fireball a monk, and you shouldn't blast a troll unless you've got a fighters hacking away at it too. That's the way things should work.

Eldan:

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Originally Posted by Eldan

Technically, different spells dealing different amounts of damage is not a problem. Or I don't see it as one. Because they deal damage of different kinds, that affects different kinds of creatures, damage with additional effects, damage in different areas, to more or less targets, etc. The pure damage is not the only metric.

Absolutely true. My problem is not that different spells have different damage in the abstract - it's that the differences in damage are arbitrary and not connected to a spell's power level.

**Hanuman** · 2013-08-05, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)

The damage scaling issue is named "rocket-tag", where enemies and players cast save-or-die spells, damage is just one way to accomplish that.

Monsters with ridiculous HP to CR ratio have it because they aren't player characters and likely are not intelligent. They are a big chunk of meat that smacks the party around, and are designed to tank FOUR player classes, and even then the PC's are still designed to beat them about 2-6 times before exhausting their resources and needing to rest and re-supply.

The HP is so high because the whole party needs to contribute, not just the one caster. In a PvP scenario, yes, first one to lose their head loses, but players need to fight hydras

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 04:16 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Vadskye

Eggynack:

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Absolutely true. I would just add two things. First, the problem of spell unconditionality is not actually something I didn't think about - it just didn't make it onto the list. Not even 45 was enough, it seems.

Second, I decided to simplify the point about SR by not considering SR: No spells, since the existince of spells that ignore SR doesn't change the fact that SR uses a bad mechanic. However, it is completely true that SR does not seriously inhibit a well-built caster.

Mind if I edit your points about spell unconditionality and add them the list in the original post?

Go ahead. It's a pretty important chunk of the problem with spell design. Folks think that there's any kind of real defense against a wizard, and there really isn't one.

On the damage issue, I really don't think it is one. We shouldn't compare the damage of a fireball to the HP of a given PC. We should compare the damage of a fireball to the damage of a melee guy that's trying to deal damage. The damage levels aren't really comparable. A barbarian that's giving it his all is insurmountable by all but the most damage focused wizard builds. Blasting is really the last thing that should be reined in. I mean, warmages are mages that are built particularly for damage, and they're at tier four. On single target versus AoE, I have to disagree with the evaluation that AoE is significantly better, or even better at all. If I'm picking up a blasting spell, it's going to be something unconditional and high power like an orb of fire. It's significantly more important to fully kill one guy than to half kill a group of guys, because half killing someone doesn't actually change the way an encounter looks. As is the usual truism, the only HP that matters is the last one.

**TuggyNE** · 2013-08-05, 07:05 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Carl

You do al realise that the whole argument "con makes blasty not so silly as he makes out" is a logical fallacy.

I mean surely your not all so dumb as to not see the inherent issue in con being an impossible to dump stat and how that affects possible character customisation. Particularly for attempts to create classes that heavily focus 2 stats instead of one when one of those stats isn't Con?

I don't realize that at all, actually. Con is never a dump stat*, and it wouldn't be a dump stat even if the most highly damaging spells were 1d4/2 levels. What with Fort saves, natural weapons, regular weapons, traps, and enemy blasting spells, you need a lot of HP to survive. Sure, this is a bit of a system problem, but arguably the problem is found mostly in classes that need more than one key ability besides Con (or, if that's your thing, classes that need more than two besides Con).

*Unless you're playing an undead or construct PC, of course.

Originally Posted by Siosilvar

The DMG recommends 25 points because that's what the Elite Array is. The Elite Array, however, is the rounded down average character. Realistically a character's stats run closer to 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 9 which is 29 points by itself.

Yeah. I'd like to note that that is a perfect example of terrible math on the part of WotC; applying "D&D math" (i.e., always round down) to real-world numbers like roll distributions is a grave and unjustifiable error.

Gonna go through various responses, even if not addressed to me, because that's how I roll.

Originally Posted by Vadskye

Actually... I didn't think about it from that perspective. If I added a simple rule that said that you can arbitrarily decrease the area of a spell (within the normal parameters of the spell - making Fireball a 5' radius is okay, but making it a hemisphere is not), that would solve that problem rather nicely. I'll just have to think about whether it would cause unintended consequences. Thanks for the idea.

