52 Pages: Spells for Prophets

Like I said, the final 52 Pages version is going to swap out prophetic miracles for spells on cards that fit better with magic item generation and keeping your powers in front of you as a player.

A few things:

Flame Princess style, turning is a spell, so it's limited in use. I haven't decided yet but am leaning towards making prophets able to repeat their "miracle" casting of spells.

Restoring hit points is a separate per-day ability, so the low levels of the "gold" healing miracles are aimed at optimizing healing and managing injury, which is what happens when HP hit zero.

I resolved the "prophecy" problem by making it a level 1 orange spell, Augury, but giving it a fairly weak effect for anyone else but prophets.



Okay, now the mechanical part of the 52 pages is really done except for the tweaking. Play examples and GM advice, you are next.

Spell Cards: Phantasm, Harden/Soften

What can I say about the poor illusion? AD&D wrongfooted it with Phantasmal Force, spawning a thousand cries of "I disbelieve!" No, the illusion couldn't just mess with minds; it had to do psychosomatic damage. Yeah, everything had to do damage in those uncreative teenage combat-dungeons of yore, which is why the "2nd level damage gap" quickly got filled with black tentacles and flaming spheres when Unearthed Arcana came around.

But anyway, what can a wiser DM and players do with a mere non-damaging Phantasm? The possibilities are endless, and it becomes a contest of wits between players and DM. As the illusionist here, you are not just trying to create something, but do a psychological bank shot - show a thing that will have an effect on someone or something else. What would a hound made of shadow do when a small fluffy white cat saunters across its field of sight? This is the phantasm a certain gnome conjured up not so long ago in a dire situation, and being on the Faerie Roads (which are halfway already to Toontown) I allowed that a 5+ on d6 would plausibly distract each hound from the combat. I place this spell at first level because it rewards creativity, aids distraction and escape - vital for the puny starting party.

The Harden/Soften spell seems at first glance to be the weakest of the first level lot - a straightforward buff/debuff. But consider that in my system, chain mail plus shield gives AC 16, to which +3 adds a very formidable barrier; kobolds can only hit that 10% of the time.

Consider further that the spell is not just written as a buff/debuff, but as a physical effect. This is crucial to encouraging creative uses. What can you do with an iron flag ... a rope turned rigid ... a rubber sword ... in the name of all that's holy, think of the hairdressing implications!

Spell Cards: Sleep, Force Shield

Oh, the ever lovin' Sleep spell. It steps into an Old School game at level 1 and forces a decision on the house-rules writer. Do you let it stand as written, or cut it down to the equal of its peers? Many a debate on forum and blog has weighed the imponderables of the situation.

Above is my current nerfing of the classic Sleep. I've waffled back and forth, at times going for the "up to 4 HD but save" approach, which makes it less all-powerful at low levels but preserves its utility well into the mid-levels. Perhaps I did the wrong thing - my 4th level party, finding it useless, traded it away at the Faerie Market for that divinational spell of most uncertain application, the Appeal to the Nine Worthy Elders (more on this later).

Probably the biggest balancing factor I applied was to make it only affect creatures that, you know, biologically sleep. This takes away its applicability to a lot of low-level pests, leaving only soldier-types, rats, and the miscellaneous animal.

The voluntary application is my attempt to make it useful for even high level parties. Restful sleep implies a higher healing rate, but also a deeper sleep from which to be awoken in case things happen in the night. You'll sleep as deeply as if you were in a safe inn, even camping in the dungeon.

Anyway, in spite of my doubts about Sleep, I'm on firmer ground with the blue spell, combining Shield, Floating Disc, and Hold Portal capabilities. Loading all three limited-use spells into one slot seems like a winning move to me.

Spell Cards: Unseen Servant, Translate

 Unseen Servant is one of those spells that's like a Rorschach test, or perhaps a red cape, for the DM and game designer. Eventually players who get this spell are going to want to push it - doubly so if you're using a rules-light system like my "all on one card" mandate for spells. They'll want to know whether they can send the servant ahead to scout, what it can see or hear, how it can communicate with you ("tap once for a humanoid, twice for an arthropod"), whether it can spread flaming oil or run through flaming oil or crouch behind an enemy so you can knock it down with Three Stooges footstool-jutsu.

One approach is to write out more and more rules to cover every possible angle. Truly the task of Sisyphus, because you can never cover every possible angle ("DM, is my unseen servant as 'fully functional' as Lt. Data?") Going down that path, you end up with a binding document of indeterminate length that you are obliged to consult and that still doesn't cover players' full creativity.

But think about the effect that has on the players. In Indianapolis, there is a nightclub where posted signs forbid the wearing of gang insignia, athletic wear or "jorts" (jean shorts). Does that sign make you feel safer, knowing that gang bangers and casually dressed ruffians are denied entry? Or does it serve the same purpose as the two-page legalese spell description - typecasting the patrons of your establishment as hooligans to be legislated against, daring them to find the loopholes?

Now consider the other approach. You're a live referee, not a dead tree rulebook - make the most of it. Inspirit the world. The few short lines on the card are what the player-wizard knows about the inscrutable contracts binding the Unseen Servant to its master. Much is left uncertain, and the servants have a reputation for arbitrary pettifoggery. For this purpose only they are allowed to form sounds in your inner ear. They belong to one of six different extraplanar labor unions, each of which forged a slightly different agreement, and the clauses in the contracts are constantly changing.

This gives you license to make things up as you go along, to balance the game as you go along, to correct mistakes where you give the players too much or too little. Using the servant for scouting ahead? Sure, but ... he will only answer, by tapping, three yes or no questions about what he's seen. It's not the DM making things up. It's not the rules document trying to nail them down.  No, the unseen servant has a mind of its own, and only the most ill-tempered player would question the DM's puppetry.

