Spells that really should be mundane abilities

[Ziegander]

There are quite a few spells that really have no business being spells and just force mundane classes even further into some horrible closet of being unuseful forever. The most blatant examples I can think of at the moment are things like the Lorecall spells that make you better at using skills that you are already, by D&D 3.5 standards "good" at. There a few other spells that just make you better at attacking enemies, things like Arrow Mind or Bladeweave or War Cry.

I'd like to compile a list of spells that should never have been spells, spells that are mundane abilities that were deemed, for whatever reason "too good" to be anything other than limited by the vancian, per-day spell scheme. What other such spells can you think of and why do they fit the mold of mundane-but-spell?

Animal Messenger
Arrow Mind
Arrow Storm
Balancing Lorecall
Blade Storm
Bloodhound
Easy Climb
Easy Trail
Exacting Shot
Fell the Greatest Foe
Find the Gap
Guided Arrow
Hawkeye
Healing Lorecall
Hunter's Eye
Hunter's Mercy
Instant Search
Lightfoot
Lion's Charge
Listening Lorecall
Mark of the Hunter
Near Horizon (redundant)
Primal Hunter, Instinct, Senses, and Speed
Remove Scent
Rhino's Rush
Sniper's Shot
Train Animal
Wake Trailing
Waste Strider

List is a work in progress. My own basic distinction here is that if the spell grants you some new mundane skill that you did not previously possess, rather than granting you a bonus to some skill or capability, that it should not really be a spell, that it should just be a mundane skill that characters could learn on their own. The existence of these spells precludes the possibility that these skills be mundane in the first place which is a large part of the problem.

[Maginomicon]

Once you have this list, perhaps you could homebrew that the mundane classes get spell progression but only get access to the spell list appropriate to their class. For example, Lorecall could be a Rogue spell.

[Slipperychicken]

Ventriloquism should be a skill or skill trick.

Cause Fear. Mundanes should be able to intimidate enemies into fleeing without blowing a feat, but a set of rules for morale would fix this nicely.

Blindness/Deafness. Because I'm morbid and and want my PC to pin people down and gouge their eyes out.

Detect Magic. There should be some way for mundanes to notice magic in my opinion. Like in Shadowrun, where people use perception to get a strange feeling when magic is nearby.

Flame Arrow: Just set your arrow on fire and get some modifications to attack and damage.

[nedz]

Detect Magic. There should be some way for mundanes to notice magic in my opinion. Like in Shadowrun, where people use perception to get a strange feeling when magic is nearby.

Rogues can use Search to find magic, but only if it's a trap.

[Slipperychicken]

Rogues can use Search to find magic, but only if it's a trap.

I don't really feel like that counts, because finding magic traps should be possible for anyone who invests in Search, not just a rogue.

[Devronq]

Maybe the spells that grant skill bonuses like the jump spell would be better as a x/day ability or something.

[Seerow]

You could probably add more than half of the Ranger spell list to this, and a good chunk of Paladin spell list as well.


Basically any buff spell (especially personal buffs) are totally legit as a non-magic ability. Divine Favor? Sure! Bull's Strength? Look at the Barbarian! And so on.

[Valwyn]

Basically all buffs, and maybe some lesser mind-affecting effects (Scare, Charm Person, Suggestion, Enthrall, Sleep)

Detect Evil for paladins (and similar). Maybe not as an Ex ability, but as a passive Su ability.

Healing. Because everyone knows that a plate of troll soup a day keeps the cleric away (possibly because your breath qualifies as a weapon now).
But seriously, there should be some way of mundane healing other than sleeping.

(Greater) Magic Weapon. I think fighters should get this for free on their weapon of choice.

Keen Weapon. Just buy a freaking whetstone.

Shield (of Faith): Just buy one already.

Luminous/Mage Armor: see above.

[Seerow]

Keen Weapon. Just buy a freaking whetstone.

Which involves making a mundane whetstone that gives you keen.

Shield (of Faith): Just buy one already.

Which involves making a mundane item that gives up to a +5 deflection bonus to AC.

Luminous/Mage Armor: see above.

Which would mean taking away all penalties associated with wearing armor, and giving some extra perks for free in the case of Luminous.