There are a few cases where it would be nice (to avoid friendly fire, for example) and probably a few outlier spells that have bizarre results, but for the most part it should be acceptable.

Glad someone got it.

Heh, yeah.

Even if you end up disliking parts of the Spell Reformation, I hope you like the duration and school changes.

Well, we'll see!

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that I prefer 4e-style slogs. You should always feel like you are in danger, and that your decisions matter. Even after my changes (which are coming soon), it is possible to 1-round an opponent - if the whole party works together. That's a huge difference between giving "I win" buttons to every caster. Right now, rocket tag D&D isn't so much about tactics as it is about winning initiative and not failing saves (if you're lucky enough to get one).

Yeah, making casters less independent and forcing them to cooperate to get things done is one of the most fundamental goals here, I think; 4e's solution seems to have been to key essentially everything to HP (and then inflate HP to give longer fights), but there are other possibilities, such as my prototype of Will Points. SoDs and SoLs don't foster cooperation at all by their nature, so should be greatly reduced or reworked; save-or-gimps and flat debuffs work rather better, and blasting is relatively well-behaved. And, of course, buffs are nicely cooperative for the most part, as long as they're not self-only or capable of replacing baseline stats.

If spells should be more disruptible, then this idea should be applied broadly, not just to a handful of spells through a confusing mechanic. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the "disrupting spells" idea, and there are a lot of interesting ways that it can be done. However, using "1-round action" spells interspersed more or less arbitrarily into the existing spell system is the wrong way to achieve that goal.

Agreed. I tried making Concentration treat all damage taken during a round as ongoing damage, Melf's acid arrow-style, but I'm not sure that was the best approach.

Now to address concerns about damage (or rather, concerns about my concerns about damage). I think this boils down to a key problem: spells don't do excessive amounts of damage relative to monster HP, but do massive amounts of damage relative to PC HP. To see the difference, let's consider the following table of average monster HP relative to CR. We'll use a 14 Con fighter of the same level for comparison, assuming average rolls at each level.

14 Con straight, with no enhancement bonuses, inherent bonuses, or even level-up bonuses? Just 14 Con at 20th level? I think that's a dubious assumption; at the very least, picking up an amulet of health +2 by level 8 should be an obvious choice, increasing that to +4 by level 12 at the latest, and +6 by level 16. (Probably considerably earlier.)

This changes the table as follows:{table=head]CR|Monster HP|Character HP|Character HP As a % of Monster HP|Character Con modifier
3|26|27|104%|+2
4|46|34.5|75%|+2
5|55|42|76%|+2
6|66|49.5|75%|+2
7|87|57|66%|+2
8|96|72.5|76%|+3
9|131|81|62%|+3
10|129|89.5|69%|+3
11|165|98|59%|+3
12|184|118.5|64%|+4
13|166|128|77%|+4
14|174|137.5|79%|+4
15|214|147|69%|+4
16|218|172.5|79%|+5
17|248|183|74%|+5
18|319|193.5|61%|+5
19|392|204|52%|+5
20|442|234.5|53%|+6
21|444|246|55%|+6[/table]

See how character HP drops off precipitously? Those are the numbers I'm looking at. When I note that a Maximized Scorching Ray deals 72 damage, I notice that that's about three quarters of a fighter's HP at that level. It outright kills from full health any rogues and wizards except the most impressively dwarven - and even clerics foolish enough to have 12 Con. I think that's too much damage. The real kicker, of course, is that it's extremely difficult to avoid this damage; the wizard doesn't have to get into melee range, doesn't have to hit full AC, and you don't get a save.

PCs do often have better touch ACs than monsters (sometimes much better, such as a defense-oriented Monk or PsyWar, sometimes only somewhat), and are more likely to have fire resistance, but other than that, note that the updated figures leave the Fighter at better than 25% health, leaves Rogues alive (albeit by a whisker) and only kills Wizards — and that's only if all those rays hit, there's no fire resistance, and so forth.

