Utility and Combat Spells Occupying the same Slot

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

In 3.5E and earlier editions players could choose both utility and combat spells within the same spell slots. Comprehend Languages and Color Spray are both first level spells. Acid Arrow and Knock are both second level spells.

4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the combat spells as powers directly tied together. My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

[Username17]

In 3.5E and earlier editions players could choose both utility and combat spells within the same spell slots. Comprehend Languages and Color Spray are both first level spells. Acid Arrow and Knock are both second level spells.

4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the combat spells as powers directly tied together. My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

First of all, the short answer is "No." It turns out that when you put a hard line between "combat" effects and "utility" effects, that you end up legislating that effects work differently in and out of combat and that ends up being really shitty and anti-immersive.

Characters in 4e can do short distance teleportation as part of their attack routines but can't hop to the other side of a door out of combat. They can murder half a dozen people with a spinning firestorm shooting out of their sword but can't light a torch. That kind of shit is shit.

People need abilities that interact with all the major minigames they are going to be thrown into, but dividing abilities into "combat" and "noncombat" does not work in any game more role-playing-like than Arkham Horror. In an actual RPG, abilities have to have concrete in-world effects, and you have to be able to knotcut with them.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the combat spells as powers directly tied together. My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

It easily can. Just make it so that some powers just can't be used in combat for whatever reason: trying to use them in combat is unsafe, they take too long to use them in combat, distractions/bad vibes/disruption will interrupt them trivially, etc.

Should it, that's a different question.

[CatharzGodfoot]

'Abilities you can use in combat' and 'abilities you can't use in combat' are always going to exist, regardless of whether you mark the categories explicitly.

If scrying on someone takes an hour, you aren't going to be able to do it in combat. If building a stone wall takes a week, you aren't going to be able to do it in combat. If brewing a potion takes 10 minutes with delicate apparatuses in an alchemical lab, you aren't going to be able to do it in combat.

There's no reason that 'cooking dinner' has to compete for resources with with 'swinging a sword'.

---

Then there are abilities that might be useful to have or use in combat, but aren't really 'combat abilities'. Tongues can be cast in combat time, and can help you get over misunderstandings or dictate terms of surrender, but it doesn't improve your ability to fight.

There's no reason that 'having a lit lantern' has to compete for resources with 'having an axe'. In real life they do compete, but this is a game. Sometimes you'll be able to throw that lantern into a haystack and have a significant effect on the outcome of a combat, but that doesn't make the lantern into a combat ability.

---

The bottom line is, keeping a character from chopping wood with her warax is dumb, but keeping 'speaks Finnish' on a separate accounting from 'knows kung-fu' is totally workable. But again, don't stop the kung-fu master from chopping wood with her bare hands.

[Red_Rob]

4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the combat spells as powers directly tied together. My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

It easily can. Just make it so that some powers just can't be used in combat for whatever reason: trying to use them in combat is unsafe, they take too long to use them in combat, distractions/bad vibes/disruption will interrupt them trivially, etc.

Should it, that's a different question.

Yes, its also the question he asked. Bill, by the way, not Frank, in case he cares.

Just because 4e fucked up an idea does not mean the idea is inherently bad. One of the problems of D&D is the character who is either combat-only or combat-useless. D&D tends to be a combat heavy game, to the extent that most games i have played tend to average around 50% combat time. This means that any character that can only function in combat or outside it is dead weight half the time. Forcing a player to choose some abilities meant primarily for combat and some primarily for non-combat is only the same as giving the Fighter skill points rather than letting him trade them in for unarmed strike. Sure, you might find combat uses for the powers, or skills, but they're primarily there to ensure you aren't deadweight for half the adventure.

Just having the powers be something that isn't usually combat worthy is enough though - making them take twice as long to cast or use a different ruleset is just punishing creative play.

[souran]

I actually completely disagree with Frank on this.

There must be a hard divsion between combat and non combat powers and you should not be able to TRADE combat powers for noncombat powers or vise versa.

