Wizards, Towers, and Public Safety Legislation

I don't know where the trope of wizards dwelling in lonely towers originated (some readers probably do). Saruman undoubtedly has something to do with it, and David Eddings' Belgariad was heavily pro-tower. I've read early pulp stories featuring Conan et al raiding towers wherein dwell sinister sorcerers and the priests of evil gods* and that probably contributed to the mix.

One explanation that often comes up is peace and quiet. The wizard, so runs this theory, needs solitude. Separation from the common run of humanity and their petty concerns. He (usually he) does, indeed, he should hold himself apart and not meddle in mundane affairs, occupying himself with the pursuit of pure knowledge. The tower provides him with a sanctuary within which he may seek wisdom and arcane power.

* a concept about which I should write something another time

Quick and Dirty: Interactive Magical Combat for Pathfinder

Today I was chatting with Nathan about magic fights. It's something I've vaguely thought about for a while - in RPGs (at least the ones I'm familiar with) fights between wizards tend to manifest as one of the following:

1. Casting the most deadly spells every round you have until one of you fails a crucial saving throw. Essentially a brute-force slugfest.
2. Casting an assortment of powerful buffs before an anticipated fight, then sneaking up and casting that Most Powerful Spell with every possible bonus while the enemy is unaware.

Now to be fair, this is partly an artefact of how RPG fights tend to go; everything's over in a few rounds, if not before a fight even starts. In some cases it's because combat is lethal and players who want their characters to survive long-term have to play tactically, minimizing the risk of an actual fight. In other cases, it's because PCs can unleash appalling devastation in mere seconds. Earlier today, Iris (see Necropolitans posts) inflicted well over 100 damage to one of my NPCs in a single round of combat where several of her attacks missed. There's also received wisdom, perhaps true, that damaging the opposition trumps just about anything else. Certainly in D&D-type games, there's a widespread perception that healing during combat is a terrible waste of time, for example. People rarely seem to duck behind barriers to reload or neck a potion, perhaps worried about what the opposition will do with that time.

Building a Lawful Good kingdom in Pathfinder, part 2

This is part 2 of a discussion about making something you could call a Lawful Good kingdom in Pathfinder:

"Basically, can it actually be both good - however you want to define that; greatest good for the greatest number is probably a working starting point - and feudal. Can you have castles and banquets and things, and subsistence level farming peasants outside to supply the tassels and banquets and things, and still be good?"

In the first part of this, I looked at the average working humanoid and discovered that the Profession rules for earning a living, coupled with costs of living rules, allow a fairly comfortable existence. Our peasant Jay "lives in their own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. They can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from their home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less."

All this, as a 1st-level peasant for the price of a week's salary per month (10gp). Jay earns 12gp per week, giving 51gp per month (assuming 30 days), so they have 41gp left, after minor taxes.

Taxes

The rules don't cover taxes in much detail. There's general advice which has one figure:

A good rule is for the GM to tax the party once per character level for an amount roughly equal to a single encounter’s total treasure value at their APL. The GM could also split this amount into multiple taxes or fees over the course of that character level. For example, a party of 3rd-level PCs on the Medium track should be taxed about 800 gp.

For non-adventurers, that's not terribly helpful. Our peasants aren't gaining levels through encounters, so there's no sense of how often a tax would apply. For a 1st-level character, the Medium value is 260gp, so if we were using that, Jay would owe a tax of 7 months' salary at an unspecified interval. Maybe that really is the annual tax rate? 50-60% of income is the going rate in the Nordic countries.

Since we're assuming that Lawful Good kingdom will provide beneficial public services, the Nordic countries seem a reasonable model. High taxation, but high services. So yes, let's take the 260gp/year figure at least for now. It's not going to work for high-level peasants - nobody is earning enough to pay 67k a year as a peasant farmer.

Jay is therefore paying 21.7gp per month in income tax, and still has just shy of 20gp in spending money every week.

What's on offer?

Now let's look at what extras we could get for Jay, either through personal spending or through taxation.

Everyday magic

Food and water are the first priority – preferably nourishing food and pure water to drink and cook with, followed by tasty food and clean water to wash in.

A Lawful Good government should be organized enough to identify people with magical potential, and train them to cast 0th-level spells. A number of traits give access to cantrips, even for those in non-magical professions.

Cantrips like purify food and drink and create water are absolutely transformative. Food can be stored for longer at the household level, and crucially, restored to edibility even after going bad! Real-world civilisations often have periods of scant food over winter or dry periods, when little grows and stores are getting thin or rotting. With a widespread system of basic magical training, there should be enough people in every village to ensure an absolute basic level of sustenance.

Access to create water also means you can keep livestock and crops alive during droughts. While you’re not going to be seriously irrigating, an apprentice can produce 2 gallons of water per six seconds, 20 gallons (about 4 bucketsful) per minute. Obviously we don’t expect anyone to do this every 6 seconds for a full working day; that would be wildly incompatible with our Lawful Good kingdom’s ethos. Still, it’s a lot.

You can bolster this with a few well-chosen investments, either directly or through supporting infrastructure. A goblet of quenching costs 180gp, but provides enough fresh, clean water for a family of 4 to drink. That’s a significant investment for the average citizen, but Jay can save up for one within a couple of years even at high tax rates. Unlike household appliances, magical items don’t usually wear out, and it's clear from canon that they can easily last for centuries. Thus, each one is a permanent boon to your people! You could encourage their proliferation further by having salaried state wizards make and sell them at cost, or decreeing that artificers must pay a tithe of items like this. They only cost 90gp to make, and are perfect for apprentices and minor priests to practice their crafting with.

On a national level, disease, malnutrition and injury are bad. They cause misery for the population, which is more than enough for a Lawful Good king to take action. On a practical level, they mean less productive workers, smaller harvests, and resources expended in treatment. Any kind of recruitment, from armies to state officials, has a smaller pool of viable candidates. People age quickly and can do less in their old age; the elderly, sickly and injured need care from people who could otherwise be doing other things. Ensuring everyone has clean water to drink and decent (if basic) food means a happier, healthier, more successful society.

Hygiene is another important tool for public health. Accessible clean water means fewer infections, and easy cleaning of infections and wounds. Utensils and medical implements can be kept clean, too. You avoid the risk of zoonoses by not sharing water sources with animals. Other simple spells – notably prestidigitation - can clean up even without water and soap, and remove stubborn stains and oil. Traditional laundry techniques put a lot of strain on fabric with pummelling, hot water, and strong soaps, so using magic should reduce wear and tear.

For those in messy professions, fastidiousness is a 1st-level spell that keeps you spotless and wards off disease. It would be a boon to medics, butchers, tanners, nightsoil collecters, miners and many more. For 1,800gp we can craft a magic item that casts it whenever you say the magic word - something like a magic curtain you pass through on your way into the workplace. It's not cheap, but it would great for morale and keep workers healthy. In fact, you could erect something like this at the entrance to an industrial quarter, and let all the city's workers file through, though that would be slow, at 600 people per hour.

