Friday, February 11, 2011

Scaling Magic

Why is it that a Gnome, or a Fairy casts the same size spells as a human? If a Fairy were to cast a Fireball, then (Assuming you're playing AD&D, and use the same inches to feet conversion I do. I wish they'd just used in-game terms...) a lot of their town would be destroyed. A Fireball covers a hundred square feet, and Fairy dwellings have ceilings of three feet. Say goodbye to the city. There's no way they could use something like that most of the time. So, what would a good way to implement smaller AoE's be without making them underpowered?

2 comments:

  1. Perhaps in the same way that many spells are already scaled up by level, they could be scaled down by choice.

    I'm reminded of the magic in the Lone Wolf novelisations, in which, as far as I do remember, a spell was built up by the caster as a complex structure. Following this idea to its logical conclusion, a spell might then be variable according to need, with all factors - range, strength, duration etc. - limited only by the ability of the caster and time available.

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  2. Perhaps. That's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure how it would be implemented as far as a coherent structure for the time it takes to cast something.

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