What A ShadowSimp Gets Wrong About Magic!
ShadowSimpLord Matt uploaded a video in which he attempts to gaslight people into thinking that bog-standard pseudo-Vancian nonsense is somehow a downgrade when compared to ShadowDark’s lazily plagiarized magic system, which works as follows:
Spells are divided into all of five 5 levels.
When you want to cast a spell you make an Intelligence check, because this is a D&D derivative and for some reason Intelligence is used for arcane spells. Anyway, the DC is 10 + spell level, so between 11 and 15.
If you succeed you cast the spell and it does whatever the rules say it does.
If you fail the spell is “lost” for the day and there’s no explanation for why this happens or what it even means: you just can’t use it again until you take a nap and then it comes right back. There’s no other associated penalty: you just can’t and because Kelsey is a moron and her fans are equally intellectually and creatively bankrupt so they don’t care.
If you roll a nat 1 you “lose” it for the day and roll on a mishap table.
There are only three mishap tables, and only the third one, which is rolled on for 5th-level spells, has anything of real consequence because there are two results that can cause you to permanently lose a spell (though nothing says you can’t relearn it later).
None of the results are specifically tailored to a specific spell, or even a category or theme, so expect most results to have nothing to do with whatever you were trying to do (ie, try to create light but mishap and lose a random item, or try to fly and suppress all light, which only matters if you need light in the first place).
Lamenations gets a mention as well but it’s just bog-standard pseudo-Vancian nonsense so he takes a different approach in trying to convince you that it’s somehow better than other flavors of bog-standard pseudo-Vancian nonsense, because it has “game breaking spells” but only mentions one and seemingly can’t think of any others despite running the game a lot.
With that in mind, here’s ShadowSimpLord Matt’s arbitrary criteria for what makes magic “good”:
He doesn’t go into much if any detail on any of these points, so mostly I’m just going to address what he’s written:
Fantastical, Wondrous and Scary
Okay, so ShadowSimpLord Matt had to tack on “scary” at the end because ShadowDark largely “recycles” D&D spells. There’s barely any description for most. Anyway, he can’t just put in fantastical and wondrous as requirements because then D&D still qualifies, even though I certainly wouldn’t describe most spells or the magic system in general as either fantastical or wonderous.
In any case this sounds like an easy fix: just put in a single spell with the potential to “end a campaign”.
Mind-Bending, Reality Shifting Power
I don’t know why he put in “mind-bending, reality shifting power” when both ShadowDark and Lamentation spells are again mostly lifted from D&D. Maybe he thinks casting magic missile is mind-bending and/or reality shifting? But, no, D&D still has that. So, again, yeah, not sure why this even here.
Break The Rules Of The Game World
I also don’t know why he put in “breaking the established rules of the game”, because none of the spells do that. The spells have their own rules that are established by the game: in other words, charm person doesn’t let you “break” any rules and charm someone, it lets you charm someone because the rules say that’s what it does.
But then ShadowDark and Lamentations largely use D&D spells so it still qualifies.
Fear the Spellcaster
Normies fearing spellcasters depends entirely on the setting and what magic can even do. In bog-standard D&D people might fear a wizard because spells can often inflict a good amount of damage, plus the wizard can transform people, charm them, or hit them with various save-or-screw effects.
The problem is that, especially at lower levels, you have limited leveled slots because it’s pseudo-Vancian nonsense and creatures can often attempt a save to shake it off. Also later editions hamstringed some spells in the pursuit of “balance”.
That said, given Lamenations lack of direct-damage spells, I’d say that D&D wizards would be scarier. Yeah, you can’t maybe cast a spell that you only might have and possibly “end the campaign”, but you can more reliably blow up a bunch of people at once.
ShallowGrift is even worse than Lamentations because you have to make a check, and there’s a flat 5% chance you’ll just outright fail and likely do something that will adversely affect you or an ally, because the magic magically knows who your allies are and it’s arbitrary like that. This doesn’t make me fear the spellcaster. Instead I’d think it’s great, because there’s a 5% chance he’ll auto-fail and probably do something probably bad to himself.
