[.11] Activating signature spells

Ken

Artisan
When a activating a signature spell from a magic item, what's the proper call if you can do the short version?

Guesses:
  • Activate 5 Flame Bolt
  • Activate 5 Spell Flame
  • Activate Evocation Bolt, 5 Spell Flame
 
As a general rule, if you as a character are capable of casting the spell from memory (whether it's currently memorized or not), then it's "Activate, [X] [Effect]".

In this specific case, it would be "Activate, 5 Flame Bolt", but if it was, say, Prison, it would just be "Activate, Prison".

I may be slightly wrong, however; you could need to put Spell in the incant, in which case it would be "Activate, [X] Spell [Effect]" ("Activate, 5 Spell Flame Bolt").
 
I would assume it would be 5 Flame Bolt. “Spell” isn’t used with other activations, and I don’t see signature spell activations being different.
 
Close, but not quite!

As stated in the Playtest Packet, every call should be in this format:

# Qualifier Effect

There's 2 exceptions to this: weapon swings (which may omit the Weapon qualifier if they have a damage number and don't use Strike), and spell incants (which don't include the qualifier at all, and where the number and effect may not be in order as expected).

When activating a magic item, the "Activate" keyword is used to show that you're triggering some magic item effect, but then you use the same pattern you would anywhere else: # Qualifier Effect. So in this case,

Activate 5 Spell Flame

is the correct call :)

A couple of additional comments:

- "Bolt" is not an effect. It should never be used anywhere except in spell incants (which have lots of other extraneous words in them as well). It's like how you wouldn't use the words "Binding Force" when swinging a weapon for a "Spell Strike Bind" - the extra parts of the incant aren't used when just calling the effect.

- The full list of effects can be found in the Playtest Packet (the existing ARB has a list too!). As a rule of thumb, if you're not sure, look up if the effect you're trying to call is in the full effect list. If it's not, you're probably not calling the right effect. For example, "Cure Wounds" is not an effect. "Healing" is. "Create Wounds" is similarly not an effect, but "Chaos" is.

- As you've probably figured out by now, signature spells are a little funky in that they're a spell that is different depending on how you choose to manifest it. At the end of the day, Evocation Bolt produces one of four (five, if you have the right Ritual) effects: Flame, Ice, Stone, Lightning, or Magic. Create/Cure Wounds produces one of two effects: Healing or Chaos. If you're not speaking a full incant, you should always call the underlying effect.

- Some additional examples: Combined Strike will always produce Flame, Ice, Stone, Lightning, Healing, or Chaos. It will never produce a "Bolt" nor will it "Cure Wounds" or "Create Wounds", because those aren't effects - they're just part of the incant. A Signature Spell put into a Spell Store, and then Activated back out, will similarly always use the underlying effect.

-Bryan Gregory
ARC
 
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So just to make sure, other effects should be activated that way as well, right? So whereas before I would hear "Activate Prison", now it's "Activate Spell Prison"?
 
"Activate Spell Prison" should be correct, yes.

Also, thank you for the quick correction, Brian! <3
 
No problem!

Note that there are a few monsters in the current 2.0 Monster DB that don't follow these guidelines. I'll be working with the Monster DB folks to do an editing pass once they have a final product and get the Monster calls all consistently following these guidelines.

One other side note: Part of the reason we specify the qualifier each time is that it's certainly *possible* to have other Qualifiers come out from an Activated magic item. For example, Eternal Resolution's verbal is "Activate X Elemental Healing". We can't assume that Activate means "Spell" qualifier, so it's good to have it explicit whenever Activate is used.

-Bryan
 
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