The Art of Converting Spells

With the release of the Arcana Evolved Spell Treasury in PDF edition this week, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the process my coauthor Jeffery and I used as we adapted spells from the SRD and other sources to make them suitable for Arcana Evolved campaigns. Of course, the book contains plenty of new spells as well, but I thought this discussion of our adaptation process might help those of you who want to convert spells from sources of your own for use in the Lands of the Diamond Throne. This Line of Sight is excerpted from an article in the First Quarter 2006 edition of the Sword & Sorcery Insider. —Monte

Now, if you know Arcana Evolved, you know that taking even the most familiar spell from the Player's Handbook—like, say, magic missile—means a lot more than just reprinting the same old SRD text.

First and foremost, the spell needs to be classified. Arcana Evolved classifies every spell as a simple spell, a complex spell, or an exotic spell. All casters have access to simple spells, but only certain casters have access to complex spells. One gains exotic spell access only through special feats. This grants the game a hidden level of balance—the top-end spells of a given level are complex or exotic, and at the lower end are the simple spells. This way, even though Arcana Evolved has a single spell list (no arcane or divine distinctions), all characters aren't casting the same spells. And it introduces a new level of campaign flavor. There are spells that one sees commonly: the simple spells. Even a mere dabbler in magic knows how to cast simple spells. More rare and strange are the complex spells. You have to be a real devotee of magic to know the secrets of casting them. Exotic spells are far fewer in number and much more rare. A caster who knows a given exotic spell might be the only mage in the kingdom with that particular spell. It might be his "signature spell," so to speak.

Secondly, each spell needs diminished version and a heightened version. Spell descriptions in Arcana Evolved have prescribed diminished and heightened effects to tell you what happens if you cast the spell using a slot one level lower or one level higher than the spell itself. This effectively makes every spell into three similar but different magical effects. For example, let's say you have a spell that animates a melee weapon to attack for you. It attacks as if you're wielding it. In the diminished version, the weapon suffers a –2 penalty to attack rolls and can take only partial actions. The heightened version allows you to use your spellcasting key ability score modifier rather than your Strength to determine attack bonus and damage. This innovation may be my favorite part of Arcana Evolved, because it adds a great deal of flavor to each spell and allows casters a lot more choices. You don't have to take a feat to use these diminished or heightened versions. If you've got the spell readied, you've automatically got all three versions readied.

And, of course, we must examine all standard d20 spells for magic item creation modifiers as well adding descriptors from the extensive list in Arcana Evolved (psionic, faen, plant, positive energy, and so on).

The Quest for Balance

But there's a lot more to spell conversions than just that—most of which comes down to balance. Here's a little secret: Some spells in the core rules are unbalanced. I bet you never knew.

Of course you knew that. Every wizard prepares mage armor. Everyone knows that magic missiles are better than every other 1st-level attack spell. They're better than many 2nd-level spells. Invisibility is the king of 2nd-level spells. You know the drill. You've read it on message boards and you've talked about it with your friends.

So why didn't we fix all that in the design of Third Edition? Three reasons:

1. We just plain old made some goofs and oversights.

2. It's impossible to make every 1st-level spell exactly the same in power when you're dealing with such diverse topics as attack spells, summoning spells, spells that make the floor slippery, etc.

3. The big reason, however, is that to change the spells so drastically would be to change the game system itself in too drastic a way. Every 1st-level wizard casting magic missile is just so . . . D&D.

But with Arcana Evolved I was free of all the baggage associated with this third point. That freedom allowed me to create virtually all new spells and ditch all the problematic ones.

However, players love a lot of those spells. They want their mage blade to cast a hypnotic pattern spell, and their magister to cast Mel's acid arrow.

Well, now they can. But it meant that each one had to be rebalanced with the other spells in the system—and without the baggage mentioned in the third reason above. Spells in Arcana Evolved have a smooth progression, with low-level spells being slightly less powerful than they are in the core rules. So, a spell like magic missile needs rebalancing; something that always hits for decent damage is likely a 2nd-level exotic spell, for example.

A Team Effort

For game designers, magic in Arcana Evolved poses a real challenge. And when you're talking about a 240-page book with so many spells, the work can be daunting. In the case of the Spell Treasury, I had Jeffery Dobberpuhl to work with me. Jeffery handled the initial conversion of all the SRD spells. He came up with the heightened and diminished effects and developed a lot of creative ways to covert spells that didn't fit well into Arcana Evolved at first blush. For example, many spells in the SRD deal with alignment or have alignment-based effects. There is no alignment in Arcana Evolved but some spells, from holy word to consecrate and desecrate, have quite interesting effects, even in the context of an alignment-free system.

This means that converting many spells was more than just adding heightened and diminished effects or classifying them as exotic or complex. These spells had to be reworked entirely. Between the two of us, Jeffery and I re-engineered a number of spells from both the core rules and other Malhavoc Press products. A few, such as the aforementioned holy word, changed so greatly that they're pretty much brand-new spells. Plus, the heightened and diminished effects contain a lot of new results never before available in either the core rules or Arcana Evolved.

Which is to say that the Spell Treasury is really something to be excited about. It will enhance all Arcana Evolved or Arcana Unearthed games and inject an incredible amount of new flavor. Greenbond characters casting tree shape and warp wood, and magisters using quintelemental blast from the Complete Book of Eldritch Might or mirror image will change your game—for the better.

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