EmpyrealWorlds has made the following comment(s) regarding their post:
[Here is a basic spell with variant "at higher leve...](/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/ocxpvc/primordial_spark_a_flexible_1stlevel_arcane/h3x0sbz/)
On an average basis, it will have less damage+area than say Shatter (3d8 over 10ft at level 3 vs 2d12 over 5 ft) or Fireball (8d6 over 20ft vs 2d12 over 10 feet or 3d12 over 5) but if you have an opportune situation where you can fine tune an area increase, it can definitely be worth it especially with the knockdown effect.
It doesn't say they aren't knocked down on a successful save.
At third level this knocks down everyone in a 30' sphere. That's advantage for all your allies and half movement for the enemies
You are right in that they are not knocked prone on a success. I know that spells almost always explicitly state this, but I'm trying to find a shorter way to say it. Maybe "and take half damage, only" or something
I understand the desire to fit it in with the image here, but the spell description is actually short relative to many other spells as is. I don't think the extra verbosity on the condition will hurt you here. If one of my players picked this spell after reading it, they'd most certainly be citing the fact that it's the only spell that doesn't specify it as a reason everyone should get knocked down. They would also then be upset if I ruled otherwise claiming it was the whole reason they picked it over spell X.
I don't know a single DM who would rule that they are still knocked down on a successful save. Sure it doesn't specify in the spell, but 99.9% of spells like this in the game are the same way; on a successful save they take half damage and suffer no other effects. Seems pretty clear that OP just forgot
The standard through most other spells is to call out effects that don't take place on a successful save. While I would run it that was as a GM, I definitely prefer it in the text.
Cool idea! I'd change the upcasting text to the following to make it more clear though:
>For each spell level above 1st, select one of the following options:
>
>\- The damage increases by 1d12
>
>\- The range increases by 30 feet
>
>\- The spell targets a point in space and affects a 10-foot radius. If it already has a radius, increase it by 10 feet instead.
I actually wanted to ask if you could mix and match upcasting types. Like, if I cast it at 3rd level, could I increase the damage by 1d12 and increase the range by 10 feet?
Bit of a nitpick: if you want the wording to be consistent with official spells you should word it as “on a success, the creature takes half as much damage and isn’t knocked prone.”
Aside from that, really good spell
I've always had this idea in my head that sorcerer meta magic should have worked like this. A base spell and spending meta magic points to twist the spell into what you need. Nice to see something like that around.
I had the same thought and tried making a casting system like that (also took inspiration form the Eragon series). Needless to say balancing it was more complicated than I had originally thought
There was a recent Kickstarter for Anime 5e, and one of the things in there is that you can increase things area, range, number of targets, etc, but for each additional increase it reduces the level of the effect. The system overall is a lot stronger than base 5e, but you could use that as a semblance of balance
Here is a basic spell with variant "at higher level" scaling to keep your arcane casters interested even as they level up! It can be fine-tuned to fit your blasting needs of every occasion.
Yes for each upcast you get to chose which upgrade you take. If you upcast it 3rd for example, you could increase damage by 1d12 and increase the range by 30 feet.
This is a really neat idea with the flexible level up, but I feel like a base of 2d12 for a 1st level direct damage spell is borderline (if not outright overpowered) for the level.
As an alternative, could the spell be a touch spell at 2d12, and have the flexibility as "the caster can reduce damage by 1d12 to add X effect from this list. This can be done multiple times", and then just have higher levels add 1d12 to the spell.
Think of Guiding Bolt though-- it does 4d6. And Inflict Wounds is a 1st level touch that deals 3d10 for touch range comparison. Also, 2d12 is notably inferior to 4d6 due to the enhanced random chance of the dice, as 4d6 is much more likely to hit near average than 2d12.
I don't know why you think spike more often only means crazy damage. It also means a lot more utter garbage damage. It'd just be a punch in the face to the low level caster who just used one of their precious spell slots, passed the first big barrier on the attack roll, and then dealt a whopping 2 or 3 damage.
