Not Used: Weird spell.

Not a weird spell, but the spell Weird. Perhaps for illusionists, it could function as it does, or closely, in PnP A D&D. 7th teir spell, even if the target makes a saving throw, they are still be paralyzed for one round, or two. (thats 7 segments, right?) and the target looses 1d4 strength for 7 rounds.

I am on the fence about making spells function differently for various flavors of arcane caster/specialists.... probably not overly hot on that particular aspect.... but...

Weird as a spell...well, much like Meteor Swarm.... it leaves a lot to be desired. In its current state, there is practically no reason to learn or memorize the spell if one could otherwise use Wail of the Banshee.

Wail can only be blocked by death magic immunity. Wierd can be blocked by both mind immunity and fear immunity, and i believe even true sight will make one immune (it is an illusion, but i am not 100% certain of this). On top of that, wierd allows more than one saving throw.

In just about every way, Wail gets you more bang for your buck than Weird. About the only benefit is that it bypasses death magic immunity.... woo hoo...

Spell needs some sort of tune up in order to deserve being a 9th level spell.

Perhaps it could follow A D&D rules exactly, it takes the form of the targets greatest fear creature-wise and it has to fight the creature, if the target looses, he/she dies.

KangTheMad wrote:Perhaps it could follow A D&D rules exactly, it takes the form of the targets greatest fear creature-wise and it has to fight the creature, if the target looses, he/she dies.

This would be very problematic I think. Each creature would require a "worst fear" spawned creature... otherwise if you have a generic "fear creature", some baddies will obliterate it instantly, while the creature obliterates baddies instantly... all depending on the target's stats. That's effectively "doubling" the creatures eating up resources

And in the end, I like the weird creatureshadowthingy vfx

What makes this spell ultimately suck compared to wail is the double-save. A number of creatures have either a good fort or a good will save, so you can't really exploit either weakness as you can with wail (and exploiting low fort saves).

Overall it's a shame because illusionists don't have a great number of offensive spells to start with. Weird and Phatasmal killer are the bread and butter, and the steak of their meal as well, and both spells are duel-saves.

Let's see....

How about remove mind spell-immunity from blocking it, give it a DC boost and give a status for a short time even on a failed save? Paralyzed sounds appropriate

Everyone seems to forget the real point of Weird - awesome VFX!

Personally I wish it had it's fortitude save removed. It doesn't make much sense anyway.
Though being blocked by mind-spell and fear immunity AND true sight to boot is still too much imo.

Ok, so remove the Mind Spell Immunity and True Seeing from warding against the spell. I never knew that True Seeing blocked it... see, you really do learn something new every day.

I just tested it in game, true-seeing doesn't give immunity to weird, it's just a counter-spell for it.

That fear and mindspell immunity grant immunity I think is perfectly fine. The spell is supposed to scare the bejeebus out of the targets, so being fear immune makes 100% perfect sense... and fear is included in the greater "mindspell" coverage.

Just removing the fort save would put this spell on-par with wail of the banshee in terms of effectiveness.

Thats a decent way to go... make it a will save or die.... yeah, I can dig it.

A bump just for consideration with the great magic overhaul in progress....

weird bug fix / update note

Not making it Will save or die. Sure, wail of the banshee basically does this with a single save, but wail of the banshee is necromancy (aka, death magic), not just a super-powerful illusion.