Sanitation

For a number of reasons, toilet facilities make a big difference. Hygiene is obvious, as poor sanitation can spread disease and parasites. Toilets help control pollution and keep an environment pleasant. They can also be important tools for public safety, as people nipping into the bushes or a dark alley are vulnerable to attackers - a real-life problem in many places.

Luckily, magic offers us the chance to build clean, hygienic toilets without the disruption and challenges of massive infrastructure projects. I present the Mark I Prestidigitoilet.

Once cast, a prestidigitation spell enables you to perform simple magical effects for 1 hour. The effects are minor and have severe limitations. A prestidigitation can slowly lift 1 pound of material. It can color, clean, or soil items in a 1-foot cube each round. It can chill, warm, or flavor 1 pound of nonliving material... Any actual change to an object (beyond just moving, cleaning, or soiling it) persists only 1 hour.

The Mark I is a sturdy 6-ft. cubicle containing a toilet seat with bowl, and a basin. It's imbued with a permanent prestidigitation effect. The enspelling costs 1000gp, as it's a cantrip cast at caster level 1.

When someone places their hands in the basin, it focuses the prestidigitation spell there, cleaning their hands. Otherwise, the spell cycles through the cubicle, cleaning it one 1-ft. cube at a time. The entire thing contains 216 1-ft. cubes, which would take 1296 seconds to clean, or just under 22 minutes. That's far better than nothing, but not great.

However, we don't really need to clean the entire thing constantly. The actual toilet is only around a 2-ft. cube, giving 8 cubes, which take less than a minute to clean. It's fairly reasonable to have customers wait 1 minute between uses to ensure a clean toilet. In fact, if the customer stays put, the Mark I guarantees a clean posterior as well - essentially a combination self-cleaning toilet and bidet.

If we're allowed some flexibility with the 'intelligence' of the spell, we could program it to do a full clean at intervals.

Depending on how we interpret the "clean" part of the spell, the Mark I may dispose of sewage. If not, we'll need provision for removing it, but we can at least keep the facilities hygienic. If we have the toilet full of water, a purify food and drink spell will do the trick, since it explicitly "makes spoiled, rotten, diseased, poisonous, or otherwise contaminated food and water pure and suitable for eating and drinking".

Good Repair

Breakages can be a significant drain on household and business finances. This means another really useful spell is mending.

This spell repairs damaged objects, restoring 1d4 hit points to the object. If the object has the broken condition, this condition is removed if the object is restored to at least half its original hit points. All of the pieces of an object must be present for this spell to function.

For households, broken crockery, tools, and damaged clothing will need replacing. It's likely to disproportionately affect the poor: they're likely to buy cheaper goods that break more easily (the classic Boots Theory). Children tend to break things easily but don't earn income, so families with children will have a higher burden. We can also guess that infirmity and disabilities increase the likelihood of accidental breakages, again placing higher costs on vulnerable people. So this is a good point of intervention.

Again, this is a cantrip, and will cost 1000gp as a permanent effect. However, it has a casting time of not 6 seconds, but a full 10 minutes. That's a bigger issue. We can only repair 6 items per hour, so a hard maximum of 144 per day.

I'm envisioning here basically a box that you put broken things into and leave for 10 minutes while it 'cooks' them back together. Or maybe the boxes are mundane, but you pile them up on a magic table and it cooks them one at a time.

An advantage we do have is that the spell isn't worried about cost. You can repair a diamond ring as easily as a wooden spoon. If we assume people will prioritise repairing the more costly items, it can be fairly efficient. But let's take a conservative assumption: we're repairing broken cups, at 1gp each. The table of marvellous repair will fix 144 cups per day, paying for itself in a week. Well, probably a bit more with the cost of the table, call it a fortnight. After that time, the repairs are essentially free - they increase the disposable income available to the populace, and avoid unnecessary waste, while likely benefiting the poorest most. After all, the wealthy aren't going to waste 10 minutes hanging around for a 1gp cup to be fixed, let alone queue for it.

This service can also provide employment: someone to explain the process, hand out boxes, or do it on clients' behalf. On a modest salary, it would be well-suited to a retiree or someone unable to manage more physical or complex jobs.

Wealthier households and large businesses could easily have a box of marvellous repair of their own, perhaps at a higher caster level to allow repair of heavier items. A high-end restaurant with expensive china could save a lot of money in the long run. A jeweller would find the box handled fiddly repairs of delicate items much better than they could, since the difficulty of the repair isn't a factor. An artisans' guild might splash out 5,000gp for the 5th-level variant, which can repair a full set of masterwork tools (5 lb.) in a mere ten minutes - a hundred uses would cover the cost.

GURPS and large-scale spellcasting

I've been thinking about how you'd set up magical precautions against natural disasters in GURPS. It seems like exactly the sort of system where you could do that sort of thing. Hurricanes, earthquakes and so on are devastating, so it's reasonable that a benevolent government would pour effort into effective countermeasures. Even an actively malevolent ruler might do so, because the economic impact and infrastructure damage is really inconvenient.

This post examines the case of Seismia, a country prone to various disasters.

One of the troubles is the sheer area natural hazards affect. GURPS generally handles area spells with a fixed cost ("base cost") per radius in yards.* This cost is the amount of Fatigue Points you need to spend (basically, how tiring it is). A meagre half-mile radius with a base cost of 1/2 clocks in at 440 Fatigue Points. That's roughly one noble estate or village.

*they also measure things in miles per hour, degrees Fahrenheit, pounds of weight, feet and inches, making the system an absolute ruddy nightmare for the sort of scientific realism it's meant to support. For those wondering why the game isn't more popular, this is probably a factor. Yes, I know Americans have an abiding love for their imperial measurements (and I use plenty of them myself in everyday life), but they are wildly inconvenient when calculations come in. Put out a metric version, for the love of all that's holy.

I'm not a great judge of typical capabilities in GURPS, but human capabilities hover around the 10 mark; I'd guess an experienced mage would buy up Health and buy extra Fatigue Points, so they might be able to throw in 20FP or so. Far short of our total.

Ceremonial casting might help. This is much slower (one-tenth of normal speed), but that isn't a problem. It allows other mages, and even random bystanders, to contribute some of their own energy. We're still limited, though...

• Each mage who knows the spell at level 15+: as much energy as he wishes to contribute.
• Each non-mage who knows the spell at level 15+: up to 3 points.
• Each mage who knows the spell at level 14 or lower: up to 3 points.
• Each unskilled spectator who supports the casting (by chanting, holding candles, etc.): 1 point, to a maximum of 100 points from all spectators.

"Mages" are those who have the inherent power of Magery, rather than merely having learned a spell; they're better, faster, stronger and more wizardly.

