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New Arcane Spells for v4


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First of all, I'm very sad about that Executioner's Eyes didn't made it into that list (as you suggested in the other thread). I know it's a IWD Spell, but it'd give Diviners some more offensive orientated power.

 

Secondly, I found no fresh and new D&D spells either. I found Intensify Summoning, but spells like that (not this one in particular) have more potential as a "Necromancers and Conjurer only" feature for KR in my eyes.

 

Greater Arcane Sight/Prying Eye/Greater Prying Eye/Watchful Eye/Wizard Eye (joking)

Greater Arcane Sight

- pretty much what you said: even if it is implementable I see little to no use for it

Prying Eye/Greater Prying Eye (in it's D&D form & with "nerfed" TS)

- except from beeing funny ('cause of creating a horde of eyes), I'd use it only once to laugh my ass off and then never ever again

- scouts are only useful if it's your first playtrough

Prying Eye/Greater Prying Eye/Watchful Eye (with your suggested detect traps and detect illusions abilities)

- at least useful in solo games (the detect traps part, though again more useful if it's your first playtrough)

- (on a side note) @Demi: I used the search function to refresh my knowledge about what exactly you plan for TS and found out that "true" is one of you favorite words :p

- do you intend the same changes for detect illusion? I bet not.

- if not it could be indeed usefull to a certain degree

- not very appealing for a lvl 7 spell though

Wizard Eye

- I fear whatever effort you put into improving this spell, it wouldn't be very appealing for a lvl 7 spell

 

Conjure Greater Elemental

Ardanis suggested to move greater elementals here

Interesting idea. Maybe give each of them a little special ability in exchange?

Edited by Lawlight
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Greater Arcane Sight

In fact, I would place it on 2nd level, where Arcane Sight resides. I know this is a five level difference against PnP source, but we do have two detect-enemy's-statistics spells there, and for a 2nd slot, I think the ability to know what to throw at the enemy archmage is a fair deal. Besides, the aura detection of Arcane Sight is hardly doable, at least if it were to be of any use.

 

Executioner's Eyes

I think Demi has simply forgotten to post it?

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First of all, I'm very sad about that Executioner's Eyes didn't made it into that list (as you suggested in the other thread). I know it's a IWD Spell, but it'd give Diviners some more offensive orientated power.
I think Demi has simply forgotten to post it?
Thanks for having so much faith in me! :D Jokes aside, I didn't forget about it, and I was going to suggest it, but as a 8th lvl spell, because Prying Eyes probably couldn't fit such a high spell slot (you even seem to consider it weak for a 7th lvl slot), and the only great PnP spell, Moment of Prescience, is not implementable imo. :( Btw, IWD version was a 9th lvl spell, but fortunately we can add a PnP spell there, Foresight.

 

Secondly, I found no fresh and new D&D spells either. I found Intensify Summoning, but spells like that (not this one in particular) have more potential as a "Necromancers and Conjurer only" feature for KR in my eyes.
Indeed. Augmented Summons is exactly what I had in mind to suggest for KR's Conjurer. :)

 

Greater Arcane Sight

pretty much what you said: even if it is implementable I see little to no use for it
In fact, I would place it on 2nd level, where Arcane Sight resides. I know this is a five level difference against PnP source, but we do have two detect-enemy's-statistics spells there, and for a 2nd slot, I think the ability to know what to throw at the enemy archmage is a fair deal. Besides, the aura detection of Arcane Sight is hardly doable, at least if it were to be of any use.
The ability to know target's spell/combat/specific protections would be great, actually worth a spell slot higher than 2nd imo (though perhaps not 7th as per PnP), but that would make sense only in a ideal world where A64 removes the feedback text from each and every spell cast. As it is now, you already know everything you need to know (except a bunch of pre-buffs with the latets SCS versions - but it's not hard to guess Stoneskin is one of those :D ).

 

Prying Eye/Greater Prying Eye/Watchful Eye/Wizard Eye (ahahahah)

Afaik I cannot tweak thief's detect illusion skill (else I would at least make Non-detection work against it). I was suggesting to make this Eye a sort of long lasting Detect Trap + Detect Invisibility + Dispel Illusions + scout area (which could be combined with powerful summons). I actually feared that allowing it to dispel illusions via thief's skill was too much...do you instead feel it wouldn't be worth a spell slot? Mmm...

 

Anyway, I have no better idea...we could move here Executioner's Eyes (as I initially planned) but than I'd need a 8th lvl Divination spell! Do you have any suggestion?

 

Conjure Greater Elemental

Ardanis suggested to move greater elementals here

Interesting idea. Maybe give each of them a little special ability in exchange?

