Wednesday Knights Blog

So Chuck asked:

so does this mean scroll have gone away? What about potions that duplicate spell affects?

The short answer is no. First, with respect to potions, the PH lists four different potions: healing, vitality, recovery, and life. These are the only potions listed, however. Also, (once again hearkening back to Earthdawn), every class receives a certain number of healing surges every day, that the character can use to heal himself. These potions (for the most part) allow you to spend healing surges and regain a certain number of hit points.

With respect to scrolls, they still exist as well. However, rather than for spells, they exist for what are called rituals. Rituals are essentially 3E spells or feats (comprehend language, Tenser’s floating disk, brew potion, knock, enchant magic items, etc.) that are converted to a ritual, which is a spell that takes and extended period of tiime to cast. Just flipping through them, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour seem to be popular casting times.

Anyone can cast a ritual, as long as they have access to it and have spent the time to learn it (by studying it for eight hours). You can cast a ritual from a scroll, however, it still takes one half the time it takes to cast the ritual normally. Thus, these are clearly not useful for most combat situations. The PH also contains 30+ pages detailing various available magic items, including armor, weapons, holy symbols, orbs, rods, staves, wands, rings, etc.

The one thing that I do like about clerics is that can get a magical holy symbol that will allow them to perform their powers more effectively. Wizards can do the same with orbs, rods, or staves.