Cryomancy: Re-fluffling Spells for a Theme (and Minor Mechanics Changes)

[RickAllison]

Hello, everybody!

I want to make my wizard more icy, as his patron is the lady of death, the Raven Queen. To that effect, I am looking at re-flavoring, re-fluffing, and occasionally re-doing the mechanics of spells to fit that theme. So here goes!

Cantrips:
Green-Flame Blade to Violet-Ice Blade. Ice crystals gust around the target (later dealing damage), then come together as one shard that explodes against an adjacent creature.
Booming Blade to Binding Ice. Ice leaps from the blade and binds the target to the ground. If broken by movement, the shards explode and inflict cold damage.

1st:
Fog Cloud to White-Out. Thick snowfall and winds surge in the sphere, obscuring vision.
Grease to Black Ice. Slippery, isn't it?

2nd:
Flaming Sphere to Ice Crystal.
Hold Person (and later Hold Monster) become ice-themed, trapping the user as a frozen statue. Maybe turn it into a Con save?

3rd:
Fireball to Avalanche. Drop some snow on them!

4th:
Greater Invisibility to Hidden Flurries. Disappear in a burst of chilling winds, become hard to track.

5th and 6th have good ice spells already.

7th:
Forcecage to Frozen Prison. Just fluff here.

8th:
Incendiary Cloud to Blizzard.

9th:
COMET STORM!! About what it sounds like.

Thoughts?

[Dalebert]

Changing the energy type of spells goes beyond fluff. Far fewer creatures are resistant to cold than fire. You can take elemental master and now it works on all your spells. Part of the balance of the game is based on which spells are available for which energy types. That seems very much intended.

That said, I feel like the designers fell short of getting that balance right. For instance, they made the different draconic sorcerer types and anything but cold or fire seems practically non-viable. If I were your DM, and if you were picking something other than cold or fire I'd be fine with re-fluffing a few spells for you to work with your energy type. But there are already plenty of cold spells. There's no need.

[Crgaston]

Those all sound fantastic!


Except for the fireball analogue, because then wouldn't all that snow make the AOE difficult terrain? How about a sphere of absolute zero? Or tiny ice shards?

Instead of setting things on fire, it could make unattended liquids frozen for a certain amount of time, or unattended solids vulnerable to bludgeoning damage for a round or two.

I'm really thinking it would be appropriate to make those who fail their save unable to use reactions until the start of your next turn, but that isn't just fluff. Maybe drop the damage by 1d6 if you were to go that route.

[RickAllison]

Those all sound fantastic!


Except for the fireball analogue, because then wouldn't all that snow make the AOE difficult terrain? How about a sphere of absolute zero? Or tiny ice shards?

Instead of setting things on fire, it could make unattended liquids frozen for a certain amount of time, or unattended solids vulnerable to bludgeoning damage for a round or two.

I'm really thinking it would be appropriate to make those who fail their save unable to use reactions until the start of your next turn, but that isn't just fluff. Maybe drop the damage by 1d6 if you were to go that route.

Sounds great!

I don't think I will actually use the cantrips (as it is, I'm looking at Frostbite, Chill Touch, Shape Water, and Mold Earth), and I'm not particularly attached to any of the damage ones. Well, except for Comet Storm. But that is just because I love the idea of blowing up four massive ice balls.

Some other potential ones: Slow (as particles get colder, they are slowing down), Time Stop as Absolute Zero (basically dropping everything around to so cold that movement completely stops), and Imprisonment (Ice Prisons). I'm more inclined to use control or utility spells anyway!

[Sabeta]

Changing the energy type of spells goes beyond fluff. Far fewer creatures are resistant to cold than fire. You can take elemental master and now it works on all your spells. Part of the balance of the game is based on which spells are available for which energy types. That seems very much intended.

That said, I feel like the designers fell short of getting that balance right. For instance, they made the different draconic sorcerer types and anything but cold or fire seems practically non-viable. If I were your DM, and if you were picking something other than cold or fire I'd be fine with re-fluffing a few spells for you to work with your energy type. But there are already plenty of cold spells. There's no need.

A lot of Fire Spells seem to have a direct cold analogue, such as Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost. The general theme seems to be that Fire deals direct damage, and Cold deals slightly less but with a useful effect added on. It's definitely something that I would work with the DM on to create proper balance, but overall could be a very fun addition to a game. Unfortunately, Resistances always tend to make some spells and weapons more viable than others no matter how hard Developers try otherwise (and in D&D it doesn't look as though they tried terribly hard).