[Psyren]

You can expand this list considerably if you throw in alchemy, getting you things like healing, skill buffs, small-scale transmutations, localized abjurations and even various divinations.

[Osiris]

Ventriloquism should be a skill or skill trick

How would you make this? Perform (Ventriloquism)? If within 5 ft, -2 DC, 15 ft is +2 DC, 20 ft is +4 DC etcetera
How's that? Anybody got something for this?

[Isamu Dyson]

I think a whetstone is part of the in-game roleplaying experience: you don't use it to gain keen, but rather to keep up your blade's default level of sharpness.

[Maginomicon]

The Thogaturge is hungry...

[Slipperychicken]

I think a whetstone is part of the in-game roleplaying experience: you don't use it to gain keen, but rather to keep up your blade's default level of sharpness.

I could have sworn that either 3.5 or PF let you spend ~5-15 minutes sharpening a bladed weapon with a whetstone to gain +1 damage on the next attack it dealt. I think it was PF, but my google-fu has failed me.

[Valwyn]

Which involves making a mundane whetstone that gives you keen.

Yes, but since it's mundane, it would wear off after a time. 1d4 encounters and has five uses?

Which involves making a mundane item that gives up to a +5 deflection bonus to AC.

Which would mean taking away all penalties associated with wearing armor, and giving some extra perks for free in the case of Luminous.

I meant spells that in general replicate equipment. If you want your caster to use a shield or armor, buy some.

I think a whetstone is part of the in-game roleplaying experience: you don't use it to gain keen, but rather to keep up your blade's default level of sharpness.

That's probably true (I think the PHB even says swords and the like come with a whetstone), but I don't think many people actually use them since they have no mechanical effect.

[Isamu Dyson]

That's probably true (I think the PHB even says swords and the like come with a whetstone), but I don't think many people actually use them since they have no mechanical effect.

Hey, if it's good enough for Strider (more accurately, Strider's player)....

[Valwyn]

Strider? I don't think I know him.

[Seerow]

Yes, but since it's mundane, it would wear off after a time. 1d4 encounters and has five uses?

Depends on the price.

But honestly keen's not a big deal. That is one of the things a mundane can replicate already (Improved Critical), just most people don't consider a feat worth it when the weapon enhancement is so cheap.

I meant spells that in general replicate equipment. If you want your caster to use a shield or armor, buy some.

The thing is, they don't just replicate equipment.

Shield gives you a tower shield with none of the normal associated penalties or need to take up a hand, plus immunity to a common low level damage dealing spell which is normally very hard to ignore.

Shield of Faith gives you the equivalent of a Heavy Shield that scales upwards, but that stacks with real shields (deflection bonus) and doesn't have any of the penalties of a normal heavy shield (no ACP, no ASF, doesn't take up a hand), and applies to touch AC.

Mage Armor gives you a chain shirt with no ASF, ACP, etc.

Luminous Armor gives you a Breastplate, again with no ASF, ACP, Max Dex, etc, and causes the opponent to take a -4 penalty to hit on top of that, effectively making it better than full plate.

Greater Luminous Armor is the same thing, but Full Plate equivalent, still giving enemies the -4 penalty, making it better than any mundane armor by a large margin.



We're not just talking about spells replicating equipment Mundanes have here. We're talking about low level spells being better than the mundane equipment in every way. While sure, a Mage should be able to get the equivalent of light armor without the ASF penalty, there is no reason why a Fighter at the level when a Wizard is tossing out Greater Luminous Armor should be wearing full plate and have worse AC, suffer awful movement penalties, and take huge penalties to the only skill checks he's likely to be any good at.

So giving a Martial character an ability equivalent to the Armor spells is basically "You ignore ALL penalties associated with the armor you wear". And that ability should come online somewhere between levels 3 and 7.

A Martial character trying to replicate Shield might get to deal damage with a 1 handed weapon as if it were a two-hander (bonus strength to damage, increased PA returns), while wielding his shield.

A martial character trying to replicate Shield of Faith should just straight up gain a deflection bonus to AC. Don't try to justify it with a weird piece of equipment, just give it to him. Call it parrying if you want (he uses his weapon to deflect things from hitting him. And yes that includes touch spells. Because **** you wizard).

