Dungeons & Dragons White Box 14

One last business before we can move onto spells. The turning undead concept was good — a small bridge between combat and faith, permitting a solid bullet in the cleric's arsenal under specific circumstances. There are game issues with it — overall, the randomness is troublesome, especially at higher level, where the effect either works as a dead fizzle or a machine of the gods, without nuance. And the latter is too powerful in game play, too often, especially with lesser undead. But... there's no fundamental problem with the rule appearing here, as an early construction where few undead existed. Later, as more undead emerged and the game deepened, the swinginess of the mechanic became harder to justify. No need to go into this now. We can move forward, as this, like other recent metrics, is perfectly servicable.

A full explanation of each spell follows. Note that underlined Clerical spells are reversed by evil Clerics. Also, note the Clerics versus Undead Monsters table, indicating the strong effect of the various clerical levels upon the undead; however, evil Clerics do not have this effect, the entire effect being lost.

An odd insertion, oddly written. We introduce the spells for seven words and the comment on the table above. Writing this in the opposite order would be more typical. But meh.

From here, I must adjust how the content going ahead is deconstructed. With regards to the spells, none so far as I'm concerned were badly conceived. Thus there's less need to criticise the writing or their intent. If written by Gygax, these are his better work, more careful to be sensible and with a greater consciousness in their application to game play. Perhaps because these were more firmly established in game play than the earlier part of this book. In either case, I think my focus here has to be upon those present-day persons who might be trying to play these rules "as written." Holes for game play proliferate throughout, as I shall try to outline. Get ready to be bored.

EXPLANATION OF SPELLS:

Magic-Users:

1st Level:

Detect Magic: A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has a limited range and short duration. It is useful, for example, to discover if some item is magical, a door has been "held" or "wizard locked," etc.

As the later Players Handbook identified, matters such as range, casting time, duration, area of effect and such were either ignored or rendered inconsistent. For example, how far out from the self can the caster detect magic?  Not line-of-sight, the spell says so, but still, "limited" is hardly definitive. I live in Calgary, where on a clear day I can see the Rocky Mountains sixty miles from here. Every now and then we get a particularly effective atmospheric refraction, so that without editing a picture like the one shown can be experienced live. I've had incidents where I was walking in some part of the city towards the mountains during a weather change, where the distance peaks were visibly receding as I watched. It's a profound effect.

As the game moves from tabletop mechanics to the imagined setting, where the application isn't just applied in combat but in any situation that might come up through prodecural operative party actions, firm limits had to be imposed. But this need not be discuss further here. That can be left to another time. For the moment, let's just discuss the individual spell functions.

Issues bound to come up with detect magic here include the kind of magic, the strength of the magic, whether or not the magic is dangerous and even whether or not it's a spell. The door is opened to these things because I can identify, specifically, if the door is "held." That's a specific spell I'm identifying; so why shouldn't I be able to specifically define the presence of others I find? Does it include the presence of an invisible person? If a person is charmed? Whether someone is presently engaged in ESP with a member of the party? Or either clairvoyance or clairaudience? How about if an opponent is protected from normal missiles, or is confused, or protected from evil? These details matter, and a "rules lawyer" is going to want to know why hold portal or wizard lock are special among other spells that have active, continual components that are also magic. A "ruling" here isn't definitive — an issue that many DMs refuse to understand... because a ruling, like any enactment of legitimacy, must logically apply, and not arbitrarily.

Rules are a contractural arrangement between players of a game, regardless of the DM's presence. In monopoly, we agree to pay each other, we agree to throw two dice, we agree that jail occurs on the third double and so on. This largely unspoken agreement is something we learned to accede to at the age of five or six, when we found ourselves playing games with siblings or friends and grew tired of these things always ending in fist-fights. "Fairness," we understood, enables shared expectations among the participants that enables "fun" that doesn't collapse into chaos. This principle applies to the presence of the DM, just as it applies to everything humans do cooperatively. The position of the DM does not contradict this.

