Communal resist energy is interesting, imagine your group will be fighting some fire dealing enemies in an upcoming event, instead of having to prepare so many resist energy spells, just prepare one, divvy up the duration so it covers everyone for a minute (the minimum) and save yourself some slots for something else.
I think the communal spell idea was brilliant. It could have been a metamagic feat, I agree, but +1 spell level to split up the duration? Fantastic when you don't need the full duration of the spell itself, but need the whole group to have the spell.
My players have tripped over these very recently, and they are rapidly gaining favor.
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Weak?
Having Resist Energy, or Stoneskin, or Phantom Steed, for the entire group weak? All this at the cost of one lousy spell level?
Someone has a strange definition of weak.
Sure but you're splitting the duration and thus they don't last as long. So thus you have to prep more of the same spell to get the same duration.
I would normally have to prep 4~ times at higher level to get the same effect. Some times I want to avoid 15 minutes of adventuring.
If they don't appeal to you, that's perfectly acceptable really. The multiple targets for lesser duration is a nice adaptive commodity for the posters above who do like them however. There are hundreds of spells, not every one will find the same uses or like-status at every table.
To be honest, I would rather have a mass version of the spell.
My thoughts exactly.
I think that the ability to divide the spell duration among multiple targets would have worked better as a metamagic feat.
To be honest, I would rather have a mass version of the spell.
In a recent thread about Words of Power, someone actually wanted a Communal target word. Mass already exists for any Selected target Effect Word.
Think about that.
Communal certainly has a niche. It's main power is simply that you get it so much faster than a Mass spell.
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I'm with Suzaku on this one. You have to divide the duration and all the communal spells that were mass went from rang to touch
Darkvision Mass
Transmutation
Level: sosrcerer/wizard 4
range 10 ft.
targets: Allies in a 10-ft.-radius burst centered on you
Resist Energy Mass
Aburation
Level:cleric 3, druid 3 sorcerer/wizards 4
Range:close(25ft.+5 ft,/2levels)
Targets One creature/level, no two of which are more than 30 ft, apart
I would normally have to prep 4~ times at higher level to get the same effect. Some times I want to avoid 15 minutes of adventuring.
It looks like it does exactly the opposite. You are able to prepare a single spell, at a much lower level than a Mass version, and split the duration of minutes per level among the whole party.
That lets you save higher level spells for more powerful effects.
You don't need the entire duration for a single encounter, so instead of having Prot. from Evil active on a single party member for 5 minutes, I Prot my whole party for the 10 rounds we're dealing with the evil summoner and his minions, with a single use of the spell.
The party of 5 is in a desert, and everyone needs Endure elements, but not for 24 hours, only the 8 or so the party is traveling, so you either need to burn 5 uses of EE for everyone to have 24 hours of protection, 16 of which they don't need, or use the communal and cast it twice and only have 2 hours superfluous protection.
Resist energy has a 10 minute duration. One casting is not likely to last through several encounters, and even if it does, not all enemies will be guaranteed to be using the same energy type, so tossing out the communal version lets you use one spell to protect the whole party for the single applicable encounter with a single casting of the spell.
Darkvision: lets you get through the dark part of the cave/use cover of darkness to surprise the enemy, then you turn your lamps on and mosey on without wasting too much darkvision.
tldr
Lets you save resources by using a lower level spell that only lasts as long as you need it when the longer duration wouldn't really be very helpful.
Personally I really like the idea of a Communal Spell metamagic feat.
After looking at the descriptions of all the spells that were made communal, I came up with a first draft of such a feat. If anyone could critique it for restrictions or caveats that I'm missing, I'd appreciate it (I'd also be interested to see a complete listing of all spells that would fit the specified criteria).
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You can spread the effects of your spell to multiple allies by dividing its duration amongst them.
Benefit
When casting a spell with a duration of 1 minute per level or greater, you may divide the duration in intervals among the creatures touched. For spells whose duration is based upon your level, the interval is equal to the part before the per level text (i.e. 1 minute/level becomes 1 minute intervals). Spells with a fixed duration are divided into the next smaller interval (e.g. 24 hours => 1-hour, 1 hour => 10 minutes, 10 minutes => 1 minute).Restrictions
School: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, or Illusion only
Range: touch, 0-ft, or close
Target or Effect: one creature or object
Save: none or harmlessA communal spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Communal spells are a nice compromise with mass spells. Mass spells typically being 3 spell levels or more above the base spell. Communal spells are, what, one level higher? Way worth it until you can get the mass version, and probably better for scribing on a scroll.
Communal spells are great for a single encounter or section of a dungeon. Communal resist energy fire makes some encounters trivial, and much easier than packing 4-6 resist energys.
Personally I think they're awesome...but yeah a Metamagic Feat would probably have served better.
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There's also action economy to consider as well: one standard action to cast resist elements on everyone Vs still casting spells on party members when the combat Vs that fire elemental is already wrapping up (and the guy who really needed that spell during the combat ended up being the guy you hadn't cast it on yet).
Maybe they weren't the shiniest of new spells, but they fill a niche nicely, IMHO.
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Communal would have been better as a metamagic feat than as a whole new type of spells. I play mostly spontaneous casters and adding a bunch of duplicate spells for multiple targets is prohibitively expensive.
Water Breathing has functioned like a "communal" spell since day 1. The precedent is there to have a single spell which can affect one or many targets.
Reposted my suggested meta-magic feat over a thread Volaran created in the house rules forum.
Communal would have been better as a metamagic featYes it would have been better... too much better.
I tend to agree. Turning spells "mass" would have been a game breaker. I would guess by the similar naming conventions it might have been proposed as a metamagic feat but scrapped as the developers started coming up with nasty scenarios involving the feat and rather than do away with the idea completely evolved it to a more passive form.