As for Translate ... it is what you make of it. Knowing an inscription in a long-dead language or whatever the rhino people are saying amongst themselves can be the difference between life or death.

Spell Cards: Featherweight, Light

A while back I posted about the idea to use spellbooks from the defunct collectible card game Zatch Bell as a lodging for players' spell cards. It required a little resizing to the skinny card sleeves they have but I'm now proud to say that the player of Sivir the Elf now carries her four spells in a little gray book. And will never again forget how Sleep works ... right?

Two years ago I posted a long series reworking the standard spell lists that had remained much the same across editions of D&D. Later, I tried boiling the spell list down to the most essential spells and stating them as single cards. This time around the spell list is expanded, some of the dog spells thrown out (Temptation/Fortitude anyone?) and I think it's a good time to go two by two through the card-based spells I use in my current games.

The one thing I'm missing, I think, is crazy-ass spells. Stuff like Tobias' Obeisant Simian Valet from the New York Red Box campaigns, or Matt Finch's Strange Waters spell that got into Flame Princess. Always looking for the good suggestions on those. But now, on to the mundane stuff...

The number in parentheses is the caster level required to cast the spell; the range of both of these is sight, 30' and they represent the Yellow School of Change and the Red School of Energy.

Featherweight is the ultimate repurposing of the Feather Fall spell. Brendan on Untimately has recently posted some good insights about how OD&D spells can be understood like equipment, solutions for specific exploration problems like locked doors and illegible inscriptions. Well, if that approach to spells is Phillips-head screwdriver for Phillips-head screw, I want spells to be more like Swiss Army knives with strange emergent properties.

Players in my games have used Featherlight to cross a pit in the course of escaping a troll - who nonetheless batted them around like a party balloon - and to make opening a secret door that much easier. Nobody's yet had the chance to use the Wiley Coyote gambit ... cast it on the big bad monster, push it back with a pole over the cliff edge until 10' has passed, and then bye-bye. By the way, it's "weightless" in the sense of  "zero gravity," so that monster will still exert force and do damage as normal. (Even more devious, find yourself a 300 lb weight in the dungeon, go stand by it and yell until something comes along; then toss it up until it has flown 10' in the air, and run like hell.)

With Light, I cut to the chase and make provisions for its offensive use. Straightforward enough, but both of these spells with a little luck and ingenuity can get even a beginning party out of an out-of-level monster encounter in a jiffy. I guess if you see spells-as-equipment, then these represent the kind of creative uses of equipment that are the pinnacle of Old School play style.

Real Spellbooks

Not exactly the kind Jack Chick had in mind ...

but play aids that would save trips through the rulebooks by organizing each spell-using character's library into pages.

I know there have been various spell card decks here and there through the ages. Stuart's pocketmod spellbook is almost what I'm after, but I want the ability to easily add in spells and have different books for different characters.

And I've already got spell cards for my system...

Then I remembered the CCG flash in the pan of 2005: Zatch Bell. Its gimmick: your collectible deck was stored and played from inside a little spellbook binder with 16 sleeve-pages for the cards. This is perfect.

 It doesn't seem to be available through UK retailers ... good thing I'm going to GenCon Indy, huh?

One Page Wizard and New Spell Cards

Putting this up makes me realize there's a pending project I have, to write more spell-descriptions for the Old School Players rules I'm using. When last my players met they found the need for descriptions of spells as high as 3rd level, and I'd like to have it all written down so there's no misunderstandings!

Anyway, this set of one-pagers continues the philosophy of spells from here and here. Things are even more changed up from D&D and I have taken on board an idea from (CORRECTION: Italian name related confusion) Tsojcanth's Paolo Greco, to have spell level equal caster level and space the acquisition of new spells more evenly. Of particular note is the change to Sleep which takes its rightful place as a level one feller of rats and kobolds without the implications for higher-level monsters, insectoids and so forth.

In a versatility boost, Force Shield subsumes Hold Portal, Tenser's Floating Disc, and Shield; Weightlessness likewise has more uses than just Feather Fall, and Tonguetie/Tongueloose is kind of like Silence reversible to ESP. I'm careful to make the information revealed by the human intelligence spells, Tongueloose and Detect Thoughts, subject to DM control, so that plot points don't have to be given away directly.

Three Spell Monte: Two Pages of Spell Cards

No, not those cards.

Cards have been recognized as a great way to keep track of spells in a fire-and forget system since at least 2nd edition D&D. My insistence in the current campaign that each spell be castable only once a day makes this even easier, with no need for duplicates. Maybe, in fact, I'll work up some spell cards for those rules and my players.

I'm keeping text to 18pt, unlike 3rd ed ...

In the meantime, here are spell cards for the 12 magic spells that are all you need to play the one page starter rules (see here and here). The way these spells are going to work is almost tailor made for cards - or so I realized. You know as many spells as you have written down in your book, which varies with your intelligence and with how many spells you have found during adventuring. You can take a certain number of spells with you each day, ready to cast, depending on your level and intelligence.

When you cast them, you turn them face down; the extra moons and hourglasses are to paste on the back of the card so you can see when they'll be recovered. Spells require either 10 min (hourglass) or a full night (moon) to recover; I've ditched the at-will casting for now, finding it hard to balance. The number at top right is the minimum caster level at which the spell is available. That's it; no such thing as "spell levels", or rather, those equal caster levels.

Here they are shrunken; click for full size:

In the next couple of posts I'll fill in the wizard class with the actual spell rules and with ... Lab Abilities.