Yep, I was planning to give them slightly more unique feats following aVENGER's work (e.g. air elementals could get a whirwind ability, fire elementals could set target's on flame).
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Executioner's Eyes

Anyway, I have no better idea...we could move here Executioner's Eyes (as I initially planned) but than I'd need a 8th lvl Divination spell! Do you have any suggestion?

No I have no better idea either. With Foresight at 9th lvl and Moment of Prescience not beeing implementable at 8th lvl as you said (it's a pity): I aggree that this gap at lvl 8 should be filled with Executioner's Eyes.

 

Greater Arcane Sight

The ability to know target's spell/combat/specific protections would be great, actually worth a spell slot higher than 2nd imo [...]. As it is now, you already know everything you need to know [...].

Without that Combat Text feature Greater Arcane Sight would not only be great - it would actually be mandatory (not that I'm against it).

 

Prying Eye/Greater Prying Eye/Watchful Eye/Wizard Eye

I actually feared that allowing it to dispel illusions via thief's skill was too much...do you instead feel it wouldn't be worth a spell slot? Mmm...

For me it wouldn't be worth a spell slot, but maybe I'm not objective here, because I use thiefs alot. Furthermore. I'm really in love with your suggestions for Invisible Stalker (detect and disarm traps would make it a cool summon) and I fear these features would make him/it the better scout anyway (BTW I would go one step further and give the IS a limited Set Trap ability too). Back to topic, even without the dispel illusion feature the Eye may have a right to exist, because it adds flavor. But is this enough? My suggestion would be to expand your concept of the Eye (Detect Trap + True Seeing + scout) in the direction of "three (or more) eyes see more than two" a.k.a. Clairvoyance / a sort of "danger detector" (maybe even a sort of Clairvoyance aura to protect the whole party, given the fact that the eye(s) is/are quite fragile).

 

Conjure Greater Elemental

Yep, I was planning to give them slightly more unique feats following aVENGER's work

Excellent. :)

Edited by Lawlight
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Prying Eye

For me it wouldn't be worth a spell slot, but maybe I'm not objective here, because I use thiefs alot. Furthermore. I'm really in love with your suggestions for Invisible Stalker (detect and disarm traps would make it a cool summon) and I fear these features would make him/it the better scout anyway (BTW I would go one step further and give the IS a limited Set Trap ability too).
I know, but Invisible Stalker may still need the Eye (or Farsight) to really act as a scout (we havent't decided yet about allowing it to explore the areas a la vanilla's Wizard Eye). That being said the stalker can still be detected and killed (unlike Prying Eye) and cannot detect invisibility.

 

Back to topic, even without the dispel illusion feature the Eye may have a right to exist, because it adds flavor. But is this enough? My suggestion would be to expand your concept of the Eye (Detect Trap + True Seeing + scout) in the direction of "three (or more) eyes see more than two" a.k.a. Clairvoyance / a sort of "danger detector" (maybe even a sort of Clairvoyance aura to protect the whole party, given the fact that the eye(s) is/are quite fragile).
Well, it's not a bad idea imo. In fact, if my memory doesn't fail me, within 3E Watchful Eye was turned into a paladin spell working as a Shield Other effect.

 

Actually, if we expand this concept the Eye can have a huge potential. You know what, this spell can actually end up being really cool imo.

 

Perhaps you could give it modest bonuses over Wizard Eye but make it untargetable by enemy units (hence a "prying eye" scout that can snoop about with impunity).
Actually I was giving that for granted, as the Eye is not supposed to be a real "creature". It may be dispellable though.
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If True Seeing cannot detect illusions, will it be totally superseded by Prying Eye?
No, True Seeing will offer different advantages that our suggested Prying Eye does not. For example even if our PnP True Seeing won't be dispelling Improved Invisibility anymore, it will still make the affected creatures partially visible, and as a new feature it will now allow the caster to directly target the II creature with spells, and attack him/her without suffering the -4 penalty to attack rolls (as if he wasn't invisible at all for him). Furthermore TS will act as a Spell Immunity: Illusion. Within V3 it just meant immunity to very few things, such as Spook, but within V4 I'm adding quite a lot of powerful offensive illusions such as Phantasmal Killer, Solipsism, and Weird.

 

That being said, the Eye is a higher lvl spell, thus having it appear slightly better than TS (which is a 5th lvl spell for priests) wouldn't be so bad. anyway, as I said, the two spells doesn't even overlap each other completely. I'd say the Eye might be more useful to the party, but TS will remain more useful for the caster himself.

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Hi Demi,

 

I'm curious if you have considered some of these IWD spells:

 

Level 6

 

Antimagic Shell

 

A Classic for sure. Is it abusable? The drawback seems pretty balanced in most cases, but it can be very powerful for a wizard that prebuffs for melee.

