As far as I can tell, there are no spells that specifically shrink or enlarge objects (as opposed to creatures) outside of Wish. Am I wrong about this? I would think that Transmutation Wizards, at least, would have the ability to alter the size of inanimate objects.
Okay, but it's still concentration for the target inanimate object. Shouldn't there be a spell at a lower level than the Creation spell that can permanently enlarge or shrink objects? Or at the least last for hours without concentration?
I feel like there's too much potential for abuse. Like... you could enlarge a single piece of gold and turn it into a double sized amount of gold. If there was to be a homebrew permanent enlarge/shrink it should probably need some limitations to avoid being abused like that.
I think what seems strange is that you can use the Creation spell and make stuff out of thin air (apparently) that lasts for minutes or hours without concentration, but there is no option to upcast Enlarge/Reduce on a thing that has no will of its own such that you can do something else requiring concentration for an hour. Maybe this is the element of the concentration mechanic that seems unnecessarily restrictive and ill-fitting to me. Maybe there should be a separate Enlarge/Reduce spell for objects from the one used for living creatures.
Re: your point of breaking the economy, if the duration is Not permanent, but only for a limited time, then Detect Magic should be able to discern that the coinage is magical and therefore would not be accepted in most cities.
Yeah, I think that would be a fair house rule. Like... to allow players to cast Enlarge/Reduce for objects at 5th level and apply the rules of Creation to it (the spell no longer requires concentration, and the length of time of the transformation matches the Duration limitations of the Creation spell).
Hmmm, I believe 4th level would be more appropriate, since Wizards first get Enlarge/Reduce at 2nd level. A 9th level wizard is already quite high for most areas that aren't centers of major commerce and politics and 5th is the cap for 1/2 casters. If the spell is the same duration as Creation, but one isn't pulling literal material from the Shadowfell, it should, thematically speaking, also be an easier spell.
So now that has me thinking, would this lead to Wizards Enlarging a magical boomerang for their Enlarged Barbarian ally? Would this make a Fighter or Barbarian more powerful than, for instance, a Haste spell?
Oh sure, I was just thinking that the simplest way of balancing it was just to treat it under the same rules of Creation, since that's designed to allow you to create matter in a way that doesn't break the game. It'd just be a way to have a similar spell but still leave the player open to learning different spells later on. But by default Enlarge also enlarges the target's equipment, so I'd assume if you house ruled that casting at a higher level increased the duration, you wouldn't need to grow the player and their weapon separately.
I've seen some DMs/players mention bringing back the permanency spell as homebrew. It is a spell that basically makes other (non-instantaneous) spells have an "until dispelled" duration.
Oh sure, I was just thinking that the simplest way of balancing it was just to treat it under the same rules of Creation, since that's designed to allow you to create matter in a way that doesn't break the game. It'd just be a way to have a similar spell but still leave the player open to learning different spells later on. But by default Enlarge also enlarges the target's equipment, so I'd assume if you house ruled that casting at a higher level increased the duration, you wouldn't need to grow the player and their weapon separately.
Yeah, I think I originally wrote Enlarged great axe or something, and then realized that the Enlarge spell already covers that. But a missile weapon should shrink once they leave the possession of the Enlarged PC, right?
I'm also trying to understand how OP the devs think allowing larger than Medium sized weapons would be since that and rare gem stones are the arenas where more players would most likely try to abuse a permanent Enlarge spell.
I've seen some DMs/players mention bringing back the permanency spell as homebrew. It is a spell that basically makes other (non-instantaneous) spells have an "until dispelled" duration.
I'm guessing permanency would be ritual spell in 5e?
I'm curious what the thought process was behind Not having a permanency spell. If it makes primary casters too powerful, how have homebrew versions of it compensated for that increased power level?
I remember pemanancy in 1e. It was the last step in creating a magic item. It also cost the character a permanent loss of one point of constitution. Made you wonder how many wizards died to make that bag of +1 sling bullets. RAW at the time, each one had to be made individually, so it was a lot of con points
There could be a lot of ways to abuse a permanent reduce/enlarge, though. Want a castle? Have someone build you a scale model of it, take it to the spot and ta-da, you’re a baron. Want a ship or anything else big, same deal. Really anything could work, swords, armor, anything would need a fraction of the materials. A dozen suits of plate made from mithril, coming right up. I know magic is well, magical, but this would completely destroy the economy, such as it is.
