Alex, you and I have talked about CHAINMAIL’s fireball and lightning bolts. Another thing struck me today when I was reading through the spell section and it concerns the eventual use of your spells outside of the dungeon enviornment.
massmorph (hides units: a la Macbeth)
hallucinary terrain
phantasmal force (from the sci-fi novel by whatshis name, literally creating a phantasmal force of soldiers)
rock to mud (One turns terrain into swamps from rock and the other turns impassble swamps into passable terrain for units.)
fireball (more as a siege weapon against walls)
lightning bolt (ditto)
haste (double troop movement)
- transmute rock to mud is on the list, but I don’t see it in the alphabetical listing, shouldn’t it be between “tongues” and “true seeing”? Anyway, in ad&d the spell could be overpowered when people turn ceilings into mud. I believe the intention is for “the ground” only. There is a nice thread at dragonsfoot discussing it. My last post on page 4 quotes the short story written by gygax that has mordikanien casting it against an iron golem–backing up my point I believe.
- haste. You have it set at 1 person per level. I understand this is to balance the extra attack in “dungeon exploration” with a party of heroes, but I feel there should be some option for this spell in mass combat which effects a large number of men, but only for how fast they march. Perhaps a “fleet foot” spell or some such.
- how do you see phantasmal force working in mass combat?
- are there other spells I’m missing that anyone would like to bring up?
- a point on catapults. You have large galley being able to cary “two light catapults” but I believe in your write up of catapults there is only 1 type that unspecified. My offer is to say light catapults are 5’ diameter and heavy are 10’. Right now it appears you just have one catapult with a range of 150-300’ and a damage of 3d6. Might I suggest one catapult–the light which does 2d6 and the heavy which does 4d6?