Well, first of all hello, it’s my first post on the forum.
Now, let’s get started.
I’ve been playing for a few weeks by now and I I’ve browsed through the forum in search for some topics and as a result I would like to share with my opinion on certain matters.
Since I RP mostly a wizard I will start with spells in general. From what I understand many of the changes were made in order to bring down the magic power to an acceptable for this setting level as well as to remove some broken spells and I agree with most of the changes. However there are some that I do not understand:
Summoning spells (conjuration) – to some extent I understand the change cause 24h duration was too long, but making them 1 turn + 1 round/lvl makes them almost useless, especially on low levels, where they are not oh so powerful. I believe that a change to 1 turn/lvl would be more appropriate and below are the reasons why:
- You can’t summon appropriate monsters from the summoning spell list, so you are stuck with some dire animals instead of more potent outsiders (at low levels at least, I will mention elementals later).
- You can’t summon multiple creatures what is in conflict with what is allowed per PnP spell description.
- When considering outsiders such as elementals it maybe could be scripted that they would make a will (caster) vs. will (creature) check every turn or every 2nd turn to see if they break free before the spell duration expires, as I suspect they would be rather unhappy to be imprisoned in the demi-plane. Same would apply to planar binding.
Summoning spells (necromancy) – actually I should not call them summoning, but creating. Those spells per PnP rules have indefinite duration unless your undead servant is destroyed. I would think that making them 1hour/lvl is more appropriate for this than the same duration as conjuration summoning spells and here are the reasons why:
- This is necromancy, not conjuration. You do not summon from other plane (plane of death or shadow), but you animate a corpse or bind a soul of the recently deceased man/creature. It’s different in type, thus should last longer, especially since PnP description of the spell is rather clear. We could add the gold use in the case of this spell or some component use (i.e large bone) or both.
- The RP limits the use of these spells because they are inherently connected with evil, hence you won’t use it openly in the public even if your adventure pack consists only of “Outsiders”. You use these kind of spells rather secretly and in small trusted groups of PCs. So if a group of three wants to adventure then additional fighter or at least decoy is really handy. Those creatures are not an I win creatures.
Summoning (transmutation) – I would apply similar rules as the necromancy, because those are frankly animated objects like a blade or a pile of armor and sword. Although unlike undeads I would have their duration same as regular summons, meaning 1turn/lvl, because those use magical energy to function and unless you create a real golem from scratches over some period of time with use of proper components and such, then their duration should be similar to the regular summons.
I wouldn’t touch Gate or BBoD. They are fine. And besides if you want to cause real carnage among some other players or non hostile NPCs, you just throw one gate after another with no PfE and release numerous Balors to Barovia –
– of course probably few moments later you will be visited by some DPs
Polymorph spells – well those are a really good tool for RP and to be honest those forms are not that powerful to reduce their time to such a short duration. Any buffed fighter will do much better than buffed and polymorphed wizard, and mostly the polymorph is the spell of last resort in prolonged dungeon crawl. And this brings me to the next thing.
I would love to see that ‘dungeons’ are “no rest areas” (at least such as towers, tombs, sewers), but this would be best implemented only when making wands and scribing scrolls is available… if not, then casters would be gimped too much and as a result non casters in the same party would suffer as well, although with more 'no rest' it would be more RPish (i would not change the interval between rests in general, cause in safe places you can study and change your book as you want, same with sitting around and relaxing). We should remember that a rest does not last few seconds as we see on the screen in game, but relaxing a bit to remove fatigue lasts a bit more, same with studying and a meditation…. I won’t even mention sleep. And I doubt that hostiles few rooms further or one level below or above would just stand idle for the time when you rest. This would also create more demand for healers (cause for now I see clerics mostly as self buffing and smiting machines) and would make casters to not spam their spell easily but preserve them for real hard situations and instead they would buff a fighter. With wands and scrolls casters could do their job during that kind of crawls much better.
Smarter NPC casters. I mean, give them more breaches and dispels to use on glowing Christmas trees.. with that it would be really interesting to see PC casters struggle vs NPC casters.. and if you think that the changes in summons are over the top, well think of adding in some places casters that can throw banishment or dismissal
There is a really hefty number of means how to counter other casters and the effects of their spells without overnerfing or unnecessary tweaks of useful spells and as a result sending them into oblivion and eliminating some parts of fun . Breaches and banishments being the most obvious.
(think of blind, grease, cloud etc. spells as well). I would agree though that PfA should be tweaked cause it does not make sense if it protects you from stinking cloud for example.
Please write what you think of these sugestions and discuss maybe.
Ps. I may add a few suggestions later about other things like what low levels can do but i would like to see much more of the world before doing so. Because it's rather hard to explore alone when you are a low level (6 now) and it's hard to RP joining to every adventurers group that goes somewhere cause of your idea of PC. (yeah and brings me sometimes to killing rats en masse, which is not only boring but it does not develop my PC).