So a 440-point spell to keep rainstorms out of a 1/2-mile radius would require the full exertion of 22 mages who know the spell at a high level. That's a tough order for one village.

If we have all the villagers come along to chant, they can add up to 100 points to our total. Let's say we can find 100 of them. Let's also say our Head Wizard can rustle up extra energy from magic items, contributing 40 points and leaving us a nice simple 300.

To make up the 300 points, we'd need 100 lesser spellcasters - mages who don't know the spell in question, or non-mages who know it very well. Mages are generally in short supply, though. Perhaps Seismian government compels everyone to study certain spells for national defence against hazards, the same way they might require longbow practice?

That 1/2-mile radius is 0.78 square miles, or about 2km². The population density of Scotland is 70/km², so that would give us 140 inhabitants or thereabouts. Conceivably, if all of them had been forced to learn Protection From Hazard at 15+, and we made all of them participate in the ritual alongside our Head Wizard (20 FP), we could get the energy we need: 3 FP x 140 = 420 FP.

Of course, learning those spells requires investment of time and effort. Most spells are Hard skills, and expensive to learn. For those Seismians lucky enough to have average IQ 10, learning the skill at IQ+5 will cost a mighty 24 points. Those down at IQ 8 have to spend 32 points! Considering ordinary folks tend to have 100-150 points in total, that is a very significant investment in one niche skill.

Looking through Thaumatology, not many options help with spellcasting costs. The obvious one is, of course... sacrifices.

Sacrifice

This section of rules is deliberately fluid, giving no specific set of rules, but a set of ideas and discussion of their implications - for example, how the value of a sacrifice is calculated will determine the kind of sacrifices that happen.

Fantasy, however, gives some useable guidelines.

The basic currency of sacrifice is hit points. If the victim is sapient and consents to the sacrifice, use his full HP. If he does not consent, divide his HP by 3. For nonsapient victims, always divide HP by 3; they are presumed not capable of consent. At the GM’s discretion, offerings of material goods worth 20% of a campaign’s starting wealth count as 1 HP. Offered wealth may be cast into the sea, burned at a shrine, ritually consumed by someone possessed by a god or spirit, or otherwise destroyed or made inaccessible... Each HP of sacrifice could be exchanged for two energy points of magic.

According to Low-Tech Companion 3, sheep have 10 HP. They can therefore be sacrificed for the equivalent of 6 FP.

Wales supposedly contains around 1500 sheep per square mile (I resist my inclination to fact-check this in detail). Let's assume this is a reasonable figure for our hypothetical country, and that whatever sheep-equivalents it might farm (potentially including crops) are fungible in terms of density and sacrificial potency.

With a modest 1% tithe of livestock, Seismia can gather 15 sheep per square mile for sacrifice each year annually, providing 90 energy towards spells of various kinds.

Putting it together

We have to make some assumptions about mage density here. Let's say that there is one high-class mage per 10 square miles, able to contribute 20 energy. There are 2 decent wizards per square mile, who can contribute 3 energy. Assorted inhabitants can give us another 100, and we have 90 energy per square mile from sheep.

Putting all that together... we don't have enough. Our half-mile radius can produce 306 energy, far short of the 440 required. To protect the village from storms, we'd need to increase the Seismian sheep-tithe to 4% of livestock, which is a fair chunk considering it'll be on top of other taxes.

It only gets worse when I reveal that the actual cost for protection from storms (Weather Dome) is 3, not 1/2. We'd need 2640 energy to protect the village!

Thankfully, this sort of thing works better at scale. In a 10-mile radius, we have 31 top-flight mages, 628 decent ones, and a 2% sacrifice will net us 9420 sheep. This gives us 59132 energy, more than our target of 52800.

Sticking with Wales as our current example, it's roughly 170 miles from top to bottom, so we need to cover an 85-mile radius. That will cost us 448800 Fatigue Points to bespell against storms. However, we can muster an impressive army of mages: 2270 top-class mages for 20 FP each, and 45396 decent ones giving 3 energy apiece. There's frankly no point getting the ordinary folks involved for a mere 100 energy. We'll make up the difference with sacrifices: a mere 2 sheep per square mile will suffice and to spare.

Of course, we'll probably want to cast some other protective spells on the whole country, so I'd better stick with that 1% tithe. Plus... with ceremonial spellcasting, any roll of 16+ on 3d6 is a failure! We might need to give this a few goes, lads. Still, it's not a bad outcome.

Base FP cost of spell
Radius (Miles)	1/2	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1/2	440	880	1760	2640	3520	4400	5280	6160	7040	7920	8800
1	880	1760	3520	5280	7040	8800	10560	12320	14080	15840	17600
2	1760	3520	7040	10560	14080	17600	21120	24640	28160	31680	35200
3	2640	5280	10560	15840	21120	26400	31680	36960	42240	47520	52800
4	3520	7040	14080	21120	28160	35200	42240	49280	56320	63360	70400
5	4400	8800	17600	26400	35200	44000	52800	61600	70400	79200	88000
6	5280	10560	21120	31680	42240	52800	63360	73920	84480	95040	105600
7	6160	12320	24640	36960	49280	61600	73920	86240	98560	110880	123200
8	7040	14080	28160	42240	56320	70400	84480	98560	112640	126720	140800
9	7920	15840	31680	47520	63360	79200	95040	110880	126720	142560	158400
10	8800	17600	35200	52800	70400	88000	105600	123200	140800	158400	176000
85	74800	149600	299200	448800	598400	748000	897600	1047200	1196800	1346400	1496000

 

Top mages	OK mages	Sacrifices	Top mage energy	OK mage energy	Others	Sacrifices	Sum	Without sacrifices
1	2	30	20	6	100	180	306	126
1	6	90	20	18	100	540	678	138
1	24	360	24	72	100	2160	2356	196
3	56	840	56	168	100	5040	5364	324
5	100	1500	100	300	100	9000	9500	500
8	156	2340	156	468	100	14040	14764	724
11	226	3390	226	678	100	20340	21344	1004
15	306	4590	306	918	100	27540	28864	1324
20	402	6030	402	1206	100	36180	37888	1708
25	508	7620	508	1524	100	45720	47852	2132
31	628	9420	628	1884	100	56520	59132	2612
2270	45396	45396	45396	136188	100	272376	454060	181684

Have I missed something? If you know of an energy-saving technique that would help Keep Seismia Safe, contact your local Hazard Dispelling Bureau immediately.

Firearm crutches for fantasy RPGs

This post is immediately inspired by a Twitter conversation, but of course its parent inspiration is the Combat Wheelchair created by Sara (mustangsart).

Firearms in Fantasy

Pathfinder, which I play weekly, has long had rules for firearms and an entire class dedicated to them, the Gunslinger. I've always been a bit chary of them for a couple of reasons. One is simply that fantasy with firearms drifts into a different space from fantasy without, mostly due to source material. The other is my personal, non-expert discomfort with things like "targeting touch AC" (meaning firearms bypass armour and shields) and the very rapid reloading that 6-second combat rounds and fights that generally finish within 5 rounds require.

