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Thank you for Jolt. My Stormborn sorceress was really missing that spell and have just got my group's permission to have it (we are rotating DMs so I need the whole group's agreement).
I would also be quite happy to pay for a Bonus UM with all the cut spells in it.
Thanks for the cool blog post! Sometimes it is pretty neat to see what gets left on the cutting room floor and I may just use a few of these too.
Breeze and drench would be really nice to have in a nautical adventure, I guess.
Hmm... Magical Lineage (Scoop) and apply Reach Spell. Why? At will medium distance scooping. Useful? Doubtful. Interesting? Maybe. (I chuckled at the lava idea.)
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I like the fact that Jolt is transmutation. It's like using telekinesis to cause friction in the air to release a discharge.
The thing that confuses me though is how many conjuration spells from UM allow spell resistance. I thought the whole point of conjuration was that conjurations put all their energy into bringing forth actual physical stuff. How then would spell resistance help against an actual rain cloud forming over your head and pouring real water on you?
speaking of bonus bestairy breeze and drench would be awesome spells for a faerie dragon.
Sweet! Thank you for posting these!
Will we be seeing a blog about the non-cantrip spells that got lost in the book too? I'm still pretty curious about what choose fate does, so I hope they don't just get errata'd out.
Eleric made a list over on the errata thread:
** spoiler omitted **Some of them obviously just got renamed (reinforcing bands = cushioning bands, hush = forced quiet), but that still leaves several pretty cool sounding spells.
If it's cool with our golemy overlords, I can provide a brief and non-mechanical description of the spells that got cut.
Nice!
I noticed that all of these cantrips were listed as "Sorcerer/Wizard 0" with no other entries. Any ideas as to which cantrips should be made available to other classes, and which classes?
Drench, useful as it is, has application as a comedy gag spell. I am NEVER letting my players see this.
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Thanks for this! More cantrips (and / or orisons) was number one on my wishlist for Ultimate Magic... now I don't have to buy the book! I kid, I kid! :)
I'll add my voice to those questioning Jolt's school. Is this a simple typo, or was there a design reason behind the choice? I can see that spreading out the 'ranged touch, 1d3 damage' cantrips amongst different schools makes a certain amount of sense, but Jolt seems like pure evocation.
I'd also have prefered Jolt to have done non-lethal electricity damage (maybe with a little larger die than normal) just to mix things up a bit. After all, it's 'the volts that jolts, the millies that killies', right? ;)
Drench is hardly overpowered, since it's basically a 'not as helpful' version of the Create Water orison - although I guess you'd technically need to get your divine caster level up a little to match the full Drench effect (if your DM was being picky about such things). I like that though - divine magic should be better at some things than arcane magic (and how easy / lazy would it have been to have just given arcane casters the vanilla Create Water as a cantrip? - the difference is good!).
Breeze is great - I can see a lot of arcane casters in APs like Legacy of Fire or Serpent's Skull where the setting suggests a hot environment taking this puppy instead of 'blowing' (excuse the pun...) a precious first level spell known on Endure Elements. And yes... now your hair does look cool...
At first glance I thought that the schools for Jolt and Scoop had been switched, Scoop looking like a Mage Hand variation, but it's actually more like a mini Floating Disc, which is great - again, for some uses (specifically the moving of dangerous or unknown liquids), this cantrip could replace the need to take the full first level spell, while far from rendering Floating Disc redundant - that's great design!
Root (along with Breeze) gives some nice bonuses, possibly suggesting a design ethic of allowing +2 bonuses to specific stuff for cantrips (and orisons one imagines) or a +1 bonus to general stuff (like Resistance or Guidance).
I also wondered about how Penumbra meshes with the Stealth and Perception rules - would it, for example, reduce a 'favourable' visual Perception modifier to a 'normal' one, or a 'normal' to an 'unfavourable' (basically a -2 to the Perception check of the guy trying to see you)? Seems reasonable considering the '+2 to specific' guideline (and makes the cantrip useful for more than just orcs...). Of course, if you're playing a 'Batman' Wizard you need both Breeze and Penumbra working on you at all times, just to maximise the impact of posing on that gargoyle...
All in all a lovely selection of cantrip goodness!