 

Lich Touch

 

Seems weak for this level, but I do like the Goul Touch on steroids aspect. Could be a great Necro pick at L5.

 

Soul Eater

 

I love this spell!!! Extremely Necro. Has many possible applications, including summoning your own creatures to cast it on.

 

Level 7

 

Seven Eyes

 

Has this been brought up already? My apologies if it has. I seem to recall it being voted down as impossible to implement. But it's in IWD. Can it not be recreated in BG2?

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Seven Eyes

I suggested it just a week ago. You can find his answer here.

 

Soul Eater

The latest information here was the following:

this is another of those spells which is really hard to implement (I'd surely need to use scripts ).

Thanks to info by Galactygon, EFF-targeting dead objects (par1=3, par2=3) is sufficient.

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Antimagic Shell

A Classic for sure. Is it abusable? The drawback seems pretty balanced in most cases, but it can be very powerful for a wizard that prebuffs for melee.
Yes it's a classic, but I cannot implement all its intended drawbacks (caster's magical equipment should not work anymore) and I fear it could be exploitable indeed. ProMagic scroll does pretty much the same, and I think the AI has already trobles dealing with it (I and DavidW made Spellstrike work against it, but it's a very expensive counter). I think it's better to leave it as a rare scroll use rather than risking to add an OP spell. Not to mention Abjuration school already has tons of 6th lvl spells, amongst which Globe of Invulnerability and Protection from Magical Weapons which already perform similar roles (even ProMagicEnergy to a lesser extent).

 

Lich Touch

Seems weak for this level, but I do like the Goul Touch on steroids aspect. Could be a great Necro pick at L5.
I don't know, it's a cool looking spell, but in practice it has very little use. :( It isn't much better than Ghoul Touch, and, as with almost all touch or weapon-like spells, I already have enough troubles trying to make the latter appealing (though it's actually very good early on imo).

 

Soul Eater

I love this spell!!! Extremely Necro. Has many possible applications, including summoning your own creatures to cast it on.
Very cool spell, but even assuming it's doable I'm not sure I'd pick it simply because it actually never existed outside of IWD. I admit I'm probably adding Executioner's Eyes despite it being a IWD-only spell, but I do that only because I have no other option at all. That being said, I kinda like its uniqueness, and I'll think about it - though right now there's absolutely no space at this spell lvl (unless Banishment is moved to its PnP lvl, the 7th - which is something I'd do if only it wasn't like the 2nd most used 6th lvl spell within SCS, right behind PfMW).
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Cloud spells

Could SR standardize a way to detect cloud spells radius? I know such a thing would require alteration of the spells themselves and that's why i ask here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "detecting clud spell radius". You mean being able to exactly see which area will be affected before casting? If that is the demand I'm actually against it, I'm not a fan of the way modern Blizzard-like rpgs treat AoE spells. :)

 

All cloud spells currently have a standard 30 feet radius AoE, unlike PnP, where all of them have 20' radius instead.

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8th Level Spells

 

This spell lvl was very lightly populated, and unfortunately even within PnP there isn't much choice at this lvl. I'm going to suggest quite a few of non-PnP spells because of this, though they already exist within either IWD or NWN, making them acceptable imo (much like BG's Sphere of Chaos, and surely way better than BG's silly Mantles).

 

Mind Blank

I guess it doesn't need presentations. It is an Improved Chaotic Commands, granting even more immunities, and protection from Divination spells as well (such as Knoe Opponent and Oracle), but more importantly it will last 8 hours, making it an obvious day-long buff a la Stoneskin for mages who can afford it.

 

Monster Summoning VIII

The difficult part here will be to find summons enough appealing to fit such a high spell lvl but not OP. I was thinking to suggest using salamanders here, but even Umber Hulks can fit this slot if we make them 8HD creatures as per PnP.

 

Conjure Elder Elemental

For some reason I'm not too much into it. Unlike the other three versions of this spell it doesn't exist within PnP, and I don't like that Druids would be left behind as they are limited to 7th lvl spells and Greater Elementals (though they then get princes via innate HLAs).

 

Create Greater undead

This is not a mandatory spell, as Necromancers already have two spells here (one of which is the terrific Horrid Wilting) but I guess most of you would like it. I'm not sure which BG creatures could fit this. We could use mummies and a Greater Mummy, or a single powerful Boneguard.

 

Lightning Ring

Evokers absolutely need new spells here, especially if we make Incendiary Cloud a Conjuration as all other clouds. This one existed within both AD&D and 3E Spell Compendium and it's truly powerful imo. The spells is kinda unique, as it's similar but still different to both Fire Shield and Blade Barrier, with a little of Call Lightning too. Its implementation would be the following: caster is surrounded by electricity, becoming immune to electrical damage, and once every round (twice within 3E) a 5d6 lightning bolt is discharged, targeting a random opponent (within PnP you can direct the bolts). If we think it's needed we can add a fire shield-like dmg when struck effect, but the spell can probably be fine either way.