Somebody pointed out that most games are about 50% combat. I would say that is just about correct. Combat is also probably a games most detailed minigame.

Players really need a way to acess any minigame you are going to have, but at the very least every class needs to know its function in combat and in explortion and in diplomacy, and every class should serve a purpose.

Powers that are defined for combat should interact with the gameworld in meaningful ways and if you are willing to double up efforts then every combat ability can have non combat functionality as well.

However, any game that makes you draw combat and noncombat abilties from the same well is never going to play correctly.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

No.

It easily can. Just make it so that some powers just can't be used in combat for whatever reason: trying to use them in combat is unsafe, they take too long to use them in combat, distractions/bad vibes/disruption will interrupt them trivially, etc.

The problem with this is that in order to balance the weaknesses you need to make the effect of the utility power greater than before. You can't have 'create flame' and have At-Will 'scorching burst' at the same time because if create flame does have those limitations people will just ignore it and use scorching burst.

The problem is that this causes an escalation of power very quickly. In 4E D&D, Wall of Fire comes online at level 9. It's 20 feet high and is up to eight squares long. In order to make the separation of utility power worth it you need to scale it up some other way. Easy enough for Wall of Fire, but what about Mass Charm Person? Even if you solve that problem, it raises the question of why you even have this separation in the first place? It's a waste of space Personally, I'd just like to tag a ton of powers as 'Ritual', which means that if you put in the time investment you can scale up the effect in size and duration like in Mutants and Masterminds. You can put a downward or upward (or both) limit on the number of 'Ritual' spells someone is allowed to have if you're bothered about certain players intentionally/accidentally gimping themselves in the non-combat minigame. Alternatively (or both) you can give certain powers a side order of non-combat utility. Inflict Curse comes packaged with Remove Curse. Dispel Magic has obvious combat and non-combat applications. Summon Succubus gives you a base creature but also gives you the option to equip it with a Demon's Crown (gives it more direct combat abilities) or a Devil's Crown (more 'utility' abilities). So on and so-forth.

Of course the biggest reason why I oppose separation of Combat and Utility powers is because I think that it's super-lame that between two equal-leveled wizards, one can use Flame Cloud (combat) but not Castle of Fire (utility) while the other one can use Castle of Fire but not Flame Cloud. I am really against game mechanics that advertise a separation of combat and non-combat power, because it breaks immersion and creates cliched thinking.

[A Man In Black]

Yes, its also the question he asked. Bill, by the way, not Frank, in case he cares.

No, it's not the question he asked. Judging from the thread, he seems to have asked if resources that solve the problem of murdering people should come from a separate pool from resources that solve problems which aren't murdering people. Frank's answer addresses that question: there are precious few abilities which kill people which do not also solve other problems. Fireballs can set fires and blow things up, swords cut ropes and batter doors and rattle in scabbards, etc.

My answer was addressing the difference between a 3e Teleport spell you can cast in combat and a 4e-style Teleport ritual that is functionally identical save for a 10-minute cast time. I think this is an interesting discussion: there's some game space between someone who can use telepathy or teleportation or fire projection or what the fuck ever tactically and on the fly, and someone who can do it to solve a situation that requires it but only with prep time. I think it's not quite relevant to this thread, though.

The problem with this is that in order to balance the weaknesses you need to make the effect of the utility power greater than before. You can't have 'create flame' and have At-Will 'scorching burst' at the same time because if create flame does have those limitations people will just ignore it and use scorching burst.

The obvious way to make rituals relevant is to protect their role. If you were going to make a 4e-based heartbreaker, for example, you could give any effect with a duration longer than five minutes to the rituals. In a low-magic-and-I-really-actually-fucking-mean-it game, anything magic at all could be a ritual.

Alternately, the "combat" abilities are schticks, and you only get so many of them. So everyone can learn the boring starchy ten-minute-Town-Portal for the time it takes to listen to Sir Boring The Magic Tutor, but it costs real resources to learn Teleport In The Blink Of An Eye.

