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.

Cleanup on One Page Spells

I guess I should also summarize my commenters' opinions on the higher spell levels, even though they're not going to get the one-page treatment (maybe Advanced One Page Rules will handle them):

Level 4: Polymorph is a big hit, with the suggestion that Self and Other applications be combined into one super-versatile spell. Charm Monster and Dimension Door were the other ones that got multiple votes.

Level 5: Teleport was unanimously chosen, and Animate Dead got multiple votes. I'm not super big on any of the alternatives - Conjure Elemental seems to outclass Animate Dead, although it might be a good substitution if I give necromancy exclusively to evil clerics. Cloudkill, Contact Other Plane, and Transmute Rock to Mud ... The spells get less iconic as the levels rise.

Level 6: As I've said before, this is the last level I'll seriously consider. Stone to Flesh and its reversal were unanimously chosen. Geas was also popular (even if I consider it more of an NPC spell). The rest were singletons, showing the fraying of consensus at these high levels that characters rarely reach.

Oh, and here are the 6 more low level spells I mentioned last time. Lots of spells at level 1 is a good idea, but after that, my brotha, you have to find your own...

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.

Three Spell Salad: Levels 2 and 3

In our quest to strip down the classic spells of D&D to the essentials, we have a new contributor, JD Jarvis, whose picks don't change our 1st level selection smuch but get added in to the next 2 levels.

Invisibility is the clear winner for super wizards everywhere, with 4 out of 6 desert-island spellbook compilers choosing it. Behind it we have a pack of four, each tied at two picks: Web, Levitate, Mirror Image and ESP.

Mirror Image is cool ... but it serves much the same function as Invisibility. Some people would give ESP the heave-ho on the grounds it's a plot spoiler. I just nerf it into Detect Thoughts, and if the being fails a Mind save the caster gets to sample one thought from its stream of consciousness. Levitate and Web, together with Flaming Sphere, are the more physical spell effects that would anchor the Day list if I picked three "Day" (straightforward) and three "Night" (arcane) spells. But with Feather Fall being expanded to Weightlessness, Levitate is too much like that and too much like a certain spell coming up next level. So the final three are:

ESP: Overnight recovery at (caster) level 3
Invisibility: Overnight recovery at level 3
Web: Overnight recovery at level 3

By the way, I'd probably pick Knock/Wizard Lock for the third of the level 2 Night list.

I'm not sure of the wisdom of allowing turn recovery for some of these, but the levels in question are high enough that the "Basic" rules don't have to worry about that.

The level 3 spells ... well, Fireball and Dispel Magic are clearly the A-listers, with all 5 contributors choosing them.  This is where the limitations begin to grate; Fly gets 2 votes but there are some other strong contenders, like Haste, Clairvoyance and Monster Summoning. The Day list would really start to shine here with Fireball, Fly and Haste, while for Night effects, the ability to summon a stronger monster, dispel magic and use clairvoyance would have to do. For now, let's go with:

Fireball: Overnight recovery at level 5
Dispel Magic: Turn recovery at level 5 (with no re-tries to dispel any one effect)
Fly: Overnight recovery at level 5

Next: up some comments on how this approach would fit into a class system, plus spell cards!

Three Spell Rhumba: Level 1

So ... the 49 Page Rules will be a "Basic D&D" - like product, with rules for player character levels 1-3 but allowing for NPC foes up to level 6. This means I get to focus on only the first three levels.

Four of you weighed in redoubtably on my three-spell challenge: Courtney of Hack & Slash, Changeling Bob, the Rubber Duck and Paul. There was actually quite a bit of consensus, so that I could pick six spells at first level and three at first that had all gathered multiple votes, and very few multiply-endorsed spells were left on the floor. This was as I had suspected; with the classic spell lists and even up through 3rd Edition, some spells clearly stand out as winners.

Here's the first level. You get to pick one each of a spell that takes the whole night to recover, a spell that takes a ten-minute turn to recover, and a spell you can cast at will. At character level 2 a wizard gets to pick another spell. Spells can get easier to recover as you gain levels; I put these power-ups on the even numbered levels because you get new spell levels on the odd-numbered ones.

Spell Recovery: Charm Person Night L1 Turn L4 Feather Fall At Will L1 Light At Will L1 Magic Missile Turn L1 At Will L6 Shield Turn L1 At Will L4 Sleep Night L1 Turn L6

I like to tweak spells to make them maximally useful. So yes, Light can be cast on someone's eyes, but they get a save to see if it lands on their hair instead, and let's also say you can only have one Light on at any given time. Shield basically creates a disk shaped force field no more than a yard off the ground that can be used to haul treasure, block a door, and thousands of other uses. Feather Fall can make you feather light for six seconds, enough to be hurled by the party strongman up onto that remote ledge.

Well, this is a minimal wizard. But she's guaranteed to get two out of three of the Most Useful Spells at first level, and has the weaker powers compensated by at-will use. It's a way of smoothing out the magic-user power curve by boosting first level powers, while making the higher-level powers not multiply so dramatically.

I'll do levels 2 and 3 next post, and I'm also thinking about splitting the spell lists into, for want of a better word, Day and Night paths. Where, for example, Day = Light, Feather Fall, Shield, Magic Missile, Create Rock, and Grease/Glue ... and Night = Ventriloquism, Unseen Servant, Summon 1 HD Monster, Comprehend Languages, Charm Person and Sleep. That gives a little more choice but doubles the spell list's size.

Give Me Three Spells ...

Last summer I expanded on all those color magic spells. This summer I'm considering stripping them down.

What's the thickest part of any D&D edition or clone? Easily the spell listings, followed by the magic item listings. Does it have to be that way? Hell no. Especially not as I gear up for the 49 Page Rules Project  ... an entire clone-like adventure game presented in modular, "one page rules" format that you can rip and plunder for your own games.

After all, we all know what the "staple" spells are at each level, the ones you keep memorizing over and over again. Then there are the "weird" specialist spells like Spider Climb and stuff ... but maybe those could be bought on scrolls, or found as treasure. After all, what you do is just hoard them up anyway.

Imagine there's only 6 spells at 1st level and 3 at each level thereafter.

And picking up a good idea from 4E, that was ridiculously overextended to character classes it shouldn't have reached: you start with one of the two weakest 1st level spells as an at-will power, then one of the next two as a power you need to rest 10 minutes to recover, then one of the two strongest as a power you need to sleep on. At 2nd level you get another 10 minute power. At 3rd you get one of the three 2nd level spells, and at 4th you get another, at 10 minute or overnight levels depending on their strength. And so on.

6 pages. For everything.

Are there other spells out there? Hell yeah. In the hands of nerd wizards with more time to do scholarship than adventure. But they will have to be found. They're in the DM's treasure section, not the players' handbook, which now has a grand total of 24 magic-user spells through 7th level, or 12 spells if you're writing a "Basic" book that only goes up to character level 5. That's just 6 pages, or 3 pages for Basic, at 4 spell descriptions a page.

So, participation time. Pick a magic-user spell level (any edition D&D, really, because I have a suspicion the answers across editions are going to look very much the same).

If it's first level, pick 6 spells. If it's any other level, pick 3. Those would be the only spells any adventuring magic-user had at that level. What would you pick for power and interest value? And are these any different from what players pick in your game, especially if it enforces pre-memorization?