My character concept is perfectly in-line to use the spell Weird, but my DM and I know how bad of a spell it is. We have been discussing a few adjustments to make it a 9th level spell. We did discuss dropping it to an 8th level spell, but even that seems very poor.
1 - Expand the area to 60' radius. (We were also looking at Hallucinatory Terrain's 150' cube as an option.)
2 - Remove the save, unless the target(s) are immune to fear or have some other out.
3 - Treat it as a mass Enemies Abound spell instead of the Fear spell which has a freaking 30' cone already.
4 - In subsequent rounds, allow in Intelligence save to escape the creature's deepest fears, manifesting its worst nightmares as an implacable threat or take 4d10 psychic damage.
This spell has the vibe of a massive battlefield control spell that you can drop on enemy formations, including mounts and anything else which might be in the area to go mad and start freaking out on each other. At 9th level this should be a massive game changer, and not a 3rd level reskinned spell but worse. We are not certain about balance, so I figured I would stretch the powers that be to tone down our modifications to make more sense balance-wise.
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IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
The radius really doesn't need to be expanded; more often than not expanding the radius like that just makes it more of a hassle to place the spell without having friendly fire in combat. Changing the save from WIS to INT does improve the odds, though I'd still leave the initial save, particularly since you're already getting a big boost from the save type change. Changing the secondary effect to Enemies Abound is honestly a bit broken; mass random targeting is a fairly OP effect, especially if you try to stack it with no initial save. "Manifesting its worse nightmares as an implacable threat" as an alternative to the 4d10 is both a weaker effect and is useless for describing the actual in-game effects of the spell, and choosing between the two options at the end of every turn just seems like it will bog down play.
Frankly, Weird is effective as it is for nuking a squad of mobs; very few of them are going to beat a 19+ save DC even on WIS. It's not effective as a boss nuke, but that's different from saying it's a useless spell. Really, if you want to tune it up, just add the 4d10 damage to the initial save and call it a day; gives the instant gratification people feel they need from it.
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My character concept is perfectly in-line to use the spell Weird, but my DM and I know how bad of a spell it is. We have been discussing a few adjustments to make it a 9th level spell. We did discuss dropping it to an 8th level spell, but even that seems very poor.
1 - Expand the area to 60' radius. (We were also looking at Hallucinatory Terrain's 150' cube as an option.)
2 - Remove the save, unless the target(s) are immune to fear or have some other out.
3 - Treat it as a mass Enemies Abound spell instead of the Fear spell which has a freaking 30' cone already.
4 - In subsequent rounds, allow in Intelligence save to escape the creature's deepest fears, manifesting its worst nightmares as an implacable threat or take 4d10 psychic damage.
This spell has the vibe of a massive battlefield control spell that you can drop on enemy formations, including mounts and anything else which might be in the area to go mad and start freaking out on each other. At 9th level this should be a massive game changer, and not a 3rd level reskinned spell but worse. We are not certain about balance, so I figured I would stretch the powers that be to tone down our modifications to make more sense balance-wise.
IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
The radius really doesn't need to be expanded; more often than not expanding the radius like that just makes it more of a hassle to place the spell without having friendly fire in combat. Changing the save from WIS to INT does improve the odds, though I'd still leave the initial save, particularly since you're already getting a big boost from the save type change. Changing the secondary effect to Enemies Abound is honestly a bit broken; mass random targeting is a fairly OP effect, especially if you try to stack it with no initial save. "Manifesting its worse nightmares as an implacable threat" as an alternative to the 4d10 is both a weaker effect and is useless for describing the actual in-game effects of the spell, and choosing between the two options at the end of every turn just seems like it will bog down play.
Frankly, Weird is effective as it is for nuking a squad of mobs; very few of them are going to beat a 19+ save DC even on WIS. It's not effective as a boss nuke, but that's different from saying it's a useless spell. Really, if you want to tune it up, just add the 4d10 damage to the initial save and call it a day; gives the instant gratification people feel they need from it.