Let's consider touch AC for a moment; a Rogue is quite likely to want high Dex, so probably at least +4 by this time, and should have a ring of protection +1 or better by this time. The enemy Wizard might have +2 Dex (ray caster, after all) and +5 BAB, so makes three +7 attacks against 15 AC. Counting crits, the odds of doing at least 48 damage are pretty good (73%), but the odds of doing 72 or more are kind of abysmal at 32%. (The odds of killing the Rogue outright with at least one crit and all rays hitting are a scant 4%.) If you add Weapon Focus and a Dex-boosting item to that for a total of +9, the odds shift to 85%/46%/6% respectively. OTOH, if you boost the Rogue's defense by assuming +2 deflection, +1 luck/insight/dodge (from any of a number of sources like haste or ioun stones), and +5 or +6 Dex (at level 11, most Rogues are going to pump it pretty well), things get a lot nicer, with only a 45% chance of soaking 48 damage and a 12% chance of being knocked down to 2 HP (not to mention a 17% chance of taking no damage at all).

I suppose this is where we run into the limits of trying to fix one aspect of a system in isolation. I think that humanoid creatures should be the center of the balance of the system for philosophical reasons; therefore, I create spells for that balance point, and I plan on reducing monster HP and HD when I get around to it.

I'd agree that this is the sticking point; note, though, that for this to be a minimal-intervention fix, the implications of high-, mid-, and low-optimization damage outputs from melee, archery, and other characters should also be considered. Spell damage isn't necessarily the benchmark, after all! (If anything, monster HP are only a problem for very-low-op THF and low- to mid-op TWF/archery/warlock/natural weapon attackers. Reducing it might have … unpleasant … side effects.)

However, I appreciate that not everyone feels that way, and this is an issue which is somewhat tangential to my overall goals with the Spell Reformation: I want to make a spell fix that everyone can use, not just one which fits my personal ideal system. Therefore, when I introduce my proposed changes, I will make it clear what I expect from damage, and I will include a very simple variant rule to make blasting monsters easier - though that will, naturally, make those spells too good against humanoid opponents. Does that seem fair?

I'd suggest also considering some other possibilities, including making touch AC a bit more effective as a defense (for monsters, but mostly for PCs) while hopefully containing the excesses of high-op touch AC optimization where possible.

Note that I continue to feel strongly that AOE damage spells like Fireball are too powerful relative to single target spells; that's not something that changes based on which scaling system is used.

You've already gotten some disagreements on this, but actually I'm inclined to agree here; area-based damage is inherently almost strictly superior to single-target damage, although damage type, friendly fire, defense type (Reflex, Will, Fort, touch, none), SR, and so on muddle the issue somewhat.

I think that it's perfectly acceptable - even desirable - if blasting is a poor decision when fighting those monsters. Spells should not be universally useful; that's one of the key problems with the original spell system. You shouldn't Finger of Death a giant, you shouldn't Suggestion a mind flayer, you shouldn't Fireball a monk, and you shouldn't blast a troll unless you've got a fighters hacking away at it too. That's the way things should work.

Well, trolls though… how else are you going to get enough acid/fire damage on them? Torches? +1d6/hit from flaming weapons? Burning them on a pyre? Flask rogue? (OK that last would actually work quite nicely.)

Otherwise yeah, I suppose there are always foes that blasting should work poorly on.

Absolutely true. My problem is not that different spells have different damage in the abstract - it's that the differences in damage are arbitrary and not connected to a spell's power level.

Hmm, yeah, there's something of an unnecessary inconsistency there.

Random thought: what if negative/positive energy spells did less than their listed damage when used to heal? That would fix scaling for them, so you could actually use cure X wounds against undead without being laughed off the planet, and vice versa. In other words, take something like cure critical wounds and specify that it does, I dunno, 4d8+1d8/2 levels (max 11d8) against undead, but only 4d8+1d8/3 levels healing (max 9d8), the idea being that it's easier to just sort of shoot a stream of raw energy at something antithetical to it than to guide precise restoration. (You might need to tweak bolt of glory and one or two others to get it right.)