I'm not really interested in delving into the exact realistic chances of these things, especially given a fantasy world. But for the record:

In the first case, I find it immersion-harming that a small lead pellet fired by alchemy from a tube has a rules mechanic of simply punching through armour (or perhaps inflicting damage through sheer force?), but an arrow fired by a Strength 24 orc sniper's composite bow or from a gastrophetes doesn't. This is before we get into oddities like "this Diminutive sprite the size of your thumb has a pistol that will shoot right through the frost giant's tank-like plate mail, but the frost giant's tree-sized spear can be deflected by the sprite's thimble breastplate."

In the second case, obviously it varies a lot with guns, but by my understanding you'd be doing well to fire a flintlock weapon three times a minute.

The topic of making crutches that doubled as firearms came up in the thread, and got me thinking of magic, and actually - while I'm not enamoured of actual "magical firearms" in a general fantasy setting, incorporating minor magical elements into a mechanical & alchemical firearm actually works pretty well for me. I'm a fan of thinking about how the fairly widespread availability of trivial magic might affect society!

The concept we're looking at is sturdy, adventurer-friendly crutches with a built-in firearm. So how might this work?

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells: for the would-be pheasant plucker

Your irregular extract from that invaluable compilation of the overlooked arcane.

It is, in general, potent and impressive magic that captures the popular imagination. It is a curious fact that both the largest group of spells, and the best-known, are those of middling power: dramatic and devastating enough that onlookers are thrilled and audiences lean close to catch the storyteller's words, yet within the reach of sufficient mages that they earn a sense of familiarity.

Little attention, in comparison, is given to the many useful cantrips developed through the ages. Yet their very humbleness means they are accessible to a far wider field than more potent spells, and thus significant to wider society. Unschooled hedge-wizards can use these tools in their researches, and priests not bestowed with divine might can yet call up the lesser blessings of their gods. Even to the artisan, the doctor, the farmer or the servant, a cantrip can be a talent within their grasp and capable of greatly aiding their livelihoods.

The spell I present today is one such cantrip. To the academic mage, even the travelling adventurer, it may seem of little value. Nevertheless, I have heard from the lips of hunters that it can make the difference between a successful hunt and an empty belly. Both gamekeepers and poaches, besides, have reported high regard for this cantrip in aiding the detection of their foes - the one to capture them, the other to evade them.

Forester's Warning

School transmutation; Level druid 0, hunter 0, ranger 1

CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components S, F (leaves or loose stones)

EFFECT

Rangetouch
Area 30-foot radius
Duration 8 hours
Saving Throw none Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

This spell can only be cast in an area with fallen leaves, grass, undergrowth, gravel or similar loose material. At your silent command, fallen leaves become crisply dry, twigs grow fragile and undergrowth snags loudly against whatever passes by. Attempts to use Stealth while passing through the affected area incur a -5 penalty, which stacks with the normal penalties for using Stealth while moving. You aren't affected by the penalties from this spell. If you sleep within the affected area, the DC of your Perception checks increases by only half the normal amount while you sleep (typically +5). Rain negates the effects of this spell within 1 hour.

I've finally got round to adding a Ko-fi button to my blog, in the hopes of making some use of all the gaming material I produce - only a fraction of which I've ever posted here. If anyone does enjoy it, I'd really appreciate a coin or two. It makes it easier to spend time on this, rather than my day job or side gig as a proofreader.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells: for the worried waiter

Your irregular extract from that invaluable compilation of the overlooked arcane.

For those who cater to the tastes of others, the fickleness - nay, the mendacity! - of the customer is an eternal poltergeist: bursting forth unpredictably, often in the midst of what was otherwise a pleasant conversation; impossible to pinpoint, and extremely difficult to prove; unwelcome, noisy, frustratingly stubborn once roused; and of course, liable to begin hurling crockery at one's head. The chief distinction is that the application of a simple Persuivant's poltergeist parlay can compel such spirits to honestly set forth their complaints and how they might be remedied. For customers, alas, the host has no such convenient method.

A particular burden for many establishments, be they public house or the marble halls of an elven palace, comes in the form of over-demanding diners. No sooner is their bespoken dish set before them than they are overcome with dissatisfaction, envy, curmudgeonliness or base self-importance. Scorning the cook's sweated labours over a hot stove, the delicate ministrations of the pâtissier, the hours that may go into preparation of the dish specifically ordered by the customer, they instantly demand a change.

The dish is inadequately cooked, they proclaim. The sauce is too thick; the vegetables too cold; they did not expect fish in the Seafood Supreme. In the most flagrant cases, they resort even to the bare-faced "No, I ordered the venison". Deaf are they to the evidence, thrice-confirmed, of the waiter's little notebook, or even their more shamefaced relatives across the table.

The genesis of the following spell was undoubtedly in such a case. Nothing more can be ascertained; indeed, mages of the culinary inclination generally refuse even to discuss its existence, fearing rightly that publicity might only make customers more suspicious. I present it, however, to the discreet and discerning scholarly eye of the subscribers of this little publication.

Waiter’s Weal

School transmuation; Level bard 1, lackey 1; Servitude 1

CASTING

Casting Time 1 minute
Components S, M (a drop of saliva)

EFFECT

Rangetouch
Target one touched serving of food
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

This spell proves its value in restaurants and great houses, where diners insist that they actually ordered the veal flechettes. You invoke a meal that might have been, gradually transforming the chosen meal into another of the same or lesser cost. The meal must be one that could have been prepared by the chef with the ingredients available.

As part of the spell, you can choose the arrangement of the dish (though highly complex arrangements require a Craft [cuisine] check) as well as determining its temperature and freshness. Common condiments of negligible cost can be applied. The form of the dish’s container changes to suit the chosen meal.

It’s generally considered polite to go around the corner before casting this spell, giving the patrons at least the illusion of having been pandered to.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells: for the humanoid-about-town

Your irregular extract from that invaluable compilation of the overlooked arcane.

Fionnuala Magwhite, a promising scholar, suffered the triple misfortunes of a large family, a position firmly in the middle tier of the country aristocracy, and a timid demeanour.

As a result, her studies and travels were constantly hampered by the obligation to attend tedious social events, and the determination of inebriated half-uncles, maiden aunts, waggish tradesmen, wagon drivers, acolytes of Ghreld the Librarian, evangelical clerics of Lord Sol, and adventurers who thoroughly overrated their personal attractiveness (and indeed, personal hygiene) to engage her in conversation.

Frustrated by this, she turned to magecraft, studying the intricacies of illusion and experimenting at length until she devised a spell to defend her from aural inconvenience. Magwhite's bore baffle has become an invaluable gambit in the back pocket of those who can't face small talk.

