Sorry to spam your tavern stream, but I feel that I and Gladio Joel Giannitelli came to a brilliant conclusion.
Holden’s Magic Hand level 3, ongoing
You evoke a magical hand of pure force that acts as you wish at the best of its ability. Treat the hand as a character, but with access to only the basic moves. It has a +1 modifier for all stats, 1 HP and moves by hovering around. When you cast this spell, choose the size of the hand:
• Tiny: it has Dex +2, d4 damage and it takes +1 to aid or interfere rolls.
• Small: it has Str +2, d8 damage and the forceful tag.
• Medium: it has Con +2, d6 damage and +2 HP for each level you have.
The hand lasts until it is destroyed by taking damage in excess of its HP, or until you end the spell. While this spell is ongoing you take -1 to cast a spell.
Named after Holden, our Wizard, Guardian of the Blue Veil, whose spells all have a “magical hand” skin, and the first to ever research such a spell.
wait, the small version deals more damage than the medium one?
Good spell though, it looks fun to play!
the smaller its striking surface, the harder it hits. However, being too small, you just don’t have the raw power to be dangerous. I envisioned the middle one as the most efficient combination between mass, speed and striking surface extension to be the most offensive one.
This looks like a pretty awesome spell, but it does fall a little outside of the common spell format.
When I get back to my comp, I’ll comment a bit more on it 🙂
The problem with this spell is that it creates a character. This begs the question; who “plays” it? You might answer that the wizard does, but the spell is still weird in a sense that it requires you to make two rolls for one “effect”.
First you need to cast it, then you need to “control” it by rolling to make it do what you want. Let us assume that the Wizard has an intelligence of 18, giving him a +3 to casting it, and that the thing has a +2 bonus to what you want it to do.
Even then, the chance of rolling a miss is massively higher, as you go from having to roll 4+ to 4+ and then 5+. You go from a 8.33% chance of missing to a 23.61% chance.
This doesn’t consider the amount of complications you might suffer from rolling partials! The chance of rolling a strong hit goes from 58.33% down to 24.3! This means that even if you don’t roll a single miss, the chance of getting at least one partial hit is now 52.09%.
I think it is generally a bad idea to make a spell this way. It would be much better to make three spells, one for each kind of “hand”, which had a single effect that fit the normal framework for spells.
My take on the spell, divided up into three separate ones:
Holden’s Helping Hand, level 1, ongoing.
You evoke a small, magical hand of pure force. While this spell is active, you can’t cast spells, but it can perform simple tricks at your will and or grant +1 to the roll of an ally.
Holden’s Heavy Hand, level 1.
You evoke a magical fist of pure force that strikes one target for 2d4 damage.
Holden’s Huge Hand _level 3, ongoing._
You evoke a big, magical hand of pure force that defends a target until dispelled, granting that target +2 Armor. You cannot cast spells while this spell is active.
Also, the “you take -1 to casting spells while this spell is active” is a Cleric cliché. The Wizard can usually not cast spells while a spell is ongoing.
I’m sorry to be rude, but you really need to read the spell lists. Specifically, Animate Dead (level 3 cleric) and Summon Monster (level 5 wizard).
I stand corrected 🙂
Oh, and it didn’t sound rude at all 🙂
wait! Are you saying that one of those spells made your game awkward? If that’s the case, I’m super interested to hear what happened, summon monster is one of my favorite spells!
Not at all. I love high-power leverage. I just haven’t had a player casting this spell, so I’m not very familiar with it.
Polymorph on the other hand…
I matched the summoning spells with this one because the effects produced by the hand have to be much more varied. Just like you were playing another character! He could pick up a sword and start fighting with the strong hand, hover around sitting on the tough hand, trigger traps with the dextrous hand, and so on.
Having to double roll does not seem an issue to me. With summoned characters, you can perform all kinds of crazy actions. And you can perform them more than once if you roll good enough! If your first roll with the summoned character is a 6-, the worst case scenario is the GM telling you that the spell ends after performing the action. And that’s ok! Here applies the general DW mentality: the more you can invent by avoiding the moves, the better your fictional positioning, the greater advantages you’ll get.
(edit: I’m not saying that you should avoid rolling. Cause rolling means xp and moving the story forward! I’m saying that, if you really want to get the job done, 100% sure, without risks, you better start thinking about it!)
Damage is a gamble: it could be higher than MM (or even higher than fireball!) if you get the chance to attack more than once, or it could be a fraction lower if you’re unlucky. But then again, not only he could have the hand to pick up a weapon, but damage is not the issue! The strong hand is mainly to grapple opponents, disarm them, free the wizard from chains, and what else..!
small update: the strong hand is now forceful!
You guys are going to get sued by Bigby!