[3.5] Differences of magic styles

[Climowitz]

Please help understand it every casting style is worth existing separate from each other. Between arcane and divine I understand. But when it comes to incantations, mysteries, soulmeds and utterances. Mechanically are they enough to be a separate type of casting or could they be meshed into the other types? What makes them unique, other than class restriction and separate list.

[Powerdork]

Invocations (did you mean those?) are spell-like abilities (which are not spells, but they make spell effects) except that they have somatic components, and they are at-will abilities.
Mysteries are weird and start out as once-per-day arcane spells with only somatic components, but then become twice-per-day spell-like abilities with no components, and eventually become three-times-per-day supernatural abilities (which aren't spell effects, and can't be dispelled; using them does not leave an opening for an attack of opportunity, either).
Soulmelds are custom temporary magic items that let you use your life essence to Divert Power To Forward Shields, basically. Leave them be.
Utterances are spell-like abilities. Read the Truenamer guide to learn more.

[Feantar]

Incantations are spell-like abilities (which are not spells, but they make spell effects) except that they have somatic components, and they are at-will abilities.

I think that's invocations not incantations.

[Psyren]

Soulmelds are custom temporary magic items that let you use your life essence to Divert Power To Forward Shields, basically. Leave them be.


Soulmelds are a bit more complicated than that I'm afraid. They function like magic items in many respects (take up body slots, have to be targeted individually to dispel them, dispels only suppress them temporarily, AMF/dead magic disable them.) But they also function a bit like SLAs (no verbal or somatic components to activate, their direct effects are subject to SR.) Some of them provoke AoO when activated, like Dissolving Spittle or Necrocarnum Circlet, but most don't.

[Zaq]

Mysteries are basically spells. They eventually turn into SLAs and Su abilities, but they function like spells most of the time, and they're formatted basically like spells, which is important. Critically, you can run out of them, which isn't true for most of the other magic stuff we're discussing here. They function the most like spells of anything we're discussing today. You could give mysteries to a regular arcane or divine caster (just treat 'em as spells) without breaking much.

Invocations are at-will powers that you can't run out of. They're just abilities you have. Mechanically, they're SLAs, but they pretty much just work. They have somatic components that rarely matter. Most of the self-buffing ones have long durations, usually 24 hours (effectively "always on"). It wouldn't make a ton of sense to "mesh them in with" existing spells; the majority of invocations are weaker than what a normal spellcaster gets at a comparable level, with the tradeoff being that they aren't a limited resource round by round.

Utterances are SLAs but they don't work like other SLAs. You've gotta succeed on a skill check to use them. They have verbal components. You can't run out, but technically the skill check gets more difficult the more you use a given one in a given day. The ones that target creatures are reversible (two powers in one, basically). They have a whole bunch of unique and really messy rules. They also tend to have extremely short durations. I often compare utterances to invocations (utterances are less at-will than invocations are, but with proper optimization it's relatively hard to run out of "uses"), though utterances are usually much weaker just because of poor design decisions. Some utterances have a glancing similarity to regular spells, but there's always some wonky element that makes one different from the other, and almost never in the utterance's favor.

Soulmelds are their own beast entirely and it's really not useful to think of them as "powers." Mysteries, invocations, and utterances are all "powers" in my head, but soulmelds are totally different. The closest analogue, as has been mentioned, is magic items, but soulmelds do follow different rules from magic items. Some of them just give constant effects, some let you activate other effects, and all of them change depending on how much you've got invested in them, which is intended to change from round to round (feature, not bug). All soulmelds have at least two effects: one basic effect just for shaping it and one or more extra effects from binding it, which is a mechanic granted by taking class levels. You can't really usefully compare them to spells or even to mysteries or utterances. I guess some of the always-on buffs you get from invocations can be compared to soulmelds, but even that's a stretch. Soulmelds are their own deal and should be treated as such.

