Realm Spell Saving Throws

[RaspK_FOG]

I think that your arguments raise quite an interest in me; in all actuality, I see where you come from, and your major problem is, as far as I can tell, the explanation behind all of this. Perhaps we would have to be more in depth about all of the things that relate to the Sidhelien...

Issue No.1: Sidhelien Alignment
It is not that elves cannot fiddle with lawful acts on a constant basis; that's what the neutral alignment represents (a more-or-less balanced course of action between the two ethical extremes of law and chaos). In fact, Rhuobhe Manslayer is shown as a non-exemplar case of an elf, what with him being Neutral Evil; not in him being evil, but being neutral instead of chaotic. Note that being restricted to non-lawful alignments does not mean that half the elves are neutral; a different distribution than the normal is something quite possible (in other words, take a Gaussian curve and nudge it up a bit from the mean).

Issue No.2: Spellcasting Restriction
The restriction on spellcasting is purely roleplayed, not mechanic: no elf will suddenly realise you have cast a Necromancy spell on the other side of the globe. Likewise, it generally presents us with the themes behind the elven point of view on magic. For one thing, a druid (the major part of the priesthood of Eric in Cerilia) is a servant of the divine and thus is expected to be doing his god's will, and the latter is a balancing power (amongst other things, he is truly Neutral), even an arbiter of life and death to some extent (in the sense of the natural cycle). That's absurd from the elven point of view: to tamper with the lifeforce of another is like tampering with the very essence of life to them, not with the spark of life every being has. Conjuration is another matter, and I think I'll disagree with Fizz here: a summoned creature is not even entirely normal, even for magic. It pretty much summons an ideal form, not so much a specific creature that may or may not die. That's perverse in a way.

Issue No.3: Clarity
I think that all of this can easily be wrapped up and mentioned with greater clarity, even without using the original 2e wording, which, as far as I can tell, sometimes is too heavily themed with little concern for mechanics.

On the matter of compensation, though, I have to object: the Sidhelien are some of the few creatures that need not be blooded to use true magic, can move unhindered on all sorts of terrain, are immune to natural disease, and are not supposed to die of old age. Is that too little in your eyes?

[gazza666]

As pointed out this is incorrect.

Check out the "other" things that Cerilian elves get:

As pointed out they don't need to be scions in order to cast greater magic (i.e., non-magician/bard type).

Yes, but I dealt with that in my post. This is a non-issue in a regent only campaign, and at best balances the fact that they can't be clerics or druids in a non-regent campaign.

Timeless:

The agelessness is not really a variant on a standard elf - virtually no campaign will last the centuries of game play needed to see a difference. The immunity to disease would be nice if it affected supernatural diseases; as it doesn't, this is primarily only flavour since the average PC will never contract a normal disease. If anyone runs a campaign where Blinding Sickness and Filth Fever are common, then they're outside my experience.

Indeed, I personally think that if offered a trade between immunity to normal diseases and a chance to automatically spot concealed doors, I'd take the latter - neither will come up very often, but the latter is something that cannot be simulated with low level magic, so it has more value. But that's an opinion, of course.

Nature Stride:

It's far from worthless, I'll grant you. But it's not worth giving up 40% of a spell list for.

Automatic Language: Sidhelien. Bonus Languages: Any.

I don't think you can really mean that the greater access to bonus languages is a significant power up - especially since they don't speak any of the human tongues (which a standard elf would).

Favored Class: Any one arcane spell casting class.

Spellcasters suffer so much for multiclassing that they're unlikely to do it. This feature is only of use to an elf who wants to take a couple of levels of sorcerer or bard (compared to a standard elf). Indeed, one could argue that given the number of spells Sidhelien elves can't cast, this actually works out weaker.

You are focusing on a single aspect and using that as the basis for "balance" and not viewing the overall picture.

It is true that I didn't go through the list until now, but that's because the loss of schools of magic is so overwhelmingly crippling that it makes these features pale into insignificance.