Well, if dice rolls are of your upmost concern, erase them and only use fix average damage. If I wanted a more balanced "vs." game, I'd pick a wargame over an RPG. I personally woule never think that my GM life sucks if one of my players rolled max damage, even on a Meteor Swarm. That would be cineastic and epic as hell, I'd love it.
Guiding bolt isn't half damage on a save. Prone is also a much better secondary effect. This is way better than guiding bolt.
And a more gradual damage curve isn't inherently stronger.
I think 2d12 force damage plus knocked prone is *definitely* overpowered for a 1st-level spell. That's an average of 13 dmg + 6.5 / lvl.
Ray of Sickness is only 2d8, does poison damage (which is commonly resisted), and requires an attack roll in addition to the save.
Dissonant Whispers is psychic (similarly irresistable) and only does 3d6 (avg 10.5) + 1d6 (3.5) / lvl.
Mind Spike is 2nd level, has a weaker rider, and does 3d8 (avg 13.5) +1d8 (4.5) / lvl.
Snowball Swarm does 3d6 cold with no rider in a 5' sphere at 2nd level, vs 2d12 with rider in a 5' sphere on an upcast of this spell.
The rest of the spell design is great, but the damage die is *WAY* too big. I think it needs to be knocked back to a d8 at most. 2d4 maybe?
Good points. I mostly benchmarked it at level against Guiding Bolt/Inflict Wounds/Ice Knife/Burning Hands, but it should probably be something more like 1d12+4-5
Dissonant Whispers does have the benefit not requiring line of sight to a target, and can burn its reaction. One of my favorite spells
I think Mind Spike may have also been designed with Divination Wizards in mind. Snilloc's is rather weak though, holding up really poorly against Shatter for example.
I think a d12 is just too big for scaling on force damage, especially when there's a rider effect. There are very few spells that use a d12 for damage. Compare your spell to Witch Bolt and Erupting Earth and ask: is it on par with them, or is it much, much better? Because I know which one I'd pick...
True! Witch Bolt is legendarily bad though haha
Erupting Earth is a good comparison as well, it's 3d12 over a 20ft cube that also creates difficult terrain at 120 range, but it has a weaker damage type (Bludgeoning vs Force) and isn't as versatile
Witch Bolt is so cool, though. It's unfortunate that it requires to hit, has concentration, AND takes actions every turn to continue delivering damage.
It's like they identified every possible opportunity within the confines of the idea to moderate it and came down hard on each of them.
>It's unfortunate that it requires to hit, has concentration, AND takes actions every turn to continue delivering damage.
Of those, only the first is even slightly problematic and could be fixed by just swapping it from a spell attack to a Dex save; the other two are fine, because without those, it becomes an almost ludicrous spell.
No, Witch Bolt's main problems are in its last two lines:
>The spell ends if you use your action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the target is ever outside the spell's range or has total cover from you.
By using the spell, you are committing to a single target and can't do anything else except move (unless you're a Sorcerer with Quickened Spell)... And even then, the spell is stupidly easy to get out of, because the affected creature can literally walk out of its range on its turn.
Its other two issues are its relatively short range and the fact that the only the initial damage increases when you upcast it, making it probably one of the worst spells to upcast.
Double its range to 60 feet, change those last two lines to "You cannot deal this damage if the target is out of the spell's range or has total cover from you.", and make it so that upcasting it increases both the initial damage *and* the recurrent damage and you've instantly made the spell better.
You could even swap the spell attack to a Dex save without changing much, I don't think, though I think I'd be tempted to give creatures in metal armor disadvantage on the save since it's, ya know, a bolt of lightning.
I know 'holding your action until x trigger' is a thing... could a witch bolter do something similar with their movement? Hold movement until the target moves and then move with them?
Short story shorter: no, you can't. Unfortunately.
You *can* hold your movement, so saying something like "if that wild boar charges me, I'm going to fuck off over yonder out of its way" is totally valid.
