Developing a Magician Spell List:
What are the guidelines? In the BRCS, illusion and divination were dominant, of course, but enchantment and non-offensive transmutations were also fairly prominent. Do we want to keep this theme? Or do we want to get strict about no spells outside of the 2 main schools above level 2?
This issue must be decided on before we can begin picking the PHB and/or BRCS spell lists apart, otherwise it will be an impossibly confused task.
Osprey
I suggest that the magician’s spell list looks like this:[ul][li]Mostly Divination and Illusion spells, with a few unique magician spells (for example, imagine a spell called “Eleira’s Illus-Transition” which is an Illusion (Phantasm) [Mind-Affecting] spell that works mostly like polymorph self, except that the whole effect is illusory).[/li][li]Some Transmutation spells that allow for boosting one’s capabilities but nothing to extraordinairy (no Statue, for example).[/li][li]Evocation spells of only the lighter motives, like Gust of Wind. Shatter might be interesting as a part of the magician’s spell list.[/li][li]Necromantic effects are an issue, since 3e/3.5e does not go a lot towards allowing many necromanitc spells of a healing/helpful nature, unless they are also sinister. I have another few ideas concerning THAT part, though.[/li][li]Quite a few Abjuration spells, mainly Banishment, Magic Circles, and things like that I suppose.[/li][li]Conjuration is tricky.[/li][li]Not that many Enchantments, at least not unique ones.[/li][li]Magicians should also (in my opinion) have a small healing repertoire of spells, some of them possibly new (remember what I said about necromancy?).[/li][/ul]
Well, not to rehash an old argument, but there are quite a lot of spells
that are classified as being in one school or another that really could be
reclassified that would make sense for the magician`s spell list of
illusions, divinations or “universal” spells. The 5th level wiz/sor spell
Sending, for instance, seems like it would be a sensible spell for BR
magicians to cast and it could just as easily be defined as a divination
spell as an evocation. Daylight (3rd level arcane evocation) would be
doable for magicians.
In fact, here`s a list of spells that would normally be considered true
magic in 3e (and some that were in 2e) that IMO would be good for BR
magicians, their spell level and the 3e school classification:
Sepia Snake Sigil (3rd, conjuration)
Suggestion (3rd, enchantment)
Daylight (3rd, evocation)
Nondetection (3rd, abjuration)
Secret Page (3rd, transmutation)
Confusion (4th, enchantment)
Rary`s Mnemonic Enhancer (4th, transmutation)
Mordenkainen`s Private Sanctum (5th, abjuration)
Sending (5th, evocation)
Mordenkainen`s Lucubration (6th, abjuration)
Suggestion, Mass (6th, enchantment)
Mind Blank (8th, abjuration)
Demand (8th, enchantment)
Personally, I don`t think magicians should get access to the spells that
outright charm or dominate other characters, that being the province of
true magics and bards. A hint of that is OK (like suggestion) but full on
charm should be a step beyond them.
One should probably note that magicians should not be able to cast Shadow
Evocation even though it would be available to them as an illusion spell
because it basically allows them to cast spells (albeit less powerfully)
that they would be totally barred from casting. There are a few spells
that are classified as illusions or divinations that I don`t really buy for
BR magicians (like Simulacrum) but c`est la vie.
One might also dip into the spells that are normally considered clerical or
druidic, and a few that are bardic. A magician might, for example, be able
to cast the 2nd level divine spell Augury, and along with it the 4th level
spell Divination. Other spells that are in 3e classified as divine that
would probably be apt for magicians:
Detect Poison (0th)
Guidance (0th)
Know Direction (0th)
Detect Animals or Plants (1st)
Detect Chaos/Law/Good/Evil (1st)
Detect Snares/Pits (1st)
Detect Undead (1st)
Faerie Fire (1st)
Enthrall (2nd)
Find Traps (2nd)
Status (2nd)
Glibness (3rd, bard)
Sculpt Sound (3rd, bard)
Discern Lies (4th)
Modify Memory (4th, bard)
Zone of Silence (4th, bard)
Find the Path (6th)
Spellstaff (6th, druid)
Stone Tell (6th, druid)
Moment of Prescience (8th)
A few of those might be debatable, but on the whole I think they`re
sensible for magicians.
Gary
Gary, I like a lot of your suggestions, but I’m still debating whether magicians should have the bardic social-type spells. I would prefer that their main social spells remain divinatory, such as Detect Lies. While illusion and enchantment are arguably intertwined, I think Bards should remain the main magically-enhanced smooth talkers (with spells like suggestion and glibness and charm, that’s exactly the type of role created).
