| Generic Villain |
How is the contact entity spell supposed to work? If I just read the spell itself, it's fine, but upon looking over the "Contact Spells" sidebar on pg. 111, things become less clear.
"Usually found in the form of scrolls or spell trigger items, an individual contact entity spell comes predetermined to work with a single kind of entity"
"Though the class lists for these spells includes spontaneous casters, this is primarily to let them use the spell if found on a scroll, not to have unfettered access to contact entity as a spell known"
Okay, so say a PC wizard found a scroll of contact entity I that contacts deep ones, then proceeds to copy it into his spellbook. Is the intent that this spell will, once cast, only function on deep ones? If so, the spell dialogue itself really should have spelled that out. A line such as:
"Each contact spell is attuned to only one kind of creature, and each is a unique spell. For example, a contact entity I spell that functions on deep ones would be called contact entity I (deep ones). A contact entity I (ratlings) is an entirely different spell and must be prepared or learned separately."
I know this is based on a Call of Cthulhu spell, but even the CoC version is spelled out more clearly than this.
| Generic Villain |
To further complicate things, the aforementioned sidebar mentions the following:
"Contact spells do not replace or supplant planar ally or planar binding, so each contact spell targets an eldritch creature that is not an outsider."
Yet it can be used to contact a denizen of Leng and a hound of Tindalos, both most definitely outsiders. It's like the sidebar and spell were written by different authors, and neither were quite in sync.