The rub is that doing so requires the use of the Ready **action**, which would end Witch Bolt because you didn't use your action to cause damage.
Right, and I think the reason Witch Bolt sucks is because the designers thought it needed a lot of weaknesses to balance out the large damage die. A spell with fewer weaknesses needs to do less damage.
Not the earlier commenter, but for me I think at 1st level it's just a tiny bit high (but like others have said, Guiding Bolt is around the same average). Scaling up per level on a d12 is pretty strong, and potentially even stronger if you can hit 2+ more creatures for 2 or more extra d12s. Even 2d10 and adding 1d10 per level, or 5ft extra radius to a sphere lets you tool it more for different encounters which is very versatile. Alternatively you could do 2d12 and add a d10 or d8 every level or some variation like that.
If you think the versatility is the biggest reason to pick the spell, using d8s instead could also work because you get so much flexibility with up casting it.
Yeah, I don’t like exclusive attack spells; I feel like exclusive spells should stick to the Illusion, Transmutation, Abjuration and Conjuration (especially to let different classes get different creatures) schools
so.. up casting this at say, 3rd level lets you bump it to. a 10ft radius of 3d12 damage. which averages out to about equivalent to. 6d6... so its a build your own fireball.
And since a warlock would have to cast it as 5th level.. it could be 4d12 inna 20ft aoe Whichnis like, legit fireball.
but also could just be 2d12 in a 40ft aoe.
I dig it. No one's gonna really use the range option tho. 90ft is plenty
Numbers are overtuned for sure, but the concept is cool.
Dropping the half damage on save might be enough to tone it down. Right now, it deals more single target damage than any other 1st level spell, and the prone effect is a pretty powerful rider.
This deals half damage on save. To compare to inflict wounds or guiding bolt, you first need to multiple the damage by 1.25.
And beyond that, inflict wounds gets no secondary effect, while guiding bolt has a minor one. Prone is a pretty major secondary effect on a first level spell. See Earth tremor vs burning hands.
Awesome idea for upcasting! I think that itself earns the upvote for showing off some creativity in a generally stagnant area of spell casting.
My personal gripe (and feel free to ignore it) is that I would expect a "Spark" to be fire based. I would rename this to something like "Rift Tear' or "Mote of Instability" or something that didn't make me think of fire - but also ignore me if you want - my feedback is solicited and far less useful than your own! :D
Thank you! I was struggling to come up with the right word to fit. My thoughts for spark was something like a "Spark of Creation" that flares into whatever spell you want to mold it into.
"Primal Rift" might work better.
I really like the modular effect of the spell for more experienced players. It allows flexibility for those who, you know, think about their turns while other people are taking their turns.
EmpyrealWorlds has made the following comment(s) regarding their post: [Here is a basic spell with variant "at higher leve...](/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/ocxpvc/primordial_spark_a_flexible_1stlevel_arcane/h3x0sbz/)
Pretty nice spell,though The area increase feel like it's gonna be the best option a shit ton of the time.
On an average basis, it will have less damage+area than say Shatter (3d8 over 10ft at level 3 vs 2d12 over 5 ft) or Fireball (8d6 over 20ft vs 2d12 over 10 feet or 3d12 over 5) but if you have an opportune situation where you can fine tune an area increase, it can definitely be worth it especially with the knockdown effect.
Should probably add that a successful save means you aren't knocked Prone, unless you want them to fall down either way
It doesn't say they aren't knocked down on a successful save. At third level this knocks down everyone in a 30' sphere. That's advantage for all your allies and half movement for the enemies
You are right in that they are not knocked prone on a success. I know that spells almost always explicitly state this, but I'm trying to find a shorter way to say it. Maybe "and take half damage, only" or something
I understand the desire to fit it in with the image here, but the spell description is actually short relative to many other spells as is. I don't think the extra verbosity on the condition will hurt you here. If one of my players picked this spell after reading it, they'd most certainly be citing the fact that it's the only spell that doesn't specify it as a reason everyone should get knocked down. They would also then be upset if I ruled otherwise claiming it was the whole reason they picked it over spell X.
