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Friday, April 5, 2002
On the Black Isle Developer Boards
Friday, April 5, 2002, 17:31 | MageDragon
From the Black Isle Developer message boards.
J.E. Sawyer (Lead Designer)
Elemental swarm spell: In our game, this is what it does:
Elemental Swarm
(Conjuration)
Level: Drd 9, Selune 9
Range: Sight of Caster
Duration: 1 turn/level
Casting Time: 1 round
Area of Effect: Special
Saving Throw: None
This spell allows the caster to summon four elementals, one from each of the elemental planes, to do his or her bidding. The spell always summons 16 hit dice elementals. The elementals will fight on behalf of the caster until the spell duration expires or they are destroyed.
It's pretty effective.
Fighters wisdom: I consider a fighter's wisdom to be one of his or her prime stats, given their asstacular Will saves.
Point-buy system: Discussions of what it should "feel" like aside, the point-buy system is not weighted because the mathematics in the DMG's scale don't make sense. The system attempts to convince the player that in some cases, +1 = 2 and in other cases, +1 actually = 4 or = 6.
Wizards: Wizards get a bonus feat at first level and a bonus feat every five levels after that. By 15th level, you could have a wizard with Greater Spell Focus in multiple schools (+4 to save DC).
Sorcerers do gain additional skill points, as listed in the rules forum.
Summoning spells: Summoning spells that last eight hours? They barely last eight rounds. The duration of most summoning spells in 3E is pretty short.
Animate Dead produces some pretty scary dudes at high level.
Dragon’s eye: What makes you think that after descending to the bottom of Dragon's Eye that you will go back up? Domains: Here's a task for you, if you'd like to understand where we're coming from. Find two domains in the PHB or FRCS that have domain spells that are all in Icewind Dale or Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter.
It's rhetorical; there are no domains that have ONLY spells that we have in Icewind Dale 2. If we can't even find ONE domain that has all bases covered, finding nine or ten full domains (which still barely scratches the surface of possibilities for FR deities) is impossible. The deities listed were the ones whose domain spells could be most easily represented by what we have -- one per alignment. Oghma's a bit of a stretch, but he is one of TWO neutral human FR deities (if you discount the various elemental lords). At the higher levels for some of these deities, I was just leaning back in my chair, looking at our spell list, and rubbing my temples in anguish.
Contest: BTW, I'm writing up an IWD2 contest for the near future, so that will hopefully draw many people to re-examine what we are making. It worked like a charm for Neverwinter Nights. Man, that was a difficult contest to judge.
Chad Nicholas (Sciptor)
Key rings: Nope, sorry. I asked for this as soon as I started working on IwD2.
Familiars: I just know that it was decided to not have familiars early on in IwD2's dev cycle, and that decision hasn't changed. Once all of you see the changes we've done to the entire game, I don't think you'll feel that anything is too hard to do (how much time we have is another matter).
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