Director of Games
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So,
One of the things I want to do as a sort of blind test on this system is to determine if we are hitting all the necessary word families (like Body, Fire, Meta, etc...).
So, that is what this thread is for. No need for extra comment, just list the families you would like to see and a brief description of what sort of effects they should cover (feel free to use existing spell effects as shorthand). Please keep these brief and please look through the ones that are already posted to prevent this thread form becoming overly long and full of repetition.
I want to be able to compare this list against the planned list to make sure I am covering all the bases.
Thanks.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
- Persistant battlefield control effects (ie the "Wall of" series)
- More granularity in the Illusion school (effects that target only one person, one sense, etc)
- More granularity in the Enchantment school (there's so much more to do than just "you like me" and "you go insane")
- Magic that directly interacts with other magic (ie Dispel, syphoning spell power, taking control of an ongoing effect, etc)
- Curses, and ways to tie them to flavor/plot (like they do in fairy tales)
- Spells that only respond to specific alignments or other contingencies
- Ways to effect things on other planes
Terrain - Transmutation alteration of the earth and stuff.
Hindrance - Conjuration area impedances and toward higher, damaging stuff along the lines of black tentacles.
Obfuscation - Conjuration (?) effects for reducing/blocking line of sight.
Illumination - Evocation increasing or decreasing light levels or creating mobile lights.
Shadow - As a modifier to a spell to reduce its cost and/or level with a disadvantage of allowing disbelief (like shadow conjuration/evocation). Or alternatively, to allow certain words not known/prepared to be combined with it.
Just to pop in the ones That I Had in my other post.
Teleportation: from short jumps to world spanning,
Shaping: from shaping and manipulating existing elements, Think shape earth and animate rope,
Movement: this category includes pushing and pulling objects, yourself(flying)and knocking foes around.
Ethereal: making one object pass through another, eventually scaling up to allowing a player turn ghostly. Alternatively, causing things to NOT be able to pass through others, IE: protective circles, barrier enforced doors,force fields etc.
I want to be able to compare this list against the planned list to make sure I am covering all the bases.
I know I keep referencing Ars Magica, but it references Plato, and so I feel pretty good referencing it.
Animal
Air
Body
Earth
Fire
Metamagic
Mind
Plant
Sensory
Water
This should cover just about anything you want to do.
-Ben.
Animal
Air
Body
Earth
Fire
Metamagic
Mind
Plant
Sensory
Water
This should cover just about anything you want to do.
So back to this, because really, what we've got here is a really ugly lovechild of Ars Magica.
If we wanted to hammer this better, we'd look at those sorts of effects and then look at what we want to do with them. In Pathfinder, this equates roughly to our school:
Abjuration
Conjuration
Divination
Enchantment
Evocation
Illusion
Necromancy
Transmutation
And of those, they collapse down into this:
Abjuration (Controlling)
Conjuration (Creating)
Divination (Understanding)
Evocation (Destroying)
Transmutation (Changing)
Enchantment is really just controlling the mind.
Illusion is really just controlling the senses.
Necromancy is really just controlling the body.
Except that we're basing this off a cost system on targets and rolling the verb in with the noun for our second part (the school/family combination) and putting a cost on that. That's where some of the confusion is coming in, because there's not a set of guidelines standardized for each family, because each family is a mishmash of noun+verb.
The kernel's here, but it's all jumbled together.
-Ben.
Already posted a +1 to this idea on a different thread, but this looks like the more appropriate place for it:
There needs to be a "combat maneuver" category (even if it isn't called that) that allows the use of various combat maneuvers like grapple, pull, bull rush, and so on. There are a lot of spells that can be at least approximated with just the words that exist and one extra combat maneuver.
The focused schools from the APG might be a good place to start!
Concealment: Invisibility, blurring, shimmering, darkness
Teleportation: Short jaunts, long-range travel, and plane shifting.
Scrying: Clairvoyance, scrying, sharing senses
Communication: Message, telepathy, sending, etc.
Foresight: Divination, augury, foresight, moment of prescience, etc.
Fortune: Luck effects, unluck effects (a lotta rerolling)
Shapechange: Enlarge/reduce, beast shape, elemental body, form of the dragon, etc.
Undead: Summoning, creating, controlling, healing, and damaging the undead
Antimagic: Countering, dispelling, and disjoining magic effects.
Clouds: X fog, X cloud - dispersible cloud of concealment and whatever else
Weather: Altering or controlling the weather, making gusts of wind. Could probably be rolled into "air".
Sonic: Sonic damage effects, object/weapon shattering, deafness
Animal
Air
Body
Earth
Fire
Metamagic
Mind
Plant
Sensory
Water
This should cover just about anything you want to do.So back to this, because really, what we've got here is a really ugly lovechild of Ars Magica.
