3.5e Homebrew Spells

 ==Cofniben's Darkwave==

Evocation [Darkness, Evil]

Level: Blackguard 3, Dread Necromancer 5, Hexblade 3, Sor/Wiz 5, Ur-Priest 5

Components: V, S

Casting Time: 1 Standard Action

Range: Close (25 ft. + 5ft./2 levels)

Target: 30 ft. cone

Duration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: Reflex Half and Fortitude Partial; see text

Spell Resistance: Yes

The caster launches a wave of cold darkness from his left hand. The wave deals 1d8 points of damage per two caster levels (maximum 10d8). Half the damage is cold, and the other half has no specific type. A successful Reflex save halves this damage.

When struck, targets must also succeed at a fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round, overwhelmed by the evil charge of the darkwave. (If a character takes no damage from the spell, such as if they make the Reflex save and have Evasion, then they are not stunned and need not make the Fortitude save.)

==Desalinate==

Transmutation

Level: Brd 0, Pal 1, Rgr 1, Sor/Wiz 0

Components: V, S

Casting Time: 1 standard action

Range: 10 ft

Target: 1 cu. ft./ level of salt water

Duration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: None

Spell resistance: No

Aside from that collected in the form of rain water, fresh water did not, for a long time, exist. Thus, it became necessary to come up with a simple spell which can be cast by nearly anyone to create fresh water from salt water. To that end, some of the most talented wizards and other spellcasters in the world simplified purify food or drink so that any caster (aside from those who can already cast the original spell) can use it with a minimum of learning or talent.

Desalinate works as purify food or drink, but it serves only to remove the salt and impurities from seawater. It has no effect on any object other than water, and it has no effect on any object that is already affected by any spell or magical effect.

==Genocide of the Dead==

Evocation [Good]

Level: Sanctified 7

Components: V, S, Sacrifice

Casting Time: 1 Standard Action

Range: Touch and 1 mile (see text)

Target: Undead creature touched and its spawn

Duration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: Will negates

Spell Resistance: Yes

You invoke ancient and terrible powers hostile to the undead to call down destruction upon your target's entire twisted, misbegotten lineage.

The target must succeed at a Will save or immediately be destroyed.

If the target is destroyed, all spawn within one mile created by the target with a Create Spawn ability must also succeed at Will saves or immediately be destroyed.

For each spawn destroyed, all spawn within one mile created by that spawn must succeed at Will saves or immediately be destroyed, and so on until all descendants of the original target have been destroyed, succeeded at Will saves, or had an ancestor succeed at their Will save.

Sacrifice: 1d6 nonlethal damage per undead creature destroyed by the spell

==Megiddo's Smashing Pumpkin==

Necromancy

Level: Blackguard 4, Druid 6, Duskblade 5, Hexblade 4, Sorcerer/Wizard 5

Components: M, S, V

Casting Time: 1 standard action

Range: Close

Target: One creature

Duration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: Fortitude half

Spell Resistance: Yes

A moldy, rotten pumpkin flies from your hands and beats your opponent about the head and shoulders before crumbling into nothing.

Make a ranged touch attack. If it hits, the target is mysteriously reduced to half of its current hit points (rounded down). A successful fortitude saving throw leaves the target instead with 3/4 of his previous hit point total (rounded down).

Material Component: A single pumpkin seed.

==Youth Drain, Least==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blighter 1, Clr 1, Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 1

As youth drain, except the target ages only 1 year.

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 1 year old.

==Youth Drain, Lesser==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blackguard 1, Blighter 2, Clr 2, Dread Necromancer 2, Hexblade 1, Mortal Hunter 1, Sor/Wiz 2

As youth drain, except the target ages only 1d4 years.

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 5 years old.

==Youth Drain==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blackguard 2, Blighter 3, Clr 3, Dread Necromancer 3, Hexblade 2, Mortal Hunter 2, Sor/Wiz 3

Components: V, S, M

Casting Time: 1 standard action

Range: Short (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target: One living creature

Duration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: Fortitude negates

Spell Resistance: Yes

You point at your target and years evaporate from their lifespan. They age 1d6 years per 4 caster levels (minimum 1 die, maximum 3 dice). This is never beneficial to the target.

In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 10 years old.

==Youth Drain, Greater==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blackguard 3, Blighter 5, Clr 5, Dread Necromancer 5, Hexblade 3, Mortal Hunter 3, Sor/Wiz 5

As youth drain, except the target ages 1d10 years per 3 caster levels (minimum 1 die, maximum 6 dice).

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 25 years old.

==Youth Drain, Dark==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blackguard 4, Blighter 7, Clr 7, Dread Necromancer 7, Hexblade 4, Mortal Hunter 4, Sor/Wiz 7

As youth drain, except the target ages 1d12 years per 2 caster levels (minimum 1 die, maximum 12 dice).

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 75 years old.

==Youth Drain, True==

Necromancy [Evil]

Level: Blighter 9, Clr 9, Dread Necromancer 9, Sor/Wiz 9

As youth drain, except the target ages 1d20 years per caster level (minimum 1 die, maximum 24 dice).

Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 250 years old.

DM as Provider of Information

When a player asks, "What do I see?", the average DM finds this a perfectly reasonable question, and attempts to answer the question (unless it's dark, or the relevant character is blinded, or whatever). Same with "What do I hear?" These are your standard-issue primary human senses, how we get most of our information about the world, and thus naturally how the DM conveys most of the information about the characters' world to the players. The DM might reasonably call for a Search/Spot/Listen/Perception check, if there's information that would be available only to particularly observant characters.

When a player asks, "What do I smell?", "How does it taste?", or "How does it feel?", the DM might be a little taken aback, as these are unusual questions, but will generally still attempt to answer the question. Again, perhaps with a Perception check, though one might be at a bit of a loss for what skill to use in 3.5 -- probably a basic Wisdom check. It's been said before (probably by me, among many others) that a decent DM will volunteer sight and sound data, while a masterful DM will neglect no senses when giving information. (This can be overdone -- nobody wants to hear a full discourse about how the air feels and tastes on every room their characters enter -- but underdoing it is a much bigger risk in practice.)

I leave as an exercise to the reader coming up with situations in which lesser-known senses, such as proprioception, might come up in play.

But when a player says "I cast detect magic", the common DM reaction is frustration or annoyance. Especially in Pathfinder, where cantrips/orisons like detect magic are at-will, so players have been known to "spam" them. The ubiquity of detect magic is, in fact, quite a common complaint I hear about Pathfinder. (To a lesser extent, the same goes for paladins and detect evil, even in 3.5.)

I've seen more than one DM frequently resort to "The area in general is so powerfully magical it gives you a headache and you can't pick out individual magic effects." This is may be a legit technique for lending particularly epic or eldritch locations an extra element of "you're dealing with things you can't understand", but, if you use it, you should definitely reserve it for, say, the final dungeon of the campaign, where you're walking into the lair of a physical god. (But even then, if you're high enough level where you're a reasonable challenge to said physical god, one would think your techniques for casting detect magic would have advanced along with everything else on your sheet, so even in the presence of supremely powerful magic, you can still pick out details.) Fun fact: There are, in fact, rules for detecting "Overwhelming" auras with detect magic, but they're limited to epic-level spells and artifacts.

And if you do that, you should do it for other senses, too. A mission to the elemental plane of light, where everything is so bright that it gives you a headache even if you keep your eyes closed and there's no way to pick out visual details. Or the plane of darkness, where no light sources function. A cacophonous factory floor, where you can't discern individual sounds. Perhaps even your sense of proprioception fails when you come in contact with stuff of the Far Realm. The one such example that I have seen DMs use fairly often in practice: stenches so strong they make you gag.