Basically D&D meets virtually all of his criteria, except maybe the “scary” bit at the top, at least relative to his belief that ShallowGrift and Lamentations also meet his criteria.
Oddly, he states that magic should have no explanation other than it’s the manipulation of what he considers to be “raw power”, which still explains how it works, albeit poorly and the mechanics don’t even really back it up.
To dig deeper, all magic should have an explanation, because if it doesn’t then how do characters learn and use it? How does a designer or author properly utilize it in a way that doesn’t seem arbitrary? How does a GM determine what can do what, new effects, etc?
If a wizard’s magic cannot be explained, how can he record it in books and scrolls and teach it to others? How can he copy it from scrolls and books? Create magic items at all?
I found this bit amusing:
Here he says:
“It logically follows that If magic is a reality bending power then wielding this power should be dangerous because it's just you're just a mere mortal how how can you do this you have this Forbidden Knowledge yes but uh there's only so much you can do with it.”
Why should this power be inherently dangerous? I could see some forms or applications of magic being dangerous: throwing balls of fire around, changing your shape, summoning monsters, teleporting? Sure, those sound kind of crazy and I could see a wizard having to exercise more mental control in harnessing and shaping these energies to produce a very specific effect.
But, say, conjuring light? Not so much.
It would also make at least some sense if the difficulty in casting some spells varied by the spell’s level or complexity compared to the wizard’s own level. This is why systems with even halfway decent spellcasting check mechanics let you add your wizard level to the mix. ShallowGrift doesn’t do that, at least not by default: you have to randomly roll a spellcasting check buff during a level up.
Additionally, this knowledge is obviously not forbidden because lots of people can use it and there’s no default law imposed by man or god preventing or even punishing you from utilizing…whatever it is supposed to be. It’s not even harmful in Lamentations, and in ShallowGrift only occasionally does something kinda sorta bad, specifically to the spellcaster or one of his friends, so…I guess just don’t befriend a spellcaster.
“…you're just a mere mortal how how can you do this…”
Do what? Cast magic missile? Charm someone? It’s apparently incredibly easy and either completely harmless or at least usually harmless.
If you wanted to actually even attempt to tie the complexities of spellcasting with wizard competency, the odds of success and result should depend on the magical effect and capabilities of the wizard. At 1st-level trying to conjure and manipulate a flaming sphere is probably difficult and could have some chance of getting out of control—especially if the wizard is injured or distracted while trying to conjure and control it—but at 5th level any risk should be noticeably reduced, and at 10th-level it should be no problem.
But then if we’re just conjuring some light? Picking up a small item and moving it a few dozen feet? Moving a little faster? Firing off a tiny, one-shot bolt of arcane energy? That should be a trick most any wizard can do without risk of explosion or random items teleporting away. But, again, we’re talking ShallowGrift.
“There's only so much you can do with it and um both Shadow dark and Lamentations of The Flame Princess their magic and systems are premised on this idea.”
Sure, just like in D&D with its bog-standard pseudo-Vancian nonsense, because in every edition of D&D you have spells that do set things, and that’s all that happens in ShallowGrift and Lamentations. It’s actually worse though because spells do one specific thing and you can’t even boost some of them like you can in 5th Edition.
“I'm mentioning Dungeon Crawl classic here um because because they have mishap tables too.”
Yeah, way to give a token nod to DCC. It’s hilarious that ShadowSimpLord Matt admits that it might have been the first to do it “in recent years”, even though it was released like twelve years ago and is notorious for each spell having its own specific table to roll on to determine what happens each time you cast a spell.
He claims he’s played it a few times: I’ve never played it at all, but I still remember those tables from when I owned the book and, again, it’s a huge feature of the system. I get the feeling that Matt doesn’t want to talk about it much, because were he to be honest he’d have to point out that DCC did it far better than ShallowGrift could ever hope to, and over a decade ago to boot so it has no excuse for being as bad as it is.
Other ways that make DCC’s magic superior to both ShallowGrift and Lamenations, if you want “scary” magic at any rate, is that fucking up spells can mutate your character. But also rolling really well can auto-enhance the spell, so people can’t even say, oh, no biggie, he’s just casting magic missile, because it could be one shot, several, an entire volley, or one big super blast.