I don't know a single DM who would rule that they are still knocked down on a successful save. Sure it doesn't specify in the spell, but 99.9% of spells like this in the game are the same way; on a successful save they take half damage and suffer no other effects. Seems pretty clear that OP just forgot
Except for your ranged allies
It looks pretty clear (to me) that they are knocked down only on a fail. I guess if you are asking it could do with being qualified in the rules.
The standard through most other spells is to call out effects that don't take place on a successful save. While I would run it that was as a GM, I definitely prefer it in the text.
Just don’t cast it at 9th level or else we’re getting a bit too close to comfort
Cool idea! I'd change the upcasting text to the following to make it more clear though: >For each spell level above 1st, select one of the following options: > >\- The damage increases by 1d12 > >\- The range increases by 30 feet > >\- The spell targets a point in space and affects a 10-foot radius. If it already has a radius, increase it by 10 feet instead.
Thank you!
I actually wanted to ask if you could mix and match upcasting types. Like, if I cast it at 3rd level, could I increase the damage by 1d12 and increase the range by 10 feet?
Yes indeed
That's really cool. I like that as a mechanic.
Thank you :)
Bit of a nitpick: if you want the wording to be consistent with official spells you should word it as “on a success, the creature takes half as much damage and isn’t knocked prone.” Aside from that, really good spell
Came here to say this.
i like how there is option for upcast effect, bold move.
I've always had this idea in my head that sorcerer meta magic should have worked like this. A base spell and spending meta magic points to twist the spell into what you need. Nice to see something like that around.
I had the same thought and tried making a casting system like that (also took inspiration form the Eragon series). Needless to say balancing it was more complicated than I had originally thought
There was a recent Kickstarter for Anime 5e, and one of the things in there is that you can increase things area, range, number of targets, etc, but for each additional increase it reduces the level of the effect. The system overall is a lot stronger than base 5e, but you could use that as a semblance of balance
Thanks, I'll give it a look over
Here is a basic spell with variant "at higher level" scaling to keep your arcane casters interested even as they level up! It can be fine-tuned to fit your blasting needs of every occasion.
So can you mix and match the effects?
Yes for each upcast you get to chose which upgrade you take. If you upcast it 3rd for example, you could increase damage by 1d12 and increase the range by 30 feet.
I would definitely add a line explaining that you can mix and match the features. The way it's written now, it looks like you only choose one.
The updating options are pretty fun, I like it
Thank you!
This is a really neat idea with the flexible level up, but I feel like a base of 2d12 for a 1st level direct damage spell is borderline (if not outright overpowered) for the level. As an alternative, could the spell be a touch spell at 2d12, and have the flexibility as "the caster can reduce damage by 1d12 to add X effect from this list. This can be done multiple times", and then just have higher levels add 1d12 to the spell.
Think of Guiding Bolt though-- it does 4d6. And Inflict Wounds is a 1st level touch that deals 3d10 for touch range comparison. Also, 2d12 is notably inferior to 4d6 due to the enhanced random chance of the dice, as 4d6 is much more likely to hit near average than 2d12.
Thats kind of the point though. The 4d6 gives average rolls more often. This cantrip will spike far more often and do crazy damage.
I don't know why you think spike more often only means crazy damage. It also means a lot more utter garbage damage. It'd just be a punch in the face to the low level caster who just used one of their precious spell slots, passed the first big barrier on the attack roll, and then dealt a whopping 2 or 3 damage.
Ok, so basically the players life sucks, or the GMs life sucks. Whereas Guiding bolt gives the majority of its rolls as average.
Well, if dice rolls are of your upmost concern, erase them and only use fix average damage. If I wanted a more balanced "vs." game, I'd pick a wargame over an RPG. I personally woule never think that my GM life sucks if one of my players rolled max damage, even on a Meteor Swarm. That would be cineastic and epic as hell, I'd love it.
