What Makes A Spell Or Power Useful In An RPG?
I’ve had an article on the site for more than a year called The Best Wizard Spells in Dungeons and Dragons. On Saturday, I found this comment on the article:
ANY spell is useful. You just have to use your imagination and get creative. Just because DMs only know to to do adventures that involve killing the orc for the pie doesn’t make spells useless. A real DM knows how to tailor a game for multiple scenarios, only 30% of which should involve actual combat.
All the useful spells you picked were spells that involved simple-minded “dungeon bashing”. Just the type of dumb mentality that created stupid 4th Edition. Thanks you 4rons
I deleted the comment, of course, as I don’t particularly like to be randomly insulted on my blog.
Now, insults and creative punctuation aside, this comment got me thinking about something:
What makes a spell or power useful in Dungeons and Dragons?
There are, in my mind, a few possible criteria:
- It should have opportunity for frequent use. Decipher script is limited in its use, Charm Person is not.
- It should be useful to overcome a challenge. That challenge doesn’t have to be combat; it can be social, or it can be plot-related.
- It should be something that can’t be done with mundane means. Light isn’t nearly as useful when you have a lantern around.
I’m sure there are other things that can make a spell or power useful in Dungeons and Dragons. What do you think? What makes an ability useful, and what makes it worth choosing over another spell or ability in your roleplaying game?
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11 Responses to “What Makes A Spell Or Power Useful In An RPG?”
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>> I deleted the comment, of course, as I don’t particularly like to be randomly insulted on my blog.
I’ve been following your blog via RSS feed for awhile, and I’m going to have delete my subscription because of that single line.
If you’re going to put yourself out there, you have to expect dissent and disagreement. It was your offhand “Of course I deleted it, how dare someone disagree in a direct, somewhat contentious manner.”
I’ve seen too many RPG blogs of late take themselves way too seriously. It seems the debate over 4e has taken on a nasty tone similar to the political discourse these days. And that’s sad. I wanted to be part of RPG blogs to talk about gaming, not to see people sit in silos.
Good luck with your blog, but if you’re going to matter of course delete comments because they dissent or make you feel a bit uncomfortable, then really, is it a blog or a soap box? What is it that your blog really is?
Regards,
AC - by choice
You’re welcome to unsub, AC, no one’s forcing you to read my blog.
However, I hope you understand the reason I deleted the comment: It was uncivil.
You can disagree with me all day long here. If you’ve read any of the comment threads previously, you know that to be true.
However, when someone resorts to name calling, that’s where it ends. Save that crap for message boards.
This is my blog. To come here and disagree with me is fine; I invite discourse.
To come here and insult me is akin to walking into my house, saying “Your cabinets are ugly and you’re a moron.”
I’m just keeping it civil.
D&D is a game that historically has been about combat, so it often left characters with the options of having flavorful/interesting spells (that people loved to find interesting uses for) at the cost of being less valuable when fights broke out. It wasn’t really a fair choice to give.
Now, the rituals are broken out into their own category, so spellcasters aren’t sacrificing anything to take the more flavorful and interesting spells. I like the idea of having piles of rituals for my wizard, so that I don’t have to decide ahead of time what’s going to be useful given a specific set of circumstances, I can have a variety of tools for the job.
1. What Dave said about rituals.
2. Spells that allow one to affect encounters before they happen. Cast silence, then fight and nobody can call for help and no wandering beasties are attracted. Or use an illusion to lure the opposition into a trap. Cover the entire area with fog or darkness and then launch a barrage of arrows and whatnot into; they can’t respond because they don’t know where it all is coming from.
Tommis last blog post..Political leanings
@ Dave - I’m with you. One of the most positive things I’ve seen with 4E is the breaking of the back of the Vancian system.
I think, maybe, they’ve finally gotten it right.
@ Tommi - 1. Always agree with Dave. It’s your safest bet. 2. I like what you’re saying - support spells that give the party a combat advantage. It’s all about battlefield control, no?