As with most DM sins, I've been (partially) guilty of this one myself. I have been known to say "This entire area is permeated with an ambient aura of evil", in the case of an area proximate to a permanent portal to the Abyss, when paladins were using detect evil. But! This is a case of more information, not less: the ambient evil didn't render them unable to pick out finer details of evil. When there was a demon in the next room, they could still pick out the demon's evil aura from the dungeon's ambient evil aura. And meanwhile, they had the information that there's something so evil that's been here for so long that the evil has soaked into and permeated the very stones themselves.

Anyhow: why is the DM reaction to "What do I see?" so different from the DM reaction to "I cast detect magic"? They're both usage of the character's defined abilities to gather information about the world. Perhaps it's that the rules for detect magic are slightly complicated and the DM doesn't feel like dealing with them. Perhaps it's that detect magic, unlike sight/taste/proprioception/etc, is not a standard-issue primary human sense in the real world, so it seems more legit to deny characters the full use of detect magic than it would to deny them the full use of their other senses.

As I alluded to two paragraphs ago, it's about information. As I see it, one of the DM's primary roles is to provide information to the party. (There's also some business with deciding what information is available, and under what circumstances, and of course deciding what the information consists of in the first place, but the primary business, for the purpose of this post anyway, is providing the information to the party.) Any situation where the party requests specific exposition (that their characters would reasonably have access to) is an opportunity for the DM to maximally fulfil this role.

So whenever a player asks for information, it warms my withered black heart, because it's an opportunity to provide exposition (and, often, to come up with information on the fly, which I enjoy and am decent at). Some DMs will try to restrict the flow of information, either because they think it increases the challenge or because they're just not good at or don't enjoy coming up with new information on the fly. I don't have much to say about the second thing, but I'll digress for a paragraph on the first:

Security through obscurity can make for an interesting fight, if used sparingly. Trial and error can make for an interesting battle. The minionry of Dr. Blelyj once fought a monster that, unbeknownst to us, was made more powerful when it was subjected to magic missile. Many lulz were had at the expense of the poor sorcerer who'd thought his magic missile was a sure thing. There are many clever monsters of this sort: albino red dragons, those gas spore monsters that look like beholders, mimics (and the general venerable and well-populated genre to which they belong, "monsters that look like harmless objects"), shambling mounds ("oh, it's a tree monster, trees usually get wrecked by lightning, right?"), and so on. Withholding one key piece of information can be a fun lark. (If you do this much, you should also make sure that your monsters don't always act as though they have complete information about the party.) But many players (myself included) don't care for every battle to be trial and error. Usually we just want to deploy our tactical abilities against the monsters' tactical abilities, and prefer to have more complete information rather than less (and sometimes invest substantial character options into perception and knowledge abilities, and it's generally not a good idea to deny players the fruits of their character building without a good reason).

Which brings me to knowledge skills! There are rules for knowledge skills, which you would do well not to ignore. The rule of thumb is "one piece of information for a DC of 10 + the monster's HD, and an additional piece of information every 5 thereafter". You don't need to indulge player requests for specific bits of information ("What kind of DR does it have?", or even "Any major weaknesses?"), but it never hurts.

My main beef with the knowledge system (in fact, one of my beefs with d20 in general) is that knowledge skills can't be used untrained. My beef with this is threefold: one, it restricts me as a DM from being able to give out information, and I always love giving out information; two, it restricts me as a player from acquiring information, and I usually love acquiring information; three, it forces me as a DM into a position where I have to say "no", which is Bad. I keep thinking of instituting a "you can use trained-only skills untrained at a -10 penalty" houserule. Other DMs I've played with have dealt with this by expanding (usually on the fly) the list of relevant knowledge skills for a piece of information: to identify a given undead creature, you might be allowed to use Knowledge(dungeoneering) or Knowledge(arcana) if you don't have Knowledge(religion), for example.

Anyway, I generally encourage players to invest points in and use the Knowledge skills, because I enjoy providing exposition and it's a good tool for that. And yes, like everything, it can be overused -- I play with a druid who tends to ask if she can use Knowledge(nature) to identify everything she encounters, no matter how obviously non-natural. But, in general, allowing players to roll Knowledge checks is generally better than not allowing it.

Do note that "Knowledge" isn't just book-larnin'. It isn't always "I read about this in a book once" (though for some characters it might be). It's a combination of that, practical knowledge ("I encountered something like this once"), observation and extrapolation ("Look, it's got flattened teeth, it's probably an herbivore, though that doesn't mean it's necessarily harmless"). So think twice before using the "Nobody has seen one of these for centuries, you can't make a knowledge check" line. (Nobody's seen the Others for centuries, but people still figured out they have DR/dragonglass or Valyrian steel, through practical observation and also it was in at least one ancient book.) Actually, that's a general principle: a thing being difficult means you should pile circumstance modifiers on to increase the difficulty, not "you can't do it". If you can swim up a waterfall with a high enough Swim check, you can deduce the properties of an ancient monster with a high enough Knowledge check. "Don't even bother to roll" is if it's too easy to fail, not if it's too hard to succeed.

Mechanatrixes and Electricity

So, there's the mechanatrix race from Fiend Folio. They're kind of neat, because they're descended from robots constructs.

And also they're described as follows: "They behave with cold rationality and have a no-nonsense attitude toward life." Which is to say, they're wombats.

But the most noteworthy thing about them, from a mechanical perspective, is how electricity damage heals them. Every time a mechanatrix would take electricity damage, they take no damage, and it heals them instead, 1 point of healing for every 3 points of damage they would have taken.

So how do you get at-will electricity damage? Should be easier than at-will healing, right? Right! But, as it turns out, not much easier.

---

The obvious notion is to consult reserve feats, those feats from Complete Mage and Complete Champion that give you supernatural abilities as long as you have a spell of a certain level prepared. And, indeed, there is an electricity damage reserve feat: Storm Bolt (CM).

But wait! Storm Bolt gives you a 20-foot line of electricity. Can you include yourself in a line effect? Let's consult the SRD: "A line-shaped spell shoots away from you in a line in the direction you designate. It starts from any corner of your square and extends to the limit of its range or until it strikes a barrier that blocks line of effect."

So, by RAW, no, not really. It starts in any corner of your square, and shoots away from you. Our mechanatrix could get a mage buddy with Storm Bolt, but he couldn't Storm Bolt himself.

The same problem applies to if you're, say, a Dragonfire Adept or Dragon Shaman with lightning breath (plus you're generally explicitly immune to your own breath weapon).

---

Or, the allegation goes, you could use a persisted or or permanency'd thunderhead (SpC) spell. A little cloud that floats above your head all day, zapping you with tiny lightning bolts for one electricity damage every round, forever.

Except the mechanatrix isn't healed for 1 point every time they accumulate 3 points of electricity damage they would have taken. Every time they take electricity damage, it's divided by 3, they're healed for that much, and the remainder doesn't matter. 1/3 rounds down to 0 -- it's healing, not damage, so the "all attacks deal at least 1 damage" exception to the "always round down" rule doesn't apply. Thunderhead does nothing.

You could persist or permanency a weapon of energy spell, but then wind up with a bunch of your build or a butt-ton of gold invested in metamagic reducers or a single spell, which is hardly worth it for something so trivial as infinite out-of-combat heals.

---

You could shell out 8,301gp for a +1 Shock Whip. As long as you're wearing a bit of armor, you can whip yourself all day and only the electricity damage will go through. Expensive, weird, and a little kinky. ...I shall expend no more words on this notion.