I think some excellent suggestions have been made, already. Here is my idea.
First and formost the guideline should be making magicians useful and fun to play. They will primarily be a support class denied the fire and brimstone of true magic.
So I think that necromancy is right out the door, foul taste to the stuff. All other spells looked at one at a time, and no I am not going to do that in one post.
I think the most important thing to remember is that magicians are not wizards sorceros bards clerics druids or any othe spell caster. They fill a uniqu niche of advisor and support. I think illusion and divination should be what they have most of, this is cannon. And they should probably get most illusion or divination spells a level or two earlier than wizards and sorcerors.
Other spells should be chosen to fufill the roll of advisor. If a spell seems allowable, but doesn’t seem quite right for a magician, raise it up a few levels. I already used the Tenser’s floating disk example in another thread. It is a decent spell, not overly powerful, but most definetly evocation. So, let the magician get it as a level 2 or 3 spell instead of level 1.
I will stop rambling now, and go dive into a cup of my morning coffee…
I like both Geeman’s and Raspk_FOG’s suggestions.
I always seem some of the magicians as the hedge wizard/witch in some of the smaller towns.
I would like to see some of the traditional ‘witch’ spells in their list:
Bestow Curse/Remove Curse
Eyebite
Ray of Fatigue
These are mostly necromatic effects, but not of the undead-affecting type. Without access to flashy evocations or many summonings, these would be the main defenses of magician.
Some healing spells would be needed, but nothing too powerful:
Cure light and maybe moderate
Lesser Restoration
Remove Disease
Remove Paralysis
I think most people are concentrating on Court Mages or something similar. But with mages being uncommon most towns would have a hedge witch instead of a mage. Trying to capture what spells have that flavor. (Adept from the 3.5 SRD has a small list, but not exactly what I was looking for. The witch spell list in the 3.0 DMG was more where I got these ideas from.)
At 08:09 PM 7/12/2004 +0200, destowe wrote:
>Without access to flashy evocations or many summonings, these would be the
>main defenses of magician.Some healing spells would be needed, but nothing
>too powerful:Cure light and maybe moderateLesser RestorationRemove
>DiseaseRemove ParalysisI think most people are concentrating on Court
>Mages or something similar.
I`d stay away from healing/curing magics if at all possible. Aside from
being redundant with the magics of divine spellcasters it isn`t IMO really
a matter of what would be practical for them to have access to. That is,
it would seem like heal spells would be a smart thing for them to have…
but it`s simply outside the capacity of the class itself. Given the ease
of multi-classing in 3e/3.5 if a BR magician wants to cure light wounds
they should take a level as a priest of Ruornil (or whatever) so it`s
really not that hard for a pragmatic magician to get access to healing
magics if s/he really wants.
>(Adept from the 3.5 SRD has a small list, but not exactly what I was
>looking for. The witch spell list in the 3.0 DMG was more where I got
>these ideas from.)
Yeah, when it gets right down to it Magicians just have to have their own
unique spell list… “Cheating” the spell list using schools of magic
just doesn`t really work game mechanically or thematically IMO.
Gary
That does sound like a good idea Geeman.
Remove the healing and they can multi-class for them. The choice of cleric would probably reflect better the type of spells they cast then.
I would beware of the one that worships Eloele in the small town. Preferably find the one dedicated to Sera or Rournil instead.
Heres what Id propose for a BR magician`s spell list. In 3e some of
these spells are classified in schools of magic other than illusion and
divination. I`d suggest that they could for BR purposes be reclassified
without hurting things.
3rd: Blindness/Deafness, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Daylight, Deeper
Darkness, Displacement, Illusionary Script, Invisibility Sphere, Glibness,
Major Image, Sculpt Sound, Sepia Snake Sigil, Suggestion, Tongues.
4th: Arcane Eye, Confusion, Detect Scrying, Discern Lies, Hallucinatory
Terrain, Illusionary Wall, Improved Invisibility, Locate Creature, Mnemonic
Enhancer, Modify Memory, Phantasmal Killer, Rainbow Pattern, Scrying, Zone
of Silence.
5th: Contact Other Plane, Dream, False Vision, Feeblemind, Mirage Arcana,
Nightmare, Persistent Image, Private Sanctum, Prying Eyes, Seeming,
Sending, Telepathic Bond.
6th: Analyze Dweomer, Find the Path, Legend Lore, Lucubration, Mass
Suggestion, Mislead, Permanent Image, Programmed Image, Project Image,
Spellstaff, Stone Tell, True Seeing, Veil.
