Removal of "Gift" Effect Group - Good or Bad?

Does the removal of the Gift effect group as proposed in 0.9 improve setting and system?

  • Total voters
    58
  • Poll closed .
Saephis

Saephis

Virtuous
With the debate regarding Corrupt continuing from yesterday, it seems prudent to ask the question as well if the removal of the Gift effect group, moving of Life to the Healing effect group, and Death to the Curse effect group.

For reference, excerpts from the 0.9 Packet are as follows (With emphasis added for specific notation(s):

- Curse: Curse was changed from a "each spell has its reverse as a specific removal" paradigm to a "one spell cleans up everything from this Effect Group" paradigm (similar to Binding with Release, Command with Awaken, Alteration with Antidote, etc.). Cleanse was added as a new effect to fix all Curses on a target (and is a new spell at Earth 4). This eliminates the Remove Curse effect group entirely. In addition, Death was moved from Gift to Curse (see the Healing and Necromancy comments below for more on the intent behind this change). Note that this means Death will affect many more creature types than it affects today, expanding its use and desirability (to balance out the change in utility from Life/Death reversability).
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- Gift: Removed entirely (see Curse, Healing, and Necromancy comments for details).
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- Earth: The “Healing” Effect Group has been renamed to the “Earth” Effect Group. Existing effects and spells were consolidated down into a simple spell at every Earth spell level which will allow the caster to manifest the chosen type (Healing or Chaos) at an amount appropriate to the spell level. Earth was removed as a separate damage effect, replaced in all cases by Healing. Life was added to this school with its reverse changed to the new effect Corrupt (see Necromancy below). This brings Life more in line with its in-game expectations of a Healing spell of great power and allows us to eliminate the tiny Gift effect group. Finally, with the addition of a Cure / Cause Wounds spell at every level, the Help / Harm Undead spells were removed.
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Curse:
I Curse you with [Weakness|Silence|Destruction|Paralysis|Death]
I Cleanse you from Curses
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Earth:
With Earth I [grant # Healing|Purify you|Restore you|grant you Life|grant you Sanctuary|grant an Earth Blade|Turn Undead|Destroy Undead|Cure Disease|create a Lesser Earth Storm|create an Earth Storm]
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I think the loss of the 'I grant you the gift of Death' verbal is losing good flavor, but from a systems standpoint I don't see a problem with merging them into the other effect groups.
 
I voted "No."

It lessens the flexibility of the Earth casters, and between this and the items change, will likely make Life spells suddenly very rare (I don't know if I will be memorizing more than one above my Rebirth, but I doubt it).

I dislike folding it in with Curses, as it doesn't super fit in with the others, which are lasting debilitating effects that can all be removed with one spell (another gripe for another post). It's also another example of making new inconsistencies when trying to smooth out old inconsistencies, as Cleanse does not remove Death.

And yeah, I'm gonna miss the inherent sarcasm of the incant.
 
From the flavor & setting aspect, I don't care for it for the following reasons:
  • 'I grant you the gift of Death' is a great verbal.
  • The oft-visited debate of 'Is Life Necromancy' or 'Is Death Necromancy', given the reversible nature of Earth spells, is great discussion to explore the rarely explored (because the ARB says you can't really) nature of Chaos.
  • Life being the inverse of Death makes sense.
  • Edit Inclusion: The nature of a Curse is to have a lasting malady on someone. Cursing someone to immediately die isn't a curse, its an inflicted effect.

From the system setting, I don't care for it for the following reasons:
  • The inclusion of Death into Curse, and Cleanse spell to remove curses isn't universal -- Cleanse doesn't remove the Death Curse, in a propsal that is intended to simplify things
  • Corrupt, frankly, is not prepared for play, and easily arguable not an inverse of Life.
  • Death will be largely easily defended against, with parties largely not wanting to take Weakness (Melee/Archer-types), Destruction (Anyone), Silence (Casters), Paralysis (Really, Anyone), and now Death. While local creature-statting is up to the respective chapters, balancing against universal PC skills will still see this water down the usefulness of the Curse effect group.
From an 'easily understood' standpoint, with Curses so varied in effect, having Death included will lead to questions of "What happens if you take a Death Curse?" (You may laugh, but some years ago I was asked 'What does Death do?' by a new player) given that wide range.

So, I voted no.
 
I voted Yes.

I don't believe that the Gift school, as a thing, is Good for Earth Casters. I think that the removal of it, however, helped us to start a conversation as to what's wrong with Earth Casters.

1) Life is simply too necessary.

2) Culture developed where Earth Casters are seen as wasteful for using Death spells (whether reversible or not).

I voted Yes because the extra school is unnecessary. I believe (and am designing) there's a better way to have the Life/Death theme in Earth Casting that doesn't require the existence of an extra school.

Removing Gift doesn't make Earth Casting bad. It was bad to begin with.
 
I haven't voted because neither 'yes' nor 'no' really encapsulate my answer, mostly because I think the question is loaded ... in order to answer 'yes' you basically have to like the as-proposed method for removal of Gift. So unless you have absolutely no problems with Life/Corrupt and Curse of Death you are forced to answer 'no', which in my opinion puts bias into the results.I would prefer an option of "Yes, but different" or something to properly capture my outlook.

As asked, my answer would be 'no', but the nuance is that I think Gift was a terrible aspect of the 1.x rules since it only had 1 effect (granted, reversible). However, I also do not like the Life/Corrupt/Death as the proposed means to remove Gift for the reasons that Evan states. I think Gift should be removed, but the 0.9 concept for it feels grating as it introduces weird exceptions (Corrupt cannot be cured by Life, Death cannot be fixed by Cleanse, Life fixes Death, but Dispel could remove Corrupt (assumed)).

There has got to be a better way to achieve the goal of removing Gift. Unfortunately, I am drawing a blank on viable options; my ideas all have problems that would discount them as an acceptable solution.
 
I voted yes.

I've never liked Gift as a separate school. Having a separate school for one reversible spell seems wrong from a design point. I personally would have put it in curse for both Life and Death.

I love the idea behind Corrupt as being the opposite of Life, and Death being a Curse as a different option. Corrupt needs work, but the idea behind it is solid.
 
mikestrauss said:
that one small change really deals with the majority of the flavor issues.
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Except then you have no Death spell to be the opposite of Life, which breaks the flavor of Earth being the "reverse spell school".
 
Avaran said:
Except then you have no Death spell to be the opposite of Life, which breaks the flavor of Earth being the "reverse spell school".
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Which is why I personally love the idea of Life as healing, a fixed Corrupt as its opposite and then the Curse of Doooooooom!
 
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MaxIrons said:
Which is why I personally love the idea of Life as healing, a fixed Corrupt as its opposite and then the Curse of Doooooooom!
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I think you'd need to change Life more than Corrupt so that Life does more than...what it does; but I like the direction you're driving this train.

That said, I think the aesthetics of Life/Death and the association that those two terms have with each other I think it would be weird to have "Life" but no "Death", especially since those two spells have been so iconic across the depth of this game's life.
 
I definitely like removing Gift as a separate effect group. I think, in this case, the goal of making the effect groups consistent is of more value than retaining it as is. As far as creature immunity goes, changing "immune to Gift" to "immune to Death" seems a simple fix to me.

That being said, I really like the direction MaxIrons ideas points us in.
 
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