Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Hi there,

The question is, this tags next to the School of the spell... What do they mean? Are they restrictions? How is it working?

Cheers

ICly:

Without planar knowledge, you don't even know they exist.

With planar knowledge, one can hypothesize that certain spells are aligned with certain planes on the World Tree/Wheel, of the appropriate alignment. Needn't be an exact plane but "lower" or such.

OOCly:

It means that in P&P, casting a spell with the descriptor means you commit an act of that descriptor. Meaning, it gives you alignment shifts.

In NWN2, due to the exploitability of changing alignments by spamming spells, for power building purposes, it doesn't shift your alignment. However, I think if a DM sees you do that, you either get a warning that doing so will result in a shift, or get shifted a few points.

Hoihe wrote:It means that in P&P, casting a spell with the descriptor means you commit an act of that descriptor. Meaning, it gives you alignment shifts.

Incorrect. There is no such thing as incremental alignment tracking in pnp. That's a purely NWN thing. Descriptors in pnp are mechanical indicators dictating how the spell interacts with other effects. A spell with the [Evil] descriptor for example means that spell is affected by a spell like Protection from Evil, or a spell with the [Acid] descriptor is countered by a spell that adds resistance or immunity to Acid effects.

While a DM can certainly note how often you use aligned spells and decide at some point that your alignment may need an adjustment, that is not the purpose of Descriptors.

D20 SRD wrote:[Descriptor]

Appearing on the same line as the school and subschool, when applicable, is a descriptor that further categorizes the spell in some way. Some spells have more than one descriptor.

The descriptors are acid, air, chaotic, cold, darkness, death, earth, electricity, evil, fear, fire, force, good, language-dependent, lawful, light, mind-affecting, sonic, and water.

Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the spell interacts with other spells, with special abilities, with unusual creatures, with alignment, and so on.

A language-dependent spell uses intelligible language as a medium for communication. If the target cannot understand or cannot hear what the caster of a language-dependant spell says the spell fails.

A mind-affecting spell works only against creatures with an Intelligence score of 1 or higher.

For the purposes of in-character knowledge, what a descriptor means is that the spell makes some use of energies or themes of that descriptor. An Acid spell conjures or otherwise manipulates acid. A Mind-Affecting spell affects the target's mental state. An Evil spell draws on evil forces or gods, summons or enhances fiends or undead, harms souls, or causes cruel and unusual pain and suffering. Again, these can have an affect on alignment (if you use spells counter to your alignment regularly and with intentions that are clearly at odds with your alignment), but the only purpose of a descriptor is just to label it according to what energies it uses and what effect it has.

I suppose it depends on how your rule lawyer interprets the words. However, due to "no game effect usually", I'd say that it doesn't change alignment unless the spell specifically specifies otherwise (hence, usually).

I could see where it might be interpreted otherwise ("how the spell interacts with alignment"), however, because alignment is a game effect and because of the "usually no game effect" clause, I'd say this is referring to how it interacts with other object/people/spell/etc's alignments.

I personally always thought WotC was pretty clear in most of their rules, but its something that a lot of people struggle on. Chalk it up to an nwn2 community misinterpretation. Its one that circulates a fair bit, at that.