Reality check: how many normal players with a PC wizard that were given the option of getting the above features, in exchange for losing access to 20-40% of their spell list, would actually consider it a bargain? Yes, this is a "power gamer" argument - reject it as such if you wish - but to my mind the only feature that is even in the ball park is the lack of greater magic access for non-elves. And I would argue that this is completely balanced by the elven lack of access to clerics and druids - arguably, elves still get the short end of the stick here, since humans can be wizards if they are scions, and elves can't be paladins either (which is a shame given that they have a charisma bonus).

Much of this probably comes from how you are inserting the BRCS rules into your own game.

(shrug)

As far as I can see I'm reading the same thing you are, but we're drawing very different conclusions. I'm not even sure that elven wizards are that much stronger than elven magicians, as they apparently lose many of the spells that define "greater magic".

Focusing on a single aspect of gameplay will remove some "balance" aspects and really nothing can be done in the basic rules to cover all of these things.

I agree, but I don't think it's reasonable to identify the issue I'm expressing about game balance with all elven wizards and sorcerers with the phrase "a single aspect of gameplay". All aspects of gameplay that relate to such characters are impacted; they lose a lot of damage potential (from evocation), virtually all "save or die" effects (from necromancy), and some flexibility (from conjuration). There is no point being a non-specialist wizard if you must give up access to three schools of magic anyway; that's the sort of change that is arguably drastic enough to warrant a different class. And sorcerers get hurt even worse - the bread and butter of a sorcerer is evocation (Magic Missile, Fireball) and they make use of quite a few necromantic spells as well (Blindness/Deafness, Enervation, Finger of Death, all the way up to Wail of the Banshee). Yes, a sorcerer could be constructed that didn't use any of these spells (as could a wizard), but we're removing a choice here. There is a big difference between a sorcerer that chooses to be offbeat and one that must be offbeat.

It basically doesn't hurt bards, I'll give you that.

[quote
I think a lot of your issues with this arise from your house-rules (i.e., own game) and as you pointed out later you don't use alignments.
[/quote]
I must be having a bad day, because I don't see anything in what you quoted that fundamentally contradicts my interpretation.

Each spell is different.

So no help at all then for the novice DM who wants to know the answer to the very simple question: "What spells are elven wizards allowed to cast without becoming outcasts?"?

Grouping them by school is one way to do it, of course. But there are apparently exceptions:

The "reason" that elves disfavor the conjuration and evocation schools is because they "force" changes in the world or the "force" something to appear (most notably the summoning subschool, although all except the healing subschool have aspects that put them close to "forcing" changes - hence they need to be watched and not routinely used (i.e., the "disfavored schools")

But what does "disfavoured" mean? That they can only cast them once a week? That they shouldn't cast them in front of the queen?

And why, if conjuration is not supposed to be routinely used, do elves get 3 conjuration spells added to their list from the druid spell list (one of which is Shambler - a summoning spell)? Was that just a mistake, or are some conjuration spells OK? If so, what makes them different from others?

I really am trying to understand here, but either I'm asking questions that have obvious answers or questions that don't have easy answers. Some of you are saying that only conjuration/summoning spells are bad; others are saying that all conjuration spells are bad.

And I repeat my previous question: why do elves have a problem with "forcing" changes on nature? Nature is resilient; it recovers. Certainly there are no long term effects of casting Summon Monster N or Magic Missile. Are there? If it's just that elves don't particularly like these sorts of spells, well - elves are pretty cool with most funny beliefs. They don't even care if you worship a human god, as long as you keep it to yourself (right?) So why do they get all bent out of shape over a school of magic? Elves aren't stupid, so presumably these schools must actually have a harmful effect - what harmful effect is it? Does it destablise the flow of magic somehow? Does it kill puppies?

All spells of that school affect the life force - and that is something that elves have tremendous trouble with.

OK, but why? Is it a fey thing? It can't be a nature thing, because druids cast Finger of Death all the time, and they're pretty into the whole nature ideal. Presumably even nymph druids can still cast Finger of Death, right?

Let's cast this another way. Suppose, in a variant game, someone decided that elves would be allowed to be druids. Perhaps they reasoned that if rangers could get their power from nature, so could druids. I'm sure that this has been discussed before.