“I don't want to lead you astray there's too many people too many Talking Heads that do that already.”
ShadowSimpLord Matt claims to not want to lead you astray even though that’s precisely what he’s been trying to do for a while, now: if you want a game with even halfway decent mishap rules, and you want to stick to d20, then DCC is the way to go. If you don’t want to support Goodman Games because they’re woke then just homebrew your own system as it’s not hard.
My recommendation would be, if you don’t want to make a table for every specific spell, at least make a mishap table for every spell school/category so you can have results that are even remotely thematic.
Also, don’t be a lazy sack of shit and pinch out a d12 or d20 table: go percentile, and then have the d100 roll modified by your degree of failure, which could be determined by the spell’s level/complexity and your wizard level, so a lower-level wizard casting a more powerful spell has an increased chance of a more catastrophic result.
Maybe even incorporate a Willpower currency or something, something that replenishes each day, which lets you mitigate the mishap. Oh, and stop relying on pseudo-Vancian nonsense: either go Vancian or come up with something else.
“…um you know they don't read the rules but then they have opinions I don't get it.”
Translation: ShadowSimpLord Matt is pissed that people with more than a couple neurons bouncing around in their skulls actually read ShallowGrift and concluded it was derivative vapidware trash. He wants people to stop hating what he likes because it makes him feel stupid. Worse, he wants you to stop innovating, and just resign yourself to churning out third-party crap for it.
About 4 minutes in he summarizes the ShallowGrift magic system but I already did that at the start. He also summarizes the Lamentations system, which is just bog-standard pseudo-Vancian nonsense, which he incorrectly describes as Vancian, and it’s hilarious that he does what many hobby tourists do when you point out the stupidity of it, which is to point you to The Dying Earth:
“People need to understand though it's not you need to read dying Earth uh Vance's dying Earth to really understand what vancian is…”
Yes, people do need to read The Dying Earth if for no other reason than to realize that what’s going on there is nothing at all like what’s going on in D&D and its lazy derivatives. Here is a key passage:
The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on a long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time.
Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violet Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.
Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.
There’s no memorization going on. It’s more like the spell is alive, or sentient in some manner, and is eager to leave the pages of the book. It reads more like the wizard has to actively resist the spell entering his mind, which can only contain a few spells at a time, to be unleashed upon the world when desired.
It also seems to take little time and effort to do so, and that the wizard would be able to simply check his book at any time and force it back into his mind again.
Now if you look at The Dying Earth RPG, which was at the least approved by Vance, you can get more detail as to how it works. Basically—and this is pulled from the foreword of Rhialto the Marvellous—magic is a sort of science, and spells are sets of instructions that are “inserted into the sensorium of an entity which is able and not unwilling to alter the environment in accordance with the message conveyed by the spell”.
So, it’s more like casting spells is essentially putting some sort of command out there, and getting something else to do the magic for you.
Spells are categorized into cantraps (yes, trap instead of trip), which are minor magical feats. Actual spells are divided into straightforward and complex, and there are no levels, and no leveled spell slots, which is one way D&D magic drifts into pseudo-Vancian nonsense territory.
Spells can be failed, and there are “dismal failures”, as well as a magic point currency that is used to make spellcasting more reliable. You can cast spells without any magic points but this is more difficult, though I’m not sure exactly how since I don’t know the rules to the game, and don’t want to take the time to learn it just to prove ShadowSimpLord Matt wrong, not that I need to.
“I I the more I think about it the more I like it you're not just memorizing something you're imprinting it upon your soul your very being…”
Except, you’re not, and the writing in no way even begins to suggest this.
The spell goes into your head, I guess, and you’ve only got so much head space, and then you unleash it later and then some other entity does the legwork for you. Or in the RPG you basically have infinite magic, it’s just you burn magic points to do it better and when you run out bad things can happen though I’v never played the game so not sure what this entails.
If you wanted to go with the former, a better model is to say that you have x number of units or space or whatever, and each spell takes up its own amount of space.
For example, a level 1 wizard might have 3 spell slots, and various spells take 1 slot, but you could also pack in a 2 or even 3 slot spell. Or, a spell could be souped up, taking up more space for added oomph.
