Words of Power casting, what do you think?

[Alanto]

I'm thinking of (checking with the players first of course) using and possibly enforcing PF's Words of Power casting style for my next campaign.
I quite like the flexibility, and it looks like it might limit some of the crazier excesses of spellcasters, though I realise it risks making 'em take even longer over their selection and such...and now I think of it, possibly kneecapping people like Alchemists.

Basically, I was just hoping to ask: Has anyone played using the words of power system? Is it any good? Is there something I'm missing, and in fact makes it brokenly silly?

[atemu1234]

I'm pretty unfamiliar with this system, but I'll give it a shot:

If people aren't known for doing it, odds are it's not too good. I'll look into it and get back to you. Is it based off of the Dark Speech/Celestial Speech from the BOVD and BOED, respectively?

[stack]

It has niche uses, especially for summoning focused spontaneous casters, but the limited words and lack of ongoing support prevents it from seeing much use. Just another mostly forgotten idea printed and abandoned.

[atemu1234]

It has niche uses, especially for summoning focused spontaneous casters, but the limited words and lack of ongoing support prevents it from seeing much use. Just another mostly forgotten idea printed and abandoned.

I'd check homebrew about it then. Odds are the internet isn't this forgetful.

[squiggit]

It's a pretty cool concept, but the variant's received no support whatsoever so it's pretty barebones.

[Alanto]

I'm pretty unfamiliar with this system, but I'll give it a shot:

If people aren't known for doing it, odds are it's not too good. I'll look into it and get back to you. Is it based off of the Dark Speech/Celestial Speech from the BOVD and BOED, respectively?

It's not based on any specific language as I understand it, it seems to be fluffed more like a precursor to 'modern' magic styles and spells.

[grarrrg]

Read the Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?291907-PF-CTP-s-Guide-to-Words-of-Power&p=15594488&viewfull=1).
See if anything jumps out at you.

[Spore]

Compared to classical casting it is

- more flexible than spontaneous casters
- worse than actual named spells (if you want to emulate a cure light wounds, it suddenly does 1d6+CL (up to 5).

Niche uses include creation of undead and summoning as a standard action (taken from the guide). I could also imagine blasting as the power is there and you can choose the form of the spell with target words. That's a thing I never liked about Vancian blasters. If you want a Cone you have to have Dragon's breath, a 1st level or a 5th level spell. There is no way to create a 3. level fire cone.

[Thealtruistorc]

Personally, I find it too limited and not powerful enough. The combinations don't allow you to do anything drastically different from a regular caster, and more often than not you will find regular spells more useful.

[Red Fel]

I dunno. I read a guide (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5kvBvq2DEHjY2pwRUNXcG5Ybjg/edit?pli=1) that suggested some pretty cool and unusual stuff you could do with Words of Power.

Like making a wall out of pure terror. Or throwing a fireball made of lightning that targets will saves instead of reflex saves. Or launching enemies up into the air, creating a fog bank that limits line of sight, and bombarding them with a blizzard while your party remains comfortably below.

[Serafina]

Words of Power are best for Sorcerers since it gives them great flexibility.
It's less good for Wizards for that very reason.
It's quite limited for other casters since they suffer from a limited selection of words.

The system needs GM-arbitration on a few issues:
- How do feats/traits/effects that apply to specific spells to combinations of words? A Prime Example would be Spell Specialization - does it take effect if i combine the word i have selected with other words, or only if i cast it as a standalone word? If the latter, can i pick a combination of words for the feat instead?
- Does Instantaneous count as a Duration for the effect of a word-spell? RAW lists it as a possible duration (along with permanent or rounds/level and such), but actually not treating it as a duration allows for much more interesting word-combinations.

It will probably require quite a bit of GM-invention too, mostly for making new words to make up for the limited selection (which isn't all that hard though) and because it simply doesn't interact at all with certain rule systems such as Mythic Rules.

Spontaneous Casters can pull Shenanigans to get access to actual spells - since any effect that gives a specific spell (instead of allowing you to select one) gives you that spell (examples are Bloodline/Mystery-spells), you can use Pages of Spell Knowledge (which contain specific spells, such as a PoSK (Contingency)) to simply add them to your arsenal. Pages of Spell Knowledge are not spell trigger/completion items, so you can simply craft them without having access to the required spell (which is actually easy for wordcasters, since they only add +2 to their craft-DC for that).
Fluff-wise this can easily represent spell-research, but a GM should be aware of that option and decide whether to allow it or not.


Using Words of Power to limit the impact of Spellcasters is actually a great option, since it simply removes a lot of the game-changing spells out there. However, it will relegate arcane casters to minion masters (summoning and undead creation) and blaster roles, while divine casters will have a small amount of buffs and healing wordspells.
A Word-of-Power Sorcerer without Shenanigans to get actual spells (beyond their bloodline-ones) should be firmly in T3 - they still have great flexibility and significant impact, but nothing as powerful as certain spells.

[Person_Man]

Reading through them there are a number of gems. For example, Accelerate gives you an extra Move Action every turn, and action advantage is the quickest route to optimization. Seems like a pretty convoluted system though. Can someone explain it in 3 sentences or less?

[Red Fel]

Reading through them there are a number of gems. For example, Accelerate gives you an extra Move Action every turn, and action advantage is the quickest route to optimization. Seems like a pretty convoluted system though. Can someone explain it in 3 sentences or less?