In your opinion, would druids suffer the same restrictions on schools of magic that wizards do? To be blunt: could they cast Finger of Death?

Even in a normal Birthright campaign, an elven ranger gets some divine spells. Is an elven ranger an outcast if he uses Cure Light Wounds? Conjuration/Healing most certainly tampers with the life force - sure, it does so with the best of intentions, but there are necromantic spells that act in the best interests of "life" as well: Disrupt Undead (surely anything that hurts undead is good for nature?), Gentle Repose (I realise that elves probably don't like raising the dead, but this spell can be used just to get your dead buddy home and into an open-casket funeral), Undeath to Death (see Disrupt Undead); as well as some that don't hurt any more than enchantment/charm spells: Blindness/Deafness, Astral Projection (perhaps they're against planar travel - fair enough, but in and of itself this is not a spell that most people would regard as "nasty"). Certainly that's not a lot of spells - most necromancy spells are, indeed, to do with death - but I haven't cherry picked spells that nobody would normally use, either (though most wizards don't prepare Gentle Repose very often, admittedly).

[gazza666]

Here are some spells that are in other schools, that I would suggest violate elven ideals more than the above necro spells do:

• Charm Person (and all the later variants, especially the Dominate series): Even the lowly Charm Person violates someone's free will by forcing them to become your friend; Dominate makes them a puppet. Elves favour free will, correct? (To be honest, virtually all of the enchantment/charm spells involve coercion to some degree; I won't bother listing them all, since these are the most obvious).
• Rope Trick - if elves don't like conjuration spells because they interface to other planes, well - this one actually creates an extradimensional space that by definition violates nature.
• Polymorph invokes an unnatural change on a target. OK, it's not permanent - but Polymorph Any Object often is, as is Baleful Polymorph.
• Disintegrate. You don't get much more of a permanent alteration and nature-destroying spell than this; unlike Finger of Death, this works just fine against trees as well as creatures.
• Control Weather. It's only transmutation, so presumably it's OK for elves to use this as frequently as they wish, totally disrupting the natural weather patterns.

I'm not even listing the more controversial examples (does stopping time violate nature? Suspending someone's animation? Using a Wish?).

Of course the counter argument could be that just because a spell is transmutation, enchantment/charm, etc doesn't necessarily mean it's a free-for-all. That's fine - but why not invert this logic and apply it back to the other schools, so that not all uses of necromancy, conjuration, and evocation are bad?

If the issue is not the direct effect on nature but rather the indirect effect of casting certain types of spells, that's fine too - I just want to know what that effect is. For example, maybe casting necromancy spells in an area gives a cumulative 1% per spell level chance that some nasty incorporeal undead will come through from the Shadow World, and that this percentage decays very slowly (if at all). And maybe conjuration spells might let some extraplanar being in, while evocation spells let elementals in (but presumably these schools have their chances decay faster than necromancy, since necromancy is shunned while the other two are merely disfavoured). This sort of thing gives elves a good, solid reason to shun the schools of magic - and in addition, it adds a potentially useful DM device to justify a sudden arrival of some nasty creature for plot purposes. It also affects other wizards as well, potentially - maybe the percentage chances decay faster in a low-source area than a high-source area, which is why most human wizards don't care as much (since they have fewer high source areas to concern them).

Or perhaps instead of opening up the Shadow World barrier for incorporeal undead, necromancy might gradually reduce the lifeforce in the area so that animals and plants slowly die and the ground becomes more barren. Instead, perhaps they might impact the source potential.

Whatever is most appropriate for the setting - you guys know that better than me - but they surely must do something bad, because otherwise the elves are just being bigots.

[gazza666]

I think that your arguments raise quite an interest in me; in all actuality, I see where you come from, and your major problem is, as far as I can tell, the explanation behind all of this. Perhaps we would have to be more in depth about all of the things that relate to the Sidhelien...

(and snip!)

I think I understand a little better now. Thank you.

