A quick primer for some of the newer readers here at the Alexandrian: When 4th Edition was announced in 2007, Dream Machine Productions went on hiatus. We were waiting to see what would happen with 4th Edition and what direction the market was headed in.

Now that those questions have been answered, DMP is slowly revving itself back up into production mode. Spells of Light and Dark: The Art of the Flame and Void proved to be the unanticipated revival product, but we’ve got several more in the pipeline.

But if you like what you read here on the site, I think there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll enjoy what DMP has to offer. This is what has come before:

The covers above link to the RPGNow purchase pages, but the books are also available from Paizo and Lulu.

And now for the question some of you may be askng: What’s happening with Legends & Labyrinths?

It’s coming. Following the problems I had during the development phase of the project, I came back to it with fresh eyes and realized there were some fairly fundamental problems with the approach I was taking to the product. This isn’t primarily a content issue — it’s a structural one. I feel very strongly that the organization of an RPG manual has a lot to do with the utility of that manual. Because of the Sidebar Reference System, reorganizing the book has meant revising a lot of content of the SRS content.

So, as I’ve said before, Legends & Labyrinths will be released when it’s ready. Which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.

A couple days ago, I talked about some of the oddities surrounding the ligth and darkness spells in the core rulebooks. The genesis of that post was a collection of light-and-darkness themed spells I was creating for an adventure. (I really like the idea of using rare knowledge — particularly spellbooks filled with non-core spells — as a type of treasure.)

As I tend to do, once I started exploring the concept of light and darkness spells I got a little carried away. When I stepped back and discovered that I had cranked out 20 pages worth of spells, I realized that what I really had on my hands here was a true mini-supplement.

So I spent a few more days laying out the book, developing artwork, creating the cover, and going through my proofreading cycles. The result is Spells of Light and Darkness: The Art of the Flame and the Void.

THE ART OF THE FLAME AND VOID…

Spells of Light and Dark: The Art of the Flame and Void contains 50+ spells themed around magical light and darkness. While many may merely dabble with the unrefracted glory of magical light and the stygian forces of magical darkness, there are great wonders and terrible powers to be harnessed by those willing to master their might…

Animate Shadow
Banefire
Blacksight
Blinding Burst
Blinding Light
Blindsight Cocoon
Control Shadows
Dark Shroud
Eclipse
Endless Daylight
Endless Night
Endless Twilight
Flare
Gloomsight
Hidden Shadow
Incandescent Burst
Midnight Shroud
Moonlight
Obfuscate the Hidden Eye
Orb of Darkness
Orb of Light
Radiant Infusion
Shadow Chains
Shadowsheen
Shadow Spy
Shroud of Brilliance
Starflame
Touch of Shadow
True Darkness
Unholy Darkness
Unholy Gloom
Utterdark Shroud
Wall of Brilliance
Wall of Shadows

… and many more!

RPGNow – Lulu PDF – Lulu Print
20 pages

There are six ability scores in D&D. And there are six spells for buffing those ability scores:

bear’s endurance – Clr 2, Drd 2, Rgr 2, Sor/Wiz 2
bull’s strength – Clr 2, Drd 2, Pal 2, Sor/Wiz 2
cat’s grace – Brd 2, Drd 2, Rgr 2, Sor/Wiz 2
eagle’s splendor – Brd 2, Clr 2, Pal 2, Sor/Wiz 2
fox’s cunning – Brd 2, Sor/Wiz 2
owl’s wisdom – Clr 2, Drd 2, Pal 2, Rgr 2, Sor/Wiz 2

Okay, I can kinda see the archetypal reasons for the bard, druid, paladin, and ranger getting access to different subsets of these spells.

But given the fact that the cleric’s key role in the party is healer and buffer, why are they missing cat’s grace and fox’s cunning?

It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Never has. In my house rules, the cleric gets access to all six buffs, just like the arcanists do.