Magwhite’s Bore Baffle

School illusion [phantasm]; Level socialite 0, wizard 0

CASTING

Casting Time 1 full-round action
Components V ("No, please, go ahead, I'm sure we're all ears")

EFFECT

Range 15’ radius
Target creatures of your choice in range
Duration 10 min./level
Saving Throw Will disbelieves; Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

You cloak yourself in a comforting illusion, giving those who observe the impression that you are listening attentively to their words and making appropriate responses. A successful Will saving throw allows them to perceive the situation normally (for example, that you are in fact completing a crossword while loudly humming the latest lute hits). If a creature fails their saving throw, conversation is not considered interaction for the purpose of granting an additional saving throw.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells

A while ago I began compiling a list of, uh, alternative spells for Pathfinder, so basically for D&D.

Having been prompted by Big Jack Brass' recent tweets, I hereby present an extract from that inexplicably-unpublished manuscript, "Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells"

• Flares
• Speak to Dead
• Burning Hams
• Disguise Elf
• Ear-Piercing Cream
• Enlarge Parson
• Really Obscure Poison
• Cockling Skull
• Reign of Frogs
• Enter Poe Singh-Han's Big Bees

(yes, I actually have rules for these, but I don't feel like editing them for the blog at 1am and I might try to make them into something publishable)

Per Plunum: a game of making do

The premises of the Great Enchanter occupy a prominent, yet not fashionable, location in a moderately well-trafficked part of the town. The Great Enchanter's name is not bandied about on the lips of the vulgar, but thanks, in no small part, to the aid of certain mnemonic incantations, a general awareness of their presence and location permeates the populace, so that anyone in need of magical aid might find themselves wandering uncertaintly in that direction. The large brass plaque prominently fixed on the ancient, stout oaken door displays the name of the Great Enchanter in letters that are just large enough to bespeak confidence, yet not so large as to appear desperate; fancy enough to convey a hint of wonder, yet not so gaudy as to seem frivolous.

The Great Enchanter's door opens upon a modest reception room, with fine claw-footed wooden chairs where a customer may await attention. Reassuringly respectable landscapes hang upon the neat wallpaper; reassuringly mystical books and orbs line shelves behind the heavy wooden counter; a fine balance is struck between allaying the qualms of the hesitant first-time visitor, and delicately suggesting the proprietor's bona fides.

The customer is politely ushered into a consultation room.

For this client, a modest and businesslike office with little sign of arcane learning but the names of the gold-lettered tomes that line the shelves, a faint scent of incense and the ornate carvings on several locked cupboards. A plain blue rug keeps their feet from echoing on the wooden floorboards of the office. Sunlight streams through the windows, supported by the steady light of several lamps to give the atmosphere of any pleasant morning call. They take a seat in a comfortable armchair by the fire, and enjoy light refreshments while the Enchanter, or perhaps one of their assistants, clad in the garb of any respectable professional, delicately elicits from them the nature of their difficulty and - even more delicately - the depth of their purse.

For that client, a dim chamber redolent of magical learning, lit by the multicoloured flickering of myriad fat, dribbling candles. Shelves of gold-lettered tomes fill one wall; elsewhere heaps of mysterious paraphernalia threaten to flood from several open cupboards. Feet echo on the rune-etched floorboards of the chamber, and scrolls of strange Boreal writing hang from the walls. The heady scent of incense and less identifiable things waft through the air. Two chairs, swathed in cloths woven with mysterious symbols, are huddled by a fire over which a bronze cauldron bubbles with sweet-smelling liquid. A tray of exotic sweetmeats and spiced wine are placed in the outstretched claws of a gargoyle, while the Enchanter, or perhaps one of their assistants, garbed in outlandish outfits, interrogates them on the nature of their difficulty and - somewhat indirectly - the depth of their purse.

On the rare occasions that two clients visit in quick succession, they are often kept waiting. This is not, as they are informed, because the Great Enchanter must update their records, or meditate to clear their mind of distractions, or realign the lunar resonances of the chamber, but because locking or unlocking the cupboards, moving the rug, dispersing the scent of incense or dragging that wretched gargoyle in and out of the corner cupboard - to say nothing of changing outfits - are quite time-consuming. You'd know. It's your job.

It's a tough life being an apprentice. And the magical business isn't exactly booming.

Now, for the first time in weeks, someone has come to seek the aid of the Great Enchanter whose name is prominently displayed upon the brass plate outside your office! Fortune, or at least the ability to pay off the more pressing of your debts, beckons!

But the Great Enchanter is not there.

Incapacitated in a magical mishap? Drunk? Struck down with Dancing Fever? Engaged in a scandalous liaison at a weekend villa which you are strongly and sorcerously abdjured from interrupting? Dead? Just plain feckless?

But you really, really need the money.

And so you, the stout-hearted apprentices of the mage, must spring to the task for which your studies have in no way prepared you.

Don't panic!

It's not all bad. After all, you have spent months, perhaps years in the service of the Great Enchanter, who selected you for your undeniable arcane potential, and certainly not because you were cheap, found sleeping rough in the outhouse after running away from home, nearby and in need of a shilling when an old school rival showed up with a new apprentice, the child of a particularly persistent yet remote relative, hired as a bootboy but insist on calling yourself an apprentice, or you just wouldn't stop pestering them.

You know:

1. How to pack a very heavy rucksack really efficiently so you can carry all the mage's stuff as well as your own
2. Basic self-defence
3. How to evade a variety of adversaries
4. The fundamentals of business, as filtered through the idiosyncrasies of your mage
5. A little bit about theoretical magic
6. An assortment of minor incantations, mostly used for domestic chores and tiresome tasks the mage refuses to undertake.

You also know two genuine spells, which fall into one of the following categories:

1. The mage taught you this in a rare moment of determination, due to an urgent need to get something done, reluctance to risk taking part in a particular ritual, a brief flash of pedagogical responsibility, a drunken haze or an attempt to show up a rival. It is useful, perhaps impressive, though difficult to perform.
2. You learned this spell without the mage's sanction; perhaps you stole down to peruse a heavy tome of ancient wisdom, or accidentally broke a precious globe containing an imp who taught you the spell in thanks for its freedom, or peered through a crack in the floorboards and watched the mage conjuring. It is a potent, illicit spell which you had best not perform openly. You're pretty sure the chances of horrible death are quite low.

And of course, you have your own personal merits, (in)competencies and capabilities.

But more importantly, you really, really need the money.

Yes sir, madam, the Great Enchanter will take care of that right away.

Magic Scales

So at some point I had an idea for a different kind of magic/power system, and basically just wanted to scribble it down while I remembered. I'm certain that someone has already thought of this for an existing game; I just haven't come across it yet so I don't know where.

The immediate inspiration was reading some White Wolf stuff, which to my mind has a real problem with powers. Basically, they want you to have supernatural powers that sound really cool (and which, in game fiction, are really cool). Unfortunately, they also want to make those same powers very specific in their mechanical capabilities.