And paired with reduce, you can move your stuff anywhere without having to worry about size and shape. It would be a big deal for a low level spell.
I remember pemanancy in 1e. It was the last step in creating a magic item. It also cost the character a permanent loss of one point of constitution. Made you wonder how many wizards died to make that bag of +1 sling bullets. RAW at the time, each one had to be made individually, so it was a lot of con points
There could be a lot of ways to abuse a permanent reduce/enlarge, though. Want a castle? Have someone build you a scale model of it, take it to the spot and ta-da, you’re a baron. Want a ship or anything else big, same deal. Really anything could work, swords, armor, anything would need a fraction of the materials. A dozen suits of plate made from mithril, coming right up. I know magic is well, magical, but this would completely destroy the economy, such as it is.
And paired with reduce, you can move your stuff anywhere without having to worry about size and shape. It would be a big deal for a low level spell.
I think the early D&D developers had instituted the loss of CON as a way to limit how much you would want to use this tactic. That is an even more significant price now that concentration saves are a big deal.
There would obs need to be some kind of limit placed on what could or could not be made permanent and whether/how it could be dispelled. A dispel-able ship isn't very useful if there is even a slight chance your foe can upcast Dispel Magic. Also there would need to be limits on how far Enlarge/Reduce could grow or shrink an item. Twice/half the size is a good benchmark.
I've seen some DMs/players mention bringing back the permanency spell as homebrew. It is a spell that basically makes other (non-instantaneous) spells have an "until dispelled" duration.
I'm guessing permanency would be ritual spell in 5e?
I'm curious what the thought process was behind Not having a permanency spell. If it makes primary casters too powerful, how have homebrew versions of it compensated for that increased power level?
I haven't looked into it myself. It would probably work like contingency and require an additional spell slot of higher level to do.
I remember pemanancy in 1e. It was the last step in creating a magic item. It also cost the character a permanent loss of one point of constitution. Made you wonder how many wizards died to make that bag of +1 sling bullets. RAW at the time, each one had to be made individually, so it was a lot of con points
There could be a lot of ways to abuse a permanent reduce/enlarge, though. Want a castle? Have someone build you a scale model of it, take it to the spot and ta-da, you’re a baron. Want a ship or anything else big, same deal. Really anything could work, swords, armor, anything would need a fraction of the materials. A dozen suits of plate made from mithril, coming right up. I know magic is well, magical, but this would completely destroy the economy, such as it is.
And paired with reduce, you can move your stuff anywhere without having to worry about size and shape. It would be a big deal for a low level spell.
I think the early D&D developers had instituted the loss of CON as a way to limit how much you would want to use this tactic. That is an even more significant price now that concentration saves are a big deal.
There would obs need to be some kind of limit placed on what could or could not be made permanent and whether/how it could be dispelled. A dispel-able ship isn't very useful if there is even a slight chance your foe can upcast Dispel Magic. Also there would need to be limits on how far Enlarge/Reduce could grow or shrink an item. Twice/half the size is a good benchmark.
I dont know how they would limit the amount of spells they could permanence. Maybe have ot work like wish and have a roll to see if you could ever cast the spell again. Maybe make it an artificer class feature (hint, hint WotC). Or maybe just set the limit equal to your spellcasting modifier.
Honestly, if I was going to homebrew a permanency spell and want to keep it from potentially breaking everything, I'd honestly just say that a player can only have one permanent spell active at a time... so if you try to apply permanency to a second target then the first one immediately dispels. So it's essentially just sacrificing one learned spell to make sure that individual enchantments can last forever.
Although honestly, that's still probably pretty broken. Without further limitations you could, for example, give your Monk a permanent haste status and they could endlessly zip around the world all they want.