Nope. I may be fairly new to PF, but having read through the rules and guides, this is one thing I get - Words of Power is a complicated system, that really requires you to have a comprehensive understanding of how it works, ideally by going over the rules extensively. Once you do, of course, it's easy to work with. It's kind of like algebra; you have to study the mechanics of what it means to solve for x, but once you understand that, you can pretty much apply basic algebra to any algebraic equation presented to you.

I'll try, though.

Words of Power replaces the idea of individual spells with "words," which are spell components (effects, shapes, and metamagics) that can be rearranged and combined to produce different effects. It gives you increased versatility at the cost of removing some of the most powerful spells from your arsenal. You slap together your Words, and the highest level Words involved will determine spell slots, save types, damage types, and other variable factors.

Three sentences. How's that?

[Serafina]

Short explanation (not limiting myself to three sentences because that causes convoluted sentences).

Any caster can decide to be a Wordcaster, which leads to them learning Words instead of Spells, those words are then combined into Wordspells.
Words come as Target-, Effect- and Metawords which respectively determine what the wordspell targets, what its effects are and the latter modify some of the former. You always know all target-words and they don't count against spells known or anything, while effect- and metawords do.

Combining is pretty easy: You take a Target-word and one or more Effect-words.
If you take several Effect-words, you take the lowest duration, the save of the highest-level individual words (you can chose on a tie) and must obey the target-restrictions of all words (if thats not possible the combination isnt allowed). Multiple Effect-words count as a higher level according to a table (two levels higher if its two words, or one/three levels higher if its two words of unequal level, or three levels higher if its three words).
The level of a Wordspell is equal to the level of its Effect Word(s) OR it's Target-word OR any Metawords, the two aren't combined or anything.


Actual three-sentence version:
A character can chose to be a Wordcaster and automatically know all target-words and learn Effect- and Metawords instead of normal spells.
Multiple Effect-words can be combined with changes to the wordspells level according to a table, and you keep the lowest duration, highest save and all target-restrictions.
A wordspell is memorized and cast like any normal spell, using the highest level of target-, effect- or metawords to determine its spell level and all relevant effects and using all effects of all effect-words and targets what its target-word says it does.

[Alanto]

Hmm. So basically, it *is* lower-powered than regular casting, but more flexible and will need some GM tweaking. Cool.

I think I'll run with it then, given I was planning to do a sort of setting where magic *used* to work like the Vancian version in the books, but then got essentially switched off for a couple of millennia, knowledge was lost...

....blah blah blah in the meantime people have figured out about back up to the level of Power Words, so that's what there is (the odd surviving stave or whatnot still being around if you can find them, but stupid-expensive since nobody's making them anymore)


Anyway, thanks a lot all, and for the list to the guide, I didn't realise there were guides for basically everything at this point :smallsmile:

[Vedhin]

Hmm. So basically, it *is* lower-powered than regular casting, but more flexible and will need some GM tweaking. Cool.

I think I'll run with it then, given I was planning to do a sort of setting where magic *used* to work like the Vancian version in the books, but then got essentially switched off for a couple of millennia, knowledge was lost...

....blah blah blah in the meantime people have figured out about back up to the level of Power Words, so that's what there is (the odd surviving stave or whatnot still being around if you can find them, but stupid-expensive since nobody's making them anymore)


Anyway, thanks a lot all, and for the list to the guide, I didn't realise there were guides for basically everything at this point :smallsmile:

As someone who likes this system, I advise only enforcing it for full casters. Other casters have quirkier spell lists (Alchemists especially), so Wordcasting tends to nerf them needlessly. The Magus is also hit hard, because or how balance between melee and ranged touch spells is calculated (all Wordspells are balanced for ranged touch).

Also, keep an eye on the Undeath word. Standard action, ranged, expensive material component-free Animate Dead, one level lower. The Servitor line of words is also a big one to be aware of, as it's standard action summoning. Neither are really "broken", but free minions from Undeath make it really good.


Generally, you'll find arcane casters become debuffers and/or blasters, and divine casters tend towards buffing. Both get BC, and minonmancy.

[Serafina]

Well, in some ways Words can be stronger than their equivalent spells, and some don't have an equivalent.

- Various elemental words tag on secondary debuffs - an Ice Blast also Entangles, Acid Wave also Sickens etc. You generally don't find that amongst Blast-spells, but then again Blasting isn't known for its brokenness and this doesn't make it so.
- Undeath creates undead without requiring expensive Onyx, it also works at range and potentially on multiple targets. Extremely good for a Necromancer, irrelevant if you don't have shambling dead around.
- Summoning words are standard actions, not full-round actions.
- Accelerate grants a move-action - but then again thats mostly a boost for melee users, especially since there are no words that require full-round actions. It can also grant an extra attack that RAW stacks with Haste and similar effects/weapon enchantments.
- Borrow Future is basically Celerity, except without the extra cheese of having no drawback. It can potentially (boosted target word, pushing it to 7th-level) target a whole group giving HUGE alpha-strike potential
- Negation is an anti-magic field that doesn't have to be centered on yourself
- Lock Ward has some abuse potential - simply cast it on your off-time on corked potions, rolled up scrolls, closed books and whatnot and combine it with buff-words. Then open those objects (potentially as part of another action, such as drinking a potion or reading a scroll) to get basically free buffs

Of course, a lot of words are also worse than their equivalent spells - and the sheer shortness of the above list when compared to all the abusable/broken spells out there should tell you something too!

[Vedhin]

Also, don't forget that meta words have limited uses, and are needed if you want the "Selected" target word to target multiple creatures. This includes things like Undeath, Servitor, and almost every buff.