Also, "ritual" being a method to just power up your existing abilities is also a good idea.

Of course the biggest reason why I oppose separation of Combat and Utility powers is because I think that it's super-lame that between two equal-leveled wizards, one can use Flame Cloud (combat) but not Castle of Fire (utility) while the other one can use Castle of Fire but not Flame Cloud. I am really against game mechanics that advertise a separation of combat and non-combat power, because it breaks immersion and creates cliched thinking.

There are ways to avoid this, like rewarding people for themed aesthetics or choosing themed/linked powers, if it's really important to you.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think this is an interesting discussion: there's some game space between someone who can use telepathy or teleportation or fire projection or what the fuck ever tactically and on the fly, and someone who can do it to solve a situation that requires it but only with prep time.

Again, I personally think that this is really bad for creativity and immersion. We want Wolverine's player to use his super-regenerative abilities to create an on-the-fly bloodbank to help bubonic plague victims, but when his regeneration is tagged 'combat' it creates a mental roadblock that causes people to pass over the ability when considering solutions to problems. Even if it's totally allowed by the rules, there is a considerable proportion of the playerbase who will see the Regeneration or Steel Skin or whatever maneuvers tagged 'combat' and skip over them.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I mean, hell, where's that Robot Chicken staff plays 4E D&D YouTube video? That's like the best argument against a combat/utility separation of powers ever.

[hogarth]

I mean, hell, where's that Robot Chicken staff plays 4E D&D YouTube video? That's like the best argument against a combat/utility separation of powers ever.

I don't think anyone here is going to defend how 4E combat powers work! E.g. if I have a power that lets me fly, I shouldn't have to punch someone first; that's just idiotic.

A more measured example is a spell like Scrying in 3.5E. It has a casting time of 1 hour; I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. On the contrary, it encourages scenes like Ming the Merciless sitting in his evil citadel spying on his enemies, instead of doing an Aaron Sorkin-style scry 'n' talk.

[A Man In Black]

Again, I personally think that this is really bad for creativity and immersion. We want Wolverine's player to use his super-regenerative abilities to create an on-the-fly bloodbank to help bubonic plague victims, but when his regeneration is tagged 'combat' it creates a mental roadblock that causes people to pass over the ability when considering solutions to problems. Even if it's totally allowed by the rules, there is a considerable proportion of the playerbase who will see the Regeneration or Steel Skin or whatever maneuvers tagged 'combat' and skip over them.

Then don't tag it combat. Tag those powers "General" or "Schtick" or "Major".

It's a really terrible idea to have powers tagged "Combat" and "Utility", yes. It's not necessarily a bad idea to have powers separated into the pile you can use in a combat turn and the pile you can't use in a combat turn, as long as you don't fall into the same pit that 4e did.

[crasskris]

In 3.5E and earlier editions players could choose both utility and combat spells within the same spell slots. Comprehend Languages and Color Spray are both first level spells. Acid Arrow and Knock are both second level spells.

4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the combat spells as powers directly tied together. My question is, should such a hard line between powers exist or not?

No.

If you need to categorize your powers, then identify the types of problem solutions your mc accepts (combat, stealth, social, craft, etc.), and use those types to tag your powers. Then, optionally, have all characters take at least one power of each type.

[ModelCitizen]

4e has to draw a really harsh distinction between combat and "utility" because of its power scheme. In 4e almost every power you know is part of your core combat shtick. To beat up even the simplest monsters you're going to run through most of your powers because each power can be used exactly once. You can't take one or two powers that work for killing ogres and then diversify like you could in almost any other game. To be good at killing ogres, you need a whole combat worth of different standard actions that all work on ogres.

The whole combat vs utility thing is a solution to a problem only 4e has. A game where you can use the same power more than once or you can prepare different powers wouldn't have that problem.