---

You could take a level of electrokineticist. Kind of a lackluster class. It requires a powerpoint reserve but doesn't advance manifesting, so it's a trap for actual manifesters, and you should just use Wild Talent to qualify. But the class features aren't even great for a non-manifester.

Plus, most of the x-kineticist's class abilities specify things like "she takes no damage from a x lash she creates" or xs "engulf one of the pyrokineticist’s hands (but do her no harm)", so you'd have to work out whether an electrokineticist mechanatrix can deliberately target themselves for the full effect of their powers.

An entire class level, just for this ability? There's gotta be something better.

---

Well, there's something that, by RAW, does work way better: consult Magic of Incarnum, and take the Shape Soulmeld (lightning gauntlets) feat. Can't wear magic gloves, but 1d6 elec damage at will as a touch attack (and it is well known that it is possible to touch oneself).

But... incarnum is (subjectively) kind of lame. It's one of those things, along with Tome of Magic* and Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords, that feels to me too slick and soulless and 4th-edition-y, and which only annoying optimizers ever tend to actually open. There's gotta be something more aesthetically pleasing. More... interesting.

*Binders can allegedly bind Focalor to achieve some form of at-will electricity damage, but honestly just typing this sentence has used up 100% of my ability to give a crap about ToM for the day, and I couldn't possibly find it in my heart to double-check whether this would actually even work.

---

So here's a more interesting idea: shocker lizard.

You could maybe get a domesticated one for money, but you could much more reliably get one by being a 5th level arcane spellcaster and taking Improved Familiar. (You may also consider trading away your regular familiar for an alternate class feature or the Forlorn flaw (Dragon #333), because the Obtain Familiar (CA) feat is better: it makes prestige classes progress your familiar.) Or you could be a ranger or druid and take Monstrous Animal Companion (Dragon #326).

Anyway, shocker lizard. Your eye might be drawn to its Stunning Shock ability, but alas! It won't work. "An electrical shock" sounds promising, but "this attack deals 2d8 points of nonlethal damage". There's no such thing as nonlethal electricity damage. Nonlethal is its own thing. A point of damage cannot be both nonlethal and electricity, it is either one or the other. The shocker lizard is quite clear: it's fluffed as electricity, but it's actually just nonlethal. (A particularly generous DM might rule that the shocker's nonlethal shock will cure any nonlethal damage the mechanatrix may have taken, but we oughtn't rely on the generosity of the DM.)

No, what we need is Lethal Shock, because that's actually electricity damage. But wait! You need two shocker lizards for that!

Are you seeing what I'm getting at yet?

What I'm getting at is this: Mechanatrixes have tamed shocker lizards, and use them in war and daily life. Mechanatrix society is ruled by a cadre of arcane casters, all with shocker lizard familiars. Mechanatrix adventuring and war parties always include at least two shocker lizards, usually more, with at least one usually being the familiar or animal companion of one of the party's casters.

Next time you use mechanatrixes as a DM, team them up with some shocker lizards. The lizards have been trained to use their lethal shock every round, and the mechanatrixes and lizards all stay within 20ft of one another. (Maybe bump the total ECR of the encounter up by one or so, because synergy.)

As for me, because I'm not currently DMing a game: next time I'm making new characters (at ECL6 or more) at the same time as somebody else (either because it's a new campaign, or because two characters died at the same time), I'm going to try to convince them to make a pair of wandering mechanatrix adventurers with shocker lizard familiars/companions. ("Hey, you feel like making a bard, beguiler, dread necromancer, druid, duskblade, hexblade, ranger, sorcerer, spellthief, wizard, warmage, or wu jen?")

EDIT: Alternately, you could just take Extra Familiar (Dragon #280), which negates the requirement that you have a buddy with the same plan, but which makes it a bit less interesting. On the other hand, every extra shocker lizard adds another 2d8 electricity damage each round (that's extra damage to anything not immune to electricity and an extra ≈3 points of healing for each mechanatrix), so you would certainly benefit from everybody involved having Extra Familiar (at most 6 lizards can contribute to any one lethal shock, but even if you have 7 lizards, you can just have one 5-lizard shock and one 2-lizard shock each round, paying only a slight save DC cost, because the save DC is also a function of the number of lizards involved. Or there's the option to just have more than 6 lizards contribute to a single shock: it would still only be 12d8 damage, but there's no cap on the save DC).

Extra Spell

Extra Spell. The feat that launched a thousand arguments, once upon a time. To wit: does it allow access to spells that aren't on your class list? Or does it allow access only to spells that you would normally be able to access anyway?

The arguments were (mostly) settled when the official WotC FAQ chimed in:

Can the warmage (Complete Arcane) benefit from the Extra Spell feat?

No. Extra Spell lets you add one spell to your list of spells known, but the spell must be taken from your class spell list. Since the warmage already knows all the spells on his class spell list, this feat has no effect.

But not everybody treats the FAQ as gospel, and rightly so (often, they provide insane and self-contradictory interpretations of the rules).

Prima facie, the line in the feat about "Extra Spell is generally used to learn a specific spell that the character lacks access to and would be unable to research" seems reasonably clear-cut: it allows you to mine other class lists, because if a spell is on another class's list and not yours, you lack access to it. If so, then the FAQ is flatly contradicting the text of the feat, so the FAQ is wrong.

However, I can see how it could have been intended to mean "lacks physical access to a written version to copy into his spellbook". It's ambiguous, but I can see the possibility.

---

That said, though casters don't need nice things, I disagree with the "official" FAQ answer.

There are precedents in the Expanded Knowledge, Shape Soulmeld, and Martial Study/Stance feats, which allow you to access things you would otherwise be unable to access.

There are hardly any circumstances under which Extra Spell would be useful if you adhere to the FAQ's answer. If you're on a class with a desperately limited number of spells known, maybe. Or, as the text of the feat says, if you want a spell but can't find a scroll of it. Or if you're a Chameleon and use your free floating feat every day to temporarily learn a new spell long enough to copy it into your spellbook. So the official interpretation makes it a waste of a precious feat.

Worst of all, the official interpretation is boring.

---

So I'm inclined, in my games, to let Extra Spell take a spell off any list at all.

With the exception of known game-breaker spells (though most of those are level 9, and thus unlearnable with Extra Spell).

And with the caveat that you don't get to pick from the weird lists like Trapsmith or Adept to get a spell early; if it's available to a full caster player base class, you get it as a spell of that level, no lower.

Pi, Bursts, and Cones

About two Pi Days ago, I celebrated in the most appropriate way I could think of: I actually did some calculations involving pi.

See, at some point I had seen Paizo's Steel Sqwire templates. I judged them unnecessarily expensive, because I knew I could make some that were just as good myself.

So I went and I found some wire...

...and did some calculations.

I decided that all the fiddly little right angles and squarenesses in the RAW templates for cones and bursts were unnecessary, because I was making templates to represent actual cone and burst shapes. I decided my cones would be quarter-circles and my spheres would be circles! So that involved some math.

As everyone should know from elementary school, the circumference of a circle is 2πr. And, obviously, the perimeter of a quarter-circle is 2πr divided by 4, plus 2r, or r(π/2+2). And 1 inch for a mini equals 5 feet in-character, so we divide all our answers by 5.

radius (ft.)	cone (in.)	burst (in.)
10	7.1	12.6
15	10.7	18.8
20	14.3	25.1
30	21.4	37.7
40	28.6	50.3
50	35.7	62.8
60	42.8	75.4
70	50.0	88.0

(If you do this yourself, you might consider yourself well-advised to double-check my math before cutting.)