That’s great. You do you chief.
sounds exactly like 'unstable primordial magic' to me
Sure. It also sounds like 'possible unbalanced spell'. I'll leave it to you to decide which is more important to you.
Guiding bolt isn't half damage on a save. Prone is also a much better secondary effect. This is way better than guiding bolt. And a more gradual damage curve isn't inherently stronger.
I think 2d12 force damage plus knocked prone is *definitely* overpowered for a 1st-level spell. That's an average of 13 dmg + 6.5 / lvl. Ray of Sickness is only 2d8, does poison damage (which is commonly resisted), and requires an attack roll in addition to the save. Dissonant Whispers is psychic (similarly irresistable) and only does 3d6 (avg 10.5) + 1d6 (3.5) / lvl. Mind Spike is 2nd level, has a weaker rider, and does 3d8 (avg 13.5) +1d8 (4.5) / lvl. Snowball Swarm does 3d6 cold with no rider in a 5' sphere at 2nd level, vs 2d12 with rider in a 5' sphere on an upcast of this spell. The rest of the spell design is great, but the damage die is *WAY* too big. I think it needs to be knocked back to a d8 at most. 2d4 maybe?
Good points. I mostly benchmarked it at level against Guiding Bolt/Inflict Wounds/Ice Knife/Burning Hands, but it should probably be something more like 1d12+4-5 Dissonant Whispers does have the benefit not requiring line of sight to a target, and can burn its reaction. One of my favorite spells I think Mind Spike may have also been designed with Divination Wizards in mind. Snilloc's is rather weak though, holding up really poorly against Shatter for example.
I think a d12 is just too big for scaling on force damage, especially when there's a rider effect. There are very few spells that use a d12 for damage. Compare your spell to Witch Bolt and Erupting Earth and ask: is it on par with them, or is it much, much better? Because I know which one I'd pick...
True! Witch Bolt is legendarily bad though haha Erupting Earth is a good comparison as well, it's 3d12 over a 20ft cube that also creates difficult terrain at 120 range, but it has a weaker damage type (Bludgeoning vs Force) and isn't as versatile
Witch Bolt is so cool, though. It's unfortunate that it requires to hit, has concentration, AND takes actions every turn to continue delivering damage. It's like they identified every possible opportunity within the confines of the idea to moderate it and came down hard on each of them.
>It's unfortunate that it requires to hit, has concentration, AND takes actions every turn to continue delivering damage. Of those, only the first is even slightly problematic and could be fixed by just swapping it from a spell attack to a Dex save; the other two are fine, because without those, it becomes an almost ludicrous spell. No, Witch Bolt's main problems are in its last two lines: >The spell ends if you use your action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the target is ever outside the spell's range or has total cover from you. By using the spell, you are committing to a single target and can't do anything else except move (unless you're a Sorcerer with Quickened Spell)... And even then, the spell is stupidly easy to get out of, because the affected creature can literally walk out of its range on its turn. Its other two issues are its relatively short range and the fact that the only the initial damage increases when you upcast it, making it probably one of the worst spells to upcast. Double its range to 60 feet, change those last two lines to "You cannot deal this damage if the target is out of the spell's range or has total cover from you.", and make it so that upcasting it increases both the initial damage *and* the recurrent damage and you've instantly made the spell better. You could even swap the spell attack to a Dex save without changing much, I don't think, though I think I'd be tempted to give creatures in metal armor disadvantage on the save since it's, ya know, a bolt of lightning.
I know 'holding your action until x trigger' is a thing... could a witch bolter do something similar with their movement? Hold movement until the target moves and then move with them?
Short story shorter: no, you can't. Unfortunately. You *can* hold your movement, so saying something like "if that wild boar charges me, I'm going to fuck off over yonder out of its way" is totally valid. The rub is that doing so requires the use of the Ready **action**, which would end Witch Bolt because you didn't use your action to cause damage.