[Ice9]

From the thread title, I though this was going to be about something entirely different - powers that had both a combat and utility use in the same slot. So for example, you pick Teleport. You get both a move-action short range jump, and a long distance gate that takes several minutes. You pick Burning Hands and in addition to the obvious combat use, you can light one finger on fire as a torch, or heat your hands up and work metal without a forge.

That sounds workable, actually. I mean, ideally, powers would just lend themselves to both combat and non-combat uses organically, and I'm certainly not advocating against that. But sometimes one of the uses isn't obvious, or would work better with different parameters than the other, and straight-up dual/triple function abilities can solve that.

[OgreBattle]

Characters in 4e can do short distance teleportation as part of their attack routines but can't hop to the other side of a door out of combat. They can murder half a dozen people with a spinning firestorm shooting out of their sword but can't light a torch. That kind of shit is shit.

Isn't that the same thing with 3e? If you've memorized fireball and no other fire spell, you can only light torches with an expenditure of Fireball.

[LR]

Isn't that the same thing with 3e? If you've memorized fireball and no other fire spell, you can only light torches with an expenditure of Fireball.

The fact that fireball can light torches (or incinerate them) at all is the difference. In 4e, interaction between powers and objects is DM fiat, and real action outside the strict rules of combat is supposed to be handled by rituals, which are actively harmful to the goals of an adventuring party.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's not necessarily a bad idea to have powers separated into the pile you can use in a combat turn and the pile you can't use in a combat turn, as long as you don't fall into the same pit that 4e did.

This still creates the aforementioned mental roadblock because combat powers will always fit into the pile that can be used in the combat turn and you'll only find non-combat powers in the other pile. Even if you do have a selection of non-combat powers in the first pile, you've still recreated the problem because the problem was that of sorting. Changing the labels will help a little, but even an amateur will quickly come to see the pile of powers that combat powers can only fit into is the 'Combat' pile while everything else is the 'Non-Combat' pile.

From the thread title, I though this was going to be about something entirely different - powers that had both a combat and utility use in the same slot. So for example, you pick Teleport. You get both a move-action short range jump, and a long distance gate that takes several minutes. You pick Burning Hands and in addition to the obvious combat use, you can light one finger on fire as a torch, or heat your hands up and work metal without a forge.

Not every power needs to work like this - Polymorph Any Object, Telekinesis, and Dispel Magic have obvious combat and non-combat utility - but it'd be a big help IMO.

[A Man In Black]

This still creates the aforementioned mental roadblock because combat powers will always fit into the pile that can be used in the combat turn and you'll only find non-combat powers in the other pile. Even if you do have a selection of non-combat powers in the first pile, you've still recreated the problem because the problem was that of sorting. Changing the labels will help a little, but even an amateur will quickly come to see the pile of powers that combat powers can only fit into is the 'Combat' pile while everything else is the 'Non-Combat' pile.

Funny, people didn't seem to stop using Plane Shift out of combat in 3e despite the fact that you could use in combat. It's perfectly possible to do, because 3e has already done it just by quietly tweaking cast times.

Make the non-combat magic Ritual magic, and require a five-minute ritual, and just call the other magic "Spells". Require people to read aloud out of a spellbook for the non-combat magic. Just do something really obvious and dramatic to separate the two, and don't call attention to the fact that you're actually making it so that the non-combat magic can't be used in combat time.

[Seerow]

This still creates the aforementioned mental roadblock because combat powers will always fit into the pile that can be used in the combat turn and you'll only find non-combat powers in the other pile. Even if you do have a selection of non-combat powers in the first pile, you've still recreated the problem because the problem was that of sorting. Changing the labels will help a little, but even an amateur will quickly come to see the pile of powers that combat powers can only fit into is the 'Combat' pile while everything else is the 'Non-Combat' pile.

Funny, people didn't seem to stop using Plane Shift out of combat in 3e despite the fact that you could use in combat. It's perfectly possible to do, because 3e has already done it just by quietly tweaking cast times.