[Ramza00]

Please help understand it every casting style is worth existing separate from each other. Between arcane and divine I understand. But when it comes to incantations, mysteries, soulmeds and utterances. Mechanically are they enough to be a separate type of casting or could they be meshed into the other types? What makes them unique, other than class restriction and separate list.

Taking you out of the game mechanics and the game flavor, lets look big picture.

2000 3rd Edition
2003 3.5 Edition
2008 4th Edition

Now to sell books you are attracting people with new content, or new mechanics, or new flavor, or new ideas or something "NEW" and it has to be "exciting" enough to make a person buy the book. Or it has to solve an existing problem.

Well different "expansion books" are trying different things. Frostburn has a different reason why you buy it compared to Magic Item Compedium and Spell Compendium. New Magic Systems mainly came out in these 4 3.5 edition of books.

2004 Expanded Psionics Handbook
2005 Magic of Incarnum
2006 Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic

And 4th Edition came out in 2008 with it being announced August 2007. Well Magic of Incarnum, ToB, and ToM were all designed to sell books but also to get feedback from the users who play D&D to see if they like the ideas, but also mechanical feedback for people complain they do or do not like the mechanics. Like is it fun to play and complex, but not to complex for too complex slows down the game, feels intimidating, and is mentally exhausting.

You need to get the right amount of complexity for these typeof games to enter a Flow state, and a Flow state is the goal of making the gaming experience fun and thus sell more books.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luiz_Vieira14/publication/268035628/figure/fig2/AS:295367213109255@1447432439637/Current-model-of-the-Flow-state-Based-on-37.png

Aka there needs to be reward and a feeling of I did something by learning these obscure rules and the learning had benefit, but also there needs to be enough randomness to keep me in the moment and not planning 3 steps ahead, aka challenge but not too much and not too little challenge.

This is the same thing that Magic the Gathering is also trying to do even though there are lots of different things with Magic and D&D.

-----

Psionics is worth it.
Tome of Battle all 3 classes is worth it.
Binder is worth it.

Shadowcaster is very much not worth it. It is so bad mechanically and in play. If there is something you like from shadowcaster just convert it into a traditional arcane or divine spell.
Truenamer is also very much a mess and not worth it.

Magic of Incarnum is more headache than it worth, and I say this as a person who loves weird mechanics and wants to love Magic of Incarnum. The ideals are sound, the implementation of the ideas on a practical level is not sound. Flavor wise if you like MoI's flavor that can be imported into other things.

[Malphegor]

Truenaming is fun as a thing you add on to existing classes as an optional solution (“Ok so this guy is ancient, does anyone have his true name in some record somewhere so we can curse him without fail before we fight”), but probably that leads to just using the optional Ritual rules (super version of a spell with less drawbacks but takes a lot of effort and time to cast and is very dramatic, plus needs multiple casters involved), with a Truename research flavour, but at that point you don’t need any of the truenaming rules.

(Rituals not to be mistaken for Rituals, which is a bunch of feats you can take that gives you a magical Ritual you can use for a all day magical effect usually related to dragons or fae, also not to be mistaken with a plethora of spells that have Ritual in the name but they can presumably be used with the Ritual optional rules so you can do a Ritual to cast a better Ritual and WHAT IS THIS MADNESS GET A THESAURUS WIZARDS OF THE COAST)

[Anymage]

Narratively speaking some of them aren't that different from existing options (the practical difference between psions and sorcerers is negligible) or incredibly silly (incarnum takes soul energy that permeates the planes and turns it into blue equipment). As mentioned before, lots of it was experimenting with different mechanical tricks, and flavor was an afterthought.

[Climowitz]

Thanks for all the answers they were really helpful. I'm working on a revised version of magic, so far I have, spells have no level, depending on what level you cast it's power increases, for kinds of magic exist, arcane that requires you to gather energy to cast, the higher the level the higher amount of arcane energy required, divine spells which have a cooldown, it gets reduced with level and eventually gets some spell levels on 0 cooldown, psionic magic has neither cooldown or gathering energy but you have a limited amount of power points that replenish on rests out hourly basis, they also allow to improve its spells without need of metamagic feats and last the is pact magic that has a corruption effect which when it gets to 100% or higher changes your appearance, nullifies magical ability and you makes you influenced by your power source being.