Arbitrariness breaks this contract. It transformes the DM from interpreter into a despot, opening the door to cronyism among the players, an entitlement to abuse players, to channel and affect play so as to serve the DM's purposes and not the general welfare... the result is a toxic atmosphere where those who play enjoy the privileges bestowed upon them by the DM, while others quickly find themselves driven out.

This distinction isn't a point of view that's universal within role-playing any more than it is within business culture, the legal system, politics or world governments. Many, many, many persons in all fields practice arbitrary approaches to their purposes all the time, from parents to believe firmly that "because" IS an acceptable answer to every query, to D fucking T who has weaponised the ineffectiveness of the judiciary branch to impose ridiculous, nation-destroying actions upon a helpless minority. Arbitrariness is widespread; it's going to happen in D&D and those who pursue it will be loudly vocal, aggressive, abusive and conceited in their embrace of it. And because they make up a substantial part of the audible community, there will always be some jackass who points out other such fucknards as a justification of bad actions. But within this tiny space of this tiny blog, no. If the spell will recognise the footprint of a held door, that it should likewise recognise the footprint of a person affected by charm, invisibility, confusion or any other like spell.

If that's not wanted, than the spell must be defined more exactly. The above says "for example," indicating plainly that the examples given are not the only possible cases. If they should be the only possible cases, than the wording of the spell must reflect that. Loose language creates problems in rule-making. And as we process through these spells, we're going to see repeatedly how they can be re-interpreted perfectly fairly based on nothing other than their attempts to fix something as complex as this in less than 50 words.

Any time the words "for example" appear in a rule book, it's an open wound inviting queries about the mechanic. Think of it as rainwater finding every crack and groove upon the ground: arguments and hard feelings about a game campaign will accumulate in such spaces and strive to erode the ground beneath, until the structure collapses. Thus, never trust anything that's been written about game codification — language is hard and words are never without colloquial interpretations that only multiply when words are placed next to each other. Rewrite every spell description of every spell you use in your game to hammer down how you want them to work in your campaign. And then do it again each time your ruling is challenged in a way you didn't expect. Rewriting a law is not an "arbitrary" practice, not so long as the rewriting, once done, is fixed. So long as everyone can see the rule, and count on it over time, it's no longer a "ruling." It's a rule. And that's our goal. Not to replace rules with rulings, but to codify rulings into rules that the players can read, examine and act upon.

It took 1500 years of human civilisation possessed of writing to codify laws in stone (Hammurabi); it took another 1700 years before the practice of laws evolving through precedence became a consistent practice in the most civilised of places (Greece, Rome). The effort, once begun, inevitably failed about 800 years (4th century Rome) thereafter... and was not rediscovered for 800 years (early Renaissance) after that... about 700 years ago from when I write this. So in all, it's taken us 5,500 years to get to the level of legal behaviour we practice now. It's no surprise that a great many DMs believe that Hammurabi knew the best approach... and they don't hesitate to run their games that way, assuming that the DM is fucking god or something. But that is not what we call "civilisation."

Having set the precedent for discussing these rules, then, let's continue.

Hold Portal: A spell to hold a door, gate or the like. It is similar to a locking spell (see below) but it is not permanent. Roll two dice to determine the duration of the spell in turns. Dispel Magic (see below) will immediately negate it, a strong antimagical creature will shatter it and a Knock (see below) will open it.

Much like "for example," "and the like" does not hold the portal, it opens it. A quick examination of a thesaurus searching the word "portal" quickly reveals that no actual obstruction is necessary for a thing to be defined as that. Technically, anything that is a "way in" or a threshold, including from one room to the next, is a "portal," and by use of the words, "and the like," we've now let all of them count. And since dungeons and ordinary sized constructions do not define "portal" as a thing, an entrance as large as the egress of the Colosseum of Rome, also a portal, can be held by the spell. The same can be said of cave mouths, curtains, a street between two walls... if, in fact, I throw a blanket across the middle of a corridor, by definition it becomes a threshold, and I can cast hold portal over it.

