# 338 / Dec 2005 - Expanding the Magic of D&D

[Joshua Randall]

Seems like most of the time the posts on these boards are complaining about something. I'll buck the trend and say that Dragon issue # 338 / Dec 2005 is great.

I liked how all of the articles were tied into a unifying theme (Expanding the Magic of D&D). I especially liked that the Ecology of the Spellweaver tied into the Bazaar of the Bizarre article about a spellweaver spellbook.

As a side note, the Ecology of the Spellweaver is the second Ecology article in recent memory -- the other one being on the Shadar-Kai -- that has taken a seemingly lame monster and made it cool. Now I want to see an adventure featuring spellweavers and shadar-kai. :-)

Finally, kudos to Paizo on snagging Order of the Stick as one of its comics. Like a lot of other people, I've been reading OotS online for a while. But not everyone does that, so getting OotS in a print magazine is a win-win.

Looking forward to more great Dragon issues!

[Ladislaus]

Both the alternate schools of magic and the imbue staff articles were a fun twist on old ideas. Well done, and easy to import into any campaign world.

[irdeggman]

While I thought the idea for the Schools of Magic was great - the mechanic really shouldn't have been there at all.

What I mean is that this article was obviously written for people who can't shake out of 2nd ed where there was what 20+ schools with the schools of philosophy (standard ones), schools of effect, and schools of thaumaturgy.

In 3.5 there are 8 schools and Universal (everything else) and no spell belongs in more than one school. Even Ghostwalk (3.0 I know but still serves as an example) specifically stated that ghost spells were not a separate school and treated more themeatically similar to a descriptor.

There are much better ways to capture the flavor of specific dedicated study than to use the label of schools of magic and follow pattterns real similar to specialization.

Colligiate Wizard (from Complete Arcane) was a way of handling benefits of specific study and couls have served as a model for a better mechanic, so too could many of the options that equate to domains.

Sorry just had to vent because I really think this is going to open up a huge can of worms by confusing something that was designed specifically to accomplish something.

Descriptors and types are one fo the best ways to maintain differences and combinations of spells that are similar - adding in somethingn else to the equation just serves to make it more confusing.

[Kamelion]

I quite like the "schools of philosophy" idea behind the article. What I did miss, however, was some understanding or explanation as to how the schools were put together from a balance perspective.

When comparing one school of philosophy to another, there are different numbers of spells at different spell levels. Mostly there are two spells per spell level, but sometimes there is only one and occasionally there are three. I had been wondering whether there was any system employed when deciding how many spells of a given level each school would have.

It's not a huge issue, but it would be good to see how the various schools are being balanced against each other, given that they have different numbers of bonus spells.

irdeggman wrote:

While I thought the idea for the Schools of Magic was great - the mechanic really shouldn't have been there at all.

What I mean is that this article was obviously written for people who can't shake out of 2nd ed where there was what 20+ schools with the schools of philosophy (standard ones), schools of effect, and schools of thaumaturgy.

In 3.5 there are 8 schools and Universal (everything else) and no spell belongs in more than one school. Even Ghostwalk (3.0 I know but still serves as an example) specifically stated that ghost spells were not a separate school and treated more themeatically similar to a descriptor.

There are much better ways to capture the flavor of specific dedicated study than to use the label of schools of magic and follow pattterns real similar to specialization.

Colligiate Wizard (from Complete Arcane) was a way of handling benefits of specific study and couls have served as a model for a better mechanic, so too could many of the options that equate to domains.

Sorry just had to vent because I really think this is going to open up a huge can of worms by confusing something that was designed specifically to accomplish something.

Descriptors and types are one fo the best ways to maintain differences and combinations of spells that are similar - adding in somethingn else to the equation just serves to make it more confusing.

[iplaydnd35]

the section on staves or is it staffs?
anyway, that was a good section for me as a wizards familiar seems to be rather useless, i forget i have one most of the time
the bit on boccob was cool as well

[sfamiliar]

re: staffs article.

thanks -- it came through editing very nicely, and i'm glad it was well-liked. had to cut many many words from the article, and was a little concerned that it might not have .. flowed well.

--sf

[Amber Scott]

I thought it flowed well, and I really like the mechanics. I want to try this someday. :-)

-Amber S.

[Kyuss_Bait]

Well, I used the translation from the spellweaver article to try to translate the tablet in the picture. It seemed to be just gibberish but has anyone found a pattern that they could use to understand the script?