So far truenaming is part of the class truenamer which learns true names and allow him to mimic spells as spell like abilities. Shadow magic or mysteries, doesn't seem to be worth being a different set of magic but more of a theme for a class. And after what you guys said I know that I don't need invocations to work different except for the fact that they are considered sla, but my big doubt is wether I should get soul mending as another style of magic or just avoid it.

Do you consider incarnum worth?

[Zaq]

Incarnum is one of my favorite parts of 3.5, so while being up-front about that bias, I definitely think that incarnum is worth learning how to use in general.

That said, you seem to be changing so much at once that it feels like barely anything is recognizable from the base game, so I don’t know if it’s really necessary or appropriate to drop incarnum into the mix, especially if you’re going to drastically revise it before you even start.

If you’re playing a game that’s pretty similar to the rules in the books, I recommend giving Magic of Incarnum a good read and making it available for use. If you’re basically gutting all the magic systems to the studs and all but making your own system at this point while just keeping similar nomenclature to what we’re used to, I don’t see the benefit to adding in (and tearing apart) subsystems that you aren’t already familiar with.

When contemplating major houserules, I firmly believe that it’s critical to ask yourself these questions and to be honest about the answers:


What problem, specifically and in detail, is this rule intended to solve? In what way do I believe the game will be more fun with this rule and less fun without it?
Why and how will this proposed rule solve the problem identified above?
Am I making the game more complex with this rule? If so, why do I believe that the extra complexity will lead to a more fun result than otherwise? Is this rule the least complex way to solve the problem identified above without breaking something else?
Do I know what other rules my proposed rule will interact with? How have I prepared for interactions down the line?


Make sure that every change you make is addressing an identified problem. Doesn’t have to be a major structural system flaw (though it can be), but there’s gotta be some specific reason for every change to exist. Throwing new rules in the mix just for the sake of doing so and not because you want the new rule to solve an identified problem is very likely to have you just end up with a mess.

[Climowitz]

Incarnum is one of my favorite parts of 3.5, so while being up-front about that bias, I definitely think that incarnum is worth learning how to use in general.

That said, you seem to be changing so much at once that it feels like barely anything is recognizable from the base game, so I don’t know if it’s really necessary or appropriate to drop incarnum into the mix, especially if you’re going to drastically revise it before you even start.

If you’re playing a game that’s pretty similar to the rules in the books, I recommend giving Magic of Incarnum a good read and making it available for use. If you’re basically gutting all the magic systems to the studs and all but making your own system at this point while just keeping similar nomenclature to what we’re used to, I don’t see the benefit to adding in (and tearing apart) subsystems that you aren’t already familiar with.

When contemplating major houserules, I firmly believe that it’s critical to ask yourself these questions and to be honest about the answers:


What problem, specifically and in detail, is this rule intended to solve? In what way do I believe the game will be more fun with this rule and less fun without it?
Why and how will this proposed rule solve the problem identified above?
Am I making the game more complex with this rule? If so, why do I believe that the extra complexity will lead to a more fun result than otherwise? Is this rule the least complex way to solve the problem identified above without breaking something else?
Do I know what other rules my proposed rule will interact with? How have I prepared for interactions down the line?


Make sure that every change you make is addressing an identified problem. Doesn’t have to be a major structural system flaw (though it can be), but there’s gotta be some specific reason for every change to exist. Throwing new rules in the mix just for the sake of doing so and not because you want the new rule to solve an identified problem is very likely to have you just end up with a mess.