Spells would have a casting time of like, 10 minutes or more, so you have infinite magic with enough time, it’s just that if you cram it into your head you only need an action or whatever, but if you have the time you can just cast it from the book. However, you also need the book to use any given spell so it can be risky adventuring with it.
“…and then you're unleashing it out on the world so it's like this very powerful thing that's happening to you uh your character right”
Yeah, really powerful. So powerful, in fact, that, well, nothing about your character changes except, I suppose, you “forget” the spell or tick off a spell slot. It’s not like in DCC where you can feasibly become corrupted or lose ability score points. Nope, you just lose a slot, get it back the next day, and there are no long-term repercussions, even if you were to burn through all of your spells each and every day for years.
And really, the only way that ShallowGrift meaningfully differs is that you can be slightly inconvenienced for a short period of time, unless you “mishap” a 5th-level spell, in which case you can permanently lose a spell but then nothing stops you from relearning it, later.
But then you’d not only have to play ShallowGrift in the first place, but long enough to get to the point where you can even cast 5th-level spells (which is 9th-level), and not only are there plenty of vastly superior options out there, you could just do what Kelsey did and cobble together your own vapidware trash hack from existing games over a weekend.
Oddly—or, well, this is ShallowGrift so maybe not—wizards don’t have spellbooks. Sure, they exist, at least one monster entry mentions one, but there’s no book on the already anemic equipment list, you don’t start with one, you don’t need to reference one, you don’t record anything in one, and can’t learn spells from them (only scrolls). But then the staff has no purpose, either so, yeah…I guess it’s not odd but also not surprising.
ShadowSimpLord Matt asserts that the summon spell in Lamentations is the “most powerful spell in all of the OSR” because you can end a campaign with it, which sounds incredibly retarded but fortunately only matters if you’re dumb enough to play Lamentations in the first place, select the spell, and then bother casting it while trying to summon something with lots of Hit Dice and/or not bothering to take any precautions.
The description of summon is that magic in Lamentations is, of course, pulling out energy from somewhere else that interacts and warps “our reality”. So, a wizard rips a hole in time and space, which isn’t reflected in the art that I’ve seen, allowing you to…charm people? I guess there’s time and space energy that lets you do that very precise thing. Or just in general.
Anyway, summon opens the hole “a little bit more” and somehow forces an entirely random creature into the material world to do whatever the wizard wants (because, regardless of size, just a little bit more is needed for it to work its way through). So in Lamentations Land, wizards have figured out how to take and use Time And Space Energy™ to consistently generate very specific effects, but as of yet been unable to figure out a summon spell that conjures a specific entity, even if you use the same magic circle and sacrifices.
Riiight.
The process of summoning something and what you ultimately get is pretty complex and could certainly be explained better. ShadowSimpLord Matt doens’t explain how it can end a campaign, or even the likelihood of it happening, which frankly doesn’t seem likely, especially at lower levels, but what it seems to boil down to is what the entity can do based on various random rolls and the domination check results.
Basically, the wizard and entity make opposed d20 rolls, modified by wizard level, entity Hit Dice, if you did sacrifices and some other stuff. If the entity wins it tries to kill everyone for a number of rounds that is affected by how much it beat the wizard’s check. If it wins by “5 + wizard level + sacrifice + circle” modifiers, then you roll on another table.
So, if a level 5 wizard rolls like a 10, then I think that means the entity needs to get a roll of like 20 or more, plus whatever sacrifices and circle bullshit you did. If it beats your check by a whopping 19 points or “double a Great Margin”, then it makes another check: a flat 1-19 means it’s super-powered for some reason and goes on a killing spree, while a nat 20 means that hundreds more of it arrive over a period of time—like a week or something—and start ruining everyone’s shit.
Which, depending on what it can do, its total Hit Dice, might not be that big a deal.
So, when ShadowSimpLord Matt says that it’s super powerful because it can end a campaign—emphasis on the can—what he means is if you use summon and you happen to summon something absurdly powerful and you fuck up your roll by a sufficiently wide margin it could fuck up a campaign (again, depends on what it is and what it can do), with the odds being better if it also happens to get a nat 20.
