Monday, July 11, 2011

BX Rules Questions: Spell Durations, Blindness, etc..

In my last game with my players (X2, Castle Amber, read my play reports, I had some good times) I had to make a record number of rulings. As a continuation of my last post of the topic, here are a couple more questions that came up during my game:

Question 4: Spell Durations - wow, I was pretty shocked by how high someone can levitate! This item is more of a statement than a question - I'm pretty sure I'm running this "by the book".

Levitate (check page B17), lasts for 6 turns + 1 turn/level. It states that a player can levitate 20'/round. I'm pretty sure that there are 60 rounds in a turn (1 round = 10 seconds, 6 rounds/minute, 10 minutes/turn, so 1 turn = 60 rounds!) so that means a spell caster can levitate 1200 feet per turn!!! So a 6th level spell caster can levitate a minimum of 7200 feet in the air (allowing enough time to descend slowly).

You could in fact go even higher if you calculated how high you could go, then allow free-fall at terminal velocity followed by using the levitate spell at the last few seconds to slow you down before striking the earth. I didn't do the math, but a 6th level caster could likely levitate 10,000 feet in the air.

In the castle Amber adventure, the PC's used this ability to find the ruins of Sylaire. The mage of the party used this spell to levitate about 1000 feet up, which I thought it was a good idea and allowed it, but in the back of my mind I was remarking that maybe I had something wrong with the rules because WOW! After the game was over, I went back and checked, and I think I was doing everything according to the rules as written.



Question 5: According to the basic rules blind characters cannot attack. If you don't believe me check out the description for the Light Spell on page B16. I overturned that rule as a DM and said I would allow players/monsters who have been blinded to attack at a -6 to -10 penalty depending on the circumstances. I didn't like saying "Blind Creatures cannot attack at all" - I think they should be able to hear their foe and make a horribly awkward attack. What do you think? Maybe we should ask this guy?


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