7th: Greater Scrying, Insanity, Mass Invisibility, Sequester, Vision.
8th: Demand, Discern Location, Mind Blank, Moment of Prescience, Screen.
9th: Foresight, Weird.
I excluded some spells from that list that are typically illusions:
Simulacrum is a 7th level illusion that isn`t really very illusionary if
you think about it. There is, however, a rather short list of 7th level
spells there, so one might want to put it back.
I also excluded all the shadow related spells (shadow conjuration, shadow
evocation, shadow walk, etc.) since many of them effectively allow the
caster to use what is in BR true magic… and because I think several of
them would work really well for a magician based prestige class (a sort of
magician/shadow walker.)
Re: Blindness/Deafness. It seems possible for magicians to use an
illusionary version of this spell that would, effectively, put up an
illusion before their eyes or blocking their ears to prevent them from
using those senses. I did not, however, include Remove Blindness/Deafness
because that spell can actually heal damaged organs, which I think should
be beyond magicians. A version of that spell that was purely a counter to
the Blindness/Deafness spell, however, should be included IMO.
Gary
I’ve always thought Shadow Magic was a perfect weapon for the illusory specialist of Cerilia, the magician. If they get shadow versions of evocation, they are only as deadly if they are believed to be real. I think of shadow magic as a combination of conjuration and illusion in BR, as it draws on the Seeming to manifest in the physical world.
For this reason I’d opt for allowing shadow magic, but perhaps at +1 spell level compared to wizards and sorcerers (who have an easier time with that school).
I’m in favor of the suggestion to allow some support/defensive magics of above 3rd level. I think evocation should be a banned school in most cases (especially spells above 2nd level) as a most basic balancer for specialty with illusion and divination spells.
I’d prefer if Magicians recieved Heal as a class skill, and a spell like Competence (+ caster level as bonus for one skill). They could be practically helpful, and use magic indirectly to improve their skills and insight into healing, a high-demand skill for support characters.
Clerics then stand in greater contrast as a class, for they are the miracle workers and faith healers, those who are direct conduits of divine power.
Magicians don’t tend to stand in the spotlight so often. Instead they must be clever, creative, and competent to find a place of power, respect, or fame. Subtle magics should be their forte. I imagine Silent and Still Spells would be common amongst veteran magicians, especially court magicians.
IMC I prefer the NPC Adept class for many village and rural wise women, witches, warlocks, etc. Theirs is a magic that is elemental, social, based on ritual, faith, and a strong intuition. The magician stands as a small step “above” the adept in terms of power and sophistication. Most magicians are well-recieved by wizards, but I could hardly imagine the same for adepts.
It would be nice to see some decent specialty spells that are exclusive to the magician. I like it if the magican has a few tricks that true mages don’t have the finesse or focus for.
Osprey
Gary,
There is no real reason to reclassify the schools of spells for BR, other than your propensity to ‘want to do that’. All of the 3.5 spells had a school assigned to them for a reason, this has a lot to do with Spellcraft checks, specialist wizards, etc. and messing with that messes with the mechanic drastically. I know we have disagreed with the requirement/concept that every spell belongs to only 1 school in 3.5, there are other descriptors/designators, but there is only 1 school for every spell.
A magician’s spell list works regardless of what the school of the spell is in period.
Adding spells from other classes works, which is what was done in the last BRCS version of the class - there were several high level cleric only Ill/Div spells added to the magician’s spell list.
I’ve been working on a version of the SRD spell list and adding what schools the spells are in for the bard/cleric/druid/ranger/paladin ones. Once I’ve finished I’ll post it - it should make looking these things up easier for a point of reference.
One thing I think still will need to be done to make the magician class a truely playable one is to add more class abilities. IMO we just won’t be able to come up with a a sufficient number of higher level spells to make it an effective spellcasting class at higher levels, hence this weakness will have to be adjusted via class abilities at the higher levels.
At 12:12 PM 7/13/2004 +0200, irdeggman wrote:
>Gary, There is no real reason to reclassify the schools of spells for BR,
>other than your propensity to want to do that.