Averages for crude proposal:
{table=head]CL|CCW (current)|CCW (heal)|CCW (blast)|Bolt of Glory
7|25|27|31.5|24.5
8|26|27|36|28
9|27|31.5|36|31.5
10|28|31.5|40.5|35
11|29|31.5|40.5|38.5
12|30|36|45|42
13|31|36|45|45.5
14|32|36|49.5|49
15|33|40.5|49.5|52.5[/table]

Originally Posted by eggynack

Go ahead. It's a pretty important chunk of the problem with spell design. Folks think that there's any kind of real defense against a wizard, and there really isn't one.

At equal optimization, not really, but for a PC against an NPC wizard, there arguably is. (See the notes above for how a fairly low-op Rogue can avoid a fair chunk of the damage from a similarly low-op NPC Wizard as an example.)

On the damage issue, I really don't think it is one. We shouldn't compare the damage of a fireball to the HP of a given PC. We should compare the damage of a fireball to the damage of a melee guy that's trying to deal damage. The damage levels aren't really comparable. A barbarian that's giving it his all is insurmountable by all but the most damage focused wizard builds. Blasting is really the last thing that should be reined in. I mean, warmages are mages that are built particularly for damage, and they're at tier four.

I'd mostly agree, except that for system changes, you really need to consider all sides, even if some comparisons are less significant than others; if any single matching gives you weird results, that's a signal that the system is not as good as it could be.

On single target versus AoE, I have to disagree with the evaluation that AoE is significantly better, or even better at all. If I'm picking up a blasting spell, it's going to be something unconditional and high power like an orb of fire. It's significantly more important to fully kill one guy than to half kill a group of guys, because half killing someone doesn't actually change the way an encounter looks. As is the usual truism, the only HP that matters is the last one.

This is partly true, but consider: if casters are to play nicely with groups, it's crucial that they leave jobs partially finished in a way that lets others contribute. Whether this be by half-killing all the mooks to reduce the time each takes to kill by 1 or 2 rounds, or by pegging one enemy at a time all the way to dead, is mostly a matter of choice; if nothing else, simply dropping the same spell next round will half-kill them again, which means they'll mostly all be dead. But demanding that the caster be able to solve all the problems in a single round is a very bad idea indeed.

Put another way, the truism is wrong; HP is a gradual defense, not a binary one, and chipping away at a gradual defense is a useful contribution. Or would you say that a natural weapon attacker with 12 attacks/round, skirmish, and pounce is useless because no single one of their attacks can ever one-shot an enemy?

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 09:00 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by TuggyNE

At equal optimization, not really, but for a PC against an NPC wizard, there arguably is. (See the notes above for how a fairly low-op Rogue can avoid a fair chunk of the damage from a similarly low-op NPC Wizard as an example.)

Yeah, I think I had a short note about this majig somewhere. The main point I'm trying to make is that there are all of these neat defenses that look like they just completely stop wizards in their tracks. People talk about antimagic field like it automatically wins the game against wizards, and it's not a true thing. Wizards definitely have some defenses against wizards, but to some extent those don't even count. It largely perpetuates the entire issue when you need magic to beat magic.

Originally Posted by TuggyNE

I'd mostly agree, except that for system changes, you really need to consider all sides, even if some comparisons are less significant than others; if any single matching gives you weird results, that's a signal that the system is not as good as it could be.

Sure, but the major implication there was that these spells are dealing far too much damage. It's just not a thing that I think is true. If we got rid of everything that doesn't have damage as its key component, wizards just wouldn't be all that powerful.

Originally Posted by TuggyNE

This is partly true, but consider: if casters are to play nicely with groups, it's crucial that they leave jobs partially finished in a way that lets others contribute. Whether this be by half-killing all the mooks to reduce the time each takes to kill by 1 or 2 rounds, or by pegging one enemy at a time all the way to dead, is mostly a matter of choice; if nothing else, simply dropping the same spell next round will half-kill them again, which means they'll mostly all be dead. But demanding that the caster be able to solve all the problems in a single round is a very bad idea indeed.

