Advanced Designs
October 18th, 2010
Hello everyone. Today I’d like to talk to you about our recent product Advanced Arcana. For those of you who don’t know, Advanced Arcana is a for-pay product, available through www.paizo.com and www.drivethrurpg.com, and for the measly price of a large coffee or a foot-long sandwich, you get over 60 brand-new spells, plus tons of extras, including new sorcerer bloodlines, cleric domains, familiars, and focused wizard schools. Plus, this isn’t your typical cobbled-together assortment of random spells. Advanced Arcana has a specific theme, exploring and playing with the idea of spells which cost more or less than other spells, whether in spell slots, casting time, or similar. I’ll explain more about this below, but the important thing is that while Advanced Arcana does include your typical assortment of random and off-the-wall spells, one of our specific goals in designing the book was to give it a cohesive feel and give it an identity all its own.
All right, all right, let’s talk some design stories, shall we? First up, there’s the so-called “fountain” spells, which, in case you haven’t downloaded Advanced Arcana yet (and I really, really think you should, irrespective of the fact that I’ll get money. It’s a damned good book and I’m quite proud of what it accomplished), are a series of spells which, upon being cast, restore one or more expended spell slots. No, that’s not a typo. It’s not as broken as it sounds, either: the spell slots are of a lower level than the spell that’s recovering them, and, additionally, the spells have a somewhat lesser effect than one would expect for their level. But still: free spells!
So, how did this mechanic come to be? One simple word: cantrips. What? No, not 0-level spells, though I guess that would make plenty of sense, considering those are just spells that can be cast over and over again, and I could really envision a story about how I set out to make a 6th- or 7th-level spell which could be cast endlessly, only to discover that it was completely broken, and adapted it to this new mechanic. Of course, it’s a complete work of fiction, but it’d make for a good story. No, the tale of fountain spells (briefly called “cascading” spells, and before that known as “cantrip spells”) begins with a different kind of cantrip altogether.
The kind from Magic: the Gathering (didn’t see that one coming, did you? If you did, you get a cookie). For those of you who don’t play Magic, a cantrip is a spell which, in addition to another effect, lets you draw an extra card. This sounds powerful, and in a way it is, but bear in mind that typically the cantrip spell’s other effect is worth a lot less than what you would normally get for that amount of mana (sounding familiar yet?). One day, when I was brainstorming fun new things we could do and frontiers which hadn’t been covered yet, it occurred to me that this would be a very fun thing to try to translate into Pathfinder, and though it had the potential to be absolutely broken, it certainly didn’t have to be.
Obviously the spell couldn’t grant spells of equal level or greater, as that would create an infinite loop that makes a super-wizard. Magic didn’t ever have this problem, as its spells require mana to cast, and the spell it provided was random anyway (a trick we sort of stole with Ardesalf’s safer contact, one of my favorite “fountain” spells), but we obviously needed to be very careful. I’d love to tell you a story about how I had to fight to get this variant to see print, but, to be honest, my team was pretty on-board with this absolutely wacky idea. They were hesitant, of course, and noted that it would have to be watched very carefully, but they ultimately agreed it had a lot of potential and that was basically that.
At the same time, it occurred to me to do the opposite: if we were going to have a spell that cost less than a spell (by recovering a less spell slot), why not have a spell that cost more than one spell slot? I honestly can’t remember whether or not this idea came out of Magic as well, as I’m sure anyone who was a kid during the time of Unglued remembers the B.F.M. (and, of course, there’s split cards). But my guess is that it was just a nifty opposite to the other mechanic. On the other hand, I’ve always loved the idea of allowing low-level casters access to higher-level spells in exchange for a larger number of spell slots. So, I guess this idea sort of came out of everywhere.
Unfortunately, the Leadership feat prevented us from having very many low-level segmented spells (that, by the way, is the name of the mechanic where you can essentially use multiple spell slots—and casting time—to cast a really big spell), because we were concerned about players showing up with an army of level 1 wizards and decimating entire countries. In fact, the mechanic really began to shine at the higher echelons of spellcasting, and let us make some spells that allow you to do things that even 9th-level spells are hesitant to let you do. My favorite of these, by good measure, is the create replicant spell, which works a lot like clone, except the clone is its own individual, and not just a replacement body. True disjunction could also be a lot of fun, based on “stilling” or “gentling,” for those of you familiar with The Wheel of Time.
Actually, an interesting aside about true disjunction: as printed, it requires 13 castings, which, as you might have surmised, is kind of a lot. Originally it had something like 3-4, since it’s really not as good as a “save or die” spell (and while I know that save or die spells have been being faded out recently, the point, I think, is still a valid one). The others, however, especially my nemesis, Joshua Zaback, felt that it was too powerful. I fought the matter long and hard, and eventually we compromised on bringing it down from a 9th-level spell with segmented 3 to a 7th-level spell with segmented 13. On the one hand, it’s a lot less powerful now (though it really does require that you subdue the target first, which might make it more interesting), but it also allowed us to give the spell to inquisitors as a 6th-level spell (they only go up to 6th level, in case you didn’t know), which I consider a plus. So, to bring this little aside to a close, if you pick up Advanced Arcana, and think that true disjunction would be better as a 9th-level spell with segmented 3, you have my permission to go for it (you didn’t hear that from me, though! Shhhh!).
The third major innovation in Advanced Arcana (there are, of course, a number of minor innovations, and lots of fun individual spells), was the idea of the “quick” spell. This one came from Justin, who has always been a big fan of spells that could be cast as swift actions. Initially I was a little concerned about how fun or interesting the mechanic would be, but somewhere along the way they transformed from spells that were a swift action to cast into spells that could be cast as swift actions, or could alternatively be cast as a standard action for greater benefit. I’m very glad that we listened to Justin about this, because as it turned out, quick spells really helped round out the book’s theme, which was exploring the “cost” of a spell. After spell slots, the next most valuable resource a spell takes up is casting time (some might argue that casting time is even more important, especially if you’re a fan of Quicken Spell).
Join me next week (it’s horror week), and, in the meantime, never take magic for granted. Oh, and be on the lookout for some more Advanced Arcana specials this week. It's not an official theme week or anything, but, well, let's just say that if there are any fans of Nefarious Knowledge out there, you'll want to stop in tomorrow.