I elected to make a 20' burst and a 30' cone, because those are the biggest that would fit in my D&D stuff carrying folder, and anything smaller is easy enough to figure out on the fly.

So I cut my wire to length and affixed it to itself with a connector and...

This dragon's breath weapon is 10' too short for its size. Oops.

This changeling is casting darkness. Or fireball. Or obscuring mist. Or fog cloud. Or stinking cloud. Or cloudkill. Or solid fog. Or dispel magic. Or zone of truth. Or something. This is a useful size template to have, is what I'm saying.

Easy!

All-Spellcaster Battle

I recently DMed a battle that went better than I could possibly have planned.

In the old-fashioned, relatively linear, non-OGT campaign (which I've been calling "the summer campaign", for reasons of I'm running it now and it is currently summer) I've been running recently, I still sometimes use random encounter tables. Specifically, because it's set in the same world as my OGT, I use the same random encounter tables as I use for my OGT. (Though the summer campaign is set so far in the Omorashi Empire, while OGT is in Gus, so it's more like a set of tables that are in the same Excel document as my OGT tables, but which had not yet been used.)

Anyway, for a small town that has become completely taken over by goblins, I put together some creatures. For variety, there's goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, bakemonos (Oriental Adventures; I took the line that "bakemonos are the 'goblins' of the Shadowlands" a little more literally than OA intended, and declared them a form of goblin native to the Omorashi Empire (to whatever extent "native" can describe a country that's only existed for 20 years)), mites, pesties, and nilbogs (Tome of Horrors, which I recently discovered and love, full of all the monsters from earlier editions that were too horrible or ridiculous to ever get officially ported to 3e (except even ToH lacks the duckbunny)). They're all led by an ogre monk, and I whipped up some goblin spellcasters for support.

I think I may be embarking upon a half-deliberate attempt to screw every character over in combat, one at a time. This time, it's the ranger's turn: the spellcasters have obscuring mist and fog cloud, and the ogre has Deflect Arrows. Next up: solid fog, web, and undead/oozes/elementals, to annoy the scout! Non-Humanoids to annoy the beguiler! Intelligent, mind-control-resistant humanoids to annoy the Vow Of Peace cleric! Lawful Good yet hostile foes to annoy the paladin! Hostile dragons to annoy the dragon shaman! Or something along those various lines.

Anyhow, the relevant feature of this post: spellcasters! I slapped fiendish and 3 levels of shaman (an OA class that's like the cleric but more interesting) on goblin and called it a yaoguai. The relevant features are cure moderate wounds, hold person, fog cloud, obscuring mist, shield of faith, cure light wounds, burning hands, and some orisons. Also, each yaoguai starts with 1d4-1 random minor scrolls, for variety.

So, for one of the wandering monster fights, I roll... 8 yaoguais. Approximately a level 9 encounter. Needless to say, a very tough fight for an ECL1-2 party. (Most of the party wound up gettting enough XP to level.) And it went fantastically.

So the yaoguais cast some Obscuring Mist/Fog Cloud to annoy the ranger. Then the party took out a couple yaoguais. Then the yaoguais started using their Cures to bring their companions back up, their Hold Person to incapacitate the scout (they tried it on the ranger and discovered that he's not a humanoid), and Burning Hands to wreck the party's crap.

One of the yaoguais summons a huge fiendish centipede. The paladin charges and uses Smite Evil on it. The centipede uses Smite Good on the paladin, prompting entertaining incredulity. The centipede's time runs out and it vanishes.

Anyway, the yaoguais swiftly take down the entire party except for one or two. Every yaoguai that's gone down has gotten a heal and popped right back up again. And all looks lost for our heroes!

Except then the yaoguais all run out of all their decent spells, and have to resort to converting their orisons to inflict minor wounds or trying to punch for 1d2-2 damage. (Shaman at least gets Improved Unarmed Strike for free, so at least they weren't provoking with their attacks.) And the party manages to get enough healing potion down the dragon shaman that he can reactivate his vigor aura. And then it's all over and the yaoguais are suddenly easy to take down.

Why do I say this went fantastically? Because coming back against overwhelming odds from the brink of defeat is awesome. Turning a near party-wipe into a victory is awesome. (I don't really know how well the players actually liked it, because it took all night, they were exhausted by the end, and then they immediately barged into the library and discovered the ogre monk, for whom they were woefully unprepared. But I thought it was fantastic.)

And to what do I ascribe this fantasticness? All of the foes were pure spellcasters, with no melee support or capability at all. Going nova by blowing all their good spells in the first few rounds of combat allowed the yaoguais to almost, but not quite, win. Having done that, and no longer having any decent spells left, then allowed the PCs to win handily.

An encounter of nothing but pure spellcasters, with just enough power to almost wipe the party. Don't do it too often, lest it get old, but try it once or twice.

And, as a side note, this is also one of the reasons why wandering monster fights are good. You might wind up accidentally rolling an encounter it would normally never occur to you to throw at the party, and that encounter might turn out to be amazing and might give you completely new ideas to add to your DMing repertoire.

On Qualifying

So I've been thinking about the Southern Magician and Precocious Apprentice feats.

Southern Magician is a regional feat from Races of Faerun. I allow people to ignore the region prerequisites of regional feats, though I might say that I wouldn't allow a character to take multiple regional feats with conflicting region prerequisites, on the assumption that many regional feats are probably balanced around a character being from only one region.

The relevant text of the feat is this: "Once per day per two spellcaster levels, you can cast a divine spell as an arcane spell, or vice versa."

"Psh," you might say, "That's a useless, crappy feat." And yes, yes it is.

Except for the mystic theurge's prerequisite: "Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells."

With Southern Magician, you can drastically reduce the level at which you qualify for Mystic Theurge. It still requires 6 ranks in two knowledge skills, so you'll never be able to reduce it below 4 (without Inspire Courage + Psychic Reformation shenanigans), but that's still better than the level 7 which would otherwise be the minimum.

Consider also Precocious Apprentice, from Complete Arcane. The relevant text: "Choose one 2nd-level spell from a school of magic you have access to. You gain an extra 2nd-level spell slot that must be used initially to cast only the chosen spell."

Precocious Apprentice allows you to cast a 2nd-level spell at 1st level. Southern Magician allows you to cast any divine spell as arcane and any arcane spell as divine. With these two feats, you meet the "Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells" requirement at level 1.

You'd obviously want to take a level in a second spellcasting class so you can actually derive some benefit from Mystic Theurge, and then you could Inspire Courage + Psychic Reformation your way into meeting the skill requirements, and take your first level of Mystic Theurge at 3, losing only 1 caster level in each of your casting classes.

This is all well-known trickery in optimizing circles.

---

Here's the important question: how much of this should a DM allow?

Mystic Theurge is one of those classes that a novice will look at and say "holy amazeballs, that's a ludicrously overpowered class!", and a more experienced player will look at and issue a resounding "meh". (Unless you involve Ur-Priest or Sublime Chord, in which case an experienced player will perk right up again.)

The problem is that, if you enter it as intended, even with wizard 3/archivist 3, the most efficient combination that even remotely resembles the intent of the designers, you're still 3 levels behind on both sides. You're breaking the First Rule of Practical Optimization: Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels. Sure, you go to bed with more spells than a one-class caster starts the day with, but you'll be 1-2 spell levels behind for the rest of your career. Most optimizers agree the tradeoff is far from worth it, especially if your DM permits the 15-minute adventuring day (which he shouldn't).