There are different possible interpretations of this. A generous reading is that, although White Wolf want to enthuse readers and fill their mind with possibilities, they're concerned that vague rules would leave the Storyteller to create mechanics each time a power was used; the narrow capabilities are designed to lighten the load for STs and avoid balance issues. A harsher reading is that White Wolf aren't very good at matching mechanics to fluff, and are violently averse to giving players access to tools that might derail the Storyteller's beautiful plot; giving them very very specific tools ensures the Storyteller knows exactly what their capabilities are and can overrule requests for a broader interpretation.

Given that utterly broken powers have been a mainstay of the White Wolf experience from its inception, through its history, to the present day, and many of the powers are so oddly-written that the Storyteller still has to make arbitrary rulings on what's allowed, I'm going to have to plump for the latter.

There are a couple of downsides to this mixture. One is that players can be confused and disappointed when (for example) the power that they think allows them to overwhelm enemies with raw terror can be used exclusively to make them run away from you. The other is that you have to pay attention to what's possible, and some things that seem equivalent may be impossible because the designer didn't think about it, and there may be odd gaps in your supernatural arsenal.

My idea is basically the complete opposite of this ("complete opposite" is not a helpful description, and probably straight-up wrong) a very different approach to this.

So the White Wolf tack can basically be seen as permissive mechanics: You Can Do This. I've seen (somewhere) a more quantitative mechanics: You Can Do X Amount of This. I've seen narrative-quantitative approaches: You Can Roll Dice and Fluff the Result as This.

Insofar as I can classify it at all, I think this approach is more like narrative-dramatic. Essentially it's based on You Can Overcome These Challenges. Powers don't have any mechanical specifics at all; you simply choose a type of thing you can do, and decide how useful that ability is. Does it occasionally save you from mild inconvenience, or regularly allow you to achieve goals that would otherwise be beyond you?

• Trivial. The magic is nominal, or cosmetic, and of virtually no practical use (although it may be cool). Maybe you can change the colour of small items, create tiny illusions in your palm, create sparks,
• Convenient. The magic allows you to achieve something you could have done anyway, but sometimes saves you effort or time. For example, copying a document, flipping a light switch from a few feet away, reheating meals, making noises, cleaning objects, or giving someone an electric jolt instead of a pinch.
• Useful. The magic is a significant and regular asset that makes your life easier. For example, keeping your devices powered without charging (or even without batteries), locating an object you want within a room, protecting you from mild injury, telekinetically preparing meals while you watch TV, helping you win on the races, distracting an annoying person, providing a weapon, opening doors without the key, getting favours, or completing a task much faster than normal.
• Impressive. The magic provides major benefits or allows you to overcome substantial problems. For example, summoning a lost item, surviving dangerous situations, finding a person, learning hidden truths, getting into a secure area, providing a potent weapon, travelling great distances quickly, speaking new languages, removing physical barriers, or altering a person's opinion.

Note that the scale of your ability is absolute, even if you use it in different circumstances. If you have Convenient Electrokinesis and use it to turn on lights with your mind and therefore look cool, you cannot use this to turn off the forcefield using the switch on the other side of your prison barrier. Why? because that would be Impressive. It's up to you and the GM to establish why it isn't possible, if you care. In this case, clearly the barrier interferes with your mental powers.

Playing with 5e sorcerers

So I just wrote a (probably ill-advised) thing about changes to the warlock class aimed at making it less dependent on one trick. I've muttered before about some concerns I have with the sorcerer class, and I thought, why not look at that too?

First off, a quick disclaimer: I've only played a multiclass sorcerer, and I'm not in a position to comment usefully on balance. I'm not aiming to address any perceived class balance issues. As with the warlock, what I'm interested in here is flavour: how to make the sorcerer feel more distinctively sorcerery by riffing on its high notes.

Credence, Concentration and Caster Choices

So my elven ranger/sorcerer/monk who is currently composed of butterflies is currently invading the Spire at the heart of the Outlands to battle an immortal agent of cosmic equilibrium bent on genocide of her own apparently-mythical race.

What this means is I'm probably going to hit 11th level soon, which means a new Spell Known. Hoorah! I'm really indecisive about this sort of thing so I decided to brush up in advance and get some idea what I might want to learn. And I hit some snags.

Warlocks, revisited

Quite a long time ago, I talked about tweaking D&D 5e warlocks to reduce the system issues with eldritch blast and grant them more flexibility as a class. I also mentioned that I'd prefer to make broader changes.

I am nothing if not inclined to suddenly drop things I've been working on in favour of immediate whims reliable, so I'm going to revisit this topic now.

Fun with unusual spells

So, I've moaned a bit about certain aspects of 5e, including sorcery. As I've been playing casters recently, and planning others, I've spent a lot of time thinking about spells. I just want to throw out some ideas I've had for spells.

Wacky hijinks

The Elemental Evil handbook offers a lovely fun selection of new spells. Some of them have unexpected potential.

I'm pretty sure mold earth was intended to be a digging tool, but what it gave us is an infallible pit trap. You can instantly move a 5' cube of earth away, and although the spell specifically says the movement doesn't cause damage, it says nothing about being unable to dig around creatures or any defences whatsoever. Dig a 5' cube away under a target and drop them into a hole with no saves or attack rolls. Sure, it's only 5', but that should inconvenience them quite a lot. At the very least this should force a Concentration roll for casters. For extra bonus lulz, have two people take this. The first one digs out a 5' cube under an enemy; the second one shovels that 5' of earth right back on top of them. Let's see you take a standard action now, boyo. See also: quicken spell. Depending how your DM interprets all this, it's quite possibly one of the most powerful things a sorcerer can do.

Some thoughts on tweaking warlocks

I've been chatting to friends about warlocks, and had some more thoughts I want to share. Not all are my own.

One thing worth saying is that while it's easy to bundle it in with other spellcasters, I think the warlock is a very special case. To recall themes from my own stuff, it's a bit of a White Wolf case. The class has a quite generic and recognisable name that draws on some real-world tropes; it has a skin that looks familiar and tropey, in the form of "you made a pact with a terrible occult being for Great Magical Power"; but when you get down to it, it's actually a very specific concept that doesn't necessarily relate strongly to either name or skin.

This makes it quite different from the other 5e classes we've seen. Most classes can take in a range of archetypes. The paladin is explicitly a very narrow concept that's arguably one fighter archetype under a magnifying glass - but it acknowledges and owns that specificity.

In many ways the warlock is actually most similar to the rogue, of all things.

• Both seem superficially like broad concepts, but are pointed very firmly in one direction by non-optional mechanics.
• Both have a mechanic that grants bonus damage in certain situations, creating obviously optimal and non-optimal tactics.
• Both are lightly-armoured classes able to deal large amounts of damage to single targets.

