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View Full Version : Living Spells as Grafts



Xarteros
2017-04-18, 11:14 PM
Just thinking about grafts as a way of replacing limbs lost in battle, and I stumbled onto the train of thought of grafting actual spells as replacement limbs (Living Spells are from Eberron, for those not familiar)

What if you could make some form of Living-Spell graft? How would you design & price it?

Living Spells are meant to only be made from Area spells, or spells that create a non-creature summoned effect (Basically no monster summons, and no targeted spells). Thematically, I think only Line spells suit the style of a Graft (Thinking along the lines of a Lightning Bolt arm seems fine, but something like a Cloudkill arm doesn't make much sense unless you just pretend it condenses). However, that narrows down Spell options quite a lot, possibly enough to not really be worth it. One option would be to allow Ray/Ranged Touch/Touch spells as potential spells, to replace non-Line effect area spells. You could even just remove the Line spells too, and make it Touch/Ranged Touch/Ray spells only. Or, yeah, re-fluff all area spells to make them thematically compliant (Cloudkill arm is like an arm of solid smoke?)

How I think it would function would be to grant the Host creature a slam attack via the arm, and engage the spells effect on a successful slam (as normal for a Living Spell). The Engulf ability, however, I'd say would change to apply to enemies in a grapple (with the spell effect applying to the enemy each round they remain grappled, instead of for each round Engulfed). Would the change from Engulf --> Grapple be too much?

Since Living Spells normally gain a (flight? land?) speed based on the spells range, I was thinking maybe the graft would gain a natural reach based on the spell's range (Short range spell would have 5ft reach, Medium range spell would have 10ft, Long-range spell would have 15ft?), to retain the theme of longer-reaching spells

Living Spells also gain size based on the CL of the spell (CL 1-6 is a medium sized Living Spell, CL 7-12 is large, CL 13+ is huge). Should the creature's size have any bearing on what CL Living Spell Graft it can have attached? Not necessarily following those same figures, but something along the theme (more powerful spells create larger Living Spell Grafts, only usable by larger creatures)?

To break down into something easier to discuss:


How would the grafts be priced?
What spells would be applicable as a Living Spell Graft (Line, any Area, Touch/Ranged Touch etc)?
What spells (if any) could break this system? How could you work around any such spells?
How to activate the spell's effect, and potential limitations?
Graft gets Reach or other bonuses based on Spell Range?
Should the CL-based size of a Living Spell limit what creature it can be attached to?


Super keen to hear some feedback, and see if this system could get ironed out

Morphic tide
2017-04-19, 10:12 AM
I don't know the rules for normal Living Spells, so this is just spewing Ideas at it:

A. The Reach could be a fixed fraction of the spell's actual range, allowing fixed-ranged spells to "work," but with the cost of not being able to use that limb for normal grasping while using the spell-reach. Unless the spell is Telekinesis or something else that lets you use it as such by the nature of the spell.

B. The size of the non-graft Living Spell might alter the reach, or make the graft harder to get rid of in some way. Like, each size category might add 5 ft to the reach of the graft.

C. One might have the grafts give you the ability to cast the spell they are made of as either a cooldown Spell-Like ability or a uses per day Spell-Like ability. I'd prefer the cooldown, as it gives you the ability to have the cooldown of casting the actual spell be shared with the cast-on-Touch version, letting there be no difference between the two function's benefits. Like having a Heal arm.

D. Price should probably be related to the Continuous Spell custom magic item formula. Which is to say, larger durations reduce the cost of the graft, and the cost increases with both spell level and caster level. This lets you make 3rd level spells the best option for quite a few categories of use, because that's the limit of what can be Persisted by most classes. Given that you'll be using the spell it's made of, the formula has to make it so that Persist breaks even in cost, if not actually goes up slightly over the non-Persisted version.

E. Some spells break it. They have to be cut out. The vast majority are Instantaneous. The solution is to not allow Instantaneous spells, or make them cost so much that you are far better off grabbing something less crazy that's mostly interchangeable. I'd prefer the crippling cost, because having your limbs replaced with 9th level spells like Imprison and Wish as an Epic Level Sorcerer is liable to let you laugh about becoming magic. I'd even allow for Epic Living Spell grafts, given that even the most mild Epic Level Spells are liable to have disgustingly huge Spellcraft DCs. Yes, my arm lets me whack people and turn them into Devourers if they are killed by it because it's actually a Living Spell version of an altered Demise Unseen. It cost more than a level 20 character's WBL to make, but I can do it once per hour!

F. Make the various functions adjustable. Maybe you want it to be uses per day, or have it be multiple charges with cooldowns that add up to uses per day, or change the reach function. Having these be available to adjust makes it a lot more useful. One of the weirder ones might be allowing you to create Living Spells as minions from the limb, expending charges of the spell to do so and possibly diminishing the power of the limb permanently.

G. On that note, having a semi-detachable Living Spell limb would be neat. Maybe the default is that the limb turns into a normal Living Spell with the same statistics as the graft when the person it's grafted to dies, or it does so when a Dispel check fails by a sufficiently small margin. Maybe there's an option to make Living Spell grafts detach and come back, like that one tattoo construct in Pathfinder. Only it has the ability to punch your enemy in the face with Fel Drain Energy Admixture Scorching Rays instead of being a pansy Construct.

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Really, I'm tempted to start over on the regular Living Spells from scratch to make them work out in a similar way for the sake of detachable grafts. Because Vampiric Touch living spells going around as a serious problem because they can tank the damage of splitting with their temp HP sounds like a nice plot to have mechanics for. I mean, you might have to make a metamagic that turns temp HP into actual HP, but that's probably already around and hidden in some splatbook or another. And seems minor enough to be a +1 metamagic, though most would probably want it to be a +2 because Vampiric Touch is scary enough for tanky caster builds as temp HP.