If, on the other hand, you enter Mystic Theurge at level 3 (as a wizard/archivist), then you're only ever 1 caster level behind. Your spell level is on par with a sorcerer's, but you have more spells and the greater day-to-day flexibility of a prepared caster. That really is absurdly powerful.

Entry with Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1 is probably still tier 2, albeit extremely high tier 2; they get twice as many spells known and spells/day, but even that wouldn't bring their day-to-day flexibility up to the level of a prepared caster.

---

So, given that Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1/Mystic Theurge builds are probably at best on par with straight tier 1, it's a little incoherent to ban it without also banning all of tier 1.

But a Wizard 1/Archivist 1/Mystic Theurge build is approximately what you might call god tier, so not banning it would be insanity.

The obvious solution: make Southern Magician and Precocious Apprentice spontaneous-only. And, because casters really don't need nice things, let's make them mutually exclusive, just in case I'm wrong about the tier of Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1/Mystic Theurge, and thereby make it at least 4 of one, 1 of the other. Which is still 1 level earlier than prepared casters can enter; maybe this will make prepared casters not quite so much the obvious choice.

---

Precocious Apprentice
As in Complete Arcane, except:
Special: You can take this feat only as a 1st-level character.
You cannot take this feat if you have any ability to cast prepared spells. If you gain the ability to cast prepared spells, you lose the benefit of this feat.
You cannot take this feat if you have the Southern Magician feat.

Southern Magician
As in Races of Faerun, except:
Special: You cannot take this feat if you have any ability to cast prepared spells. If you gain the ability to cast prepared spells, you lose the benefit of this feat.
You cannot take this feat if you have the Precocious Apprentice feat.

Youth Draining Spells

This post will detail what my methodology is like when I create things, how I like to always have an existing framework, however rickety, to hang any homebrew on. It probably tells you more about me than about D&D.

---

So imagine that I want to return negative levels from this:

• There are no negative levels. In place of each negative level bestowed, the victim immediately ages 3d10 years. The victim may immediately roll a fortitude saving throw at the same difficulty as removing the negative level; if this saving throw succeeds, the aging is halved. If the victim receives a restoration spell within 24 hours, the aging is reversed; otherwise, it is permanent.

...to being what they're supposed to be (which I kind of do, I've changed my mind about their badness), but I still want to include spells which prematurely age foes, so I don't have to rely on infinite ciruja plants and resurrection for all my aging effect needs.

My first instinct is to find spells that bestow negative levels, because I've already (sort of) balanced aging against negative levels. But I can find only one spell that permanently bestows negative levels: energy drain. There are several which do so temporarily, including enervation and Fell Drain anything (sonic snap, let's say). So let's briefly analyze:

• Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 temporary negative level. SL2.
• Enervation: 1d4 temporary negative levels. SL4.
• Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 temporary negative levels. SL6.
• Maximized Enervation: 4 temporary negative levels. SL7.
• Repeat/Twinned Enervation: 2d4 temporary negative levels. SL7/8.
• Maximized, Empowered Enervation: 4+1d2 temporary negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 real negative levels. SL9.

---

I was going to say that if we're casting with a caster level of 12 or more, we could extend the spell to raise its duration to 24+ hours (maximum 30), thereby making it potentially permanent. But these spells all have a duration of Instantaneous, and are thus not affected by Extend Spell. Nuts. Same with Persistent Spell. Nuts.

Permanent Emanation affects only emanations (i.e., cones and bursts), and anyway is [epic] and doesn't affect the spell level. Might be able to fiat that permanency can apply to enervation, but it's not metamagic, doesn't affect the spell level, and costs XP.

Oh well. Let's say this:

• The difference between twinned enervation and energy drain is real vs temporary negative levels, and 1 spell level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Extend Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 1 and make it permanent at a high enough caster level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Persistent Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 6 and make it permanent under all circumstances. So the difference between  temporary and real is 6 spell levels.

Let's take the average, then, and say the difference between a temporary and a real negative level is 2 spell levels.

We're already several levels of abstraction in, and we'll get even more abstract before we're done, because there's simply very little to compare to. That's okay; I just want there to be some basis, however remote, for what I'm doing.

Okay, so, applying this psuedo-metamagic thing that makes temporary negative levels into real negative levels:

• Realized Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 negative level. SL4.
• Realized Enervation: 1d4 negative levels. SL6.
• Realized Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 (but let's pretend, as long as we're abstracting, that a roll whose possible results are 1,3,4,6 is a 1d6, so) = 1d6 negative levels. SL8.
• Realized Maximized Enervation: 4 negative levels. SL9.
• Realized Repeat Enervation: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.

Spells higher than level 9 don't matter and are ignored.

---

So now we have a kludgy, hacked-together, abstracted sense of how many negative levels it's appropriate for a spell of a given level to do:

• SL4: 1 NL
• SL6: 1d4 NLs
• SL8: 1d6 NLs
• SL9: 2d4 (or 4) NLs

Long ago, we made calculations and concluded that one negative level ≈ 14.6 years. So if we wanted to create a line of spells that drain youth, we could convert:

• SL4: 14.6 years
• SL6: 1d4 x 14.6 ≈ 36.5 years
• SL8: 1d6 x 14.6 ≈ 51.1 years
• SL9: 2d4 x 14.6 (or 4 x 14.6 ) ≈ 65.7 years

We could come up with a straightforward years/SL number, but spells are exponential in power, not linear: a level 8 spell isn't just the same as two level 4 spells, and a level 4 spell isn't just the same as two level 2 spells, and so on. We need a more complicated formula.

At this point, I vaguely remember from high school algebra how to tell my graphing calculator to do this, but I don't know how to tell Excel or Google or anything else to do it. To the fresh batteries cabinet to bring my graphing calculator back to life!

I asked it for a quadratic regression, because I couldn't remember what a quadratic regression is, and it gave me a terribly ill-fitting one. Then I asked it for an exponential regression, and it gave me one that fits very well: y=5.199*1.335^x, where y is years drained and x is the spell level.

• SL0: 5.20 years
• SL1: 6.94 years
• SL2: 9.27 years
• SL3: 12.4 years
• SL4: 16.5 years
• SL5: 22.0 years
• SL6: 29.4 years
• SL7: 39.3 years
• SL8: 52.5 years
• SL9: 70.0 years

Certainly not terrible. But hm: I kind of don't want there to be a cantrip that can age a person at all, and I kind of want the lowest level aging spell to take 1 year. So I'm going to finesse the numbers a bit and wind up with...

• SL0: 0.50 years
• SL1: 2.54 years
• SL2: 5.32 years
• SL3: 9.14 years
• SL4: 14.4 years
• SL5: 21.5 years
• SL6: 31.4 years
• SL7: 44.8 years
• SL8: 63.3 years
• SL9: 88.5 years

...good enough!

---

Now, some fiddling to match these numbers up with dice... Consider this chart:




The coloured numbers indicate how many of that size die would be needed to average out to approximately the desired number of years. They are colour-coded: red is most accurate, orange less accurate, yellow even less accurate, and blue least accurate of all. We could just use all the red ones, substituting for orange ones when there isn't a red one at that level, but that winds up with an ugly and inelegant progression of 1d10, 2d8, 4d6, 4d10, 7d8, 10d8, 6d20, 16d10.

Imagine we want to use all the same size dice. If so, you can clearly see that the d8 column is the most accurate.

But I don't want to use all the same size dice, because I'm biased against rolling large numbers of dice at once. We could, oh, say, start at d4, and bump up a die size every time we'd be rolling more than 6 dice at once. Then let's smooth them out a little when the die size would jump 2 at once, or would stay the same for 3 levels in a row.

