Why do Ghost Sound and Ventriloquism still have Verbal components?


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells

Silver Crusade

The whole point of these spells is to make others believe that a sound is coming from somewhere else, which is kinda hampered by the caster standing over there spewing mystic babble in a "loud and strong voice". Given that Ventriloquism and unheightened Ghost Sound have ranges of 30', there is no way that a creature capable of hearing the intended effect would miss the verbal component, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the spells.

5th edition just nixed the verbal component of Minor Illusion and several other illusion spells, is there any way that PF2 could replace the verbal components of Ghost Sound and Ventriloquism (and even many other illusion spells) with a Material (focus) component, or a second Somatic component? Illusions rely upon tricking a creature into believing that something it senses is real, which is hard to do when there is obvious spell casting going on.


I think spell components need revisited in general. Some 90% of spells in 1e had both somatic and verbal components, and that was inherited in 2e. This wouldn't be a problem, except they tied spell components to the number of actions it takes to cast. The reason we don't have more spells like Heal or Magic Missile doing more powerful things as you spend more actions is because there's only so much you can do when most spells already take 2 actions.


What Sober here is saying. That. Any kind of stealth spell where it's important that the target and bystanders need not see a spell being cast need to be able to be cast covertly or they become worthless.

For the most part, in previous editions, it hasn't been that much of an issue, because you could always just brew whatever spell you wanted into potion form or forge (or buy) the ability in the form of some knick knack magic item, but it seems like this option is being curtailed somewhat this edition.

But it really feels like a change that needs made--either get rid of the spells or make them so they work.

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