Slightly off topic - I'm now wondering if a 'Mage's Buckler' cantrip is a good idea - a small disc of force giving a flat +1 shield bonus to AC (and doesn't block Magic Missiles...) - seems reasonable considering the power scales presented in cantrips as a whole... Hmmm...
Kewl! Marking this for future reference.
Does this mean we can expect a Bonus Ultimate Magic like the Bonus Bestiary PDF with 0-level spells, prestige classes & magical items?+1 to this idea, even if only in PDF form.+1 from me too.
a pdf only (web enhancement would be cool) if you guys could manage it.
Yeah I just tried using Cute PDF to "print" to a PDF, and while it works, I can't seem to separate out the center frame, so I get the sidebars with my shopping cart and such lol.
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What? I'm sure there are going to be SOME spells in Ultimate Combat!
There will be...unfortunately. I really think that that way madness lies. It's similar to the WotC 3.X approach...all hardcover supplements have to have a section for new equipment, a section for new feats, a section for new spells, a section for new prestige classes, a section for new magical items, etc. It's padding, pure and simple. A good example was the 3.X environmental books. Sorry James, I know you worked on Frostburn (and maybe the others as well), but those were hideously padded, in my less-than-humble opinion. You could have taken all the non-filler from all five of those books and made it into one decent hardcover.
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Yeah I just tried using Cute PDF to "print" to a PDF, and while it works, I can't seem to separate out the center frame, so I get the sidebars with my shopping cart and such lol.
I'd recommend copy/pasting it to a word processor. That way you can format it how you want it to look. Then simply print to the CutePDF printer.
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Yeah I just tried using Cute PDF to "print" to a PDF, and while it works, I can't seem to separate out the center frame, so I get the sidebars with my shopping cart and such lol.I'd recommend copy/pasting it to a word processor. That way you can format it how you want it to look. Then simply print to the CutePDF printer.
That's what I did.
Would love to see some more of these cantrips.
What? I'm sure there are going to be SOME spells in Ultimate Combat!There will be...unfortunately. I really think that that way madness lies. It's similar to the WotC 3.X approach...all hardcover supplements have to have a section for new equipment, a section for new feats, a section for new spells, a section for new prestige classes, a section for new magical items, etc. It's padding, pure and simple. A good example was the 3.X environmental books. Sorry James, I know you worked on Frostburn (and maybe the others as well), but those were hideously padded, in my less-than-humble opinion. You could have taken all the non-filler from all five of those books and made it into one decent hardcover.
Ultimate Magic has already broken that, with no prestige classes and no magic items. And why shouldn't there be new spells in UC? Paladins, Rangers, Clerics, Oracles, Inquisitors, Bards, Magi, Druids, Alchemists, all of these guys are casters and martial classes. Plus, Fighters, Barbarians, Cavaliers and Rogues all benefit from new buff spells and such.
There will be...unfortunately. I really think that that way madness lies. It's similar to the WotC 3.X approach...all hardcover supplements have to have a section for new equipment, a section for new feats, a section for new spells, a section for new prestige classes, a section for new magical items, etc. It's padding, pure and simple. A good example was the 3.X environmental books. Sorry James, I know you worked on Frostburn (and maybe the others as well), but those were hideously padded, in my less-than-humble opinion. You could have taken all the non-filler from all five of those books and made it into one decent hardcover.
WotC did turn out too many splatbooks, but I don't think the environmental books were padded. It makes perfect sense for books on specific environments to include equipment, feats, skills, spells and prestige classes related to that environment. Probably the single most logical use of the "kitchen sink" approach.
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And why shouldn't there be new spells in UC? Paladins, Rangers, Clerics, Oracles, Inquisitors, Bards, Magi, Druids, Alchemists, all of these guys are casters and martial classes. Plus, Fighters, Barbarians, Cavaliers and Rogues all benefit from new buff spells and such.
Because the appropriate place to take care of stuff like that was in Ultimate Magic. Seeing as how it's all magical and stuff.
WotC did turn out too many splatbooks, but I don't think the environmental books were padded. It makes perfect sense for books on specific environments to include equipment, feats, skills, spells and prestige classes related to that environment. Probably the single most logical use of the "kitchen sink" approach.
