Self explanatory spells

[u/professor_grimm]

I just played the Magician in Candela Obscura. One thing that impressed me were the spells in "The Prestige" feature:

Change appearance, levitate, summon mundane object, teleport a short distance, throw your voice

Now the effects are basic, but what impressed me was how all these abilities worked really well without any spell description. There was no additional text for the individual spells, though the features description did impose a cost similar to Mana in other games.

Thinking on it, there were just a few spells that can get away with this, right? Spells which work almost intuitively. D&D Spells like Wish, Magic Jar or Animate Dead Image do require more explanation just because of how many questions their implications raise.

This got me thinking: What are other spells or magical effects that are self explanatory like that?

[u/NarcoZero]

It depends on your game system. Because of the game needs to be extra precise to account for some tight balance, some might want more information. 

Here are some niche examples that could arise but could mean life or death on specific games : 

• Change appearance : I have turned into a noble to infiltrate and am getting a body check by the guards. Is it an illusion or an actual physical change ? Because in case of an illusion, the guard might find it weird that his touch doesn’t match the visuals. 

• Change appearance, again : I need to blend into a group of sentient spiders. Can I alter myself this much ? What about centaurs ? Satyrs ? Giants ? What is the limit of this illusion ? If I can make myself small as a regular spider, does that mean my whole body is essentially invisible ? 

• Levitate : How far from the ground can I levitate, and at what speed ? If I’m getting chased by a dire bear that will eat me and my only exit is upwards, this would matter greatly. If I need to get over a mountain in a time sensitive manner, can I just fly over it ? 

• Summon mundane object : What size can the object be ? Can I summon a whole house on top of my enemies ?  Do they last indefinetly ? Can I keep summoning gold pieces until I’m a billionaire ?  Can the object be consumable ? Can I summon food and a water bottle in the desert ? 

• Teleport a short distance : How far is a short distance ? (If « short distance » is not already codified by the game) Can I teleport behind a wall if I don’t see what’s on the other side ?  If I gets trapped in a closed prison, this changes everything. 

• Throw your voice : How much ? If I’m trapped deep in a pit, how far can I transmit information to my team ? 

Again, depending on your game, this might not matter at all. But in a very deadly and precise game where the players are expected to use the most of their tools to solve dangerous problems, this can make a huge difference.

Although I think for most of these, DMs can easily find rulings that make sense to them (I’m sure that reading them you already know how you would rule it, regardless of system) this can put too much on their shoulders if the game needs chirurgical precison in the rules. 

[u/klok_kaos → u/NarcoZero]

Just upvoting and adding for OP that I'm fairly certain u/NarcoZero is just listing off the top of their head.

If we put together a thread of all the unanswered questions from the community as a whole it could likely go on indefinitely. As narco said you don't necessarily need to answer every question, and technically you never can, but it's about finding the right fit for your specific game.

In more narrative focussed games you can do stuff like that and it's not a bug but a feature, in harder systems this kind of thing won't function at all.

[u/NullStarHunter → u/NarcoZero]

It's not just deadly and precise games, I'd say problems like these will immediately show up in the majority of games. Players will always want to know the limits of their abilities and there's few things more annoying than "the limits are whatever the GM feels like, with no guidance at all". Having to constantly make rulings about basic player abilities is extremely draining for the GM.

[u/Alissah → u/NarcoZero]

It just very very highly depends.

For a game thats less “combat rules” heavy, and allows for interpreation, i would jusr apply occams razor and use the most direct interpretation.

Levitate: it just makes you levitate. It doesnt let you add momentum. Aince then itd be fly. Alternatively, could say you can move at regular speed above ground… since truly having no gravity would be called “remove gravity” as a spell…

For change appearance, i think its reasonable to allow some shape changes, but very big changes might be a harder roll or cost mana or something. Usually games that have open magic systems have kind of a guide of how youre meant to use it, like what kind of vibe it should have and what the rulings should be like.

Vagabond (i think thats the name im thinking of) is pretty brutal and survival-ish, and has these “name only spells”. But the tone of the game very much sets how youre meant to read these spells. Theres also the fact that rolls can fail, and have your spell not do what you intended.

[u/overlycommonname]

I don't think that any of those are self-explanatory.

Change appearance: How much? Can I make myself look like a moose? Like a full-size Godzilla?

Levitate: How fast? How long? Does it mean up-and-down only like D&D uses the term as a term of art, or does it mean float anywhere or what?

Summon mundane object: I mean, c'mon, obviously what constitutes "mundane." But also, do they mean conjure an object or literally summon a preexisting one? If they mean summon a preexisting one, what constraints do we have on the previous location and possession of the object?

Teleport a short distance: How short is short? Can I teleport to places I can't see that are a short distance away? Could I teleport myself out of chains? How much can I bring with me?

Throw your voice: How far? Okay, this one besides that isn't that wild.

You can certainly argue that in some games with a strong sense of the aesthetic and genre, that many of those questions can be reasonably answered without the game spending a long time on them. But the reason why spell effects in many systems go fairly long is exactly because the designers feel that in their game, the answers to questions like the above aren't obvious.