Make the non-combat magic Ritual magic, and require a five-minute ritual, and just call the other magic "Spells". Require people to read aloud out of a spellbook for the non-combat magic. Just do something really obvious and dramatic to separate the two, and don't call attention to the fact that you're actually making it so that the non-combat magic can't be used in combat time.

I wouldn't mind something like this. I even wouldn't mind some high level ability to let them use some of these rituals in combat. At level 7-11 when teleport is first coming online, it's a big deal and takes some time. Short range teleports can be done in combat, but a running chase where you and your opponent are teleporting all over the world really isn't something you should be capable of yet. But by level 17? Sure, why not.

Similar scenarios can be made for other utilities. There are things that come up that are level appropriate things that you should be able to deal with out of combat, that don't necessarily need to come up in combat. But at later levels, it coming up in combat either doesn't matter or is totally justified.

To steal the concept of tiers, I'd figure that using a ritual of a tier above your own has a casting time of hours or days (these are the doomsday rituals that low level NPCs use as plot points typically). A ritual of your tier has a cast time measured in minutes, and can easily be done out of combat, but in combat it is terrible. A ritual below your tier can have a cast time measured in combat actions, just like a normal spell.




But regardless, this wasn't the issue I thought the OP was really trying to get at. It's not so much "Should combat and utility spells exist" but rather "Should you have to sacrifice combat power to get utility", which is actually a good question to ask, and I can see it argued either way.

In favor of separating them:
-Separating them gives you a clear idea of how much you can expect the character to contribute in either situation.
-The character does not have to sacrifice combat ability to be useful out of combat.
-The character cannot sacrifice all combat utility to just instantly solve all non-combat scenarios.

Against Separating them:
-Separating the two is hard to justify with fluff. Why is it my wizard can know so many of this type and so many of this type, why can't he sacrifice some for the other? It's magic!
-Separating the two can prevent people from thinking of ways to use their 'combat spells' as forms of utility.
-Having utility spells that take too long or cost too much to use discourages their use even in situations when they would be ideal to use. See the 4e problem where ritual casters forget they even own rituals.

[Judging__Eagle]

Why not separate the Timing of the story into:

Adventuring
Downtime
Travelling

With things that are meant to happen "out of combat" are things like "create a magic item" or "cast a ritual with a massive, or very long range effect".

[Something] along the lines of how Dominions divides its magic system. Combat spells are wide ranging protecting your units, buffing your units, de-buffing enemies, killing the whole battlefield, etc. etc. etc.; and Ritual Spells can do anything from provide intel, to ferry units, create units, establish long term effects on a location or a unit, or target distant locations for spell effects.

If Produce Flame needs to happen out of combat, then its cost and duration needs to be more effective, or even actually effective; when compared with combat spells.

Combat spells, non combat rituals, and whatever need to have their Timing and systems calculated holistically. If someone looks at a combat spell, they know how the Timing for it works, no matter what specific combat spell it is. Rituals would have to be the same way.

Examples could be:
All combat spells activate instantly; and can have count downs that last seconds or minutes of in combat effect.

While all Ritual spells take a fully rested sleep cycle to perform, and last weeks or years; and sometimes indefinitely.

Thinking about how Mictaln holy Eagle warriors can fly, but only when blessed, and in combat is one way of thinking about battle/ritual magic.

Which might not be a bad way of dividing it. Battle, and Ritual, magic.

[TheFlatline]

Why not separate the Timing of the story into:

Adventuring
Downtime
Travelling

With things that are meant to happen "out of combat" are things like "create a magic item" or "cast a ritual with a massive, or very long range effect".

[Something] along the lines of how Dominions divides its magic system. Combat spells are wide ranging protecting your units, buffing your units, de-buffing enemies, killing the whole battlefield, etc. etc. etc.; and Ritual Spells can do anything from provide intel, to ferry units, create units, establish long term effects on a location or a unit, or target distant locations for spell effects.

If Produce Flame needs to happen out of combat, then its cost and duration needs to be more effective, or even actually effective; when compared with combat spells.

