Talk:TOMAGOMB Spells

This article has been irate webmastered!
 * -Nova 00:07, 18 February 2008 (EST)

Conversion to separate articles
I wanted to give you a heads up that I have begun the conversion of the spells section (to use templates and separate article for each spell).

I am doing this one a little differently. I am going trough (with bulk actions) the article and converting all entries to use templates that don't exist, keeping a "master" one with all fields that get used in the conversion. After I get that, I will likely try starting a dialog with you all if I have any observations that need to be taken care of. This should keep us from missing anything or giving wrong types to properties.

I will probably start a discussion page on the wiki and sit on the final changes for a bit before uploading them, as it will create 165 new articles, and that will not be as easy to change in bulk. - nova 04:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Working Template
{{TOMAGOMB Spell |Name=                    string |Class=                   string    multi value |Spell School=            string    restricted values. Generated from all Spell School pages |CPD=                     string    Mostly numbers, some special rules. Sometimes variable |Range=                   string    mostly distances, some equations. Perhaps the rules should have some standard range types |Duration=                string    possibly restricted |Level Requirement=       number |Effect=                  text      need to be careful and do some testing on this one. Need to handle line break tags (br) |Special=                 text      May need review for each item (only 12) |Target=                  string |Cross Class                        not set as a variable yet, needs review of how to handle |Casting Time=            string |Image=                   string    Need to figure out if this will need to start with Image:. Will need to strip out other properties (thumb, ect) |Area=                    string |Runic Spell Requirement= text      Consider moving to special or coming up with a better name

Questions during conversion

 * For the property "Number that can be maintained" in Lesser Skeleton Mage. There has to be a better way to handle it than to have a property like that.  Either there needs to be a more graceful way to cap instances, or this type of thing should be covered in the Special property.


 * "Number that can be maintained" could be handled by spell description, such as Special, if need be. Quite honestly there won't be a great many of those spells, as having too many of them is inherently broken for the same reason the restriction exists.  That being said, each "summoner" concept from a different spell school could in theory have a couple of those type of spells, so there certainly needs to be a precedent.  If it's more trouble than it's worth to have it as one of the "usual" spell properties, put it under Special and call it done.  The other fix would be to remove those type of spells entirely, and work purely off of Upkeep duration spells (which would be a bit of a blow to summoners... but are they already overpowered?  Questions, questions...) - LR


 * For entries with stat blocks, should we have a stat block class? For now, just using the preformed text option will be fine (I think), but perhaps we should look into other options here


 * Getting the stat blocks cleaner in some way would be nice, but I'm not the person to talk to about formatting really. If you look from entry to entry though, you'll see I follow a formulaic sort of list when creating them, so there's at least a method in the madness. - LR


 * Should the school of Teleport become the school of Teleportation?


 * Teleportation sounds a little more like a spell school I admit, so yes, that's probably a good call. I was putting off changing it myself, but I had considered the same thing before. - LR


 * Range
 * There used to be specific distances in the TOMAGOMB rules, until I realized I didn't want to limit spell creativity by setting that precedent. Those distances were Close (30 ft.), Medium (60 ft.), and Long (100 ft.).  You'll notice these are shorter distances than D&D uses.  It's just part of TOMAGOMB spellcasting.  Really long-range spells are special in this system, and rare. -LR


 * Level Requirement
 * Level requirement is, quite simply, a restriction on spells that would be waaay too powerful if given to low-level characters. A few exceptions exist (if you can find a Shadow Master to teach you Shadow Blast at level 1, then hey, good job buddy), but for the most part it's to keep some level 2 or 4 caster from calling down a Call to Judgment or similar shenanigans.  While it isn't terribly elegant, it's necessary for certain types of spell builds that are worth keeping.  Also, to be more specific, this is a caster level requirement. -LR


 * Cross class
 * Cross-class spells probably do need a little review at some point.-LR


 * Runic Spell Requirement
 * Runic Spell Requirement could be simplified to a more vague term like "Runic Mastery," as that directly describes what it is that you're doing. The more runic spells you know, the more complicated of spell effects you can build up.  It'll be a standard feature of non-1st-level Runic spells, so it's probably best to make an attribute for it rather than send it off to Special. -LR