[Isamu Dyson]

Strider? I don't think I know him.

LOTR reference .

There's a scene that shows him sharpening his blade. Keep in mind this occurs in a movie with swords that are ludicrously sharp. Keen, anyone?

We're not just talking about spells replicating equipment Mundanes have here. We're talking about low level spells being better than the mundane equipment in every way.

Aren't most buffs temporary in duration, as compared to real metal armor which doesn't tend to vanish back into ethereal emanations?

[Valwyn]

Call it parrying if you want (he uses his weapon to deflect things from hitting him. And yes that includes touch spells. Because **** you wizard).

Shield Ward from PHB II helps with that a bit (shield bonus to touch AC and to resist bull rushes, disarms, grapples, overruning, and trips). You still have to burn a feat, though.

LOTR reference .

D'oh!
In my defense, I read the books in Spanish (about ten years ago) and I didn't really watch the movies. But I think I remember that scene. When they are in Helms Deep, maybe?
*Hides from rabid LotR fans*

Aren't most buffs temporary in duration, as compared to real metal armor which doesn't tend to vanish back into ethereal emanations?

Mage Armor lasts hours per level, and many buffs are easy to extend/persist/extend+persist. It's why I don't like the idea of Divine Metamagic.

[Isamu Dyson]

D'oh!
In my defense, I read the books in Spanish (about ten years ago) and I didn't really watch the movies. But I think I remember that scene. When they are in Helms Deep, maybe?
*Hides from rabid LotR fans*

Lothlorien, i think.

Mage Armor lasts hours per level, and many buffs are easy to extend/persist/extend+persist. It's why I don't like the idea of Divine Metamagic.

Fair enough. Still, they do consume something (be they spell slots or wands), and they're at the whims of anti-magic fields/zones and dispelling.

[Seerow]

Fair enough. Still, they do consume something (be they spell slots or wands), and they're at the whims of anti-magic fields/zones and dispelling.

And thinking that any of those things mean anything is why Tier 1s are tier 1, and mundanes are almost exclusively at the bottom. Just saying.

[SinsI]

Miracle.
Anyone should be able to pray to his God and receive his blessing if in sufficient favor with him.

[holywhippet]

Healing. Because everyone knows that a plate of troll soup a day keeps the cleric away (possibly because your breath qualifies as a weapon now).
But seriously, there should be some way of mundane healing other than sleeping.

You can use the heal skill to speed up healing. But it is realistic in the way it is depicted. People don't heal from their wounds all that fast relatively speaking. You can't expect someone to go from being beaten to near death to being fully healthy in just a few days.

I personally think you should be able to get bonuses to knowledge skill checks if you have a relevant book rather than using a spell.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Miracle.
Anyone should be able to pray to his God and receive his blessing if in sufficient favor with him.

I houserule this one to be true if the character shows unusually great devotion to his god, say through regular tithing to his church on a level that could be meaningful compared to WBL or making a point of praying before every battle and so on, or if he's on a mission that's of unusually great importance to his god.

[Seerow]

You can use the heal skill to speed up healing. But it is realistic in the way it is depicted. People don't heal from their wounds all that fast relatively speaking. You can't expect someone to go from being beaten to near death to being fully healthy in just a few days.

I personally think you should be able to get bonuses to knowledge skill checks if you have a relevant book rather than using a spell.

I've actually got two things that bug me about non-magic healing:

1) It doesn't scale at all. What I mean is, if you have a level 20 Fighter with 300hp, and a level 20 Wizard with 45 hp, and both are brought to the cusp of death, the Wizard will recover to full health long before the Fighter does (The Wizard being back up and ready to go in 3 days. The Fighter taking 16 days to fully recover). It's really annoying that having more HP is a penalty when it comes time to heal up, rather than a boon.

2) Recovery is actually too fast to be realistic, but too slow to be useful in a real game. It's the worst of both worlds. Seriously, your characters recover from literally any injury within 3 days to a couple of weeks, depending on level, class, and constitution modifier. Think about real life injuries that take months to heal, or never heal. The system in place doesn't emulate that. It is actually really bad for modeling real healing.