It begun with two things that i dislike, both involving magic, first of all the fact that casters are most of the time a compendium of possible and easy solutions with so many spells and different effects to cast, having a separate list for every level gives them too many options, solving that was making spells no level, and power boosted with the level slot used to cast them. The second issue i had was that casters were a spell machine gun until they ran out and forced a rest, now many say that this issue can be solved in game by giving the casters many fights or situations for them to use spells and make them learn to be austere with it's use, i find more appealing the fact that spells may come with a time cost, either by needing to gather some energy before casting (arcane caster) or either having some cooldown time before they could cast again (Divine casters), right now i have a homebrew set with many rules changed that will soon be complete different to the 3.5 system i used as a base and inspiration to begin, and once i have a nice set up with that 3.5 style, i will begin changing lot's of parts involving combat, and perhaps, classes either by reducing its number or creating a build your own class kind of system.

That being said, in my many 3.5 games i have seen psionics twice and incarnum once, while mysteries, truenaming and binders and warlocks not a single time. Since i have read both Kingkiller Chronicles and Tales from Earthsea, truenaming was something i was familiar, and would not want to give too much a system but rather be some abilities that could mimic magic. I read both binding, invocations and mysteries and took the best of them, but when it comes to incarnum i cannot decide. The idea of using magic bound to the body and giving it the form of creatures powers or abilities or some item like effects was appealing, but however, it feels a little powerful and weird. However i haven't decided yet if i will use it's idea but right now i'm more in a yes than a no position.

This comments about experience with this types of magic is being really helpful, i wish i could read more opinions and suggestions.

[frogglesmash]

Have you ever looked at Spheres of Power? I suspect it will solve most of the issues you have with the standard magic system, and with far less effort on your part.

[Climowitz]

Have you ever looked at Spheres of Power? I suspect it will solve most of the issues you have with the standard magic system, and with far less effort on your part.

I did, while it looks pretty good, it also looks a bit hard to understand and to use with what i'm aiming, however the talent part, is a good foundation to what i'll be looking next as a way to create a build your own class, and make a focused spellcaster of a descriptor or school get more powerful when he focuses only on a single school.

[AnimeTheCat]

It begun with two things that i dislike, both involving magic, first of all the fact that casters are most of the time a compendium of possible and easy solutions with so many spells and different effects to cast, having a separate list for every level gives them too many options, solving that was making spells no level, and power boosted with the level slot used to cast them. The second issue i had was that casters were a spell machine gun until they ran out and forced a rest, now many say that this issue can be solved in game by giving the casters many fights or situations for them to use spells and make them learn to be austere with it's use, i find more appealing the fact that spells may come with a time cost, either by needing to gather some energy before casting (arcane caster) or either having some cooldown time before they could cast again (Divine casters), right now i have a homebrew set with many rules changed that will soon be complete different to the 3.5 system i used as a base and inspiration to begin, and once i have a nice set up with that 3.5 style, i will begin changing lot's of parts involving combat, and perhaps, classes either by reducing its number or creating a build your own class kind of system.

That being said, in my many 3.5 games i have seen psionics twice and incarnum once, while mysteries, truenaming and binders and warlocks not a single time. Since i have read both Kingkiller Chronicles and Tales from Earthsea, truenaming was something i was familiar, and would not want to give too much a system but rather be some abilities that could mimic magic. I read both binding, invocations and mysteries and took the best of them, but when it comes to incarnum i cannot decide. The idea of using magic bound to the body and giving it the form of creatures powers or abilities or some item like effects was appealing, but however, it feels a little powerful and weird. However i haven't decided yet if i will use it's idea but right now i'm more in a yes than a no position.

This comments about experience with this types of magic is being really helpful, i wish i could read more opinions and suggestions.

I enjoy Incarnum. I think it's one of the best systems in the game (aside from the poor soulborn... somebody throw that class a bone). It is, in my opinion, more versatile than the Martial Initiator classes and system from Tome of battle, but it is also less innately powerful. There are fewer ways to gain Essentia and everything is pretty solidly hard-capped by level. There are a few ways to push that cap, but not more than +2 or +3 capacity I think. Most of the time this equates to +2 or +3 more damage, initiative, attack bonus or +4/+6 more skill bonus or +2/+3 more damage dice for the attack. Dissolving Spittle can be VERY powerful, but that comes at the cost of drawing your Essentia practially all to that one soulmeld. The Incarnum feats like Cobal Charge and Cobalt Power can further improve classes too, and even be used to great effect by the classes in Magic Of Incarnum.

