Blocking Elemental Spells

[Dexion]

Just a quick question.
In Magic, with the exception of Deflect Energy M p.73 there aren't Blocking spells in the Elemental colleges.
There are other blocking spells in another book ?
Thanks

[Taneli]

Originally Posted by Dexion

Just a quick question.
In Magic, with the exception of Deflect Energy M p.73 there aren't Blocking spells in the Elemental colleges.
There are other blocking spells in another book ?
Thanks

Not that I’m aware of, but it would be pretty easy to write up one or more for each college. Deciding the prerequisites would probably be the most difficult part.

[Stormcrow]

Why would you expect more blocking spells in the elemental colleges? There's the Deflect Missile (Movement, Protection and Warning) spell for blocking missiles composed of elements, Deflect Energy (Fire) for blocking beams, and Block (Protection and Warning) for blocking weapons. What kind of elemental blocking spells are you looking for?

[Dexion]

I looking for something in the 'style' of an element. Aka The last Airbender master.
Because in my group Elemental Mage desire to have Blocking spell from their colleges.
Of course Magic have all the necessary spells but it's for style...

[Stormcrow]

The spells aren't arranged by style but by function. Blocking things is mostly about Protection and Movement. But if you really want, all you have to do is declare that Deflect Missiles, etc. are also in the Fire/Earth/Water/Air college and leave the "special effect" to pure description.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The spells aren't arranged by style but by function. Blocking things is mostly about Protection and Movement. But if you really want, all you have to do is declare that Deflect Missiles, etc. are also in the Fire/Earth/Water/Air college and leave the "special effect" to pure description.

Rather than give the other colleges complete access to blocking spells I could see allowing them access to lesser versions which aren't as versatile.

Like instead of College of Fire's "Deflect Energy" working against all energy, you could have:

"Deflect Light" for Light and Darkness to protect against sun bolts
"Deflect Lightning" available for Air College or Weather College to protects against lightning bolts

or instead of College of Protection's Deflect Missiles working against all missiles, you could have:

"Deflect Air" available for Air College to protect against Concussion
"Deflect Organics" available for Animal College to protect against Spider Silk
"Deflect Earth" for Earth College to protect against Stone Missile

I could also see allowing a "Deflect Fire" which is more accessible than Deflect Energy but only stops other fire spells.

Meta-spells such as "Ward" being off limits to fire-only mages and similar is another issue. I could see maybe having something like "Ward Fire" where it's accessible to both Meta and Fire, but only allows countering fire spells, not other spells.

Basically if there's any spell which applies to spells across several colleges, a niche version which only applies to one being available to just that college sounds on-concept.

"Fire Counterspell" for example, like Ward, should only be able to stop fire spells, so specializing in it is a bad investment compared to investing in open-ended Counterspell which can combine with ANY other spell you know.

I don't know if we should change anything other than that, such as energy cost or duration. "Available in a different college" as some kind of -1 benefit, and "benefits from a different kind of magery" being another -1 is probably offset with a "works on only one college" +2 drawback in terms of technique design.

Maybe that would vary based on how many colleges it originally affected: stuff like counterspell/ward are probably much more versatile than something like deflect missile or deflect energy in terms of just magic, but the latter two have applications outside magic like countering arrows and laserguns

As for prereqs you could basically just copy the normal prereq chain but have it be the narrow-college versions of them. So if you need Counterspell as a prereq for Suspend Spell, then you need Counterfirespell as a prereq for Suspend Firespell

[Shuckster]

You could also create a new spell which requires "Deflect Missile" and "Destroy (Element)" to outright remove the elemental material being used to attack, snuffing out fire, dispersing lightning, dissolving earth etc. It would only work against attacks of the specific element in question but might have a lower cost or pre-requisite count.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The spells aren't arranged by style but by function. Blocking things is mostly about Protection and Movement. But if you really want, all you have to do is declare that Deflect Missiles, etc. are also in the Fire/Earth/Water/Air college and leave the "special effect" to pure description.

I do this sort of thing all the time. My players tend to love it if their spells feel unique and customized to them. As long as the mechanical effects match the original, they will remain balanced.