(1) Disrupt Undead - sounds like that'd make for a useful cantrip. Making a ranged touch ray that hurts racial type: undead, sounds easy enough.
(2) Blur - possible concern here, I may be under the mistaken impression that "Ghostly Visage" has filled this role in NWN1&2. GV is definitely different (caster only, different conceal %, addition of DR), but I don't think you'll find it in any sourcebook out there, I always thought it was a stand in for Blur. If that's the case, one spell or the other ought exist in our world, as opposed to having the option to cast both, and possibly have both even on one subject, with complementary effects (although surely not stacking). That is, GV+Blur could mean 20% conceal on a caster, plus the DR business. On concealment generally, I remember a debate where I wanted to talk about concealment granting canon items a good while ago, and it was pointed out that concealment's awfully powerful in a gameworld where concealment is unavailable from fog, stacks of crates, bushes, darkness, etc., but where more magic to introduce it is considered. Anyhow, maybe Blur fits in our world, maybe GV does, maybe either, maybe both. Also, casting it may be one thing, permitting it as an item property for later magic items, may be another (again, canon cloaks of displacement pricing = sky high, what would a cloak of blurring or cloak of blur 2/day be worth). Net, this'd be easy to script, but does it have a role for us, especially considering GV's presence, and what I'd call our general conceal-o-phobia, since this simple PnP mechanic is not available in even the bushiest tooled area?
(3) Obscuring Mist and its longer beefed up counterpart, Fog Cloud - may be neat, though I guess I'd be interested to see how the 20% up to 50% conceal depending on distance, could work. Check if it's a melee wpn being used and if so, grant 20%, if missile, grant 50%? Hmm, may not cover ranged touch. Well anyhow, I guess it's scriptable. I further guess that somehow these'd need to interact with Gust of Wind spells, and any spell that offers more than a tiny bit of fire damage. I imagine these'd be all or nothing propositions, not just removing fire-spell AoE shaped "chunks" from your fog. Ah well.
(4) Continual Light - nerfed to something like a few mins / level in ALFA's NWN1, presumably to stop people from selling lint with an expensive item property, to stupid merchants. I sure recognize this spell from earlier editions of D&D, but didn't it get changed to "Continual Flame" in 3.5 (creates torch equivalent magic non-hot flame, as opposed to the soft glow envisioned by the old C. Light spells)? Anyhow, I guess look into whether there's still a "Light" spell or if it's really "Flame" you're looking at, and see if the same concern of crafting "well illuminated lint" and selling to stupid merchants, or if somehow that item property can be worth 0gp when configured onto an item (though surely a PC may be willing to pay for flaming gear now and again), at least to avoid an exploit.
(5) Levitate - yeah, probably RP only, unless some kind of climb/jump/fly system comes in, but this could be pretty darn annoying as a DM-aided spell anyway. DMless adventurer with Levitate memorized may as well not have memorized anything at all if he's running from something hideous at a cliff's edge, or could run across a lake thereby avoiding it. Life or death type spells are not always the best candidates for RP spells (i.e. rollback requests, "because I had XXXXX memorized, I totally would've lived!")
(6) Floating Disk - interesting especially if scripted (i.e. have a funky vfx, bound to follow, not subject to attacks, hench-disk of the most neutral faction you can think of, to follow you which ANYONE can talk to, in order to access a pChestlike amount of goodies, which are literally sitting there for the taking on a big platter. Junk drops to ground on end of spell or on caster talking to his hench disk to say "you're dismissed." An RP spell that can save you 500lb or more of encumbrance can in cases be a life or death (or rags or riches) type thing, hauling corpses, loot, heavy things involved in statics, again, if RP only, it makes a DM your personal valet (no good), if scripted, even just as a "temporary pChest or "banker box" which follows you", it may have some real use. I do have trouble envisioning a system where a buddy under your weight limit could ride on your hench-disk under a scripted system, oh well, half solutions are sometimes better than pure RP-only.
(7) Message - this and similar spells like Sending are just a license between players to send what'd otherwise be OOC tell-type information, i.e., giving a snippet of intel from a great distance. Good stuff.