Put another way, the truism is wrong; HP is a gradual defense, not a binary one, and chipping away at a gradual defense is a useful contribution. Or would you say that a natural weapon attacker with 12 attacks/round, skirmish, and pounce is useless because no single one of their attacks can ever one-shot an enemy?

The thing you're saying here seems kinda like the exact opposite of what he was saying. Your main claim is that AoE spells that deal less damage have a positive impact on the game, because they make it so that other guys can finish the job. Ultimately, you're saying that AoE's being less effective is a good thing. However, the OP was claiming that AoE's are aberrantly more effective, to the point where they need fixing. That seems very much untrue to me.

Anyways, dealing half damage to a bunch of enemies isn't pointless, because it means that the next half will kill them all. However, I'd rather deal full damage to one enemy than deal half damage to three enemies, because killing an enemy is more than an offensive measure to close out the fight faster. It's a defensive measure that cuts down on the enemy's action economy, which is all kindsa important. AoE's are good (well, they're really not, because they're basically a less effective version of a less effective wizard technique), but single target damage spells are probably better for the most part, and that's the conclusion I'm presenting.

**Glimbur** · 2013-08-05, 09:05 PM (ISO 8601)

You have mentioned this already, but part of the problem is that there are too many spells. Even one of your examples, Helping Hand, is useful in the rare case that someone is hiding nearby and sniping at you; and you know what they look like. The hand goes to them and gestures for a round. And it's an Evocation, so immunity to Divination does not help.

That's just an example of how even niche spells can add new options and abilities. And prepared casters can pick the right options and abilities for a given day. At high levels, you are not likely to need your 1-3 level spells so you can throw situational things in the slots. Easy fix? Favored Soul (maybe with some buffs), Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage exist. Wizard, Sorc, Cleric, Wu Jen, Druid, Spirit Shaman, etc. do not. This is approximately the same as throwing out all the spells and only including acceptable spells.

Con is good. At low to medium levels, on a modest point buy I would skip an 18 in the casting stat to get Con and Dex. Maybe even some Wis, depending on the exact values.

**erikun** · 2013-08-05, 09:56 PM (ISO 8601)

I'd argue against a couple of points you've made.

First, I'd like to point out that I've used quite a number of trivial spells over my character's lifetimes. Calm Animals and Talk with Animals are quite handy for the druid who wants to know what is happening during animal attacks, and doesn't want to go around stabbing them immediately. Hide from Undead was quite nice for a cleric, especially if the undead have seen him once before and are trying to hide from his lethal turning ability. I agree that several spells are unbalanced, either on the wrong spell level or too specialized, but that's a fair bit different from becoming class abilities. I don't think an unlimited Charm Animal would be very fair on a druid, for example.

Damage is kind of wonky for all characters, and it extends well beyond damage done by spells. Scorching Ray could immediately take out an opposing wizard, or it could deal a trivial amount compared to HP, or it could miss entirely (Mirror Image). The entire combat system is all kinds of awkward, and I doubt that simply changing the damage spells deal will be truely fixing anything about it.

Some of the worst buffs (meaning the strongest) are self-buffs, which means that the caster is strongly discouraged from sharing spells with other party members. As if Clerics didn't beat out Fighters badly enough already...

The problem with Fly (and to a lesser extent Invisibility) isn't that they make the caster immune to mundane; it's that mundane ranged attacks are so globally terrible that the caster might as well be immune to them. Even ignoring the full immunity from Wind Wall, we're talking about 1d8+1d6+10 as your best damage without heavy optimization towards archery.

**eggynack** · 2013-08-05, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by erikun

The problem with Fly (and to a lesser extent Invisibility) isn't that they make the caster immune to mundane; it's that mundane ranged attacks are so globally terrible that the caster might as well be immune to them. Even ignoring the full immunity from Wind Wall, we're talking about 1d8+1d6+10 as your best damage without heavy optimization towards archery.