This of course makes me wonder how the campaign setting exists at all when it’s a 1st-level spell so any crazy wizard that wants to destroy the world or even a general region for whatever reason could easily do so: just try to summon the biggest thing possible using sacrifices and circles to up its base Hit Dice, fail the Magic save, and then fail the domination check.
Sure, it will probably only flip out and get super-powered, which might be enough to wipe out a sizable area over a longer period of time, but there’s always a 5% chance a vast horde will pop out.
Which means that there are hundreds of any given entity, yet despite making very predictable, utilitarian rule magic with no downside unless you go out of your way to cast a specific spell, wizards just can’t quite figure out how to attract and bind a specific type of entity.
Riiiiiight.
Look, I’m all for giving certain spells more degrees of complexity, but it comes across as completely arbitrary that you have this one spell that has all of these uncontrollable factors, when virtually all of the rest do precisely what they are supposed to.
There’s no chance that a fireball is going to spiral out of control and rain fire down for hundreds of miles. There’s no chance that you try to charm a creature, only for it—or everyone that can see you—to become murderously obsessed with you. There’s no chance that you try to heal a creature and cause uncontrolled cellular division, resulting in tumors or even cancer.
Hell, there’s no chance of any magic in Lamentations, despite being the manipulation of “raw power”, causing cancer. Which, going off of what little I know of Lamentations, sounds like it should be a possibility. However, this would require that whole effort, passion, and creativity thing that’s lacking from so many d20 derivatives and lazy clones.
And if all it takes for pseudo-Vancian nonsense to be “done right” is to add in a spell that could maybe end a campaign if taken and used and bad rolls occur? Okay, just slot that into D&D then and you’re good. But then I fail to see how this changes anything because it’s entirely possible that no one plays a wizard, and even if they do that no one even takes summon.
The next six minutes is him talking about alternative Lamentations magic systems that also aren’t good for different reasons, and about the ten-and-a-half minute mark he attempts to make a biased comparison between D&D and games that merely copy D&D:
Not that I want to defend the Groomers of the Coast, but WokeC spellcasting mechanics are pseudo-Vancian nonsense mechanics. The only differences are that in 3rd Edition you got more spells per day, some spellcasters were more flexible. 4th and 5th Edition were more flexible and tacked on at-will stuff, but each of these editions devoted far more pages than ShallowGrift could ever hope to merely attempting to justify the pseudo-Vancian nonsense.
Which, given that Kelsey could only be bothered to pinch out like a single paragraph’s worth of stock flavor across the entire book isn’t that big of an achievement, plus they still failed, but at least they kept trying.
That said, mishap tables don’t inherently make a magic system better than another—it depends on the results and how it all works together—and mishap tables with results that are always bad for the character aren’t better than those where a mishap could be beneficial. Plus. ShallowGrifts mishap tables are horrendously banal so if anything ShadowSimpLord Matt should be trying to divert attention away from them, not that there’s anything in ShallowGrift worth praising.
(Also he doesn’t elaborate on the whole mechanical focus/grid combat thing, and I fail to see how ShallowGrift or Lamentations meaningfully differ in this department, not that you need a grid to play any version of D&D, not even 4th, because I ran an entire level 1-15 campaign and never used any maps or minis at all.)
Around 11 minutes he says:
“What I really like about like osr spells is like you get like kind of like these you know block paragraphs of like what the spell is and what it does…”
Which is identical to Groomer D&D.
“…but that kind of can feed your imagination as a magic using player and if you get creative with the Spells you might be able to do some pretty wild stuff.”
Of course, he provides no examples.
“Um not so with like the very rigid mechanical spells that you get from Wizards of the Coast.”
Skimming to a random Lamentations spell, let’s check out Locate Object:
And how does that compare to, say, 3rd Edition?
Different range and duration, plus it reads differently until you check out the d20srd version:
Checking other spells, text for spells found in normal D&D look to be at least initially lifted from the srd, though some effects might be tweaked, such as magic missile dealing 1d4 damage per level in Lamentations, which is a huge damage boost since it normally caps at five missiles in 3E.
In any case, I’m curious why ShadowSimpLord Matt considers ShallowGrift and Lamentations to be less mechanically rigid.