You don't have to be evil to work here: not a D&D warlock

So, making random characters is a thing I like to do sometimes. A while ago, back during the days of 4E, I had quite a few character concepts knocking around. This was true even though I never got to play in a single game, as I was DMing.

One of these was a fiendish warlock idea. The 4E warlock, for those who don't know, had its own array of class-specific powers like all the other classes, and this meant the different warlock pacts could really go to town with thematic abilities. All of them were interesting, but the fiend stuck with me. It had powers like summoning demonic claws to rend people, drain their life to heal yourself, curse them and wreck their mind with terrible illusions until they carve themselves up, feed (bits of) your own soul to a demon to harm an enemy... Good stuff.

The idea that particularly appealed to me was someone who completely accidentally ended up in a fiendish pact. It's just nicely different. Specifically, I had this idea for a servant in a rich household, who stumbles across a diabolical ritual and ends up receiving the fiend's gifts in place of her master - because of course, fiends love to twist the rules. Naturally, she's then left fleeing from a sinister devil cult whose members could be lurking anywhere. I liked the idea of someone left to defend herself reluctantly with unwanted evil powers, and probably ending up in a destructive spiral.

Since 5e features the warlock too, and equivalent pacts, I thought I'd try building her here. Our current campaign is about 5th level, so I decided to go for a 5th-level character. Also, this tends to be quite enlightening about your capabilities, whereas 1st level can be somewhat uninformative.

After a while bashing stats around, I realised that it's actually quite difficult to build this warlock. There are two problems here.

Warlocked in

The first and primary problem is that essentially, the point of being a warlock is that you cast hex on people and maintain it more or less permanently to boost your damage, and then use eldritch blast to deal said damage. Eldritch blast allows you to hit multiple targets as you level up, rather than increasing damage for one target; the warlock also has a choice of beneficial upgrades that affect only eldritch blast, not any other cantrips. In particular, you can take an option that adds your Charisma bonus to each hit, which together with its long range quickly makes eldritch blast the deadliest cantrip out there - you can very quickly be dealing 1d10+3+1d6 (as good as a 1st-level spell), and this increases rapidly, hitting 2d10+2d6+6 at 5th level (average 24). Another option adds pushback, although there are fewer upgrades in 5e than the 3rd edition warlock. Warlocks are really good at this.

However, the flipside is that the warlock has very few other options, and most are flat-out worse from a mechanical perspective.

Hex can be maintained more or less forever, barring a failed concentration check. It transfers between targets on death, unlike any other spell except the similarly-intended hunter's mark, and it can lie fallow between combats only to be resumed as needed. Of the warlock's handful of other spells, nothing else comes close to being this all-round useful. Don't get me wrong, there are good spells in there, but the trade-off against hex's always-on damage boost is a heavy one. It seems pretty clear that the core warlock design, where spells are regained on a short rest but you have very few, is intended to ensure that warlocks can always have hex available, with other spells being a handy extra, a niche effect or a utility slot.

Added to this is the fact that hex takes your concentration slot, which means it's a pretty suboptimal decision to focus on any other spell that requires concentration. Charm person, hold person, fly, anything that enchants or boosts or does pretty much anything other than damage is unwise. Casting one of these will interrupt your hex, meaning you'll lose a long-term benefit for a short-term one that might not even work. After all, most of those require saving throws, and often allow multiple saves (as 5e has wisely tries to cut back on stunlocks), and only work on certain targets, whereas hex just flat-out works. Since you have very few spells known in the first place, choosing these is a big gamble or commits you to what's probably a suboptimal playstyle.

The scaling spellslots helps - casting hold person at 5th level is nice. But is the possibility of paralysing four humanoids (who get saving throws every round) worth the tradeoff of guaranteed extra damage against all creature types for basically every attack you make until your next short rest? Opportunity costs become a big concern for the warlock. Don't get me wrong, sometimes one of these spells will be exactly what you want. The difficulty is the combination of very limited spells known, the fact that casting any concentration spell means you lost a huge damage buff, and the way virtually any spell has a much more niche use than hex. There's a lot of reasons to favour simple, widely-applicable non-concentration spells.

The second factor is that the warlock's choice of spells is very limited, and specifically their cantrips. There's no solid alternative to taking eldritch blast. You can, of course, but you'll lose a lot of offensive capability without having much way of compensating. The fact that you can't use invocations to boost anything but eldritch blast particularly discourages any other approach. Your non-combat cantrips are minor buffs that don't offer much active capability, so there's not really any other obvious combination of abilities to build a playstyle around. If you aren't zapping things with eldritch blast, what exactly are you going to do? And if you are doing that, then taking hex is very much the optimal choice. And if you're using hex, then casting other concentration spells is nerfing yourself.

This is, I think, possibly a mistake? It seems to lock the warlock into a single niche far more firmly than any other class. The pacts offer a few more spell options, but don't fundamentally change the way warlocks work. Again, several are concentration spells that seem a poor choice given the fairly clear assumption that warlocks are running hex.

Dude, where's my curse?

So the other issue I ran into was that while I loved the flavour of a fiend-pacted warlock, the expected warlock mechanic of constantly hurling bolts of magical energy at people is very much not what I had in mind. Does that spell "sinister pact with a demon" to you? I mean, it can, there's plenty of basis for evil-powered superhumans, but that's not the image I get. I'm thinking darkness. I'm thinking lies. I'm thinking deception, and head games, and dread, and power over people, and blights and curses and afflictions. Sure, I'm also thinking fire and brimstone, but bolts of magic? Not really. Spooky young girl pactee does not hurl force lightning. She preys on your fears, or she conjures up claws of darkness to drag you into hell. Honestly, the bolt-hurling thing almost feels more like sorcery, all about inner reserves of raw magical power.

In all honesty, quite similar things apply to other pacts. If you've made a pact with things from beyond space and time, I expect you to warp reality and drive people insane, and conjure up monstrosities, rather than blast them with lasers. Fey, of course, are notorious for raining bolts of eldritch power down upon people - oh no, wait, they wrap people in illusions and transformations and enchantments, and turn the wild against them. The various pacts give you a slightly different group of spells to choose from, but don't seem to significantly change your capabilities.

In fairness, again, this is partly because warlocks depend on two different subclassing mechanics, the Patron and the Pact. Mostly the breakdown seems to be melee-based warlocks vs. zappy warlocks, with their patron-flavoured abilities mostly subsidiary.

It's possible to eventually burn an invocation slot to buy the ability to cast either bane (a level 1 spell) or bestow curse (a level 3 spell) once per day, using a spell slot in the process from your incredibly limited supply. That is a very expensive ability. It is, of course, getting auto-levelled to 5th level, which makes it quite good. Probably not good enough to be worth losing a spell slot and an invocation to gain a decent debuff on up to 4 enemies at the cost of (once again) dropping hex, though, to be honest. Bestow curse is a little better, but has similar issues - notably, one of its uses is to essentially duplicate hex on a single target.

