New spell for our force hands-using defensive wizard:
Blocking Hand level 1, ongoing
A floating hand comes to your side ready to protect you and your allies. While the spell is ongoing, you can Defend in near range, rolling+INT instead of +CON, and you take -1 ongoing to cast a spell. If you redirect an attack this way, you redirect it to the hand instead but you still suffer the damage dealt, because maintaining the hand while it’s being attacked is consuming and exhausting; don’t apply normal armor, but instead the hand grants you 1 armor when suffering the damage from a redirected attack.
What about, instead of fiddling with HP, it either can just absorb the damage, (rendering the halve damage option useless) or give them three extra hold that count as HP, when they take damage they lose one.
Otherwise, I love the spell!
that way it would seem a bit flat and incoherent with itself. One-time-only damage absorption seems wasted on weak attacks and I don’t know, seems a bit dull, negating damage just like that and nothing else. 3 holds seems overpowered when defending three 15 damage attacks and incoherent when shortly before the hand dissolved after a total of 3 damage.
HP are a bit fiddly but their ok (I mean, look at the summon spells, they all have either 1 hp or X hp).
In fact, maybe I could change it to 1 hp +2 per level you have, like the summoning spells.
Yeah, fair enough. I like the way you did the spell.
I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of hp and still have something to think on when casting the spell instead of it just being “negate damage, duh”.
What if the damage gets transferred to you? Or the penalty to cast a spell increases (-1 for each hit) as you have to put more energy into maintaining the spell?
I was discussing with the player to redirect the damage to the wizard cause maintaining the spell while the hand is being beaten is consuming and exhausting. But the wizard has like what 16 hp. It’s suicidal!
…
But it’s actually very funny and I think self-balancing. You can always halve damage and that’s for the standard protection granted by the hand. If you want to go the extra mile and take all the damage… It will be a world of pain for you, but sometimes there’s no choice.
Obviously you can’t use your armor on damage suffered this way, but the hand provides +1 (or +2?) armor when enduring the damage.
edit: also, the spell would last longer. With about 5-10 hp, it will be gone in a few attacks. With your own 16 hp and 1/2 armor, it lasts longer! But you’ll pay the consequences later, when you realize you’re at 4 hp in the boss room 😀
I kind of like it still being you getting hurt, as the consequences of defending are more real.
Oh, cool, i like it.
editing the spell to get the player suffer the damage.
Might just be the saving grace if the heavies are up front and the glass cannons are hanging back. Wizard uses this to slap away something headed for the wounded Ranger, allowing him to get a critical shot off.
Possibly underpowered but definitely flavorful!
what do you mean by underpowered?
Not that I wouldn’t take it, just that the risk/payoff on it is pretty tough odds. If you ranged-defend with it, like others have suggested, you’re opening up your wizard to a world of hurt either in damage or other GM moves.
But on the other hand it could be worth it.