ALFA NWN2 PCs: Rhaggot of the Bruised-Eye, and Bamshogbo
ALFA NWN1 PC: Jacobim Foxmantle
ALFA NWN1 Dead PC: Jon Shieldjack
I still am fairly sure GV is a pure NWN1 &NWN2 invention, i.e., never pops up in any PnP sourcebook out there, at least not to my knowledge from scans of various PDFs out there. It's why I thought it was maybe a Bioware reinterpretation of Blur, which Obsidian adopted as-is.
If adding a PnP spell that's sort of like a non PnP spell, the question arises of whether to have them both (and therefore the prospect of the two buffs being on the same target at once, making up for each others' shortcomings), or to pick one and turf the other.
ALFA NWN2 PCs: Rhaggot of the Bruised-Eye, and Bamshogbo
ALFA NWN1 PC: Jacobim Foxmantle
ALFA NWN1 Dead PC: Jon Shieldjack
I'm not sure it would be worth weathering the complaints about "OMG nerf'd!" if we pulled Ghostly Visage in favor of Blur, on a "GV is not canon enough" argument. We'd also have to manage some sort of an exchange deal via DMs for any PCs who had already taken/scribed Ghostly Visage (as well as remove it from any NPCs, scrolls from stores, etc).
Anyone know if Ghostly Visage, in one form or another, actually exists in one of the sourcebooks?
Adding PnP content is good, but at least in the Blur vs. Ghostly scene, you end up with two 2nd level arcane/bard concealment spells, though each with slightly different twists (same duration though).
Ghostly Visage target: caster, duration 1 min/lvl, 10% conceal (apparently unconditional on stuff like True Seeing), but also DR 5/magic and immune to level 0 & 1 spells. I suspect the spell immunity is only on the "is hostile" flagged spells, since cure lights and such, whether potion form or otherwise, sure aren't filtered out by GV in my experience. I never even noticed the spell immunity before taking a good read of the description, haven't tested whether it works, but the description was virtually the same in NWN1 (except DR 5/+1 as opposed to DR 5/magic).
GV's looking sort of like Blur on steroids, just that it's caster specific. The 10% delta in concealment is probably more than made up for by DR (ie. ow you hit me, at least I soaked the first 5 points). Anyhow, since part of the enthusiasm / impetus for new spells and fixing spells is "PnP like", I don't know where this leaves GV.
ALFA NWN2 PCs: Rhaggot of the Bruised-Eye, and Bamshogbo
ALFA NWN1 PC: Jacobim Foxmantle
ALFA NWN1 Dead PC: Jon Shieldjack
I don't care if we remove GV. Personally I feel 1) its not canon and 2) its overpowered but the duration is so short (rnd / level) that its hardly going to be game breaking if we leave it in.
I do feel its going to be a heck of a lot easier to move things toward canon, which in this case, we would be.
It would be easy enough to change the code to remove existing blur or ghostly visage effects if the other one is cast.
How many arcanists do you think actually have GV? Maybe 5?
Taking out GV...Wizards with GV aren't a problem, just give them a replacement. Sorcs would probably need to be leveled-up to replace the spell, then brought back down again...would the spell change stick? Do bards get it at all?
Built: TSM (nwn2) Shining Scroll and Map House (proof anyone can build!)
It does appear on the bardic spell lists. If we disable it in the 2das/haks, it won't show as available on levelup, so a DM XP removal/replacement should allow bards/sorcerers to swap for something else.
So Ghostly Visage really was/is a NWN1-Bioware invention that carried over to NWN2, without any sourcebook basis? I'd expected it was a strange interpretation of an obscure spell from somewhere. I'm surprised there wasn't a push to get rid of it in NWN1-ALFA back when we were doing this sort of thing more regularly.
Most "weird" spells even in NWN1 traced back to someplace. Darkfire for instance traced to some Underdark source. Greater Sanctuary is a bizarro interpretation of the "can't see / can't hit" Etherealness spell, but it's not as if the game would've encoded an Ethereal Plane version of every area in the module, so "superduper invisibility" I guess was a good enough way to go about it. *shrugs*
I figured GV was just a wacky intepretation of Blur, but if someone's willing and able to do a 1:1 NWN:PnP version of Blur, all dandy. It does highlight GV as a bit weird to still have sitting there, in such case.
ALFA NWN2 PCs: Rhaggot of the Bruised-Eye, and Bamshogbo
ALFA NWN1 PC: Jacobim Foxmantle
ALFA NWN1 Dead PC: Jon Shieldjack
