Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tweaking the Divine...spells

I'm still on a spell kick and I have an idea to address a couple things three things I've wanted to do for a while.  The first thing came up in game as a discussion on potions of healing and cure light wounds - it seemed a bit cheap force a roll for a Cure Light Wounds potion - I mean you spend over 100gp for one of these it had better do more than heal 1 point of damage on a crappy roll.  The same applies to the spell  - you spend 3 hp to cast a Cure Light Wounds spell and then roll and heal up 1 point - that blows.

Secondly I have been wondering if it is appropriate in a spell point system to have the full list of Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Quite Small But Serious Wounds, Cure Silent But Deadly Wounds...  Really, if you need to cure some wounds cast Cure Light Wounds a couple times - it's not like you have to have them prepared.  Also, I know there are probably folks who will crunch some numbers and figure out which cure spells give you the best ratio per cost and everyone will stop using the others and they will be wasted space in the rule-book.

Thirdly I was thinking that clerics should have some spells to deal with 'spirits'.  I don't know why this is the case, maybe I have something from The Exorcist stuck in my subconsciousness  but I think that it just feels right to have some freaky ass ghost crap going down sometimes instead of having players just chopping up bed sheets.  However in order to do that kind of thing you need to give them tools to deal with it.  The cleric seems a natural fit for this.

Fourthly I have been looking at all the bipolar spells in the rulebook rethinking the idea that good clerics should cast the 'good' version of a spell and bad clerics cast the 'bad' version of it.  I mean really?  Wouldn't a bad cleric want to heal or buff his minions sometimes? It's not like bad creatures use negative hit points or anything.  I know a good cleric wouldn't want to use a Cause Serious Wounds spell on an enemy - but maybe a weak willed or misguided one would do it.  And really what's the difference between that and smashing in their head with your mace?

So I believe I'm going to do the following to deal with these things:

  1. Change the wording in the note about reversing spells to make it more clear that this is a setting/character thing and not a 'rule' thing.
  2. The Level 1 Cure/Cause Light Wounds will now do 4+1d4 hp damage.
  3. The Level 2 Cure/Cause Moderate Wounds is gone to be replaced with Detect Spirits.
  4. The Level 3 Cure/Cause Serious Wounds will now do 8+2d8 hp damage.
  5. The Level 4 Cure/Cause Critical Wounds is gone to be replaced with Manifest
Detect Spirits (level 2 Divine spell)
Range: 25 ft. + 5 ft. /2 levels.
Duration: Concentration.
Description:  Reveals to the caster the presence of unseen spirits or ghosts and an impression of their nature/intent.  Can be used to determine if a creature or object is possessed.  Cannot be used to detect the presence of normal creatures that are hidden or invisible.
Manifest (level 4 Divine spell)
Range: 25 ft. + 5 ft. /2 levels.
Duration: Concentration + 1 round.
Description:  Causes spirits, or other incorporeal beings of HD lower than the casters level to be made corporeal. Entities possessing objects or creatures will be forced out of them and stunned for 1 round.
At the rate I'm going It will probably be like 900 years before this gets play tested properly but what the hell I think might be cool.

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