Magical Research

[waysoftheearth]

If you assume that a cleric's spells are divinely given, then a cure-light-wounds (for example) may result from a benevolent Deity giving His own hit-points to a wounded PC via the cleric. The Deity sacrifices 6 hit-points so that the wounded PC may gain them.

Now, along comes your magic-user and researches a "cure-light-wounds" equivalent spell. Since the magic-user lacks a personal relationship with a benevolent Deity willing to sacrifice hit-points, they must instead come from the magic-user himself.

Of course your clever magic-user player will not learn this awful truth until the first time he casts his expensive to research "cure-light-wounds" equivalent spell...

[jasons]

I like this take, waysoftheearth. I've always been intrigued by the concept of new spell research, but haven't dealt much with it either as a DM or a player. Does your post imply some kind of % chance of any newly created spell having some kind of "bite you on the ass" effect? If this is addressed in some version of the rules, I've forgotten about it. The MU cure spell in question isn't a total bust, and could still be of use in a pinch, as long as the MU has a few spare HP at the time.

[waysoftheearth]

Jun 29, 2010 15:28:42 GMT -6 jasons said:

Does your post imply some kind of % chance of any newly created spell having some kind of "bite you on the ass" effect?

No, just referee discretion.

If a player wants to create a spell that is too powerful, or inappropriate for his class, then I'll usually go with it (or at least the gist of it) but will tag on some unforeseen side effect to balance it out.