Post by Katdoral on Aug 4, 2021 11:55:26 GMT -5
So, upon looking at the monster statistic blocks, Darkness (at will), faerie fire (at will), and dancing lights (cantrip) are all common between the three monster options for Drow. I'm a bit concerned that keeping them as divine innate spells might be a bit too powerful, especially darkness at will. I would propose that we alter that. Give them a choice of one of the three as a focus spell, with 1 focus point, and then design ancestry feats that can improve upon that. I also notice that each of the Drow entries come equiped with darkvision. It works in their world, but makes a bit less sense in ours. I would further propose removing the light blindness and downgrading darkvision to low light vision, with an ancestry feat that can improve it to darkvision. As for the magic resistance bonus to saves, I don't see any reason to remove or alter that. There's a case that could be made for increasing it from 2 to 3 with an ancestry feat, but that's probably diluting the ancestry options a bit too much. Thus far, 1st level ancestry feats seem to range between 5 and 7 options, and I suspect we'd want to keep with that range going forward. The above proposition would cover 4 1st level ancestry feat options, with between 1 and 3 for other things. As examples:
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Drow Innate Magic (Darkness) (Ancestry Feat 1)
Drow
You are more naturally able to summon darkness then others of your race.
Add Darkness to your focus spell list and add 1 focus point to your total focus points. If you already have darkness on your focus spell list, then increase the base level of your darkness spell by 1 and add 1 focus point to your total focus points. This feat can be taken multiple times, each time increasing the focus spell pool and caster level.
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So to explain. Focus spells are automatically heightened like cantrips, equal to half your level. The above would, assuming darkness was already on the focus spell list, augment that by increasing the spell level by 1. So, a 4th level character with this feat, following the stated parameters, would cast darkness as a 3rd level spell, instead of a 2nd level spell. For darkness, to counter, a caster would have to exceed that level with a light spell. It would be fairly simple to use the above template for each of the three standard divine innate spells and it opens the door to add the other divine innate spells presented, like Dispel magic, albeit at a higher level requirement.
The only glaring problem is in that according to the books, focus spells are obtained through classes, not ancestries. I have not seen, though it's possible I have missed one, a focus spell derived from an ancestry feat. And I'm unsure as to whether this would be too powerful for one. Anyways, I thought I'd get ahead of this now and throw out some thoughts, and maybe get some feedback.
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Drow Innate Magic (Darkness) (Ancestry Feat 1)
Drow
You are more naturally able to summon darkness then others of your race.
Add Darkness to your focus spell list and add 1 focus point to your total focus points. If you already have darkness on your focus spell list, then increase the base level of your darkness spell by 1 and add 1 focus point to your total focus points. This feat can be taken multiple times, each time increasing the focus spell pool and caster level.
************************************************************************************************************************
So to explain. Focus spells are automatically heightened like cantrips, equal to half your level. The above would, assuming darkness was already on the focus spell list, augment that by increasing the spell level by 1. So, a 4th level character with this feat, following the stated parameters, would cast darkness as a 3rd level spell, instead of a 2nd level spell. For darkness, to counter, a caster would have to exceed that level with a light spell. It would be fairly simple to use the above template for each of the three standard divine innate spells and it opens the door to add the other divine innate spells presented, like Dispel magic, albeit at a higher level requirement.
The only glaring problem is in that according to the books, focus spells are obtained through classes, not ancestries. I have not seen, though it's possible I have missed one, a focus spell derived from an ancestry feat. And I'm unsure as to whether this would be too powerful for one. Anyways, I thought I'd get ahead of this now and throw out some thoughts, and maybe get some feedback.