If you're concerned about an Incarnate or Totemist wrecking your game like a wizard, cleric, druid, etc... Don't. They lack that level of game-changing, earth shaking stopping power. They don't create planets within demiplaes inside of pocket demensions inside of the dimensions of their pockets and sit there puppeteering the world whilst sipping a tea made from the blood of every living creature gently funneled and simmered in a cauldron made from everchanging carcas of a primordial entity. They just make neat things happen with the souls of dead cool things in a way that is not necessarily evil (though it can be if you use necrocarnum).

[frogglesmash]

They just make neat things happen with the souls of dead cool things in a way that is not necessarily evil (though it can be if you use necrocarnum).

Slight correction, the soulstuff comes from the dead, the living, and the yet unborn, that's why it's not necromancy.

[AnimeTheCat]

Slight correction, the soulstuff comes from the dead, the living, and the yet unborn, that's why it's not necromancy.

Fair enough. Most of the flavor text of the soulmelds refers to legendary versions of the creatures that you're emulating or heroic figures from history long past, so I latched on the the "dead" part. But you're right. It's all the soul energy from the entirety of existence.

[Psyren]

Fair enough. Most of the flavor text of the soulmelds refers to legendary versions of the creatures that you're emulating or heroic figures from history long past, so I latched on the the "dead" part. But you're right. It's all the soul energy from the entirety of existence.

"Heroic figures long past" and "souls yet to be born" don't have to be mutually exclusive categories :smallcool:


Thanks for all the answers they were really helpful. I'm working on a revised version of magic, so far I have, spells have no level, depending on what level you cast it's power increases, for kinds of magic exist, arcane that requires you to gather energy to cast, the higher the level the higher amount of arcane energy required, divine spells which have a cooldown, it gets reduced with level and eventually gets some spell levels on 0 cooldown, psionic magic has neither cooldown or gathering energy but you have a limited amount of power points that replenish on rests out hourly basis, they also allow to improve its spells without need of metamagic feats and last the is pact magic that has a corruption effect which when it gets to 100% or higher changes your appearance, nullifies magical ability and you makes you influenced by your power source being.

I'd suggest coming up with a minimum level for your spells anyway, so that you can make some spells available at that level without being forced to come up with a level 0 or level 1 version of every spell that could ever exist. Certainly "does different things as you heighten it" can be a thing, but coming up with a level 1 version of something like Planar Binding or Ethereal Jaunt could be tricky.

[Climowitz]

"Heroic figures long past" and "souls yet to be born" don't have to be mutually exclusive categories :smallcool:



I'd suggest coming up with a minimum level for your spells anyway, so that you can make some spells available at that level without being forced to come up with a level 0 or level 1 version of every spell that could ever exist. Certainly "does different things as you heighten it" can be a thing, but coming up with a level 1 version of something like Planar Binding or Ethereal Jaunt could be tricky.

It does change. Many spells says if you cast this spell with X slot or higher it does this or also does this.

Those spells you mentioned are on the edge of being or not being on the list. Since they both have a better way of working as ritual spells. Which are spells that usually take from 10 to 100 times the usual amount of time needed to be cast. Planar binding is a sweet but dangerous thing to play with, while ethereal jaunt is an easier task to divide into many levels.

[Psyren]

It does change. Many spells says if you cast this spell with X slot or higher it does this or also does this.

Those spells you mentioned are on the edge of being or not being on the list. Since they both have a better way of working as ritual spells. Which are spells that usually take from 10 to 100 times the usual amount of time needed to be cast. Planar binding is a sweet but dangerous thing to play with, while ethereal jaunt is an easier task to divide into many levels.