On the matter of compensation, though, I have to object: the Sidhelien are some of the few creatures that need not be blooded to use true magic, can move unhindered on all sorts of terrain, are immune to natural disease, and are not supposed to die of old age. Is that too little in your eyes?

In all seriousness, yes, but I've responded blow-by-blow here to Duane, so I won't repeat it here.

I see, of course, that this is a somewhat subjective stance I'm taking.

[gazza666]

In the interests of my understanding, I wonder: if I made a list of all the conjuration and evocation spells in the PH classified by "OK for elves" and "Not OK for elves", would you guys be interested in telling me whether I'm on the right track or not?

If so, I'll see if I can get to it this weekend, at least for the first few levels. That way, at least I'll understand what spells are bad, which will be a necessary first step to understanding why.

[irdeggman]

Guess what, elves aren’t singled out with respect to restrictions on arcane spells – every race has them. So they are indeed "balanced" within the campaign. Birthright is a low-magic setting. Especially in the area of magic items but also in the fact that there are fewer casters of "true" magic, since a character ahs to be a scion or have elven blood in order to do that.

In Chap 3 you will find similar words for each of the races.

Anuireans:
Anuirean mages favor the schools of evocation and divination and magics capable of determining the course of large-scale military and political conflict. Though their feeling for the land is second only to the elves, it is a distant second – Anuirean wizards love powerful evocations spells (though they try to use them sparingly). Anuireans mages tend to disfavor the school of illusion, as illusions tend to bring attention and suspicion without providing any lasting benefit. Anuirean mages shun spells from the school of [/b]enchantment, viewing them as dishonorable

Brecht:
Brecht mages favor divinations and enchantments (although they have laws against charming potential customers). Brecht mages dislike illusions and alterations, as irresponsible practitioners can use spells of these schools to disrupt trade. Brecht mages shun no school as inherently evil or wrong. A cosmopolitan people, the Brecht prefer to be generalists, because any type of spell might be valuable in the right circumstances.

Dwarves:
Dwarven mages favor alterations, abjurations, and spells that allow them to modify nature to suit their needs and protect their homes. Dwarven mages shun necromancy and illusion spells, and disfavor spells with ephemeral effects.

Half-elves:
Half-elves should use the favored, disfavored, and shunned schools of the race from which their beliefs and philosophies on magic are adopted. However, half-elves are far more likely to seek out knowledge disfavored or shunned by their culture. Quite often, half-elves cross-train in many schools of magic merely to satisfy their curiosity of their own magical heritage and to understand how Cerilia's arcane forces adapt differently to humans and elves

Halflings:
Regardless of the attitudes of the region, halflings favor spells from the school of illusions, especially shadow magics or other magics. All halflings shun necromantic magic, as they avoid all things which bear the taint of the evil that corrupted their homeland.


Khinasi:
In theory, Khinasi mages revere all magics – except necromancy – and believe that all magical lore is equally worthwhile. In practice, however, Khinasi wizards pride themselves on power and tend to distance themselves from spells that can be cast by a lesser magician. Khinasi sorcerers favor conjuration spells and other spells with impressive, highly visible results. Khinasi sorcerers disfavor divination. Khinasi sorcerers shun illusion and necromancy.

And the 5 Oaths restrictions.


Rjurik:
Rjurik mages have a hard life among skeptical people and a harsh land. Their kinsmen consider the magic of druids wholesome and valuable, while arcane magic is automatically suspect. Rjurik mages favor spells from the schools of alteration, conjuration, and abjuration. Rjurik mages are noted for researching spells related to the weather. The wise Rjurik wizard learns, and teaches spells that appear natural. Rjurik mages shun spells from the school of evocation. Overt spell effects, such as those produced by evocations, call too much attention to the caster.

Vos:
Although most Vos leaders openly shun mages, very few will order a wizard's death, as they fear the retribution of Lirovka (Ruornil), the successor to Vorynn, the god of magic worshiped long ago by their ancestors. Privately, however, many Vos leaders seek the power to be gained from the quiet service of an allied mage against rival tribes or other dangers of Vosgaard.
Vos mages favor spells from the schools of evocation, abjuration, and necromancy. Vos wizards are feared and sometimes hunted by their own people. Thus, they must be able to survive on their own terms – using strength to frighten foes away and protect themselves from harm. Vos mages have also learned that necromantic magics inspire the fear necessary to encourage others to leave them alone. Vos mages shun spells from the school of enchantment. Although such spells could help them improve their standing in society, they are taught that magical persuasion and coercion are tools of the weak.

