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.

Every so often I’ll discuss plot holes in movies. Sometimes I’m critiquing a movie I liked. Other times I’m excorciating a movie I hated.

For example, last month I posted a lengthy essay discussing (among other things) some significant problems with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Another example would be the plethora of plot holes Peter Jackson created in The Two Towers. (Gratuitous examples include teleporting ents, the elven legion from Lothlorien that teleports to Helm’s Deep, and Faramir’s strangely psychic ability to know events taking place in Rohan on the same day that they occur.)

And frequently, during the ensuing discussions, someone will trot out what I’ve come to refer to as the Big Sleep Fallacy.

The Big Sleep is a classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It’s a noir detective story based on Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name and Chandler also wrote the screenplay. It’s widely considered to be one of the best movies ever made. It’s also remembered as having an incredibly convoluted plot. The most notable example of this is that one of the murders in the film is never explained. When asked about it later, Chandler himself couldn’t identify the murderer. It’s a huge gaping plot hole.

And the Big Sleep Fallacy looks like this: “The Big Sleep was a great movie. The Big Sleep has a famous plot hole. Therefore, there’s nothing wrong with having plot holes.”

Err… No. If you think that makes sense, I’m afraid you’re in dire need of a remedial logic class.

If you want to go for the weaker conclusion that “movies can have plot holes and still be good”, then you’re in decent shape. But with the stronger conclusion you’re assuming the unstated premise that “great movies are without flaw”. And even if you can swallow such a patently ridiculous premise, you’ve now introduced an ancillary conclusion that “plot holes aren’t flaws”… which also appears to be patently ridiculous.

You can also scent the fundamental error here by noting that The Big Sleep is specifically noteworthy for having such a significant plot hole while still being considered a great movie. In other words, that type of thing is unusual and therefore merits mention. If great movies routinely had gaping plot holes lying around, then the appearance of one in The Big Sleep wouldn’t be of notable significance.

… and that’s my rant for the day.

I’ve spent the past our or so browsing through Traps & Treachery, Grimtooth’s Traps, and the Book of Challenges for inspiration in designing a trap-laden dungeon of doom.

While reading the last of these, a supplement published by WotC during the early days of 3rd Edition, I was struck by the following piece of advice for the neophyte DM:

Make Them Dig Deep: In a lair of cold creatures, only the sorcerers will be able to muster enough fire spells to win. Using many of the same type of creatures drains a subset of the party’s resources while never tapping into another subset. The heroes need to ration resources, and that benefits those on the receiving end of the PCs’ wrath.

This advice is not given as a “one true way” of doing things. It’s instead offered on a platter of several different ways of mixing things up and structuring encounters and adventures in way that makes things just a little bit tougher for the PCs than they would normally be.

But if you’re ever looking for a concrete example of the difference between the design ethos of 3rd Edition and the design ethos of 4th Edition, that quote isn’t a bad place to start. Because any 4th Edition designer would consider that quote to be anathema: It violates two of the core principles of 4th Edition gaming (“all characters should participate in all encounters” and “strategic resource management is bad”).

A couple of days ago I mentioned in the comments that, in my opinion, “the narrow range of options that results from this design ethos is bland and boring”. It was particularly because that comment was fresh in my mind that this quote jumped out at me while I was reading. It’s a perfect example of the type of gameplay that was unceremoniously stripped out of 4th Edition.

There are some who have labored long and hard to make “liberal” a dirty word. But the twin principles of liberal thought are liberty and a belief in equal opportunity. So we would look long and hard at those who would consider liberty to be a dirty thing and look on equal opportunity with suspicion.