Perhaps permanency should apply only to objects that remain on the plane which the caster originally cast the permanency. Thus, one could conceivably make a permanent magic weapon with a lightning damage effect, or a Bonnet of Alarm, etc., while disallowing characters to get always-on powerful magic that they could not be separated from. You could argue that because creatures change all the time (emotions, experience in their occupation, aging), a permanency spell would not work on them. Also, this would limit the ability for creatures to do planes hopping without any consequences or triggering weird feedback effects of like taking a Flaming Longsword onto the Elemental Plane of Water and expecting it to work there just as well as it did on the prime material plane.
How much do you think enlarge/reduce affects items that are carried? (Eg: A 10' chain has 10 hit points. lt can be burst with a successful DC20 Strength check. Would the spell/class ability double/half the length and hp and increase/ decrease the dc by... let's say +/- 5)?
How much do you think enlarge/reduce affects items that are carried? (Eg: A 10' chain has 10 hit points. lt can be burst with a successful DC20 Strength check. Would the spell/class ability double/half the length and hp and increase/ decrease the dc by... let's say +/- 5)?
Soooooo in our Spelljammy Jam campaign we want to trap a dragon who is in humanoid form, in a portable hole. I’m curious if you could cast enlarge on the entrance of the portable hole so that it could be more easily disguised….
Soooooo in our Spelljammy Jam campaign we want to trap a dragon who is in humanoid form, in a portable hole. I’m curious if you could cast enlarge on the entrance of the portable hole so that it could be more easily disguised….
Well, I was about to say that Enlarge/Reduce doesn't work on magical objects, but there is no such restriction.
I feel it would enlarge the opening but not the extraplanar space within, though.
Opens the doors to what else could be enlarged for weird combos. Could make th eFolding Boat halfway beyond a joke XD
As far as I can tell, there are no spells that specifically shrink or enlarge objects (as opposed to creatures) outside of Wish. Am I wrong about this? I would think that Transmutation Wizards, at least, would have the ability to alter the size of inanimate objects.
Enlarge/Reduce can be cast on objects as well as creatures. So it's possible, but not permanent.
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Okay, but it's still concentration for the target inanimate object. Shouldn't there be a spell at a lower level than the Creation spell that can permanently enlarge or shrink objects? Or at the least last for hours without concentration?
I feel like there's too much potential for abuse. Like... you could enlarge a single piece of gold and turn it into a double sized amount of gold. If there was to be a homebrew permanent enlarge/shrink it should probably need some limitations to avoid being abused like that.
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I think what seems strange is that you can use the Creation spell and make stuff out of thin air (apparently) that lasts for minutes or hours without concentration, but there is no option to upcast Enlarge/Reduce on a thing that has no will of its own such that you can do something else requiring concentration for an hour. Maybe this is the element of the concentration mechanic that seems unnecessarily restrictive and ill-fitting to me. Maybe there should be a separate Enlarge/Reduce spell for objects from the one used for living creatures.
Re: your point of breaking the economy, if the duration is Not permanent, but only for a limited time, then Detect Magic should be able to discern that the coinage is magical and therefore would not be accepted in most cities.
Yeah, I think that would be a fair house rule. Like... to allow players to cast Enlarge/Reduce for objects at 5th level and apply the rules of Creation to it (the spell no longer requires concentration, and the length of time of the transformation matches the Duration limitations of the Creation spell).
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Hmmm, I believe 4th level would be more appropriate, since Wizards first get Enlarge/Reduce at 2nd level. A 9th level wizard is already quite high for most areas that aren't centers of major commerce and politics and 5th is the cap for 1/2 casters. If the spell is the same duration as Creation, but one isn't pulling literal material from the Shadowfell, it should, thematically speaking, also be an easier spell.
So now that has me thinking, would this lead to Wizards Enlarging a magical boomerang for their Enlarged Barbarian ally? Would this make a Fighter or Barbarian more powerful than, for instance, a Haste spell?
Oh sure, I was just thinking that the simplest way of balancing it was just to treat it under the same rules of Creation, since that's designed to allow you to create matter in a way that doesn't break the game. It'd just be a way to have a similar spell but still leave the player open to learning different spells later on. But by default Enlarge also enlarges the target's equipment, so I'd assume if you house ruled that casting at a higher level increased the duration, you wouldn't need to grow the player and their weapon separately.