Instead, we will consider that many spells vary in effective based on caster level. Oho! Everything suddenly got really complicated all up in this joint.

Let's pretend that the average caster has a minimum caster level of twice the spell level, minus 1. Then let's cap each spell's effectiveness at, oh, let's say, approximately twice that. Let's aim for the spell reaching its target effectiveness halfway between when it can first be cast and when it caps out.

To simplify slightly, the SL2 version can just be a flat 1d4. And let's just skip a couple spell levels where they make it particularly awkward.

So let's go with this:

SL1: 1 year
SL2: 1d4 years
SL3: 1d8 years per 4 caster levels, up to 3d8
SL5: 1d8 years per 3 caster levels, up to 6d8
SL7: 1d8 years per 2 caster levels, up to 12d8
SL9: 1d8 years per caster level, up to 24d8

---

Negative levels automatically take effect, but you can save against them becoming permanent 24 hours later. Moreover, the relevant spells and abilities always call for an attack roll. So let's have, oh, let's say the ability to defend against it with a Fortitude save. No need for any of that touch or ranged touch stuff.

But then the question arises: why would a character ever cast any of these spells? If your target is already old, or you use the very high level ones, it might kill them. Otherwise, you might advance them an age category or two. I suppose 1, 3, or 6 irreversible damage to three ability scores is nothing to sneeze at. Even so, the level 1 and 2 versions will never do enough aging with one application to actually advance the target an age category.

So I'm thinking one of two things: either you gain X temporary hit point for each Y years you drain, or your age is reduced by 1 for each Y years you drain.

I don't really want youthening to be so easy, so I'm inclined towards the temporary hit point thing. Usually, you get 5 temporary HP per point of thing you do, but this does a somewhat greater number of points of things, so I'm inclined to say one per one.

Let's next consider what spell lists this line is appropriate for. Let's go with... Cleric, Blackguard, Blighter, Dread Necromancer, Hexblade, Mortal Hunter, Sor/Wiz. The classes with only 4 levels of spells don't get the weakest or the strongest one.

Soooo...

---

Youth Drain, Least
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 1, Blighter 1, Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 1
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1 year.Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 1 year old.

Youth Drain, Lesser
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 2, Blackguard 1, Blighter 2, Dread Necromancer 2, Hexblade 1, Mortal Hunter 1, Sor/Wiz 2
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1d4 years.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 5 years old.In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.

Youth Drain
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 3, Blackguard 2, Blighter 3, Dread Necromancer 3, Hexblade 2, Mortal Hunter 2, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Short (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
You point at your target and years evaporate from their lifespan. They age 1d8 years per 4 caster levels (maximum 3d8 years). This is never beneficial to the target.
In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 10 years old.

Youth Drain, Greater
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 5, Blackguard 3, Blighter 5, Dread Necromancer 5, Hexblade 3, Mortal Hunter 3, Sor/Wiz 5
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 3 caster levels (maximum 6d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 25 years old.

Youth Drain, Grand
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 7, Blackguard 4, Blighter 7, Dread Necromancer 7, Hexblade 4, Mortal Hunter 4, Sor/Wiz 7
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 2 caster levels (maximum 12d8 years)Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 75 years old.

Youth Drain, True
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 9, Blighter 9, Dread Necromancer 9, Sor/Wiz 9
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per caster level (maximum 24d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 250 years old.

Adjucating Aging Effects

So, as I said a few posts ago, I kind of like my solution to the problem of how annoying negative levels are to to be inflicted with.

But I'm pretty confident that my negative-levels-are-aging system isn't actually balanced against real negative levels, and inherently couldn't possibly be. And, though it makes the game easier and simpler for people who don't already know how negative levels work, it does make it more complicated for people who do. So I'm considering going back to the original negative levels system.

But I love aging effects, and want to them to matter in the game as much as possible. I've already got the rule that every time you're resurrected, you gain some age, but resurrection doesn't happen all that often.

There are only two monsters I know of (from sourcebooks I allow) that have age-increasing powers:

• The phane, an epic-level (CR25) monster which has the ability, after putting characters into temporal stasis, to age them at a rate of 1d4 years/round, no save. It specifies that targets take the physical, but not mental, effects of aging.
• The ciruja plant (CR3) from Dragon Compendium. After a fairly complex and reasonably easy-to-avoid process of paralyzing the victim then burrowing into their flesh, it starts draining youth at a rate of 1d10 years/round, no save. It, too, specifies that "this has no positive benefits for the victim", specifically calling out things that "might grow more powerful with age" (e.g., True Dragons).

Obviously, there's going to be an epidemic of ciruja plants growing everywhere in my campaign world very shortly.

---

But this brings up a good point: I really should have rules for adjudicating harmful aging effects in general. Obviously, you shouldn't ever gain any benefit from being prematurely aged.

I'm going to immediately discard the possibility of "you advance an age category without gaining the benefits, but you could gain the benefits next time you advance an age category".

Instead, I propose this solution: characters, once they've been subject to such an effect, track their physical age and their mental age separately.

If you advance an age category in physical age, you gain the physical penalties. If you advance an age category in mental age, you gain the mental benefits. You can't die of old mental age, but once you hit Venerable you stop benefiting. You can die of old physical age once you pass Venerable.

Harmful effects, like the phane, the ciruja, or being resurrected, only ever advance your physical age. Beneficial effects, like reincarnate or any potion-of-youth type effects we might choose to include (probably necessary if age is to be an important thing, though I could be really mean and make them apply to both physical and mental aging at once), also only ever reduce your physical age.

This has the side benefit of doing away with the "age to Venerable. get reincarnated. repeat." cycle of infinite mental score increases.

I suppose it also means True Dragon advancement is mental, but that's unlikely to ever matter in a session.

It's one extra number to keep track of somewhere on your sheet, but it's worth it.

And We Wonder Why People Think D&D Is Satanic

The joke that always goes around this time of year is that Jesus is a zombie and will eat your brains. But if you actually read the Gospels, you'll notice that Jesus does many things a zombie cannot do. He continues to speak, cast spells, fly, lead followers, and do all sorts of crazy things. Jesus is clearly not a zombie. Jesus is clearly a lich.

---

To qualify for lich, Jesus needs to have been caster level 11, which is pretty ludicrously high, so we'll assume he's level 11 and no higher.

Of course, to cast Raise Dead (as he does in Matthew 9, Luke 7, and, most famously, John 11) he'd have to be at least a level 9 cleric (or archivist or favored soul) anyway, so at least that fits.

He should have only been able to use Create Food and Water to feed 33 people per casting, then. Maybe he managed to get it up to 5,000 (as he does in all four Gospels, and then to 4,000 again in Mark 8 and Matthew 15) with some sort of crazy metamagic shenanigans, or maybe he homebrewed a higher-level version of the spell.

At first, I thought the spell Jesus casts in Matthew 21:19 is clearly Blight, a druid/sor/wiz spell which Jesus, as a cleric, wouldn't be able to cast -- unless he has the Decay domain (or is an archivist, or took some obscure feat just to get this spell, neither of which seems very likely). Except, while the tree "withers", the wording of the passage leaves open the possibility that it isn't actually dead, and will simply "never bear fruit again". Which is to say, he might have cast Bestow Curse -- except that Bestow Curse targets a creature. Trees are living objects, not creatures. So unless it was secretly a fig treant, this was probably Blight, and YHWH offers the Decay domain -- which is, of course, completely in keeping with YHWH's personality, albeit not quite so much with Jesus's.