I get that, but there are still other spells whose effect is tied closely to their existing level, and coming up with multiple lower level versions might be onerous. For example, something like Time Stop - even if you reduced it to a single bonus round or a single bonus action, might be a tough sell as a level 1 spell, so you'd want to determine what minimum such an effect might have.

[frogglesmash]

I get that, but there are still other spells whose effect is tied closely to their existing level, and coming up with multiple lower level versions might be onerous. For example, something like Time Stop - even if you reduced it to a single bonus round or a single bonus action, might be a tough sell as a level 1 spell, so you'd want to determine what minimum such an effect might have.

Time Stop's easy, the fluff days you're actually just moving really fast, so low level versions act like hsate, but worse, and mid to high level versions give you an increasingly high number of bonus actions/rounds.

[Climowitz]

Time Stop's easy, the fluff days you're actually just moving really fast, so low level versions act like hsate, but worse, and mid to high level versions give you an increasingly high number of bonus actions/rounds.

That's exactly how I pictured it. By adding duration, targets or power tied to level one can get an interesting increasing spell. With the from your level on clause one can modify the core of the spells.

[Psyren]

Time Stop's easy, the fluff days you're actually just moving really fast, so low level versions act like hsate, but worse, and mid to high level versions give you an increasingly high number of bonus actions/rounds.

You realize you're not disagreeing with me? Haste is minimum 3rd level.

[frogglesmash]

You realize you're not disagreeing with me? Haste is minimum 3rd level.

Let me spell it out for you

Level 1
Casting Time: Standard Action
Duration: 1 Round/level
Benefits: +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves.

Level 2
Casting Time: Standard Action
Duration: 1 hour/level
Benefits: +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves,modes of movement increase by 30 feet,

Level 3
Casting Time: Standard Action
Duration: 1 minute/level
Benefits: +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves, modes of movement increase by 30 feet, when making a full attack, a may make one extra attack.

Level 4
Casting Time: Standard Action
Duration: 1 round/level
Benefits: +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves, when making a full attack, may make one extra attack, extra move action per turn.

Level 5
Casting Time: Standard Action
Duration: 1 round/2 levels
Benefits: +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves, when making a full attack, may make one extra attack, extra Standard action per turn.

Level 6
Casting Time: Swift Action
Duration: 1 rounds
Benefits: 1 rounds of extra actions

Level 7
Casting Time: Swift Action
Duration: 2 rounds
Benefits: 2 rounds of extra actions

Level 8
Casting Time: Swift Action
Duration: 3 rounds
Benefits: 3 rounds of extra actions

Level 9
Casting Time: Swift Action
Duration: 4 rounds
Benefits: 4 rounds of extra actions

[Psyren]

Let me spell it out for you

*snip*

Great, now do that for every spell above first level.

[frogglesmash]

Great, now do that for every spell above first level.

Why? It's not my project. Furthermore, I don't see how coming up with lower level versions of existing spells is inherently more difficult than coming up with higher level versions of spells.

[Psyren]

Why? It's not my project.

Nor is it mine. I was offering advice.


Furthermore, I don't see how coming up with lower level versions of existing spells is inherently more difficult than coming up with higher level versions of spells.

The latter already exist for the most part.

[frogglesmash]

The latter already exist for the most part.

I'd argue that the same is largely true for lower level versions of higher level spells, but ignoring that, even though most spells have higher level equivalents, they won't have higher level equivalents for every single spell level above them, so regardless of how OP plans to do this, they're going to have to come up with "new" spell effects.

[Psyren]

regardless of how OP plans to do this, they're going to have to come up with "new" spell effects.

We agree on that much.

[Climowitz]

Indeed many effects shall be created. But that is not a problem since I do this as a hobby and I don't have a schedule or a deadline. Also I don't have collaborators so I don't expect to finish any time soon. But is a nice project and a way to relax pass the time