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I've seen some DMs/players mention bringing back the permanency spell as homebrew. It is a spell that basically makes other (non-instantaneous) spells have an "until dispelled" duration.
Yeah, I think I originally wrote Enlarged great axe or something, and then realized that the Enlarge spell already covers that. But a missile weapon should shrink once they leave the possession of the Enlarged PC, right?
I'm also trying to understand how OP the devs think allowing larger than Medium sized weapons would be since that and rare gem stones are the arenas where more players would most likely try to abuse a permanent Enlarge spell.
I'm guessing permanency would be ritual spell in 5e?
I'm curious what the thought process was behind Not having a permanency spell. If it makes primary casters too powerful, how have homebrew versions of it compensated for that increased power level?
I remember pemanancy in 1e. It was the last step in creating a magic item. It also cost the character a permanent loss of one point of constitution. Made you wonder how many wizards died to make that bag of +1 sling bullets. RAW at the time, each one had to be made individually, so it was a lot of con points
There could be a lot of ways to abuse a permanent reduce/enlarge, though. Want a castle? Have someone build you a scale model of it, take it to the spot and ta-da, you’re a baron. Want a ship or anything else big, same deal. Really anything could work, swords, armor, anything would need a fraction of the materials. A dozen suits of plate made from mithril, coming right up. I know magic is well, magical, but this would completely destroy the economy, such as it is.
And paired with reduce, you can move your stuff anywhere without having to worry about size and shape. It would be a big deal for a low level spell.
I think the early D&D developers had instituted the loss of CON as a way to limit how much you would want to use this tactic. That is an even more significant price now that concentration saves are a big deal.
There would obs need to be some kind of limit placed on what could or could not be made permanent and whether/how it could be dispelled. A dispel-able ship isn't very useful if there is even a slight chance your foe can upcast Dispel Magic. Also there would need to be limits on how far Enlarge/Reduce could grow or shrink an item. Twice/half the size is a good benchmark.
I haven't looked into it myself. It would probably work like contingency and require an additional spell slot of higher level to do.
Yeah spells like dispel magic and antimagic field would make living in an enlarged castle pretty risky.
I dont know how they would limit the amount of spells they could permanence. Maybe have ot work like wish and have a roll to see if you could ever cast the spell again. Maybe make it an artificer class feature (hint, hint WotC). Or maybe just set the limit equal to your spellcasting modifier.
Honestly, if I was going to homebrew a permanency spell and want to keep it from potentially breaking everything, I'd honestly just say that a player can only have one permanent spell active at a time... so if you try to apply permanency to a second target then the first one immediately dispels. So it's essentially just sacrificing one learned spell to make sure that individual enchantments can last forever.
Although honestly, that's still probably pretty broken. Without further limitations you could, for example, give your Monk a permanent haste status and they could endlessly zip around the world all they want.
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Perhaps permanency should apply only to objects that remain on the plane which the caster originally cast the permanency. Thus, one could conceivably make a permanent magic weapon with a lightning damage effect, or a Bonnet of Alarm, etc., while disallowing characters to get always-on powerful magic that they could not be separated from. You could argue that because creatures change all the time (emotions, experience in their occupation, aging), a permanency spell would not work on them. Also, this would limit the ability for creatures to do planes hopping without any consequences or triggering weird feedback effects of like taking a Flaming Longsword onto the Elemental Plane of Water and expecting it to work there just as well as it did on the prime material plane.
How much do you think enlarge/reduce affects items that are carried? (Eg: A 10' chain has 10 hit points. lt can be burst with a successful DC20 Strength check. Would the spell/class ability double/half the length and hp and increase/ decrease the dc by... let's say +/- 5)?
What are your thoughts?
I think enlarge/reduce says:
Soooooo in our Spelljammy Jam campaign we want to trap a dragon who is in humanoid form, in a portable hole. I’m curious if you could cast enlarge on the entrance of the portable hole so that it could be more easily disguised….
Well, I was about to say that Enlarge/Reduce doesn't work on magical objects, but there is no such restriction.
I feel it would enlarge the opening but not the extraplanar space within, though.
Opens the doors to what else could be enlarged for weird combos. Could make th eFolding Boat halfway beyond a joke XD
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