If we wanted to hammer this better, we'd look at those sorts of effects and then look at what we want to do with them. In Pathfinder, this equates roughly to our school:
Abjuration
Conjuration
Divination
Enchantment
Evocation
Illusion
Necromancy
TransmutationAnd of those, they collapse down into this:
Abjuration (Controlling)
Conjuration (Creating)
Divination (Understanding)
Evocation (Destroying)
Transmutation (Changing)Enchantment is really just controlling the mind.
Illusion is really just controlling the senses.
Necromancy is really just controlling the body.
And it totally just ate my post, but I'm a dedicated man. So I'll redo it and remember to copy/paste before submitting again.
With what I have there, I can do anything I want.
Mass acid wave?
Mass + Conjuration + Transmutation + water + mind.
Because it's making water and changing it to be corrosive and mind-affecting.
Burning hands? No problem.
Small Cone + Conjuration + Fire.
Cause Light Wounds?
Single + Evocation + Body.
Teleport?
Personal + Abjuration + Body.
I can do this all day. The problem is that while we have a standardized cost for targets, we don't really have them for word families, we have predetermined effects in a mostly unhelpful current spell format we can then mishmash together after trying to scan through for what we need. What we really need is a better format for seeing and then applying effects.
Like:
Target
Cost Effect
00 Personal, Single
02 Mass, Small Cone, Small Line
03 Medium Line, Small Burst
05 Medium Burst, Medium Cone, Large Line
08 Large Burst, Large Line
Then you have a list of the target description and max level.
We do something similar for word families and I think spell creation will go a lot smoother. You add in a standardized cost for multiple words/schools and then you've got it really rocking.
-Ben.
Sorry, terraleon, but I'm pretty sure such a huge overhaul to the system isn't on the table - especially since it messes with the magic system already in place, as well.
Sorry, terraleon, but I'm pretty sure such a huge overhaul to the system isn't on the table - especially since it messes with the magic system already in place, as well.
The formatting could certainly be considered. As it is, reading through it is an absolute nightmare. All of the effects for each family should be shown up front in a nice table format, then described in further detail below, so I can see right away what the guidelines are for each one.
And I'm not convinced guidelines couldn't be established that wouldn't mesh with the current system. To quote, "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."
-Ben.
I'm all for good presentation, but I was speaking more of folding the arcane schools into each other (like enchantment, necromancy, and illusion into abjuration).
It would be Interesting if we could get a Poison/sickness branch,Perhaps this could be added to the Curses section for general " de-buff" effects.
Ah, in the land of Hedge Wizards, the Hermetic is King. *sigh*
It's just tough, because I'm not seeing the standarization between or really within word families. There's some between the elements-- which really don't need to be N separate families, they could be one family with an element descriptor as written. I'm not sure why the difference between the Command and the Pain and the Spook families. Pain and Spook are really subsets of Command ("SUFFER! FEAR!").
Is this cool? Sure thing. But it's a half measure and suffers by formatting.
-Ben.
Actually, terraleon, too much consolidation of categories would hurt the system, because you can't use two words from the same category at the same time (except meta and detection, which have other restrictions). If you combined the Command, Pain, and Fear categories, for example, you couldn't create a spell that both frightened a creature and caused it to move at half speed (cramp + spook or terror). Maybe not a terribly useful spell, but it was just an off-the-cuff example.
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I posted this in another thread, but thought maybe it would deserve its own Word Family:
Truename(s).
Original post from other thread:
At least the last 2 incarnations of the game (2nd and 3.X edition) had different flavor and mechanics for using this type of thing (the latest being the stuff from the ToM which isn't OGL), but when I hear "Words of Power" one of the first things that comes to mind is truenames.
How you would find out the truename of a thing or a person isn't something I care to explore in this post, but if you take, say the Power category (since power word spells are the most potent words, hence Words of Power using Power words gives you a lot of power, tee hee) or any of the other categories, and then added the truename of the target or object to the phrase, maybe it could have some sort of penalty to the target or benefit to the caster.
Just a thought. Like to see if it goes anywhere. That being said, I would like to see it go somewhere new that hasn't really been done before but has the same flavor and dire consequences that truenames have had in past incarnations.
Since the formula seems to be (family type + family type + family type), and my example in the other post was adding the truename to an existing word "string" as an extension.
This of course requires a lot of juxtaposition, i.e. how to acquire the truename, what effects the truename has, etc., but I figure it's at least worth suggesting.
I believe there's already rules for Truenames in one of the Pathfinder Companion books. It's just a neat subsystem that allows you to more easily control summoned extraplanar creatures, I believe.
Time: which would include effects like, Haste, Slow, Expeditious Retreat, and Time Stop. All Transmutation spells which deal with speeding up or slowing down.
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On the topic of true names. I do like the concept of certain creatures having a true name. But nothing that is natural (IE animals) and nothing that has free will (IE humanoids) should have a true name. And if they do it should be a fluid thing as sentient creatures with free will have the annoying tendency to constantly redefine who they are, thus changing their true name.
Now outsiders, which are entirely bound to their alignment (And alignment is the representation of free will in my opinion) have static true names, they are who they are and will always be that way.