But on the other side of things, it's simply far too slow to be useful for a real game. It's slow enough that nobody playing in a real game is going to rely on it. If wands are available, people will use those. If they're not, somebody will get shoehorned into a cleric or other caster with cure spells, and waste a bunch of resources on keeping the rest of the party going. In either case, at no point does anybody sit down and say "Oh we're running low on HP. Let's put this adventure on hold, run back to town and camp for a week, then come back". It's totally out of genre and unacceptable, so nobody does it.

[Haldir]

This isn't a spell really, so forgive me if it's off-topic, but I think Crafting magic items requiring spellcasting is kinda odd. A very common form of strengthening iron was tempering the visceral element in a relatively-easy to construct furnace. I don't see why mundanes can't optimize gear on a daily basis by spending time to reforge different magics based on items they already possess or with a spellbook/spell component pouch. You don't restructure the item, you just add spells or effects per day equivalent to casting classes. Flavor of the melee with the versatility of caster.

Edit- On topic: Haste.

[holywhippet]

I've actually got two things that bug me about non-magic healing:

1) It doesn't scale at all. What I mean is, if you have a level 20 Fighter with 300hp, and a level 20 Wizard with 45 hp, and both are brought to the cusp of death, the Wizard will recover to full health long before the Fighter does (The Wizard being back up and ready to go in 3 days. The Fighter taking 16 days to fully recover). It's really annoying that having more HP is a penalty when it comes time to heal up, rather than a boon.

2) Recovery is actually too fast to be realistic, but too slow to be useful in a real game. It's the worst of both worlds. Seriously, your characters recover from literally any injury within 3 days to a couple of weeks, depending on level, class, and constitution modifier. Think about real life injuries that take months to heal, or never heal. The system in place doesn't emulate that. It is actually really bad for modeling real healing.

1. I do kind of like 4th edition in that regard. Spending a healing surge gives you back a percentage of your maximum HP generally rather than just a fixed amount. Of course they went too far in the opposite direction since you can just rest and spend healing surges as long as you still have any so you can be fully healthy on the very next day after getting beaten down to being unconscious.

2. Well, it might make things overly complex or difficult if they modelled things too realistically. If it was realistic then after every decent fight, without magical healing, you'd be limping back home to spend a few weeks recovering. Blunt force trauma, broken bones, sprains, lacerations etc. are all things that would make all but the toughest unwilling to enter combat until they have healed up. As a game D&D needs to be fun so you can understand why they bypass that by using an abstract concept like HP. I had one DM for AD&D who wanted to use a "maiming table" which would apply permanent stat lost if you dropped below 0 HP. It was a crazy idea and I left that game soon after.

[Seerow]

1. I do kind of like 4th edition in that regard. Spending a healing surge gives you back a percentage of your maximum HP generally rather than just a fixed amount. Of course they went too far in the opposite direction since you can just rest and spend healing surges as long as you still have any so you can be fully healthy on the very next day after getting beaten down to being unconscious.

2. Well, it might make things overly complex or difficult if they modelled things too realistically. If it was realistic then after every decent fight, without magical healing, you'd be limping back home to spend a few weeks recovering. Blunt force trauma, broken bones, sprains, lacerations etc. are all things that would make all but the toughest unwilling to enter combat until they have healed up. As a game D&D needs to be fun so you can understand why they bypass that by using an abstract concept like HP. I had one DM for AD&D who wanted to use a "maiming table" which would apply permanent stat lost if you dropped below 0 HP. It was a crazy idea and I left that game soon after.

2. My point is they aren't satisfying either group with the current system. If it's going to be unrealistic anyway, why not go all the way and have full recovery in a day? Nobody actually wants a realistic healing system. Nobody likes waiting days between fights to recover. The only thing trying to impose slow natural healing accomplishes is it forces the group to have a magical healing battery to be fun.

[Urpriest]

Heroics, potentially also Heroism, Mirror Move.

Whirling Blade, Daggerspell Stance (sort of), Hunter's Eye, Hunter's Mercy, Sniper's Shot (yeah lots of Ranger spells...)