We could argue this again, but there are both thematic and game mechanical
reasons to reclassify those spells, so it`s not merely a “want to do that”
situation. (Which, BTW, is reason enough to change things.) Those reasons
have failed to make an impression in the past, so I doubt they will in this
context either, but I can list the two main reasons they are significant
here once more:
changing the fundamental BR theme that differentiates between lesser and
true magic. This is important to create a workable spellcasting character
class since without it the magician`s spell list is very short–arguably
too short to be playable.
to use other 3e mechanics for magicians. To wit, the 3e school
specialization effects for arcane spellcasters upon those spells. Since
magicians are specialists in illusion and divination (and are, in fact,
limited to those spells over 2nd level) reclassifying those spells not only
gives them access to them but makes them better at using them than would
another spellcaster. This maintains both parity with 3e`s rules and the 2e
concept of such characters.
All of the 3.5 spells had a school assigned to them for a reason, this has
a lot to do with Spellcraft checks, specialist wizards, etc. and messing
with that messes with the mechanic drastically. I know we have disagreed
with the requirement/concept that every spell belongs to only 1 school in
3.5, there are other descriptors/designators, but there is only 1 school
for every spell.
I wasn`t suggesting that the spells should be given two schools of magic,
but that they should be reclassified entirely. However, it would work
either way in this case. In fact, it probably works better just to put
them in both schools. It works for the same reasons it works with adding a
nature school of magic, and it still has absolutely no negative
consequences whatsoever other than disagreeing with the interpretation of
the 3e classification system as being a purposeful construct that cannot be
tampered with–an interpretation that I still find more than a little
dubious. Calling Sepia Snake Sigil both an illusion spell and a
conjuration spell, for instance, will work just fine, will still maintain
parity with 3e, allow BR magicians to cast the spell with the functions of
that class, and maintain the BR theme. Or it could just be called an
illusion spell.
I feel obliged to reiterate that the one spell/one school concept remains
unsupported by any actual prose in the 3e texts or any D20 text and is an
interpretation of how they organized the spells in the PHB. Not abiding by
that (questionable) theme has very little negative effect. Even if it did,
such changes remain the purpose of campaign material in the first
place. Assuming it is a 3e theme it`s the kind of thing that is
specifically changed in campaign settings for reasons that it is changed in
BR. At its core, this is a 3e vs. campaign material argument. My position
is that campaign material ALWAYS overrides such core material “rules” as
the classification of spells. It`s less significant a change than paladins
of alignments other than lawful good, a noble PC class, or any number of
basic 3e game mechanics that have been changed in the BRCS. It`s certainly
less of a change than using the Unearthed Arcana bloodline system to
portray awnsheghlien…
A magician`s spell list works regardless of what the school of the spell
>is in period.
I find it insufficient in that if one wants to include a few spells that
are not somehow reclassified it contradicts one of the basic BR campaign
themes.
>Adding spells from other classes works, which is what was done in the last
>BRCS version of the class - there were several high level cleric only
>Ill/Div spells added to the magicians spell list. Ive been working on a
>version of the SRD spell list and adding what schools the spells are in
>for the bard/cleric/druid/ranger/paladin ones. Once Ive finished Ill
>post it - it should make looking these things up easier for a point of
>reference.
That should help. I did go through all the spells in the PHB in order to
find ones dedicated to other classes to come up with the spell list
previously posted, but I`m sure there are some I might have missed,
however, so a more definitive listing that is easier to work with would
probably help.
One thing I think still will need to be done to make the magician class a
truely playable one is to add more class abilities.
That would help. One could also go with a few prestige classes… That
way one can assume that magicians specialize in particular areas once their
spell list starts to get thin.
IMO we just won`t be able to come up with a a sufficient number of higher
>level spells to make it an effective spellcasting class at higher levels,
>hence this weakness will have to be adjusted via class abilities at the
>higher levels.
That may very well be. Even the expanded list of spells from other schools
is “bottom heavy” having only a few spells at 7th level or higher. Of
course, that means up to 12th level as a magician we are good to go, but it
doesn`t particularly satisfy.
Gary
destowe schrieb:
>This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=36&t=2737
>
> destowe wrote:
> I like both Geemans and Raspk_FOGs suggestions.I always seem some of the magicians as the hedge wizard/witch in some of the smaller towns.I would like to see some of the traditional witch spells in their list:Bestow Curse/Remove CurseEyebiteRay of FatigueThese are mostly necromatic effects, but not of the undead-affecting type. Without access to flashy evocations or many summonings, these would be the main defenses of magician.
>
That would be true if the Magician would be just a specialized wizard.
But neither in 2E nor in 3E is he only a speciazlized wizard. In 2E he
had access to non-weapon-proficiencys that the True wizard had not but
only the rogue. He could fight with weapons the True wizard could not.
