Anniversary and a spell

It's been a year!

Looking back I have enjoyed my new weekly routine. I'm enjoying using this blog as an incentive to continue to develop my setting and as a result I have been gaming with my children more often and more regularly. So overall a positive outcome in a difficult year. 

Right now I need to finish my monsters, work on a customised spell list, make up some more racial and class templates and then I think start posting some of the adventure material I have created. Also I will post up some more machinery and material to complement the machinery to the max rules from Axioms.

I think my introspection this last week added to the un-joys of lockdown caused me to stall on finishing my monsters, so for this week a spell.

New Spell: Cone of Ice

This is based on the Thunderbolt spell from Heroic Fantasy that adds a condition to the damage. I always pictured Cone of Cold as encasing someone in Ice (was that in the Narnia movie?), so here is a replacement version that does just that.

Cone of Ice

Arcane 5

Range: 0’

Duration: instantaneous 

This spell produces an icy cone 40' long and 20' wide stretching from the caster’s hands. Any creatures caught in the area of effect of the cone of ice must make a saving throw versus Blast. A creature that fails the saving throw suffers 1d6 points of cold damage per level of the caster and is coated in a layer of ice, restraining their movement. A creature that succeeds on the saving throw suffers half damage but is not restrained.

A restrained creature cannot move until it escapes or cuts itself free from the ice. Restrained creatures cannot use shields and can be attacked with a +2 bonus, or can be ambushed or backstabbed for a +4 bonus. The restrained creature may attempt to escape as an action in lieu of attacking. It may attempt to slip free with a saving throw versus Paralysis or it may attempt to break free with a proficiency throw to open doors. If the creature has Contortionism proficiency, it gains a +4 bonus on either throw. To cut itself or another free, a creature must successfully hit the ice (AC 5) and deal an amount of damage with one blow equal to or exceeding the spellcasters caster level. See the condition rules in axioms 6 for more details.

Cone of Ice (5): Blast, 1d6 damage per level (27), elemental - water (x1), target 40’ long x 20’ wide cone (x2.5), range 0’ (x0.4), duration instantaneous (x1), saving throw reduces spell effects by half (x0.75), arcane (x1); cost 20.25; restrained 20, elemental - water (x1), target 40’ long x 20’ wide cone (x2.5), range 0’ (x0.4), duration until target makes save (x3), saving throw avoids spell effect (x0.5), arcane (x1); cost 30; total cost 50.25.

Notes

The tricky part here is how to price restrained as a condition. Helpless is around 40 points in the death category, and it removes the ability to act. Restrained still allows for actions so a cost of 20 felt about right.

I felt is would be inevitable someone would try to cut their way out so I added it as an option to the other two escape methods. For this I used an AC5 to reflect the spells level and the need to shatter the encasement. The hit points based off the spellcasters "casters level" seemed logical (around 9-14).