Huh. This is actually kinda interesting. What if archery were really good against magic? Like, it'd be much easier to get archery AoO's, and it'd be far harder to avoid them as a wizard. It'd also be harder to make concentration checks. If you make it hard enough to defend against, you could get a neat rock paper scissors thing going. Like, fighters can close rapidly with archers while being difficult to hit, and archers can shoot wizards which interrupts their spells, and wizards can easily keep out of range of fighters and shut them down. Basically, I'm saying that the onus of making casters weaker could be on non-casters. Spells are insanely reliable, primarily because there are basically no absolute defenses. Wizards can pull off something, but that's more like a dot than a triangle. If they weren't insanely reliable, because methods of interruption were more reliable and effective, tanks could actually be an important component of a party's makeup. Just a thought I had.

**Deepbluediver** · 2013-08-05, 10:53 PM (ISO 8601)

I've only skimmed the titles and read a few of these in detail, but for the most part I see nothing I disagree with.

These are many of the same issues I was looking to fix in my own magic-system. You probably already knew that from our other recent talks on magic-design, though.

I'll respond in more detail to some of them specifically when I get the chance.

One thing I wanted to mention, though, since you brought up how confusing varying casting times, ranges, and AOEs could be, was my personal pet peeve: different spells per day and spells known for virtually every caster.
In the PHB, the only 2 casters with the same chart are the Ranger and the Paladin. The splatbooks aren't much better. The Favored Soul uses a Sorcerer's chart, but the Shugenja goes off and does his own thing with a weird curve that starts out slow but then give him 9th level spells by level 16. It's not a problem limited to traditional casters; the Duskblade uses a chart found nowhere else, AFAIK, and the Shadowcaster is just crippled at low levels with his single mystery once per day.

One of things I hope to do is standardize, at least to some degree, what every caster gets. The basic premise is assembled in this thread, though it definitely needs revision and polish. If you are aiming for a simplified version of things, you might want to consider something like it.

**Yitzi** · 2013-08-06, 12:42 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by erikun

Even ignoring the full immunity from Wind Wall, we're talking about 1d8+1d6+10 as your best damage without heavy optimization towards archery.

Yeah...noncaster damage scaling really needs to be improved. (Melee too; Power Attack helps somewhat, but only against low-AC enemies.) It shouldn't scale quite as fast as hit points (and neither should caster damage), but maybe as the square root of level, with hit points being proportional to level.

**Amridell** · 2013-08-06, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)

I'm actually working on a pair of classes to address some of the issues you brought up, namely the arbitrary system and the useless/broken thing at low levels. Hopefully it will come out as nice as I planned.

Perhaps we could collaborate at some point? I'd be interested in some feedback.

**eggynack** · 2013-08-06, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Yitzi

Yeah...noncaster damage scaling really needs to be improved. (Melee too; Power Attack helps somewhat, but only against low-AC enemies.) It shouldn't scale quite as fast as hit points (and neither should caster damage), but maybe as the square root of level, with hit points being proportional to level.

Well, power attack is dependent on low AC enemies, unless you're running a chargebarian with shock trooper. I'm not saying that all melee guys are like that, but a decent number are, and they generally deal plenty of damage. Actually, I'd say that melee damage scaling works reasonably well. Archery could use a real pick me up, but two handing gets good returns if you know what you're doing. The real problem is that melee combat is incredibly linear. You only deal damage, and only to enemies that you can reach, and with very few ways to overcome defenses.

Finding parity by fixing damage numbers just seems kinda pointless and impossible to me. You could make every wizard spell that deals damage only deal one to each target hit, and make every fighter attack deal infinite damage, and wizards would still be at tier one, and fighters would hit tier four. It's just not going to do much good. We want as many wizards as possible to be casting fireball, because as long as they're casting fireball, the game is basically balanced. You can play a game with a warmage in a party of mundane guys, and the warmage won't even necessarily be the most powerful party member. Maybe there are some odd magic damage issues, and that might connect to the design aspect of casting (Which I actually like. Having all of your spells be really different is kinda cool to me. Your mileage may vary), but a discussion of wizard brokeness can't really be a discussion of blasting spells. It's just so distant from the problem.

Thread: The Forty-Five (EDIT: Seventy-Five) Theses on the Design and Brokenness of Spells

The Forty-Five (EDIT: Seventy-Five) Theses on the Design and Brokenness of Spells

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