True names are more useful in terms of controlling the more static things in the world, like the elements and such.
Mechanics wise a true name would be a sort of complete spell tucked away within the words of power, a preset spell that has a singular effect and cannot be augmented, but something that is only usable by someone who knows words of power. Sort of like a WoP wizard/sorc only spell much like mage's lucubration is wizard only.
When you think about it power word stun/kill/blind are all true names. The true names of prevailing concepts in the world. Stun being the true name of time, blind being the true name of darkness, and kill being the true name of death.
We are missing some of the core necromantic ideas:
Words of Draining - effects similar to vampiric touch, enervation and energy drain.
Words of Death - Command Undead(possibly a meta to bypass the mind affecting restriction of the command words vs undead), Animate Dead
Some other things of note:
Expansion of Detection words - Scry and Locate X spells
Words of Disabling - Stat drain (enfeeblement, feeblemind, etc.
Element control/creation, and not in the "Fireball" way, things like moving amounts of earth, or shaping metal, or creating water.
Some TK spells, in case i need to pick someone up and throw them away.
Words of Movement - Make objects float, fly, or move around at your will.
Words of Animation - Animate inanimate objects under your control.
Words of Life - Create life in inanimate objects, giving them a sense of self and free will.
Durations NEED to be looked at. Maybe a metamagic word that increases duration, because the durations as currently enabled are ridiculous.
Time - Timestop, Haste, possibly effects like Expeditious Retreat could be cast as Time bubble modifications, and there is also Divinations into the Future (/Past) which may belong in a separate Word Group than other Divinations...?
(there can be perception divinations which just project your normal perceptions, though Time is just another dimensino through which to project, and then Mind divinations which open others´ Minds. of course, some ´Divination´ spells are really communicating questions to extra-planar beings...)
Dimensional Creation - Dimensional Holes, Dimension Door, Rope Trick, APG Hole spells, and Planar Travel including Ethereality. This could of course be combined with Time since that is just another Dimension.
I do have a question: Would any Casters (possibly not all, e.g. only Sorcerors who would look to get the maximum flexibility from Words of Power) have a limited rate at which they learn Word Types/Groups? That kind of returns to my questions of what these are used for, if not only restricting Word combinations.
Bird is the word?
i mentioned it in another post but will cross pollinate here
Words of boundaries/barriers?
Did I missed it or no one mentioned Words Of Moving-Things-From-Afar-Without-Touching (mage hand/telekinesis)?
Words of Death: Negative energy, undead
Words of Time: Haste, Slow, Time Stop, Delayed effects
I would really like to see a family of words that effect or modify other words.
example: (Persistent) all effects of the spell remain in effect for 1 round per level
creating the ability for spells like:
Large Blast {persistent} fire blast
this would allow the creation of a field of dangerous area (like a pool of lava, an electrical field, a blizzard or acid rain) rather than all the spells simply being clones of currently existing spells.
this would make word choice in higher level spells more of a decision rather than simply picking the word combination that crams in the most damage, as it takes up one of the limited word slots available in the spell.
It seems like Meta Words can be used more widely (and without solely focusing on multi-Effects, but also MODIFYING other Effects), ala Delayed Fireball using a Meta Time Word. I get that the system would get way too complicated if one tried to break up given effects into even more basic building blocks, but the current approach could be extended, as with the example of a Delayed MetaWord usable for Delay Fireball, Delay Servitor, etc.
Then again this could just be implemented as Metamagic, which would carryover the benefit to normal Casters.
I think it'd be sort of cool to have a family of meta-ish words around reversal and/or negation.
Kind of like the idea going back to 1E that some spells can be prepared in reversed versions. Each of the reversal words would only be able to reverse some specific kinds of things to keep it from getting too complicated.
For example maybe one reversal word is around heat/cold. This would mean that one way to build a cold damage spell would be to use the cold words, but another way could be to use the fire words and add the heat reversal word. This would, of course, end up costing more than just building it out of cold in the first place. Basically knowing that word would would buy you versatility at a cost.
What about...
Words t'ya mutha!
Words of Compulsion (for enchantment effects that are not solely cammand based - say dominate, charm etc.)
Agree for several of the other new things that have been said.
Words of Compulsion (for enchantment effects that are not solely cammand based - say dominate, charm etc.)
Agree for several of the other new things that have been said.
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Maybe Spatial, Temporal, Reality word groups?
Things like Haste, Teleport, Dimension Door, Time Stop, Expeditions retreat can't be done in the current system. Also effects like Mount, Phantom Steed, invisibility, Gaseous form, Stone skin aren't covered.
It's seems like you have the direct damage very much covered, but a lot of the other effects aren't possible.
Need Target words for
Emanations
Spreads
Cylinders
Spheres
Also I think you need Duration Words, as things stand now you can't make spells like Ice Storm or Incendiary Cloud or Flaming Sphere.
Duration Words should be added so that you can turn otherwise instantaneous effect words into longer lasting effects