Bobs last blog post..What Makes A Spell Or Power Useful In An RPG?
Bob;
The key is that one can use these before the actual battle, and they can be used to decide what the encounter parameters are; in addition to shaping the battlefield, these spells might be able to alter the enemies that are involved in the encounter (wall, silence, teleport, befuddle, make ‘em fight each other, just get some creatures out of the encounter).
Illusions are excellent in that they can be used to accomplish almost anything, given sufficient creativity and sufficiently broad illusion magic.
Tommis last blog post..Political leanings
Good for you Bob. It IS your house. You aren’t a pissant moderator on somebody else’s messageboards. That is one of the big differences between blogging and forum posting.
Kudos to you for remiding folks of that.
That said, maybe it would be easier to identify what isn’t a useful spell. The lsit would be narrowed down much quicker. Also are we talking mechanically or flavor-wise?
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..RPG Carnival #2 - THIS IS HOMEBREW!
@ Tommi - I’m with you. Anything a wiz can do to set the stage is a good thing.
@ Donny - Well, for purposes of this post, let’s say “utility” - in other words, what works?
My all-time favorite spell:
Prestidigitation.
Why? The “random low-level magical effect” clause. I think there should be fewer abilities/spells, and the ones that remain should be more versatile. Especially since so many abilities/spells are clones of each other with slight tweaks. “But wait, this fire spell turns their shoes green!” or “Hey, this ability lets me roll 2d6 damage instead of 3d4!”
That said:
1. It should be cool; more than that, it should be uniquely cool. Any spell that lets a wizard fulfill the role of a rogue, for example, violates this rule. What you said about light spells vs. carrying a lantern also applies.
2. It should be useful. Whether in or out of combat, is choosing this a/s worth the cost of not taking a different one?
3. It should be versatile. Cone of Cold is great, if all you’re doing is getting into fights, but there’s only one way to use it. For the same spell slot, I could take Telekinesis and use it in a hundred different ways.
Let me start by stating a horrible truth: I’ve never played D&D.
Instead, i skipped the whole step of being ticked at someone else’s system and started making my own from scratch.
As a result, i find this discussion rather helpful and wanted to thank for bringing it up.
Something JollyBlue said that I have to disagree with to some extent because of a D&D experience some friends of mine had.
“It should be cool; more than that, it should be uniquely cool. Any spell that lets a wizard fulfill the role of a rogue, for example, violates this rule. What you said about light spells vs. carrying a lantern also applies.”
Three players and the DM, and somehow, none of them picked a fighter class. It was one Druid, one Ranger (halfling at that), and one Mage of some sort. Now, this may likely be a gaming oddity for a party to build like that, i certainly wouldn’t pick that, but i would imagine that any magic abilities enabling the spell caster to essentially double task as another class temporarily would be a must.
Bringing some comments made between Bob and the unnamed Bob basher/4E hater, i think a combat instance where Decipher text would be useful against an enemy with unknown runes that protect and enhace the wearer would be an interesting encounter possibility. The mage would have to decipher the runes to cast the appropriate disarming… thing… And there ends my D&D savvy.
Now, more directly a response to the point of this blog: Ever play Quest for Glory? In it there is a spell, possibly similar to charm, that would cause violent critters to cease their violence and pursuit. There were also certain areas, and an entire town (except the back alley) that had this spell cast on it to prevent violence in town.
Which leads me to a theory i’ve been thinking of for a while where excessive magic has lasting effects on the local environment. Example: A bunch of fire mages cast all their flame spells in a frozen wasteland and turn it into a tropical paradise. Holy clerics cast blessings over a cemetery preventing any undead that might rise from it or enter it to be instantly crumbled.
This kind of playing may not be in the rules, but some innovative house rules could turn monster bashing favorites into more than just artillery.
Hope you enjoyed those thoughts.
Actually, i take it back.
I’ve played D&D once. I sat in as an NPC guardsman at some gate with my then roommate. We were incompetent by design and successfully annoyed the PC’s, much to the delight of the DM.