[Fizz]

Birthright is a low-magic setting. Especially in the area of magic items but also in the fact that there are fewer casters of "true" magic, since a character ahs to be a scion or have elven blood in order to do that.

I prefer the expression `rare-magic' myself. I mean, Realm Magic is incredibly powerful stuff, but you won't see it very often at all, and as you said, there are very few practitioners.

IMO, this is one of Birthright's best strengths. Magic is not normal.

-Fizz

[irdeggman]

The agelessness is not really a variant on a standard elf - virtually no campaign will last the centuries of game play needed to see a difference. The immunity to disease would be nice if it affected supernatural diseases; as it doesn't, this is primarily only flavour since the average PC will never contract a normal disease. If anyone runs a campaign where Blinding Sickness and Filth Fever are common, then they're outside my experience.

Actually you will find that a game that revolves around domain actions tends to advance time much quicker than a normal game. It is not uncommon for people to run multi-generational games where a player runs his first PC's offspring and etc.

I don't think you can really mean that the greater access to bonus languages is a significant power up - especially since they don't speak any of the human tongues (which a standard elf would).

Yes it really is.

There is no standard human language in the setting there are in fact very fractional languages. So since an elve can use his Int bonus to gain any additional language that puts him at a huge advantage when compared to other races that get to choose a cultural one (what that was to refer to was the culture closest to the character's starting point).

Spellcasters suffer so much for multiclassing that they're unlikely to do it. This feature is only of use to an elf who wants to take a couple of levels of sorcerer or bard (compared to a standard elf). Indeed, one could argue that given the number of spells Sidhelien elves can't cast, this actually works out weaker.

But there are a number of Prestige Classes that favor elves and multiclassing with spellcasters.

This allowance is substantially more than "wizard" as per the PHB and includes bards and sorcerers.

It is true that I didn't go through the list until now, but that's because the loss of schools of magic is so overwhelmingly crippling that it makes these features pale into insignificance.

Reality check: how many normal players with a PC wizard that were given the option of getting the above features, in exchange for losing access to 20-40% of their spell list, would actually consider it a bargain? Yes, this is a "power gamer" argument - reject it as such if you wish - but to my mind the only feature that is even in the ball park is the lack of greater magic access for non-elves. And I would argue that this is completely balanced by the elven lack of access to clerics and druids - arguably, elves still get the short end of the stick here, since humans can be wizards if they are scions, and elves can't be paladins either (which is a shame given that they have a charisma bonus).

Check my other post about how the school restrictions affect the other races and then revisit your argument

So no help at all then for the novice DM who wants to know the answer to the very simple question: "What spells are elven wizards allowed to cast without becoming outcasts?"?

That is what a DM is supposed to do - handle and interpret things. If every thing was a specific mechanic then all DMS would have to rely on house-rules almost all of the time instead of supply "mechanics" where they are purposfully left for them to develop.

But what does "disfavoured" mean? That they can only cast them once a week? That they shouldn't cast them in front of the queen?

Again the social role-playing is up to the DM and that is what the "rules" support.

And why, if conjuration is not supposed to be routinely used, do elves get 3 conjuration spells added to their list from the druid spell list (one of which is Shambler - a summoning spell)? Was that just a mistake, or are some conjuration spells OK? If so, what makes them different from others?

Actual that is a variant and was done at the request of the boards to accomodate the elven closeness to nature. The spells were voted on and chosen by the masses. Personnally I didn't think it was necessary but bowed to the public pressure.