Random thought: Given the predilection for PCs to get pumped up on stat boosters, is anyone else struck by the similarity to performance enhancement drugs? This doesn’t have much (if anything) to do with game mechanics, but it can be an interesting insight into the relationship between wandering heroes and the world around them. I think the idea that PCs are, in some sense, doped up further alienates them from the common society. Not only do they wield amazing powers, but their very bodies and minds are being constantly hyped up on mystical enhancements.

One of the things I talked about in D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations is the fact that the game covers a range from sub-normal to super-human powers. I think there’s something particularly interesting about a world where the guy sitting next to you may be able to unleash incredible destructive forces with the flick of a thought. What does it really mean for a common man to live in that kind of world? Even if there’s only one such person in a hundred thousand?

Here are the tent-pole Evocation [light] spells from the core rulebooks:

light – Brd 0, Clr 0, Drd 0, Sor/Wiz 0
darkness – Brd 2, Clr 2, Sor/Wiz 2
daylight – Brd 3, Clr 3, Drd 3, Pal 3, Sor/Wiz 3
deeper darkness – Clr 3

I feel as if one might go mad trying to understand this progression of spells. The druid’s affinity for light spells makes perfect sense, and even the fact that the paladin has access to daylight and not the lesser light spell has some logic to it (since daylight has some martial application).

But what doesn’t make much sense to me is that the arcanists get access to the more powerful daylight, but not the more powerful deeper darkness.

The other odd thing is that the 3.5 darkness and deeper darkness spells actually creates illumination and can be used to light an unlit area: “This spell causes an object to radiate shadowy illumination out to a 20-foot radius.” This is weird enough in its own right, but it gets even weirder when deeper darkness and daylight interact with each other and cancel each other out.

In other words, if you’re in a cave and you cast deeper darkness, you can see. If you’re in a cave and you cast daylight, you can see. But if you cast both deeper darkness and daylight, you can’t see.

These oddities were the result of attempting to re-balance the darkness spells. In all previous editions of the game, darkness had actually created an area of impenetrable darkness (as the name might suggest). But this was considerd too powerful for a 2nd-level spell, and so the “shadowy illumination” formulation was applied as a patch of sorts.

While I tend to agree that darkness was very powerful, the loss of any way to create true magical darkness was an unfortunate loss. Apparently, someone at WotC felt the same way. But their solution was somewhat perverse: In the Spell Compendium there is a spell named blacklight, which creates a true magical darkness which the caster can see through.

Oddly, however, this is a 3rd-level spell which is, in virtually every way, superior to deeper darkness. It can also be cast by arcanists.

I’m not sure what the best solution for the darkness/light spells would be. But I would certainly look at normalizing the level progressions, add more powerful versions of the darkness spells (with matching light spells to provide the natural antithesis of the two sub-types), and smooth out some of the discrepancies in how the various spells interact with each other. I’d probably also look at creating a more powerful version of the light spell to add back in the combat utiltiy of the spell that was stripped out in 3rd Edition.

The spell control undead: “This spell enables to you to command undead creatures for a short period of time.”

The spell command undead: “This spell allows you some degree of control over an undead creature.”

… yeah, that’s not confusing at all.

The spell command undead, by the way, is a really great exploit that I rarely see people talking about. It’s a 2nd-level spell that lasts for 1 day per level and has no saving throw when used against mindless undead.

To put this in perspective, a cloud giant skeleton is a CR 7 creature with 110 hp and dealing 4d6+18 on a successful hit.

Even more significantly, however, command undead — unlike the 7th-level control undead — has no HD limit. And since it’s a 2nd-level spell, it can be put in a wand.

This spell can be very easily used to turn that undead-infested tomb the DM was planning to hit you with into nothing more than a recruiting ground.

By design, command undead is supposed to be the undead equivalent of charm person. But the longer duration (charm person is only 1 hour/ per level), lack of saving throw, and more powerful effect when dealing with mindless undead make it unduly powerful.