Correction would require stating that the portal must have hinges, or a obstruction that must be physically opened using muscle power. Otherwise, other interpretations are absolutely on the table. Still, arguably, the spell as it occurs in the game IS pretty weak. Why would the blanket-on-floor option necessarily be a bad thing? If we accept it, we're not breaking the game... we're turning an anemic, almost decorative spell into a flexible field tool. That Gygax and crew anticipated this is immaterial — the anticipation of new uses for a spell are always present.

The fault in this occurs when the player or DM choose to expand the spell to things that are not a portal, a way in or a threshold: a bottle, say, or the buckle of a belt, or any other thing that happens to "close" but shares no other charactistics with a passage through. If language exists as an expansion of a rule, it also stands as a boundary to that function; for portal cannot be reinterpreted to describe things that are not that, unless the DM chooses to ignore language as the principle being respected.

Conceivably, a large enough box or perhaps a coffin can be physically entered. If a cleric in my campaign, inside a coffin, were to cast hold portal on the lid, I'd likely allow that. Arguably, if there is a vampire within the coffin trying to egress, again, the argument holds. But to keep liquid from emerging from a bottle? No, I'd probably call it there. Another DM can disagree, and that's fine. BUT WRITE IT DOWN, so the same argument can be applied at another time. Don't just suppose it applies in this one situation — and remember that once it is written down, you as DM are as subject to that rule as the player. That's the contract.

Read Magic: The means by which the incantations on an item or scroll are read. Without such a spell or similar device magic is unintelligible to even a Magic-User. The spell is of short duration (one or two readings being the usual limit).

It's not quite perfectly so, but nearly so... the spell permits the reading of the magic language, that by which "spells" are written. This isn't defacto stated however; does it include a glyph, which is not part of this language? The door is open because "an item" isn't strictly defined. I do not know of what item to which the description refers; I know of no other magic language that is included in a magic item outside of scrolls. And if such language does occur, how is it separated by definition from a rune or glyph — which is immaterial, of course, since neither are mentioned in these rules. But if we're running a game with these rules in the present day, we must state whether such things exist to our players, since they know what these things are and that they're normally associated with D&D. It is hard to separate "standard" D&D concepts from this rule set, given that some of them don't exist yet.

Read Languages: The means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps. It is otherwise like the Read Magic spell above.

Quite straightforward. My sole point to make is that its not clear if I can cast the spell upon other persons who can then enjoy the benefits. Presumably, it is, but it does not state as much. Reasonably, if the spell is cast upon a person who cannot read at all, the spell should still function normally.

Now that I think of it, the spell doesn't specifically state that only one language can be read per casting, so I assume I can read however many languages I can fine within the spell's duration (which isn't stated). I did have a player once ask if when the language was "read," did that mean translated into the character's comprehensive language, or if the recipient's thought process was reconfigured in order to recognise the specific nuances of the language being comprehended. In other words, if I were able to read Russian, would I merely understand what was being said, or would it mean I was "thinking in Russian." The player had a reason for this, but it was ages ago and I don't remember; I do believe I granted her the latter interpretation.

Protection from Evil: This spell hedges the conjurer round with a magic circle to keep out attacks from enchanted monsters. It also serves as an "armor" from various evil attacks, adding a +1 to all saving throws and taking a -1 from hit dice of evil opponents. (Note that this spell is not cumulative in effect with magic armor and rings, although it will continue to keep out enchanted monsters.) Duration: 6 turns.

Technically, the spell does not specify "evil" enchanted monsters. The wiggle room here is the question, "enchanted."  The strict definition of the word (none occurs in the White Box) is, "put someone or something under a spell; bewitch." Suppose then that in a battle in a dungeon far from any sort of water, I cast "waterbreathing" upon a perfectly ordinary non-magical enemy. The range is 30 feet; in the White Box, no save is specified. Thereafter, that enemy is by definition "enchanted" and cannot enter my circle, even if that enemy is 20th level or a 16 HD monster. Food for thought.

Not saying this is how the spell should be interpreted, but it's plain that "enchanted" MUST be better defined. Nor is another word, like "evil" or "supernatural" sufficient. Every single monster the spell protects against should be recorded and made available to the player. It's a finite list. There's no reason why this work can't be done inside an hour.

All right, I need a break. That's enough.