I would probably take an effect from a normal a normal Cold spell (equal to the spell you're trying to change, ideally), and then lower the damage by probably an average of d2. This might still be a bit too strong, but perhaps lower Green Flame Blade's damage by d2 and giving it the effect of Frosbite could be really cool and stylish.

[Strill]

Far fewer creatures are resistant to cold than fire.

Not true (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?379165-MM-Resistances-Immunities-Vulnerabilities-and-Damage). More creatures are resistant to cold than fire, but fewer are immune to cold than fire.


Part of the balance of the game is based on which spells are available for which energy types. That seems very much intended.

No it's not. With the exception of Fireball and Lightning Bolt, all the spells used a completely standardized table of damage values. Fireball and Lightning Bolt, which were buffed because they're fan favorites from previous editions, deal the damage of a spell two spell levels higher than they are.

While it's true that Radiant and Force are almost never resisted, the books don't give special treatment to any other damage type. Therefore I see no problem with refluffing most spells to be a different damage type.

[DragonSorcererX]

Hello, everybody!

I want to make my wizard more icy, as his patron is the lady of death, the Raven Queen. To that effect, I am looking at re-flavoring, re-fluffing, and occasionally re-doing the mechanics of spells to fit that theme. So here goes!

Cantrips:
Green-Flame Blade to Violet-Ice Blade. Ice crystals gust around the target (later dealing damage), then come together as one shard that explodes against an adjacent creature.
Booming Blade to Binding Ice. Ice leaps from the blade and binds the target to the ground. If broken by movement, the shards explode and inflict cold damage.

1st:
Fog Cloud to White-Out. Thick snowfall and winds surge in the sphere, obscuring vision.
Grease to Black Ice. Slippery, isn't it?

2nd:
Flaming Sphere to Ice Crystal.
Hold Person (and later Hold Monster) become ice-themed, trapping the user as a frozen statue. Maybe turn it into a Con save?

3rd:
Fireball to Avalanche. Drop some snow on them!

4th:
Greater Invisibility to Hidden Flurries. Disappear in a burst of chilling winds, become hard to track.

5th and 6th have good ice spells already.

7th:
Forcecage to Frozen Prison. Just fluff here.

8th:
Incendiary Cloud to Blizzard.

9th:
COMET STORM!! About what it sounds like.

Thoughts?

Awesome! You asked about Con Save on Spells, I think it should be like this:

Ice shards, snow balls and physical ice attacks = Dex Save.

Cold energy rays, cold winds and other kinds of cold energy attacks = Con Save.

[Oramac]

1st:
Fog Cloud to White-Out. Thick snowfall and winds surge in the sphere, obscuring vision.
Grease to Black Ice. Slippery, isn't it?

Don't forget Ice Knife in Elemental Evil.

[Specter]

The Arctic Druid's spell list can give you more ideas.

What I would worry about is having one thematic damage spell per level, and the rest as utility spells.

[RickAllison]

Don't forget Ice Knife in Elemental Evil.

Oh that's already in the character sheet, this is for spells that are being changed!


The Arctic Druid's spell list can give you more ideas.

What I would worry about is having one thematic damage spell per level, and the rest as utility spells.

That is one of the things I was intrigued about. Some levels have lots of cold spells (6th has them aplenty!), and others are relatively dead.

[jas61292]

I personally have had an idea for a Cold based Sorcerer for a while, who hasn't yet seen play due to the idea not fitting well into any campaign I have done so far. But as part of coming up with the idea, I have thought a lot about this kind of stuff.

Personally, I think the biggest place Cold (and a lot of other damage types) is missing out is at third level. There is nothing to even compare to Fireball, and that is unfortunate. Electric has Lightning Bolt, but no other damage type really has anything of the sort.

Now with that said, because Fireball and Lightning Bolt are different spells, but do the same damage, I wanted to think up other elemental types that are similar for that level. Obviously, with fire being one of the worst damage types due to all the resistances, it gets a far larger, and arguably more useful area than lightning Bolt, and that is totally fair, and something I would want to take into account. Simply changing the damage type of fireball would be boring, and not exactly balanced.

That said, there is one other thing I love about both Fireball and Lightning Bolt. Both are real world phrases, and both also pretty much directly state the damage type and the area of effect of the spell right in the name. And so, after thinking about it for a while, I have decided that, whenever it is that I finally get to play my Sorcerer idea, I am going to make sure the DM allows me to have my cold damage alternative to those two: Ice Cube. There may be other spells I would want to refluff or change, but that one is non-negotiable.