Spell Redesign: Witch Bolt

in

We’re back! I bring one present you “missed”, tucked away in the bottom of your stocking below york patties and gift cards.

Boy I sure do hate these regular “deal damage” spells. Routine and favorite critic Particularist half-joked I should get around to a generic “damage spell” design, presumably to save myself some work and embarrassment engaging in the process. While there is a certain dignity to tending the fields on hot days, I find my position of indentured servitude in WOTC’s House easier on my fingernails, and the processed (as opposed to freshly picked) cotton less itchy.

At present, could could sum up the majority of damaging spells in 5th edition with one mega-spell dictating range, area of effect, and damage type by a few modifiers players would need to balance (presumably in a point cost or counter chart) to 0. One imagines 5e with such a spell (or class ability) would then reference this mega-magic in nearly all other spells (with the exception of those producing illusions or charms) before adding an additional effect.

But each day I catch a fleeting glimpse of a bullwhip trailing past Master Crawford and a door slamming to mark his egress to the fields, I find myself preferring my task set by the House. This task is (as a reminder) to discover spells which fail to deliver on the fantasies promised by their texts, fixing that particular error, then “plussing” the spell further. I’m not just cleaning up the garbage, I’m installing something beautiful in its place. By doing so (and by the crack of the bullwhip, I know Master Crawford will not overhear), I prove not only were these spells easy to fix during development (not only after the fact), but could have been improved further before release. The buck doesn’t stop with fantasies provided by the spell; for a designer, attaching new ideas to the spell is a trivial exercise.

With that, I believe I’ve laid some groundwork for today’s changes to witch bolt.

Witch Bolt

Talk about bad! Spells like this are why Giant in the Playground class guides have a brown rating. Down the list of issues we go:

  • The initial damage may seem impressive, but you can still roll low on that d12 with no buffer.

  • The follow-up damage on subsequent turns requires your action to use.

  • While the spell seems like it would scale well at higher levels, you only add additional d12s for the initial damage, not any followup activations. Why the hell not?

  • The aforementioned spell, which was already beyond consideration for the reasons I listed above, is Concentration (ending this spell the moment you cast one of 300 other spells with the same tag).

You’d get more from borrowing Master Crawford’s bullwhip! I’d also like to point out something personal/sentimental, as opposed to objective and knowable. Witch bolt is not evocative enough for its name. If you invoke the name of witches, or chaos, or a famous wizard’s name, I’m going to have an artificially higher standard for its mechanics. It’s not fair, I recognize it’s not fair, and the fact it’s not fair matters not. With all that being said, let’s see what a better spell looks like.

My Version (Better)

Alright, we’ve fixed things up a bit. Let’s go over the changes:

  • The spell’s type has been changed to transmutation.

  • Increases to the spell’s damage now apply to reactivations.

  • The spell’s reactivation cost has been changed to a bonus action.

  • Concentration has been removed (let all downtrodden spellcasters of the world rejoice).

  • The spell may now target a creature or surface.

  • Targeting a surface produces a new environmental effect.

“Witch magic” as manifesting multiple different effects through the same mechanism is a hot way of handling that thematic bubble mechanically. Let’s talk about the environmental effect of witch bolt while we’re at it.

Hexsand

My main purpose for including this was actually locking doors. Chests, doors, anchoring certain objects to the ground (like a weapon you just knocked from someone’s hand), you get the idea. There’s surprisingly few spells like this!. A bunch of spells do produce difficult terrain, but as far as world-layer hindrances go? Quite few. Even fewer spell out additional world layer effects beyond a description or two of conditions inflicted. Grease would be my favorite example, another 1st-level spell that could use some reference to its other world-layer effects. As you noticed above, they don’t need to be comprehensive! Just mention a few things the environmental effect may be expected to do, we don’t need (unimportant) nor want (very important) more details than that.

My Version (Even Better)

Might as well be two spells in one! I do sometimes wonder, smoking a pipe and gazing at Master Crawford’s spellbook by candlelight, whether I should be more careful about wordcount when fixing up these relics. There’s certainly a broader trend towards wordier spells on the whole.

Looking at my updates, the most notable is without a doubt my “snapback” mechanic. If you end the spell by virtue of leaving its range, it reactivates the spell’s effects a final time. This is relevant to another major: the area of hexsand produced now scales with spell level! You might worry a prospective warlock might swath entire battlefields with hexsand by dumping a 5th level slot on it, but there’s no need to worry. THe player is still restricted to the spell’s range + producing new hexsand from a point of origin within 5 feet of existing hexsand.

This leads me into the most important change, a mechanic I don’t think I’ve introduced since my barksin redesign: spells gaining new effects if you choose to concentrate on them. In this case, you produce lightning on surfaces of hexsand, and produce hexsand on creatures you target with the lightning. This might again be concerning to folks noting how quickly higher level spell slots can fill a battlefield with hexsand; once again I tell you the caster is heavily constrained by the limitations of range on the spell. Additionally, producing hexsand close to the caster when it’s crackling with electricty is more liable to end the spell early than decimate a battlefield. This is because taking damage while concentrating on the spell can end the spell early on a failed save vs the damage.

There’s one obvious way to get around this limitation; flight! Am I really okay with someone flying around the battlefield on a broom, casting witchbolt to zap and immobilzie some significant swaths of terrain with a 5th level slot?

Absolutely.

Some potential future changes:

  • I think hexsand could use a line or two explaining how a “cube” of the stuff might act differently.

  • I’m likely to change reactivation back to a time of 1 action. Witch bolt suffers from a trash action economy at base, sure. My version takes care of this through the “snapback” mechanic, ensuring you can get at least one more instance of the spell’s effect just by leaving range. With this in mind, it probably doesn’t need to be so easy to reactivate.

  • Following from the above, I might change the actual casting time to 1 bonus action.

  • When I eventually release this as a book or pamphlet, I’ll be dropping the vast majority of clarification text. We don’t need it! Confused about a spell’s effect? Play through it. Roll a d6 if there’s an argument, higher roll’s interpretation wins this round. It’s not my ideal solution for a game like this, and I prefer the game just work, but I’m tired of including more clarification text than what covers the actual spell’s effects. This game has a Dungeon Master, and whatever else I might think about that role, I might as well make use of them.