I agree. Barring THAT SPELL, the environment books were decent.
I wouldn't mind few spells in UC, but only if every option for mundane combat has been explored in the book.
Cut space for martial arts or mass combat or whatelse for spells would be a bad move.
Like the Monk, Inquisitor, Trapper Ranger, and other optons in Ultimate Magic?
I just say that classes and concepts not appearing in UM should be highly prioritized.
And frankly.. Trapper Ranger :/
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In my game, we recently ran across a problem with these cantrips. According to Jason, because they are "rare cantrips," they don't automatically become available to casters who gain access to all cantrips when they gain first level spells. But how does that apply to sorcerors, who only have a limited number of cantrips that they can know? Taken explicitly, Jason's wording seems to suggest that a 1st level sorceror, at character creation, could just as easily choose one of these special cantrips as they could a standard one, and that's how my player is interpreting it. To me, though, it seems that the intention is that there is supposed to be a more meaty story to how they obtained these cantrips, as opposed to the standard, "I'm a sorceror, I can choose four cantrips, and I want this to be one of them." It seems to me that the intention is for these to be akin to quest items, something that is to be found in-game, either by finding it in some obscure text, or finding an experienced caster who knows the cantrips and can teach them to you, or in the case of a sorceror, finding some place where their connection to whatever bloodline triggers the ancestral memory of the spell is unusually strong, such as a place infested with undead for a sorceror with an undead bloodline. Does it seem to anyone else to be a bit of a cheat to just simply allow a newly created sorceror to have one of these special cantrips right out the gate?
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I think the intent is more to avoid bloat of the cantrips Wizards get 'for free' at first level (i.e. all of them, except those from their opposition schools, if any). A Wizard needs a set number of 'spells known' at level one, just as any other class does, and ruling that he doesn't get these few extras automatically as well just preserves that. Allowing Sorcerers - who have a built-in limit to the number of cantrips they know at level one anyway - to choose these isn't against intent, I'd suggest... and the Sorcerer needs to be thrown a bone every now and then too, doesn't he? :)
If it's cool with our golemy overlords, I can provide a brief and non-mechanical description of the spells that got cut.Sweet! Thank you for posting these!
Will we be seeing a blog about the non-cantrip spells that got lost in the book too? I'm still pretty curious about what choose fate does, so I hope they don't just get errata'd out.
Eleric made a list over on the errata thread:
** spoiler omitted **Some of them obviously just got renamed (reinforcing bands = cushioning bands, hush = forced quiet), but that still leaves several pretty cool sounding spells.
So, did our golemy overlords allow it?
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so what would drench do to, say, a fire elemental?
I would expect it would be very similar to the question I posed on this thread.
Bottom line: some people think it should do nothing, as the spell doesn't explicitly say anything about fire-based creatures. Some think it should do some damage, or possibly impose a status effect.
I ended up houseruling that it does 1d6 damage, plus one point per Caster Level, with a Reflex save for 1/2. That seems in line with spells like Disrupt Undead, while still rewarding players for being creative.
Wow, can't believe I didn't see this page until now! Cool stuff! :)
I decided that some of these are castable by the witch class, and may be found on some ancient scrolls by one of my players in some upcoming treasure.
The spells and my reasoning:
Drench -NO: No water spells on the list.
Jolt -YES: Witches can cast many transmutations, and also lightning spells.
Penumbra -NO: No darkness spells on the list.
Root YES: Witches do physical transmutations.
Scoop -YES: Witches can cast twilight knife- another “tool” made of force.
I decided that some of these are castable by the witch class, and may be found on some ancient scrolls by one of my players in some upcoming treasure.
The spells and my reasoning: ** spoiler omitted **
I mostly wanted an excuse to use the Spells DB. Nothing personal.
Ignoring patron spells:
Witches do get an Air spell: Scouring Winds.
Protective Penumbra is a darkness spell on their list. As is Lunar Veil.
Ride the Waves is a witch [water] spell.
I think Scouring Winds is a good enough reason to give Breeze. Not the others though.
Darn, I really wanted to play my PFS Bard with Breeze active. Because he'd look like a ROCKSTAR!