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Featured: Spicing up Magic Missile
Ah, magic missile, described in the following ways:
- Page 224 of my 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook - “A missile of magical energy darts forth from your fingertips and unerringly strike its target. The missile deals 1d4+1 points of damage.
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- On the Pathfinder SRD – “A missile of magical energy darts forth from your fingertip and strikes its target, dealing 1d4+1 points of force damage.”
- And on page 158 of my 4th Edition Player’s Handbook as “You launch a silvery bolt of force at an enemy”.
Not bad, but let’s do a bit of substituting to keep this from becoming boring. How? By separating the description from the effect and changing the energy/elemental basis of the spell. For example:
- “The goblin sorcerer throws three greenish blobs that careen around the pillar and strike you in the chest with a faint sizzling and an acrid smell.” This variant causes acid instead of force damage.
- “A pair of ghostly wolfheads rise from the orc’s hands. With a howl they fly across the room, jaws extended for your throats.” This variant differs only in description; it still causes force damage. Yes, it states in the 3.0/3.5 versions that specific body parts cannot be targeted. However, that refers to causing a specific damage effect (e.g. stun, blindness, get the target to drop an item, trip, etc.) and the “going for the throat” is merely a descriptive effect; magic missiles have to impact somewhere.
- “The hag points her finger at you and four ebon bolts crackling with energy shoot from her fingertips, one at each of you.” Here it’s electrical damage with an unusual color. To make this one even more unusual, have the bolts fire from the night hag’s eyes rather than her finger. After all, she’s not actually casting a spell but using a spell-like ability. Okay, fine, I know spell-like abilities are supposed to work “. . . just like spells (though they are not spells and so have no verbal, somatic, material, focus, or XP components.” – p. 7 3rd Edition PHB. But does working just like spells refer to all aspects or simply the mechanics? Obviously I favor the latter.
- “Two icicles” cause cold damage instead of force damage
- “Streaks of flame” for fire damage instead of force damage
- “tendrils of smoke”, “spinning shuriken”, “waves of sound”, “trail of sparks”
Obviously the only limit to what you can do is your imagination and, as always, the agreement of your players. In my personal experience I have found that players who balk at this sort of free-form description/interpretation of magic usually become more amenable when the rationale behind it is explained, especially the part about how the mechanics remain the same. Besides, the heroes are allowed to put their own spin on these traditional spells. Finally, this can be extended to any number of other common and popular spells such as burning hands, lightning bolt, fireball, blade barrier, etc. Doing this will retian a bit of the wonder in magic and also keep the heroes guessing.
Written by Michael
Michael Hammes had worked for six years in the RPG industry before the reality of family life and homeownership pulled him away. Now he's back, if not as a full-time practitioner, at least as an expert dabbler. Michael's work is most closely associated with Ronin Arts and Green Ronin, but he's been active with numerous other publishers and companies as well.
11 Responses to "Featured: Spicing up Magic Missile"
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by philipjreed, GMOracle. GMOracle said: Today's post takes a look at magic missile variants http://www.gmoracle.com/?p=386 -M [...]
We let our spell-casters customize the appearance of their magic missile for some time as it is just more fun. My bard (back in 2nd edition, when Bards could use MM) summoned a handful on musical notes and threw them at her enemies, for example, much fun.
For my own campaign, however, I banned magic missile and replaced it with: http://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/new-spell-missile-attack-spell/
I like it!
One of the things I’ve always disliked about the spell system was how each spell virtually has its own mechanics. It would be nicer if there was a uniform set of mechanics which underlay the spell system and allowed you to simply mix-and-match your own spells. But that would be a bit of work for folks. Also, many players and GMs are very attached to the RAW. So while I like to push the boundaries, I tend to do so conservatively. Fortunately, in home games anything people agree to goes.
Thanks again for sharing that spell
.
Big believer in spicing up spells and making them more mysterious. It’s great to hit a party with a well know or common spell and change it’s look and affect just a little and have them wondering what’s going on. As long as the changes are more cosmetic and not giving extra damage, range, etc without upping the level it’s good by me. When I was reading the article I thought of an old star trek episode where the plants turned and “fired” their spores. You could have a nature oriented mage cast magic missile, but instead of it coming directly from him, a nearby plant(s) could fire thorns making it appear as if the forest was turning against them.
Eric
I vaguely remember that episode. Of course, I vaguely remember every Star Trek episode.
Hmm, a nature-oriented mage. Wonder if that isn’t stepping too much on the Druid’s toes. Of course, why not give the Druid that spell? Don’t call it force damage but piercing damage and maybe limit its effectiveness against heavy armor or require there be (thorny) plants nearby or at least the caster be above ground so it’s not quite as effective as the Wizard version.
Giving it to a druid is fine, especially if you change the origin of the attack. Anything that brings back the mystery and wonder you get when you first see a spell or new creature is good. I’m a little tired of people knowing exactly what’s coming their way.
Eric
Yeah, keeping things mysterious is hard, especially when a game is popular and everybody has access to the rules. I played Call of Cthulu many years ago and never bothered to learn the rules because I didn’t want to spoil the mystery. Of course I also trusted the GM to run a fair game.
I think there was a “missile mage” prestige class in 3e that played with magic missile quite a bit. I’ll have to hunt that down when I get home.
[...] Featured: Spicing up Magic Missile [...]
[...] Well, as always the easiest thing to do is to simply add a bit of flavor to the existing spells by changing the specifics of the spell. So ray of frost becomes ray of fire or minor lightning bolt or acid spit or anything else [...]
[...] can already achieve some of this by freely substituting each spell’s energy for the other (or any other energy for that matter) thus creating a lightning ball and a fire line, for example along with other tricks to expand the [...]