Jesus heals oodles of blind people, deaf people, mute people, lepers, dropsy, withered hands, paralysis, and so on. It seems to be his very favourite thing to do. Luckily, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Disease, Neutralize Poison, Restoration, Remove Paralysis, and so on, are all perfectly within his capacity to cast as a cleric 11. Not to mention the entire Cure line, which he can cast up through Mass Cure Moderate Wounds. He can even do so spontaneously, if you think he's Good or the nicer side of Neutral; but even if he isn't, he can still prepare them just fine.

And he drives out a number of demons. Dismissal serves this purpose just fine, though he does have the capacity to cast the higher level Banishment for the tougher demonic infestations.

One of Jesus's most famous spells, of course, is Water Walk. No problem there.

He calms a storm in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Uh-oh: Control Weather is a level 7 spell! Jesus would have to be level 13 to cast it, which is just not within the realm of reason. So he must have done it with the lower-level Control Winds! As a storm god, it's perfectly reasonable for YHWH to offer the Air domain, so obviously that's how he did it. (The Air domain also gives Air Walk, explaining any situations in which Jesus flies. Not that he needs the domain to cast the spell, it's also a basic cleric 4 spell. But what's he going to prepare in that domain slot instead, Enervation?)

So that's that: Jesus is probably a level 11 cleric with the Air and Decay domains (and, of course, the lich template).

---

Notice that Jesus was, of course, not high enough to actually cast Miracle. None of his so-called "miracles" were actually Miracles, nor, as I have shown, did they need to have been. Jesus could cast every spell he is shown to have cast without resorting to Miracle. Indeed, just preparing Miracle every day and using it for every purpose would have been less impressive than showing the foresight involved in preparing the right spells on the days he'd need them. (Not to mention, the things Jesus did were pretty weaksauce and unimpressive if we postulate access to 9th-level spells. This is the spell level at which casters can start creating their own mini-universes. Withering fig trees and multiplying bread and fishes is a little impressive for a level 11 cleric, a trifling waste of time for a level 17 cleric. But this is getting a little bit into the "handicap argument".)

Obviously Jesus has the Leadership feat. Or else he's a Thrallherd, which would be more plausible except a psion can't do most of what Jesus did. So leadership it is. Probably chained leadership, even, his cohort had leadership, too, as did the cohort's cohort, etc. That's relatively unproblematic.

Ah, but when he actually became a lich, all the dead came out of their graves and started wandering around. Animate Dead is single-target. I thought for a moment Summon Undead was a possibility, but the whole line is limited to at most four at once. I seem to recall a spell in some obscure book that animates every body within a radius and can be extended or persisted, but that'd be an awfully high-level spell. So I guess I dunno about this one.

The obvious, burning question: what is Jesus's phylactery? And the equally obvious, burning answer: the Holy Grail.

Obviously, Jesus turned the Grail into his phylactery either at the Last Supper or while he was on the cross, depending on which version of the myth you go with (i.e., whether the Holy Grail is the same artifact as the Holy Chalice).

Which explains how Jesus "escaped" from the cave in which he was interred: his original body just disintegrated, and a new body formed next to his phylactery. It's so obvious!

This also throws Arthurian legend into a new light: rather than seeking the Holy Grail for glory or because their deity told them to, Arthur and his knights sought it to destroy it, so that the world could finally be rid of the menace of the lich-god Jesus.

I leave as an exercise for the reader the consideration of whether the Knights of the Round Table succeeded or failed.

Blasphemy Rights

So I was mildly amused by this post on the Center for Inquiry website. You know why I was amused, right? Yeah, it's because a cleric can't cast blasphemy until level 13. Of course he's not amused! Blasphemy cast at a caster level of 13 weakens and dazes the level 12 cleric, no save!

But it did get me to thinking seriously about blasphemy as a vitally important component of free speech, and how it kind of gets shafted in D&D, saddled with the [evil] descriptor and only affecting nonevil creatures, just like the ur-priest gets saddled with evil as an alignment requirement. Not all gods are good! And even the good ones can be opposed on legitimate, non-evil philosophical grounds!

Anyway, let's fix it. My first inclination was to simply turn it from an evil spell to a good spell, but no, turns out that already exists (so do Lawful and Chaotic versions). We could just make a Neutral version (which turns out to also exist: word of balance in the Spell Compendium), but instead, let's make an antitheist version.

---

Righteous Blasphemy
Evocation [Sonic]
Level: Ur-Priest 7, Paladin of Freedom 4
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 40 ft.
Target: divine spellcasters in a 40-ft.-radius spread centered on you
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None or Will negates; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes
Any creature capable of casting divine spells (or which have spell-like abilities that mimic divine spells) within the area of a Righteous Blasphemy spell suffers the following ill effects.

HD	Effect
Equal to caster level	Dazed
Up to caster level -1	Weakened, dazed
Up to caster level -5	Paralyzed, weakened, dazed
Up to caster level -10	Killed, paralyzed, weakened, dazed

The effects are cumulative and concurrent. No saving throw is allowed against these effects.
Dazed - The creature can take no actions for 1 round, though it defends itself normally.
Weakened - The creature’s Strength score decreases by 2d6 points for 2d4 rounds.
Paralyzed - The creature is paralyzed and helpless for 1d10 minutes.
Killed - Living creatures die. Undead creatures are destroyed.
Furthermore, if you are on your home plane when you cast this spell, extraplanar divine spellcasters within the area are instantly banished back to their home planes. Creatures so banished cannot return for at least 24 hours. This effect takes place regardless of whether the creatures hear the righteous blasphemy. The banishment effect allows a Will save (at a -4 penalty) to negate.
Ur-priests and creatures whose Hit Dice exceed your caster level are unaffected by righteous blasphemy.

---

Additionally, here, have a feat (intended for Defiants, but any nontheist can take it):

Blasphemer [General]
Prerequisite: Must not worship any deity, character level 13th
Benefit: You gain righteous blasphemy as a spell-like ability at a caster level equal to your hit dice, usable 1/day.
If you are evil, you may choose to cast blasphemy instead. You may make this choice each time you use the spell-like ability.
Special: You may select this feat multiple times. Each time you do, you may use the spell-like ability one additional time per day.

Pumpkin Smash

So I'm playing a little bit of Ogre Battle again, and it occurs to me: there's Pumpkinhead creature in most Ogre Battle games, and this creature's attack is unique among the game's creatures: it always reduces its target to half its former hit points (unless the target is already a.) at 1 hp, in which case it either kills him or has no effect (I'm not sure which and/or depending on the game); or b.) undead, in those games where undead have no hit point score, in which case the pumpkin smash is one of three ways to kill it (the other two being clerics healing it and hitting it with holy weapons)).

And so it occurs to me, what if we incorporated this mechanic into D&D? My first inclination was to create it as a spell, but the downside to that is the players might get access to it. The other option is to give it to some creature as a special ability, in which case the DM (in this case, me) has more control over when the power gets used, and moreover can tweak it on the fly. On the other hand, I'm more likely to get feedback on it if it's a spell, and feedback is the lifeblood of this little test kitchen.

I'm sure somewhere in one of the bazillions of splatbooks, somebody has made a "target loses half its current hit points" spell. But I can't find it with a cursory inspection, so let's make one of our own.

---

I think it'll be a Megiddo Mehida spell, because that's most of why I introduced Megiddo Mehida into canon, so I'd have somebody whose name I could stick to the beginning of new spells, because the "[Person]'s [Adjective] [Noun]" naming convention appeals to me, it feels old school. So Megiddo's... what? Pumpkin Ray? Smashing Pumpkin? Actually, I kind of like that. Megiddo's Smashing Pumpkin.