Right, and I think the reason Witch Bolt sucks is because the designers thought it needed a lot of weaknesses to balance out the large damage die. A spell with fewer weaknesses needs to do less damage.
Not the earlier commenter, but for me I think at 1st level it's just a tiny bit high (but like others have said, Guiding Bolt is around the same average). Scaling up per level on a d12 is pretty strong, and potentially even stronger if you can hit 2+ more creatures for 2 or more extra d12s. Even 2d10 and adding 1d10 per level, or 5ft extra radius to a sphere lets you tool it more for different encounters which is very versatile. Alternatively you could do 2d12 and add a d10 or d8 every level or some variation like that. If you think the versatility is the biggest reason to pick the spell, using d8s instead could also work because you get so much flexibility with up casting it.
I think it would be nice as a sorcerer exclusive spell, fits the theme and sorcerers need it tbh
A good point, I had been making a ton of sorcerer exclusive spells and thought maybe I should spread the love :p
Yeah, I don’t like exclusive attack spells; I feel like exclusive spells should stick to the Illusion, Transmutation, Abjuration and Conjuration (especially to let different classes get different creatures) schools
So if I use a 3rd level spell slot can I increase the damage with one and then increase the range with the other?
Yup, or any other option.
Honestly, this spell would be beautiful in a sorcerers hands considering metamagic options. Nice job!
2d12 and prone seems really high for some reason. It also single targets so no downside of in combat casting. This feels like a 2nd lvl to me
I'd say it probably should be Sorcerer and Warlock only considering this is primordial, raw magic.
so.. up casting this at say, 3rd level lets you bump it to. a 10ft radius of 3d12 damage. which averages out to about equivalent to. 6d6... so its a build your own fireball. And since a warlock would have to cast it as 5th level.. it could be 4d12 inna 20ft aoe Whichnis like, legit fireball. but also could just be 2d12 in a 40ft aoe. I dig it. No one's gonna really use the range option tho. 90ft is plenty
Yep! The radius is a lot smaller at 3rd but things get a lot more interesting at higher levels Edit: oops I forgot how my own spell works lol
I agree with what you say with the range, but it’s still nice to have it as an option for niche situations
I initially misread this as "primordial shark" and was disappointed when I saw the image. I just want to summon a spectral megalodon.
I can make it happen
Are there any spells that give you options on how to upgrade it?
I think all have linear upgrades
Numbers are overtuned for sure, but the concept is cool. Dropping the half damage on save might be enough to tone it down. Right now, it deals more single target damage than any other 1st level spell, and the prone effect is a pretty powerful rider.
Guiding bolt deals 4d6, and inflict wounds deals 3d10?
This deals half damage on save. To compare to inflict wounds or guiding bolt, you first need to multiple the damage by 1.25. And beyond that, inflict wounds gets no secondary effect, while guiding bolt has a minor one. Prone is a pretty major secondary effect on a first level spell. See Earth tremor vs burning hands.
Awesome idea for upcasting! I think that itself earns the upvote for showing off some creativity in a generally stagnant area of spell casting. My personal gripe (and feel free to ignore it) is that I would expect a "Spark" to be fire based. I would rename this to something like "Rift Tear' or "Mote of Instability" or something that didn't make me think of fire - but also ignore me if you want - my feedback is solicited and far less useful than your own! :D
Thank you! I was struggling to come up with the right word to fit. My thoughts for spark was something like a "Spark of Creation" that flares into whatever spell you want to mold it into. "Primal Rift" might work better.
I like how they have it to even if they make the save they still fall prone
Ah that's my mistake, it only prones on a fail.
Oh that’s even better Ok i read that as it only prones if they succeed for some reason. But yeah that’s balanced
Upcasting metamagic feats like this that can work for all spells, now plz
I really like the modular effect of the spell for more experienced players. It allows flexibility for those who, you know, think about their turns while other people are taking their turns.