This week I decided to preview a couple of spells. One that’s an old standard to see how I’ve changed it and a couple of new ones. Not only did I change the way magic worked, I changed some of the spells as well.

First, I kicked out the “artillery” spells. You know Fireball and Lightning Bolt. These just didn’t seem to fit my view of a low magic setting. You want to do some massive damage? Summon something weird. I also dropped spells that seemed to emulate more mundane effects like Light (Just light a damned torch) and Knock. And finally I combined a few spells that had similar effects. Remove Curse is an effect added to Dispel Magic. Commune, Augury, and Contact Other Plane are mixed together into a single spell.

And here’s the spells:

Magic Missile

Spell Level: 1

Range: 150 Feet

Casting Time: 1 Round

Duration: Instant

The spell caster conjures arcane power to destroy his foes. The character launches a missile that does 1d6+the caster’s Arcanum score in damage. Each +4 of damage becomes an extra d6 of damage as with weapons. The caster must succeed on a Ranged Attack roll.

So the first thing you might notice is that it takes an attack roll to hit. This may seem a bit extreme of a take but I really wanted to direct damage spells to be the least efficient way of causing damage to opponents. So one of other things I did was toss out the area affect damage spells (Lightning Bolt and Fire Ball). There plenty of other ways that a spell caster can damage an opponent but there’s some risk or something else they have to do like an attack roll. You might also notice that I interjected another rule into the spell’s description. The +4 Damage rule. You many have noticed it if you started doing the math on the preview NPC’s. In a nutshell, each +4 modifier on damage becomes an extra d6. So, 1d6+5 would become 2d6+1.

Spirit Fog

Spell Level: 3

Range: 30 foot radius centered on Caster

Duration: 1 round/Point of Arcanum

The caster surrounds themselves with an eerie green fog. Any ghost, spirit or immaterial creature that enters the area becomes susceptible to mundane attacks. Additionally, any invisible creatures are outlined with an unearthly green glow.

Spirit Fog is a new spell. As you may have noticed, there’s no Clerics. So many of their magical tasks would fall to the Sorcerers. But I didn’t want to just copy and paste Cleric Class abilities into the Sorcerer class. Additionally, Sword & Sorcery is low magic. The chance that characters have magic weapons is slim. But they still should have a way to encounter and possibly overcome such opponents.

Control Undead

Spell Level: 2

Range: 60 Feet Radius centered on caster

Duration: 10 minutes per Point of Arcanum of the Caster.

This spell affects only mindless undead. Each creature within the area of effect of the spell are allowed to resist with a Saving Throw. Those who fail come under the caster’s control for the duration. Since these are mindless undead any complex commands will likely be misunderstood by them.

Since I mentioned Clerics, their Turn Undead is their key ability. Something like that was needed but it needed to be different. And that leads us to Control Undead. Of course, it only affects mindless undead. Free willed undead should be scary. Having no way of controlling or turning them makes them even scarier.

Don’t worry there’s also various tweaks to monsters to follow along with over all concepts that I talked about. That preview is coming up.