And they could cast spells of level 1 and 2 of all schools, despite that
a specialized wizard would be completley banned from his opposed school.
bye
Michael
As I said earlier I’ve been working on a “tool” that may help. I’ve been going through the PHB spells and making a list with the schools. Here is an excel version, sorted by school and then name of the spells from the PHB. I listed them by the SRD name with the PHB name in parens. I only included the core spellcasting classes and only the spells from the PHB, but since it is excel - if you have excel on your PC (or a product that can import it) then you can add as you see fit.
I had to zip the files, since I can’t upload an excel file directly to the board. I included 2 excel versions, one that has a break in the rows between schools and one that doesn’t. I also included a pdf version for those who only want a printed list.
Here is the pdf file alone.
That is an inspring amount of work, I remember when I had time like that… Now i have a wife and kid…
Anyway, I intend to add a column called magician, and start Assiging spells to levels. I would suggest that anyone opinionated enough do something similar, and then we can compare notes and see what we end up with.
And a hint for the less excel savvy, if you highlight the first row, and press control+shift+end it will highlight the whole list and you can sort it by any column, to get the list by spell level for a single class.
Originally posted by Kelphthal@Jul 16 2004, 06:31 PM
[b] That is an inspring amount of work, I remember when I had time like that… Now i have a wife and kid…
[/b]
Time, what time? I’m 46, married and have a 13 year old son who is playing a pretty good wizard in a friend’s 3.5 campaign.
Class features is the best thing to take into account; some wonderful ideas can be given from the Athasian bard (www.athas.org; I know you are aware of the class, Irdeggman, you’ve told us 
), as well as various other sources. Ideas that we could bear in mind would be the inclusion of social-/survival-related bonus feats, bonus on skill checks, addition to class skills, Spell Mastery (which should be allowed to Magicians as well, even if they effectively have Spell Mastery with all of their cantrips).
I want to ask something: how do people generally feel about that idea of mine, having magicians, let’s say, “unlocked” with their subtlety of magicks the secret to healing poisoning, or similar effects? I have designed a 5th-level arcane spell that generally works like neutralise poison except for the fact that it cannot detoxify naturally poisonous creatures or objects, and that the target takes 2d6 points of non-lethal damage for every detoxification it experiences unless it makes a successful Fortitude save, in which case it takes only half damage; all these effects are the result of metabolic speed-up.
RaspK_Fog
Depends on the perception of the magian class. Is he a shaman type of class or more a studious wizard-wanna-be? This would define whether or not the class would focus on alchemical type of healing (which IMO is how it would lead to the unlocking you are talking about).
In other games there are other class features that could reasonably be imported in some form; an ability that allows the character to pick a skill that is now treated as a class skill, rogue type-evasion abilities also make sense (IMO I wouldn’t go with adding sneak attack ones though), extraordinary luck type of abilities (one free re-roll per day) (see the Luck domain), etc.
I wouldn’t go with attack type of abilities, e.g., sneak attack, etc., they just don’t seem to fit the class concept IMO while luck based ones do.
Graduated bonuses to diviniation and/or illusion spells make sense to me also. That is the ‘specialist’ type of bonuses (+ to DC, + to spellcraft checks) like a +1 at a certain level with an additional +1 at subsequent levels.
Just some thoughts. Although concerning the athasian bard, I just don’t see the Cerilian bard being a master of poison. The class has always been portrayed as one that consults with and advised regents, a poisoner is just flat out not to be trusted. In Dark Sun, no one trusts bards because of this.
Bonuses to interaction skills, like diplomacy and knowledge (Nobility) also make sense, depending on how the class is perceived.
Err, I think you misunderstood me here; what I meant is that the Athasian bard as portrayed in www.athas.org fits the idea I have of class features suitable to the magician perfectly:[ul][li]Adding any one skill as a class skill to the character’s class skills, whatever his class may be. For example, a magician picks Spot as a “character skill”, meaning it is considered a class skill for him ever after. Alternatively, we could say that you choose two skills and they are forever after considered magician class skills for you; remember, class skills apply on a case-by-case basis in 3.5e, unlike 3e where class skills from your various classes where always considered class skills.[/li][li]Add a +2 bonus on any two skills.[/li][li]Add half your magician level as a competence bonus on Craft (any one skill), Knowledge (any one skill), Profession (any one skill), or Spellcraft checks.[/li][li]Learn an additional spell, from a cantrip up to any spell at least 3 levels lower than the maximum level of spells you can cast.[/li][li]Gain a +2 on saving throws against either Divination or Illusion spells and effects.[/li][/ul]
These are of course nothing but examples.