Specializations, Polymorph Merging
Valo
Member Posts: 4
Okay, so a few things that have irritated me to no end for as long as I can remember is how wizards are locked into certain combos for forbidden/specialized schools. This is particularly irritating on RP servers where you find that illusion is, more often than not, considered the best school to specialize in, giving you access to bonus spell slots but while only missing out on enchantment spells. Compared to necromancy where you miss out on divination, or all the spell schools where you miss out on conjuration (might as well just fireball yourself at that point), this can have the effect of being particularly stifling for wizard variety.
In fact, it results in the audacity of wizards not being what their specialized school is, but what their forbidden school is. Someone who gets by without conjuration, or worse, transmutation, winds up being more impressive than someone who makes divination work.
So my first suggestion is simply to allow wizards to pick their forbidden school freely, regardless of what their specialty is.
Second, polymorph.
Builds that rely on or utilize polymorph are amazing fun. What's not fun, especially for new players, is the item merging mechanics, which are not at all intuitive. What I'd like is so that no item by default merges with polymorphs. Instead, items should have some "wildshaping" property that can be applied to them, or something to that effect. When polymorphing with such an item equipped, it is not merged and remains equipped.
As such, item properties are not merged and one can have multiple items with the same property that are equipped and active even in a polymorph shape. A druid could have a set of wildshaping equipment, for example a regular Hide Armor, a +1 AC helmet and +1 AC boots, all with this item property. The result would be +3 Armor AC from the armor, +1 Deflection AC from the helmet, and +1 Dodge AC from the boots. No more worrying about only getting the highest bonus from equipped gear in applicable item slots. Now everything could potentially carry over in full but only if it's got the item property. Hell, wizards could have this stuff and specialize in polymorphing.
Content creators could also use this to bridge the gap in power between druid/monks and druids of other sorts, by placing limitations (such as alignment restrictions to prevent lawful characters from using them) on these items if they wished, opening up a greater range of viable builds.
In fact, it results in the audacity of wizards not being what their specialized school is, but what their forbidden school is. Someone who gets by without conjuration, or worse, transmutation, winds up being more impressive than someone who makes divination work.
So my first suggestion is simply to allow wizards to pick their forbidden school freely, regardless of what their specialty is.
Second, polymorph.
Builds that rely on or utilize polymorph are amazing fun. What's not fun, especially for new players, is the item merging mechanics, which are not at all intuitive. What I'd like is so that no item by default merges with polymorphs. Instead, items should have some "wildshaping" property that can be applied to them, or something to that effect. When polymorphing with such an item equipped, it is not merged and remains equipped.
As such, item properties are not merged and one can have multiple items with the same property that are equipped and active even in a polymorph shape. A druid could have a set of wildshaping equipment, for example a regular Hide Armor, a +1 AC helmet and +1 AC boots, all with this item property. The result would be +3 Armor AC from the armor, +1 Deflection AC from the helmet, and +1 Dodge AC from the boots. No more worrying about only getting the highest bonus from equipped gear in applicable item slots. Now everything could potentially carry over in full but only if it's got the item property. Hell, wizards could have this stuff and specialize in polymorphing.
Content creators could also use this to bridge the gap in power between druid/monks and druids of other sorts, by placing limitations (such as alignment restrictions to prevent lawful characters from using them) on these items if they wished, opening up a greater range of viable builds.
1
Comments
The original intent was categorizing different types of magic energy and methods of constructing spells from a rp flavor aspect, in AD&D the forbidden schools were organized like this.
- Abjuration (alteration & illusion)
- Conjuration (greater (5th and higher) divination & invocation)
- Divination (conjuration)
- Enchantment (invocation/evocation & necromancy)
- Illusion (necromancy & invocation/evocation & abjuration)
- Evocation (enchantment & conjuration)
- Necromancy (illusion & enchantment)
- Alteration (abjuration & necromancy)
It affected both chance to learn spells which had a greater impact on the evolution of a wizard in AD&D and a +1/-1 to DC and saves. It's interesting to note that both 2nd edition and 3rd edition also provided alternative specialist features that had a bigger impact on the class mechanics.The older method is more role play focused obviously revolving around themes of magic rather than game mechanics but either way if they change it then it should be to forbid 2 schools unless you're a diviner.