Other invocation abilities include things like at-will illusion, seeing through even magical darkness, levitation, at-will armour. These don't burn any spell slots and can be used constantly. The bane spells are useful, no doubt about it, but it feels like an extremely begruding tradeoff that's strictly worse than these abilities.

Building a Servant of Darkness

I spent quite a while trying to knock my warlock into shape. I faffed about with the Arcane Initiate feat to obtain alternative cantrips. I played with multiclassing. And then I realised I was doing it wrong.

I want my warlock to whisper dark secrets that drive you mad, to bend people to her will, to hold them helpless, twist fate against them, blight them with afflictions. I don't want her walking around energetically hurling magic; I want a simple glance from her demon-lit eyes to send them fleeing.

You know who can do all that stuff? The bard.

I'm serious. Look at the bard spell lists. For a start, let's note that bards get far more spells because they're designed for a different niche. We begin with vicious mockery, rather weak (1d4) as cantrips go but with a reasonable rider of disadvantage for the target, and needing only verbal components. Very flavourful, just what I wanted. Minor illusion is a good extra here for those "Efficiunt Daemones, ut quae non sunt, sic tamen quasi sint, conspicienda hominibus exhibeant" moments. On the real spell front, we have bane, charm person, disguise self, dissonant whispers, faerie fire, feather fall, Tasha's hideous laughter, crown of madness, enthrall, heat metal (how daemonic is that? frying someone in their own armour?), hold person, suggestion, bestow curse, fear, speak with dead (being dead is no defence against a demon), animate objects, geas, eyebite...

Even most of the other bard abilities feel appropriate. Being surprisingly good at all skills? Drawing on diabolical knowledge. The bardic inspiration ability feels a little odd, until you get the College of Lore and use it exclusively to make your enemies fail at everything by mocking them, which fits perfectly. The only one that seems a little odd is the free healing for allies, and you can view even that as being just one of the many fringe benefits of association with diabolical power, call now to see how much you could gain, operators are standing by! Essentially it's the patron advertising to the character's social circle.

Annoyingly, there's still a few very evocative spells that aren't available to bards. Flesh to stone, create undead, any ability whatsoever to get an actual demon to help you. The fire end of things is very limited. Still, it seems a lot better than the warlock at portraying the classic servant of demonic powers. Ironic really.

My current inclination is actually to think that multiclassing is the way to get all the key spells, but that bard needs to be the basis. The Magic Initiate feat looks promising, as it would give access to produce flame (but none of the druid 1st-level abilities are very thematic) or to thaumaturgy and command from the cleric list, both of which are highly desirable. As usual, the best option for spell breadth is to multiclass into wizard and pick up those lovely fire spells. This would, amongst other things, help reduce your dependence on enchantments - I don't have the current monster manual, but in older editions a worryingly large number of things were immune to these spells. The light domain cleric is also potentially a very nice match, if you completely ignore all that fluff about deities.

Taking the Fifth: early thoughts on D&D 5e

So I've been playing 5th edition for a little while now, with a couple of different characters. I'm really enjoying it. It seems to make a very nice job of uniting things that were good about previous editions, improving game balance, and keeping everything flavoursome. Good job, WotC.

I just wanted to make a few observations based on my play so far. We've only hit levels 3 and 5 respectively in the campaigns, so it's early days yet. I don't claim particular expertise, and my notes will inevitably be coloured by my personal experience, as the stuff I've actually read in detail and thought hard about tends to be my own characters. I don't even own the DMG or Monster Manual.

For reference, those characters are:

• a 3rd-level human fey pact warlock ex-wheelwright who just got his sprite familiar (with cloth cap and tiny, tiny fey whippets), primarily distinguished by rolling really poorly on spell attack rolls and astonishingly well on fey charm rolls.
• a 5th-level elven ranger/draconic sorcerer/monk Gap Decade traveller who talks his way into bizarre situations and then is deeply bemused about why he suddenly has to fight his way out of them, using the motley collection of skills he's picked up between National Service, natural elven affiliation for magic, and other cultures' amazingly authentic and deeply spiritual practices that also involve flying kicks.

In general the experience has been extremely good; inevitably that means my comments here will tend towards the critical, because it's really hard to pin down why I enjoyed stuff, but easy to spot the things that jarred on me.

Power and Utility for Wizards and Warriors: ideas

So, last time I wrote a massive screed critiquing the class balance in D&D. See under "fruit, hanging, low". I am nothing if not up to date - which has worrying implications.

I should make some suggestions, then. I'm not saying I'd include these if I ran a game of D&D, they're just some general preliminary thoughts.

Some thoughts on rebalancing

So, if I were going to try and rebalance this, what would I do?

One obvious possibility is to open up new options for non-casters. Magic already lets mages more or less do everything. Well, the literature easily supports an argument that mages concentrate so much on magic they really don't have time for anything else, while warriors get other stuff. While they don't have much in the way of unique abilities, warriors are good at contributing to combat. What else can we do?

The idea here is to divide the game into a series of spheres, and then actively consider what each character type can do with each sphere. None of this business of assuming the fighter just fights things. Here, you'd aim to let a warrior choose some unique skillset that allows them to contribute to exploration, to social interaction, to combat.

Power and Utility for Wizards and Warriors: critique

I've been reading a LOT about this stuff on 5e forums, especially here, and so have some opinions to spout.

Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards is a very well-established trope of D&D, and it's still a bone of contention even in 5th Edition. Oddly enough, 4th edition was probably the best at keeping parity between classes, because of its power structure. Even then, wizards came out on top in terms of utility and flavour. Being able to inflict ten different types of damage, and target four different types of defensive stat, is simply better than being able to inflict one or two types of damage and target one or two defences; the wizard can avoid strengths and take advantages of weakness. Frankly, the wizard was also more interesting in fluff, because hurling an array of different spells tends to sound more interesting than a dozen ways of saying "I stab it".

So, what do I think the problems are?

For the purposes of this discussion, "mage" just means spellcaster while "warrior" simply means any non-spellcaster. Things like clerics have interesting middle grounds, but they're powerful spellcasters and that's a primary feature.

The first part of the problem is that "mages" get a whole new subsystem of the game to play with, accessible only to them. Meanwhile, "warriors" do not have any subset of the game which mages cannot interact with.

A second part of the problem is scope. There is no broad type of effect, and very few specific effects, which warriors can produce and mages cannot. Meanwhile, there are many effects mages can produce that warriors cannot.

The best example I've seen of this is someone pointing out that a high-level mage can produce an exact magical duplicate of the party fighter, allowing them to contribute literally everything that the fighter can on top of a vast array of other magical powers.

This is slightly truer in current editions. In some editions, rogues could find and disarm traps, which nobody else could touch. In practice, many traps would still be amenable to common-sense solutions, even if no rogue was present. It was also possible in most cases to simply soak up damage from all but the most lethal traps.