Reducing friendly fire (3.5 spells+metamagic, PEACH)

[tuggyne]

Selective Spell [Metamagic]
Benefit
Any targets within the area of the spell with corresponding gems of alliance in your possession are treated as though they have infinite spell resistance to this spell.

Spells without an area are unchanged by this feat.

Special
This adds a material focus component to the spell, specifically the gems of alliance corresponding to the targets excluded, as formed by ritual of alliance.

Concerns: The wording is slightly awkward in places and I'm not sure it's clear what happens if a gem is shattered during the duration of a spell.

Ritual of Alliance
Abjuration
Level: Sor/Wiz 1, Drd 1, Clr 1
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Target: One willing creature touched
Duration: Permanent (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

You forge a permanent bond of cooperation between yourself and your new ally.

This spell causes the target to be treated as an ally by the Selective Spell metamagic feat.

Material component
A body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, etc from each of the two participants; a drop of blood.

Focus
A gem worth least 10gp, which becomes a gem of alliance.

Concerns: Not sure about the level, really, although I'm considering adjusting it up; however, obviously this spell has no particular power of its own.

Ritual of Alliance Dissolved
Abjuration
Level: Sor/Wiz 1, Clr 1, Drd 1
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 10 minutes.
Range: Touch
Target: One gem of alliance touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless, object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless, object)

Touching the gem representing your pact with a former ally, you shatter the special bond.

This spell removes Selective Spell's special treatment from the creature represented by the gem, although it does not destroy the gem itself.

Focus
Gem formed by ritual of alliance.

Concerns: Again, the spell level is uncertain, but this is not a tremendously powerful spell in its own right. Also I suspect some of the wording could use work.


I'd appreciate any critiques of this homebrew, as always!
Changelog:

Spoiler

Changed the gems of alliance to uniformly focuses.
Changed ritual of alliance to a Permanent (D) spell, removing ritual of alliance dissolved.

[Falin]

So, why the spell and gem stuff at all? Why not just make the feat allow you specify who and what your AoEs effect. Sure it makes a wizard allot more flexible. But, so? All the spell does is add an odd little middle step between not hurting your allies with fire balls and hurting them with fire balls again. It's not even a high level spell so doing it isn't even a thing. I'd just get rid of the rituals and go with making AoEs more controlled.

[bloodtide]

There are metamagic feats that do effects like this already. Sculpt Spell, for example, can shape a spell effect around friendly targets. But I don't think any feat gives spell immunity.

You might want to rework this a bit to a simple ''this spell marks one gem/3 levels to a 'safe gem' so that people with the gem don't take damage from spells cast by that spellcaster.'' Maybe have the spellcaster have the 'main gem' and others have 'small gems'.

[Bahamut Omega]

Given what this does, I feel the spell's level should be increased by 1 spell level. So a Selective Fireball is a 4th level spell, not a 3rd.

I would revise the duration on Ritual of Alliance to Permanent (D). Doing so allows the spell to be ended by an enemy's dispel magic and also lets the caster simply dismiss it as opposed to having to perform a second complicated spell.

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Falin

So, why the spell and gem stuff at all? Why not just make the feat allow you specify who and what your AoEs effect. Sure it makes a wizard allot more flexible. But, so? All the spell does is add an odd little middle step between not hurting your allies with fire balls and hurting them with fire balls again. It's not even a high level spell so doing it isn't even a thing. I'd just get rid of the rituals and go with making AoEs more controlled.

I believe Shape Spell is in Cityscape, no?

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by bloodtide

There are metamagic feats that do effects like this already. Sculpt Spell, for example, can shape a spell effect around friendly targets. But I don't think any feat gives spell immunity.

You might want to rework this a bit to a simple ''this spell marks one gem/3 levels to a 'safe gem' so that people with the gem don't take damage from spells cast by that spellcaster.'' Maybe have the spellcaster have the 'main gem' and others have 'small gems'.

That might indeed be handy; I'll consider reworking it that way.

Originally Posted by Bahamut Omega

Given what this does, I feel the spell's level should be increased by 1 spell level. So a Selective Fireball is a 4th level spell, not a 3rd.

I wasn't entirely sure whether it should increase in level or not; I'm still a bit divided.

Originally Posted by Bahamut Omega

I would revise the duration on Ritual of Alliance to Permanent (D). Doing so allows the spell to be ended by an enemy's dispel magic and also lets the caster simply dismiss it as opposed to having to perform a second complicated spell.

This was intended. I don't want the ritual to be hit by dispel magic, or be detected by Detect Magic. It should be a subtle adjustment to the workings of the universe, a deep linking between souls or something. (The gems are a bit of an afterthought, as they're commonly linked with soul magic.)

Originally Posted by Falin

So, why the spell and gem stuff at all? Why not just make the feat allow you specify who and what your AoEs effect. Sure it makes a wizard allot more flexible. But, so? All the spell does is add an odd little middle step between not hurting your allies with fire balls and hurting them with fire balls again. It's not even a high level spell so doing it isn't even a thing. I'd just get rid of the rituals and go with making AoEs more controlled.

As has been pointed out, the ability to shape spells already exists. This set is intended to fill a slightly different niche: giving in-world reality to the idea of working as a team and very precisely avoiding damage to each other. (Conceivably the gem mechanism could be changed to something else, extended to include other functionality with more spells or feats, or even eliminated entirely; the important thing is the idea of making allies immune to SR: Yes spells.