And I repeat my previous question: why do elves have a problem with "forcing" changes on nature? Nature is resilient; it recovers. Certainly there are no long term effects of casting Summon Monster N or Magic Missile. Are there? If it's just that elves don't particularly like these sorts of spells, well - elves are pretty cool with most funny beliefs. They don't even care if you worship a human god, as long as you keep it to yourself (right?) So why do they get all bent out of shape over a school of magic? Elves aren't stupid, so presumably these schools must actually have a harmful effect - what harmful effect is it? Does it destablise the flow of magic somehow? Does it kill puppies?

That is something that only detailed reading will help you with.

Try reading Bloodspawn (a free download from WoitC) to help grasp some of the "history" of the elves. It is free, so there can't be any reason, except for being lazy, with not trying to get it.

Let's cast this another way. Suppose, in a variant game, someone decided that elves would be allowed to be druids. Perhaps they reasoned that if rangers could get their power from nature, so could druids. I'm sure that this has been discussed before.

In your opinion, would druids suffer the same restrictions on schools of magic that wizards do? To be blunt: could they cast Finger of Death?

Well since you are already in a variant game I can't give you a valid opinion since elves should not be druids in a Birthright setting game.

Even in a normal Birthright campaign, an elven ranger gets some divine spells. Is an elven ranger an outcast if he uses Cure Light Wounds? Conjuration/Healing most certainly tampers with the life force - sure, it does so with the best of intentions, but there are necromantic spells that act in the best interests of "life" as well: Disrupt Undead (surely anything that hurts undead is good for nature?), Gentle Repose (I realise that elves probably don't like raising the dead, but this spell can be used just to get your dead buddy home and into an open-casket funeral), Undeath to Death (see Disrupt Undead); as well as some that don't hurt any more than enchantment/charm spells: Blindness/Deafness, Astral Projection (perhaps they're against planar travel - fair enough, but in and of itself this is not a spell that most people would regard as "nasty"). Certainly that's not a lot of spells - most necromancy spells are, indeed, to do with death - but I haven't cherry picked spells that nobody would normally use, either (though most wizards don't prepare Gentle Repose very often, admittedly).

The restriction for spells is specific to arcane spells and not to divine ones. The notes on favored, disfavored and shunned schools is located under "Arcane Magic" in Ch 3.

[dalor]

The ruler of Tuarhievel has "Death Plague" as a realm
spell. Fhileraene also has the Realm Spell "Raze,"
which would be a "non-elven" spell I would think;
according to the ongoing logic against certain magic
being used by elves.

Isaelie, the ruler of the Sielwode, has "Summoning" as
a realm spell.

Realm spells may defy the common concept of what magic
elves will use, simply because it is so limited in the
number of spells available; but then Isaelie also has
Fireball...

Even if an Elf had Legion of the Dead...who is to say
that the dead that are summoned aren`t elven hero
soldiers now passed on from war...willing to return
and aid their people.

Showing that an elven monarch actually has Death
Plague as one of his realm spells shows me that they
are allowed such magic. Plagues are a natural thing;
all disease stems from nature, and the simple
classification system of magic in the D&D game is a
bit too rigid at any rate. Spells used to have
several "schools" from which they could derive their
power...so I still go with the logic that a spell can
have similar effects even if they are from different
schools.

You don`t have to be an elven necromancer to use
necromantic magic...many elven casters used horrible
magic of deadly effect against the human invaders
during the Great War.

Note: all my spells mentionings are from official
sources...2nd Edition AD&D.


Anthony Edwards

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[ConjurerDragon]

Birthright.net Message Boards schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=3019
> wrote:
> Here are some spells that are in other schools, that I would suggest violate elven ideals more than the above necro spells do:
> Charm Person (and all the later variants, especially the Dominate series): Even the lowly Charm Person violates someone`s free will by forcing them to become your friend; Dominate makes them a puppet. Elves favour free will, correct? (To be honest, virtually all of the enchantment/charm spells involve coercion to some degree; I won`t bother listing them all, since these are the most obvious).
>
I would disagree. Sidhelien see themselves as a superior race and to
subdue and even enslave goblins was only natural to them and would still
be the norm hadn?t the goblins not successfully revolted. Favouring free
will? Of sidhelien beings perhaps ;-)
bye
Michael