What kinds of spells exist?

[User3]

Obviously, the designers can't make up their minds what spells fall into the arbitrary legacy categories they've used since 1st edition. Some spells--especially the more versatile, can-do-more-than-one-thing-as-determined-at-casting-time spells--just can't be rightly classified at all.

So what kinds of spells are there really? At it's most basic level, it might look like this:

• Offense,
• Defense,
• Detect.

But that sort of simplistic classification leaves things like teleport and dominate person out of the loop.

Should there be GURPS Magic-like categories, with things like food, movement, and protection and warning spells? Default Fantasy Hero-like, vaguely related spell categories for everything from fire magic to vibration magic to rune magic? Palladium-like magic with just one bigass list o' spells and a couple specific to each class, dispensing with categories altogether? Or is everyone happy with the current spell classification system?

You might ask, "Why change things at all?" Short answer: If you say the cleric can cast spells from categories A, B, and C, and the wizard can cast spells from categories D, E, and F, and then make the spells in categories D, E, and F quantifiably better than and absolutely different from the spells in categories A, B, and C, you can actually balance cleric and wizard... maybe even druid.

Okay, probably not druid, but you know what I mean.

[Username17]

Very basically, we see the following styles of combat spells:

[*] Attack Form: These spells substitute for an attack, such as swinging a sword or shooting an arrow - ex: Fireball, Magic Missile, Dominate Monster, Phantasmal Killer.

[*] Introduce Combat Mode: A combat mode is something like flight, or being on the other end of a river, it makes certain forms of combat impossible or difficult, and is generally used to shut down simplistic enemies. Ex.: Ghost Form, Fog Cloud, Spider Climb.

[*] Deny Combat Mode: A little more meta than the other, this is a group of spells that shut down specific combat modes. These also sometimes come with combat modes, or are attacks that make maintaining combat modes impractical, or defenses that make maintaining combat modes impractical. Ex.: Control Winds, Daylight, Dimensional Interdiction.

[*] Specific Resistance: These are actions that directly target an attack form and make them worse. Usually by giving you immunity/resistance, but not always. Ex.: Death Ward, Protection from Elements, Spell Immunity.

[*] Buff: Spells that act to make your further combat actions better. These can be really broken if it is possible to use them during periods of "precombat" or "highly restricted combat modes". I am unconvinced that it is possible to remove both. Ex.: Haste, Bull's Strength, Divine Power.

[*] General Resistance: Spells that make you die less in a broad spectrum, general way. Ex.: Cure Wounds, False Life, Mirror Image.

Noncombat spells:

[*] Solve Challenge: Some spells take a challenge of some sort, and solve it instantly. The power of these spells is dependent upon how much you are supposed to care about the challenge in the first place. Ex.: Part Water, Knock.

[*] Get Clue: These spells cause the DM to give extended explication about stuff. In many games, these actually do nothing, either because the DM gives you plenty of explication anyway, or because he won't give you useful information even with these spells. Ex.: Legend Lore, Commune.

[*] Advance Social Goals: These spells directly improve your social situation, and under many DMs, don't do a god damned thing (whether because you don't have any social goals, or because everyone is already helpful, or because all NPCs are miraculously unhelpful anyway). Ex.: Charm, Beguiling Aura, Glibness.

[*] Remote Viewing Fundamentally different from getting clues, these spells give specific, hard, game mechanical information. How important they are is entirely based upon how much your party gives a damn about that information. Ex.: Scry, Identify.

[*] Weird Utility: Some spells are miscelaneous enough that they just do weird crap. Some of it's important, some of it's not. Often these are metagame accounting tricks (RME, Rope Trick), or adventure hooks (Plane Shift, Shadow Walk).

-Username17

[erik]

For what it's worth, I like to distribute them by schools, though this is more for using flavor as the starting point than balance I think. Flavor-wise it seems easier to me to decide what school-schticks an archtype should have, and D&D's theme of casters having every sort of schtick doesn't feel right to me.

For the balance, I'd hope to make each school relevant, such that one isn't utterly superior to another- often because one school can mimic the output (or combat style/non combat style) of another to some extent... i.e. Offensive boosts, or Defensive boosts, Combat modes, etc.

That's all I got for now-

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Hey, Frank? At one point, you said that there were only a handful of spells (FSR, I'm thinking that the number you gave was like 17, or 22 or something), and that everything else either replicated or built upon another spell. What were those spells?

-Desdan

[Username17]

I worked out 31 spells for the game based on conceptual idea. They actually had some overlapping effects. Banish and Stupify and Fear and Phantasm all have elements that can be used like Blast in most ways.

Abjuration
Protect (Resistance, Shield)
Banish (Remove Curse, Dismissal)
Ward (Alarm, Hold Portal)

Conjuration
Summon (duh)
Create (Create Water, Wall of Stone)
Heal (this should probably be necromancy)
Transport (teleport, planar binding - very problematic)

Divination
Detect (Detect Magic, Scry)
Question (Tongues, Contact Other Plane)

Enchantment
Stupify (Sleep, Feeblemind)
Compel (Charm, Geas)

Evocation
Blast (Fireball, Shout)
Force (Wall of Force, Floating Disk, Telekinesis should be here)
Light (Light, Darkness, very weak subset, especially in 3.5 - should include Silence)
Metamagic (Contingency, Prismatic Weirdness - very strange set up)

Illusion
Figments (Image, hallucinatory terrain)
Glamer (Nystal's Magic Aura, Invisibility)
Pattern (Color Spray, Hypnotic Pattern - very limited group)
Phantasm (Phantasmal Killer, Nightmare, should probably just be lumped into the rest of the Fear effects)
Shadow Magic (Shadow this, Shadow that - these are broken and should go away. Instead, Figments hsould simply be able to produce tactile sensations and with failed saves, of damaging people.

Necromancy
Soul Magic (Ray of Enfeeblement, Soul Bind)
Fear (Scare, Fear - this should all go into Enchantment as a general emmotion class of spell).
Corpse Magic (Animate Dead, Gentle Repose)
Fatigue Spells (Ennervation, Wave of Fatigue - courtesy of 3.5 and hopelessly underpowered)
Poison and Bone Spells (Contagion, Bone Armor, all that crap has no business being in Necromancy at all - I use the Diablo terminology mockingly and purposefully)

Transmutation
Transform (Alter Self, Polymorph, broken as all get out).
Enhance (Magic Weapon, Bull's Strength - these don't make us happy either)
Communicate (Whispering Wind, Message - these should be Illusion or Divination)
Resize (Enlarge [person], Shrink Item)
Manipulate (Animate Rope, Fabricate)
Time Control (Slow, Time Stop)

This is the kind of thing you'd want to do if you were making a game instead of just analyzing the pieces. By handing out spell groups that individually contained a bunch of options for use as combat spells and non-combat spells, you could make all the wizards have a schtick and yet be useful in and out of combat.

Someone who has "Ward Magic", for example, might have some challenge bypassing magic (such as magic effects that prevent entrance to areas), some attack form magic (such as spells that freeze enemies), some new combat modes, (such as spells that prevent enemies from physically crossing a line - which limits enemies to ranged weapons as long as you limit yourself to ranged weapons), some advance social goals effects (such as wards to prevent influence from evil spirits), and so on and so on.

Hell, you could even have "wards" that gave you clues - for example a spell that cleaned away all the dust from everywhere where noone had walked in 24 hours. If done properly, it could be pretty cool. Ideally, you'd limit all the magic to things which could stand in for every basic kind of game mechanical effect you had available.

-Username17