In short: it's a subtly different set of crunch to support a different set of fluff.

[Bahamut Omega]

The reason I say it should be increased in level is there's little reason for a caster to not make all of their AoE spells Selective provided they do the Ritual of Alliance spell. On the same note, there's no reason to take the Ritual of Alliance spell unless they take the Selective metamagic. By raising the level, it disincentivizes casters from applying this to all their prepared spells.

Making the Ritual of Alliance spell permanent makes it possible for opposing casters to make spellcraft checks to understand what the players are doing and gives them a means to counter. As things are written now, this is just a perfect combination without a lot of effort needed; essentially take one metamagic feat and learn a new spell and never worry again about possibly hitting the fighter.

[Yitzi]

Originally Posted by tuggyne

Note: The reason for marking the created gem's value and then declaring it can't be sold is so that it can't be pulled from a spell component pouch. Any method for ensuring this that doesn't involve so much hackery would be appreciated.

Easy: State that because this is person-specific, it does not normally come with spell component pouches, and is not subject to Eschew Materials.

(If someone wants to store his gem in a spell component pouch, I see no reason not to let him, since he can't pull it without creating it first.)

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Yitzi

Easy: State that because this is person-specific, it does not normally come with spell component pouches, and is not subject to Eschew Materials.

(If someone wants to store his gem in a spell component pouch, I see no reason not to let him, since he can't pull it without creating it first.)

Even easier: Make the gem the material focus of the first spell.

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by Bahamut Omega

The reason I say it should be increased in level is there's little reason for a caster to not make all of their AoE spells Selective provided they do the Ritual of Alliance spell. On the same note, there's no reason to take the Ritual of Alliance spell unless they take the Selective metamagic. By raising the level, it disincentivizes casters from applying this to all their prepared spells.

Making the Ritual of Alliance spell permanent makes it possible for opposing casters to make spellcraft checks to understand what the players are doing and gives them a means to counter. As things are written now, this is just a perfect combination without a lot of effort needed; essentially take one metamagic feat and learn a new spell and never worry again about possibly hitting the fighter.

This is a fair point. I expect I'll have to make at least one of these changes. I would prefer to make it permanent except that the idea of an enemy spellcaster simply dissolving your bond seems a little odd. Perhaps a bonus to CL for purposes of dispel checks, accompanied by an increase in spell level?

For now, I'll just make it Permanent (D), and consider further changes later.

Originally Posted by Yitzi

Easy: State that because this is person-specific, it does not normally come with spell component pouches, and is not subject to Eschew Materials.

(If someone wants to store his gem in a spell component pouch, I see no reason not to let him, since he can't pull it without creating it first.)

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Even easier: Make the gem the material focus of the first spell.

Indeed, I don't know why I didn't think of that. Done.

[ericgrau]

Pathfinder already has this as a feat, coincidentally called selective spell. It applies only to instantaneous area spells, is a +1 metamagic, and lets you exclude up to 1 target per casting stat modifier.

Ya in 3.5 there are different ways to exclude 5 foot squares too. There's also an archmage PrC ability that does it.

The way you're doing it does make the player vulnerable to dispel. As for how much to adjust the level, at +1 selective spell is already one of the best Pathfinder metamagic feats. You might not notice it since it seems like a defensive boost but actually selective spell lets you hit many more enemy targets when you don't have to worry about allies and so causes a huge boost in total damage dealt. For area spells I'd usually take it over empower, for example, and empower costs more. The advantage empower has is that it can also be applied to other types of spells besides area so you get a lot more mileage out of it.

[Ashtagon]

You note that characters receiving protection under this feat have "infinite spell resistance". Does that mean the spell provides no protection against, for example, a fireball spell?

Perhaps change it to the following two benefits:

* Infinite spell resistance
* Take minimum damage from any damage-causing spells (as an inverted Maximise Spell feat). This feature is countered by the Maximise Spell feat (or equivalent effect).

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by ericgrau

Pathfinder already has this as a feat, coincidentally called selective spell. It applies only to instantaneous area spells, is a +1 metamagic, and lets you exclude up to 1 target per casting stat modifier.

Ya in 3.5 there are different ways to exclude 5 foot squares too. There's also an archmage PrC ability that does it.

The way you're doing it does make the player vulnerable to dispel. As for how much to adjust the level, at +1 selective spell is already one of the best Pathfinder metamagic feats. You might not notice it since it seems like a defensive boost but actually selective spell lets you hit many more enemy targets when you don't have to worry about allies and so causes a huge boost in total damage dealt. For area spells I'd usually take it over empower, for example, and empower costs more. The advantage empower has is that it can also be applied to other types of spells besides area so you get a lot more mileage out of it.

Hmm, I need to look into Pathfinder more.

I was already aware of e.g. Mastery of Shaping and so forth, and was primarily following the grand 3.5 tradition of "1759 different ways to do almost exactly the same thing"

But yeah, it probably needs to change to a +1 adjustment. Ah well.

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

You note that characters receiving protection under this feat have "infinite spell resistance". Does that mean the spell provides no protection against, for example, a fireball spell?

Given that fireball is SR: Yes, like most damage-dealing spells, this should not be a problem.