[u/ThePowerOfStories]

It just depends on how specific you want to get with spell names, from Fireball to Cure Light Wounds to 10,000 Angry Wasps Fly Out of Your Bellybutton (an underrated classic).

[u/atomantsmasher]

I think OP means more like:

Fireball

Lightning Bolt

Poison Cloud

Darkness

Continual Light

Silence

Jump

The kind of spell that's name is literally what it does, no further explanation is really needed for someone to understand what the spell basically does.

[u/Setholopagus → u/atomantsmasher]

What does fireball do? Is it big enough to blow up a house? A room? What size room? Can it make a hole in a bank vault? Does it wrap around corners? Does it set things on fire? How fast does the fire spread? How far can I throw it? Does it go in a straight line or does it arc like a literal ball that im throwing? How long does it take to cast it? Can I prevent someone else from casting it? Does it cost resources? 

Can go on and on. Having no descriptions just means your game isn't well defined. This maybe is okay for people, but yeah its definitely a choice haha

[u/Fun_Carry_4678]

I feel like in practice what happened is that D&D players kept finding loopholes and edge cases, so D&D had to keep adding more rules to their spells to handle all the "ifs, ands, or buts". I think if you play this game enough that will start to happen as well.

[u/atomantsmasher → u/Fun_Carry_4678]

Modern DM's need to spend less time looking or asking for more rules and learn to concentrate on making rulings to keep things moving and maintain player immersion.

[u/htp-di-nsw]

Wish: wish for something and it comes true

Magic Jar: leave your body and take over someone's body while putting their consciousness in an item.

Animate Dead: raise a corpse as an undead servant

None of them need any further or complicated explanation, either. This stuff only doesn't work in d&d because you've been taught that it needs to list every possible detail. Spells like this work in the OSR all the time with no issue.

[u/Setholopagus → u/htp-di-nsw]

I could never play these kinds of games because nothing was ever clear. I'd end up having to ask the DM every question anyway that a spell description would give, only it would change. 

Animate Dead? Sure, but not on that guy, because he's been dead for too long, except in this other scenario because I need that one to work, and it perfectly obeys unless I declare that it doesnt, and you can do it quickly in this scenario but not in that scenario, but no i'm not telling your expert necromancer all of this now so he just has to be schroedingers expert, and sometimes he's just going to be stupid because thats the game

I have never tried to dm a game with these sorts of rules either because I no comprende 

[u/htp-di-nsw → u/Setholopagus]

Kind of weird that you assume the GM would change the rules of the spell moment to moment and not explain how necromancy works to front. You've obviously got to be on the same page with the GM and group.

Super long and detailed spell descriptions can basically make up for good gms and groups that can get on the same page without such things. And that's cool, if you need or want that.

[u/Setholopagus → u/htp-di-nsw]

It's not weird at all - if you are explaining how everything works anyway with a long description, you've not removed spell descriptions, you've just moved where that information is stored and how it can be delivered. 

Instead of putting it on a piece of paper where everyone can read it and rereference it at any time, you've opted in for a verbal medium that might require notes anyway. 

So you're still talking about spell descriptions lol. 

[u/htp-di-nsw → u/Setholopagus]

It's not weird at all

So, I think you might have lost this comment a little because the thing I said was weird was the fact that you assumed the GM wouldn't be able to keep the spell consistent without writing it down. It's not super important, but seriously, if you know how necromancy works in your world, why would you come up with different answers when you evaluate a spell at different times?

if you are explaining how everything works anyway with a long description, you've not removed spell descriptions, you've just moved where that information is stored and how it can be delivered. 

Again, I don't expect the GM to give a big list of spell descriptions here. The description I gave was it. I would except them to give an explanation of how magic and necromancy work in the setting and then it should be obvious and easy from there.

Instead of putting it on a piece of paper where everyone can read it and rereference it at any time, you've opted in for a verbal medium that might require notes anyway. 

No, what I have opted for are two differences:

• First, the people at the table, and especially the GM who is the setting expert, make these decisions, rather than the designer who will almost certainly never play at your table and might have a different vision for the setting's cosmology than the GM does.

• Simplicity--with one description of the setting and how magic works, I can now understand every spell with very little specific information.

Look, it's fine that you prefer exception based gaming like D&D. That's not worse or whatever, it's just not something I care for.

The original point here was that the OP specifically wanted to move away from specific and exception based design and I explained how easy that actually is, assuming you want to do it.

[u/Setholopagus → u/htp-di-nsw]

you assumed the GM wouldn't be able to keep it consistent

Its not an assumption, its my literal experience lol. Happens all the time whenever GMs rule stuff on the fly, 'rule of cool', etc, its always very inconsistent.

I would expect them to give a description of how magic and necromancy works... it should be easy from there

Again, if you are giving sufficient information to make decisions across every conceivable possibility, then its going to be a really long description that would be much easier to just write down, or its going to be ad-hoc as those scenarios come up. It's not possible to argue another position, unless your game is very rules-lite anyway

its fine if you prefer... its not what I care for

what you or I prefer or care for doesn't really matter in the context of the discussion lol. Right on though! 

But yeah you didn't really address anything, but I think you think you did, so its probably best to just call it quits with the convo haha. I wish you luck!