 

Polar Ray

If we decide to move Bigby's Icy Grasp at 7th lvl than this spell is a must imo, else we can just keep the ice-tweaked Bigby spell. This is another classic spell though most PnP players conside it underpowered because of the required touch attack to hit roll. I'm not sure how balanced it would be, but in theory BG implementation would probably be a ray inflicting up to 20d6 points of cold dmg with no save. Else we could raise the damage and allow a reflex save (to replace the ranged attack roll), but then the spell would just be a Disintegrate spell with different dmg type. Mmm...

 

Polymorph Any Object or Mass Polymorph

V3 added Ghostform, but we had no Alteration spells at all in vanilla, and thus I'd like to add a 2nd one. PaO is likely one of the most devastating PnP spells ever created, but implementing it is an almost impossible task imo, as in theory it can do infinite things, such as turning a pebble into a Stone Golem, a party member into a different creature type (e.g. even a celestial!), and so on. We thought to limit it to x type of uses, but even then it's difficult to decide which ones, the power lvl limits and then write down an appropriate description to justify why the spell does that on not that.

 

Mass Polymorph is obviously less unique, but implementing it would be a simple task. :)

 

Symbol of Insanity

We have only a single Enchantment spell for this lvl (a Power Word), and I really cannot find a 2nd one. As discussed before, I'd opt to not use Charm Monster because within BG engine it would just be Mass Domination, thus deprecating the latter which is instead the ultimate enchantment spell imo (so powerful that 3E hugely nerfed it, turning it into a single target Dominate Monster). The only spell I found is Symbol of Insanity (pratically is BG's Chaos usable as a trap/symbol), and Ardanis suggested Maddening Whispers (pretty much SR's Sphere of Chaos). As discussed in other topics, I really don't know what to do, especially because SoC would outshine SoI by a mile imo.

 

So, what would you do? Remove Sphere of Chaos (which never existed in PnP but is cool) and add Symbol of Insanity, or just move SoC at 8th lvl?

 

Solipsism

Illusion is another school with just one 8th lvl spell. I really couldn't find anything within PnP, except 3E Greater Shadow Evocation, and thus I turned to IWD and NWN where I could only manage to find a 7th lvl spell, Solipsism. The concept is cool imo (the caster manipulate the senses of the target so that it perceives itself to be the only real creature in all of existence and everything around it to be merely an illusion) and to fill an 8th lvl spell slot it could work as a illusion based Mass Feeblemind. What do you think?

 

Executioner's Eyes

The most difficult task ever, making Divination school great within BG. The only PnP spell which could work here would have been Moment of Prescience, but it cannot be implemented, so I turned once again to IWD, and found there the fan favourite Executioner's Eye. This spell may not look great at first sight (allies get +4 to attack rolls and +20% chance to score critical hits) but actually has a tremendous potential (it was a 9th lvl spell within IWD for a reason), especially if the caster has many warriors on his side and/or summons.

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Mind Blank

I am fine with this.

 

Monster Summoning VIII

Umber Hulks and salamanders are both cool. Speaking of cool and underrepresented, we still have wyverns somewhere, right?

 

Conjure Elder Elemental

I think we have enough elemental conjuring spells.

 

Create Greater Undead

Mummies are cool.

 

Lightning Ring

Sounds like Thunderstorm from Diablo II. I think this is a neat spell but the damage would have to be much larger than 5D6 due to random targeting and competing with party-friendly and magic-damage-dealing Horrid Wilting. Not sure that lightning immunity is necessary.

 

Polar Ray

I think Polar Ray is cooler than yet-another-Bigby-spell. Assuming we have a unique animation, of course. I don't think this spell needs an attack roll or anything considering other magically-directed projectiles generally lack them in BG.

 

Mass Polymorph

This sounds amusing. I'd use it for the humor value if nothing else. It should clearly be called "Audience of Rabbits." :)

 

Polymorph Any Object

I hate this spell. At least make it level 9 if you are going to make the attempt.

 

Symbol of Insanity

I don't think this is unique enough to warrant another spell. I would use Mass Polymorph instead in any case because it's cooler.

 

Solipsism

Cool idea, but we should really have a distinguishing gameplay difference between all of the proposed AoE save-or-be-disabled spells of this level.

 

Executioner's Eyes

I like that it's divination, so I vote that it be included. Not sure what the concept is supposed to be, though. "I see like an executioner!" So what?

 

+20% critical hit chance combined with the proposed removal of critical hit immunity on helmets would be really useful and worth an 8th level slot.

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