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My next thought: it definitely should allow a save, I think to negate ("you lose a quarter of your hit points instead of half your hit points" is a little weird), unless I also make it a ranged touch attack, in which case the save should halve the damage, because otherwise there are just too many points of potential complete failure (spell resistance (which it should definitely allow, because it's a magical effect applied to your target, not an object conjured up and thrown at your target); touch AC; save) for it to be worth casting.

But what kind of save? Do we want it to be a mist or a projectile or a mind-affecting spell or what? Let's try to figure out what the least-commonly-targeted save is, and target that one. I pulled up SpellForge and sorted the list of spells by save. Any given result may well be off by an order of magnitude, but I only want an estimate. The estimate is that 177 spells and powers allow reflex saves, 391 spells and powers allow fortitude saves, and 786 spells and powers allow will saves. BUT, all breaths and most traps allow reflex saves, and all poisons and diseases allow fortitude saves. So that's not conclusive. Let's preliminarily say "not a will save".

Since I think I do want to make it a ranged touch attack (to allow more points of potential failure, because "you lose half your hit points", while not half as bad as "you die" (you lose half your hit points, you're still in the fight and can easily be healed; you die, you're out of the fight and it's more expensive to heal you), is still pretty bad (though, again, I don't want to add so many points of potential failure that nobody ever uses the spell, though a homebrew spell that is too weak is more desirable than a homebrew spell that is too strong)), which already incorporates the possibility of dodging out of the way (and because Mettle is much rarer than Evasion), let's make it a Fortitude save.

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Let's call it a Necromancy spell, because in my mind it fits, especially if you've played enough Ogre Battle to be familiar with Deneb, creator of the Pumpkinheads.

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It's obviously a Sorcerer/Wizard spell. Megiddo Mehida was a wizard/archivist/mystic theurge, so I'm briefly tempted to add it to the Cleric list, too, but clerics shouldn't get too many blasting spells. I'm tempted to add it to a domain, but archivists don't get domains (even if they can acquire the ability to cast domain spells with a permissive DM). What other class spell lists might it fit?

The assassin's list is entirely things to aid in sneaking up on and ganking people.
Blackguards don't get many blasting spells, but they do get a number of "be a dick" spells, of which this qualifies, so that's possible. I can certainly see Megiddo being amused at fallen paladins casting his spell.
Druids get mostly support spells, but I can definitely see a druid bludgeoning something with a magic pumpkin, so that's possible.
It certainly fits the hexblade's spell list, plus they need as much love as they can get, so onto their list it goes.
The duskblade's thing is "I'm in mêlée, hitting you with a stick and also hey look spells". I'm always a little taken aback that they get ranged attacks, too. But their spell list has no real coherent theme to it at all. Sure, they can have it, why not.
I can never quite divine what the shugenja's fluff is supposed to be, so better safe than sorry and leave it off their list. Same with wu jen and spirit shaman.
Warlocks get invocations instead of spells, and there doesn't seem to be much overlap, so that's a no.
Warmages get blasting spells and only blasting spells, but no spells quite so subtle as this (compared to half a hundred variations on "you do xdy damage on a ranged touch attack" and "target dies or nothing happens", yes "the target loses half his hit points" is subtle), so I think that's a no, even though warmages kind of need a little love (a sorcerer can be a better warmage than a warmage can, even though the warmage does get Edge).

Ehh, ok, let's call it Blackguard, Druid, Duskblade, Hexblade, Sor/Wiz.

Now, what level spell shall it be? Power word kill is level 9, but it doesn't allow a save or require a touch attack (though it doesn't affect creatures with more than 101hp). Megiddo's smashing pumpkin is much weaker than that.

The 4th level spell Phantasmal Killer is a much better comparison. It instantly kills the subject. It allows two saves: a will save which cancels all effects, and a fortitude save which reduces the effect to 3d6 damage. It's also [mind-affecting], so it doesn't affect half the creatures you might expect to encounter (most undead, oozes, vermin, many plants, et cetera). Two saves (of which one negates, one reduces damage to 3d6) is comparable to a ranged touch attack and a save (of which one negates, one reduces damage to half). The [mind-affecting] tag is worth a spell level or two, if it could affect every foe it would be a level or two higher. But death is, as established above, more than twice as much of an inconvenience as losing half your hit points, so that's a couple spell levels weaker. So let's call Megiddo's smashing pumpkin oh, say, level 4.

One situation in which Megiddo's smashing pumpkin is actually clearly better than Phantasmal Killer is against creatures which are immune to death effects. But these are relatively rare, and mostly very high level, and if you're high enough level to face something immune to death effects then you've got better options than Save-or-Dies anyway.

Yes, the poor Tarrasque is a joke (lollercoaster @ Toughness 6 times), but he's the archetypical CR20 monster. So: you cast this on him, you need to defeat his SR32 and his fortitude save of +38 (his touch AC of 5 is a joke). If you do, you do 429 damage. That seems preposterously powerful for a 3rd level spell, but Phantasmal Killer would do the same thing at the one level higher but better than twice as well.

Now consider a lizard. Defeat its touch AC of 14 and its fortitude save of +2, you do 1 damage. That's a joke, even for a 3th level spell. But then, if you're casting Megiddo's smashing pumpkin on a 2hp creature, you deserve to be pointed and laughed at.

So 3rd level is fine.

It doesn't quite perfectly fit the druid's concept, so let's make it a level higher for them. Blackguards and hexblades can't cast spells higher than level 4, and those only very late in their careers, so I'm almost inclined to bump it down to 2 for them, or at least for the hexblade. But is it a little too good for a 2nd level spell? Better safe than sorry, even with the hexblade.

So: Blackguard 3, Druid 4, Duskblade 3, Hexblade 3, Sorcerer/Wizard 3.

--- Let's throw it all together

Megiddo's Smashing Pumpkin
Necromancy
Level: Blackguard 3, Druid 4, Duskblade 3, Hexblade 3, Sorcerer/Wizard 3
Components: M, S, V
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close
Target: One creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes

A moldy, rotten pumpkin flies from your hands and beats your opponent about the head and shoulders before crumbling into nothing.
Make a ranged touch attack. If it hits, the target takes force damage equal to half his hit points before the spell's effect, rounded down (put another way: his hit points are effectively reduced to half their previous total, rounded up). A successful fortitude saving throw halves this damage (leaving him with 3/4 of his previous hit point total).
Like any attack, this spell deals a minimum of 1 damage. If the target had 2 or fewer hit points, his hit point total is instead reduced by 1.
Material Component: A single pumpkin seed.

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Now that we've got that done, we could create a pumpkinman monster, for even closer adherence to Ogre Battle. There are two possibilities: the easy possibility and the hard possibility.

The easy possibility is this:
Take the standard skeleton template.
Replace its head with a pumpkin.
It can cast Megiddo's smashing pumpkin as an at-will spell-like ability (save DC wisdom-based).
CR increases by +1.
It retains the undead type, but it is susceptible to spells and special abilities that target or affect plants.
You can use animate dead to create a pumpkinman of this sort by adding a fresh pumpkin as an extra material component.

The hard possibility is this: create a custom monster. This was my original plan, and I even found a CR calculator to aid the process, but then I realized I'm quite content with the easy version and I don't know that I could improve upon it.

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EDIT: I have found a spell in the Spell Compendium: Avasculate. Ranged touch attack, subject is reduced to half its current hit points (rounded down) and stunned for 1 round. Fortitude negates the stun. This is a level 7 spell. That, um, is kind of crap compared to the 4th level Phantasmal Killer. I maintain my original judgement of the proper level of this spell.