Combat spells, non combat rituals, and whatever need to have their Timing and systems calculated holistically. If someone looks at a combat spell, they know how the Timing for it works, no matter what specific combat spell it is. Rituals would have to be the same way.

Examples could be:
All combat spells activate instantly; and can have count downs that last seconds or minutes of in combat effect.

While all Ritual spells take a fully rested sleep cycle to perform, and last weeks or years; and sometimes indefinitely.

Thinking about how Mictaln holy Eagle warriors can fly, but only when blessed, and in combat is one way of thinking about battle/ritual magic.

Which might not be a bad way of dividing it. Battle, and Ritual, magic.

I'm totally missing the difference then between your system and 4th edition's, which uses combat powers (battle) and rituals. It seems like you just restated the original problem and said it's an awesome new idea.

I get the original post's issues. It seems to be twofold. First: casting combat spells out of combat in utilitarian ways. Second: Spells that are strictly utility might not necessarily be a good idea to come from the same resource pool as the combat spells, because it dilutes combat options and shortens the workday.

Our solution in 3.x was to allow swapping out spells memorized during the day. 10 minutes a level, with a level 0 cantrip taking 1 minute. It's not a perfect solution if timing is an issue, but it means that you don't have to memorize identify every day and waste a spell slot. A little downtime at the end of the day lets you do what you need to.

Maybe an effective solution is to designate some utility spells as having a [Ritual] subtype. These spells can be memorized as normal and blown off as a normal combat action. However, if you perform a ritual that takes X amount of time, you can cast that spell without having memorized it without using up a spell slot. With a Ritual subtype, you can avoid game-altering shit like Wish from being time-altering at-wills, but stuff like Identify or even flaming hands can be a 10 minute ritual, or it can be a level 1 spell. Caster's choice.

[A Man In Black]

-Separating the two is hard to justify with fluff. Why is it my wizard can know so many of this type and so many of this type, why can't he sacrifice some for the other? It's magic!

This does work both ways. You're a wizard, you don't have to explain shit. Nobody expects magic to work "realistically".

-Having utility spells that take too long or cost too much to use discourages their use even in situations when they would be ideal to use. See the 4e problem where ritual casters forget they even own rituals.

This is because there were too many rituals, you had to learn each of them individually, learning each of them was too expensive for what you got out of them (any more than free was too much to be quite honest), they weren't worth casting even when you did know them because they cost too damned much, not everyone was a ritual caster but it wasn't really obvious or logical who was and who wasn't, and they were crammed in the back of the book so far away from your normal level-up progression that it was easy to forget that you were even eligible for a new one.

Each of these is a game-breaker on its own.

[Swordslinger]

First of all, the short answer is "No." It turns out that when you put a hard line between "combat" effects and "utility" effects, that you end up legislating that effects work differently in and out of combat and that ends up being really shitty and anti-immersive.

Characters in 4e can do short distance teleportation as part of their attack routines but can't hop to the other side of a door out of combat. They can murder half a dozen people with a spinning firestorm shooting out of their sword but can't light a torch. That kind of shit is shit.

Well no. In 4E you can teleport outside of combat, you just require LoS for most teleportation abilities. So while you can't teleport through a door (unless it's a transparent door or has a slit in it), you can teleport across pits, through bars and all kinds of stuff. And you can do that outside of combat.

As far as not letting people use a flame blast to light a torch. That's a DM being an idiot issue. If your DM needs a rule to specifically tell him that a ray of fire can't ignite something designed specifically to burn like a torch, then he's a moron.

I actually think it's important to try to draw the line between combat and noncombat abilities. You don't want someone being able to trade away all their noncombat power for combat power, nor do you want to punish the bard by making him suck in combat in exchange for his skills. And to adequately do that, you need a divide where some skills are combat, and others are noncombat. Occasionally you may have minimal crossover, like a combat teleportation spell used to cross over a pit, but that should be the exception, not the rule.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Is anyone still on board with including extra noncombat powers with more limited combat ones? So that polymorph other is more balanced with finger of death?