For example, in ShallowGrift invisibility is just “you become invisible” for 10 rounds, and it ends if you attack or cast another spell. Since it’s merely a 5E ripoff we can compare it to that version, which can last to up an hour, and you can use higher level slots to target more creatures, which is far more flexible and interesting, and allows for more creative uses.
Now, ShadowSimpLord Matt somewhat admits this but thinks that the shallow mishap gimmick “saves” it because it “makes the spellcaster dangerous”, except he wasn’t talking about that, but the alleged ability to do “wild stuff” with spells that you somehow can’t in Groomer D&D even though spells still have very rigid effects.
Here is most of what ShadowSimpLord Matt said around this part:
“I think the way you treat magic in your campaigns is critical uh for tone and immersion…”
Sure, and pseudo-Vancian nonsense with a lazily tacked-on mishap gimmick does nothing to add to tone and immersion. Unless of course the tone was “I’m too lazy and incompetent to bother trying”. In which case, bravo Kelsey.
“…WotC has made magic so ubiquitous that magic has lost its flavor uniqueness and what makes it special…”
Given that its flavor is pseudo-Vancian nonsense this could only be an improvement.
“Um in with in 5e and probably 6E from what I'm seeing you know you could have your Fighters all of a sudden a magic using fighter of some kind at third level…”
This is only an issue if it doesn’t make sense in-game, plus if there’s no tradeoff. For example, I see no issue having a fighter multiclassing into a wizard: he is trading toughness and martial capabilities for magic.
(Oh, multiclassing shouldn’t give you all the 1st-level stuff though, so a fighter going into wizard shouldn’t automatically get access to a bunch of spells, spellbook and such. It should be more incremental, which would provide an incentive for starting as a given class.)
“Um everybody seems to have spells even like I think even I saw some barbarian builds that that could do that um makes no sense to me…”
This is because you lack imagination and vision, which explains why you’re a ShadowSimp.
For example, in Dungeons & Delvers the barbarian can choose totem Talents. One of these is the Bear Totem which, if you take the Berseker Talent later, lets you transform into a bear while fighting. It’s magic, and it makes perfect sense. But you won’t see this in ShallowGrift or other trash hacks, because it required just a sliver of creativity to conceive of and execute.
“Um it makes magic mundane makes magic uh kind of bland and um and you're just running around with like superheroes…”
I really want to see this mythical superhero book, game, film, whatever the fuck these tourists keep prattling on about, where the so-called “superheroes” can throw out, like, a couple magic missiles over the course of the entire day. Because, honestly, with the stuff I’ve seen in superhero media that sounds hilariously tame.
And, assuming he’s referring to crap like the eldritch knight archetype from 5E since he mentioned “at 3rd-level” and all, you get two at-wills, which can do stuff like 1d6 damage (whee) and then two 1st-level slots to play with.
Compare to the wizard, which by that point has four cantrips, probably Intelligence as its main stat so that’s good, four 1st-level slots, and two 2nd-level slots. Plus whatever subclass shit it also gets. I don’t play Grommer D&D but would only consider this an issue if everyone is refraining from playing wizards because eldritch knights are just objectively better than standard wizards and/or fighters.
In which case the solution is to just nerf what eldritch knight does, as a spellsword concept, or even “a non-wizard class with a few wizard spells” is pretty commonplace.
“…which I mean I have to ask the question can can peasants you know can you get a couple levels in peasant and then that guy can start casting magic too…”
The irony is that in The Dying Earth most people can use cantraps to grant blessings and such. But then I don’t see an issue with minor magical tricks like that being commonplace. It doesn’t “ruin” anything, so long as it’s explained in-game.
For example, in A Sundered World, due to the nature of reality everyone could will themselves to fly, albeit slowly—like, 10 feet per round—effectively spiderclimb wherever be reoriented their personal gravity, and conjure minor objects into existence (though without training they could only be very simple things, no moving parts, and would rapidly deteriorate into nothing once you stopped holding or concentrating on it).
This didn’t detract from the setting, or make magic feel less special. In fact, it was just one of a myriad of ways that the setting differentiated itself from others. And this wasn’t done because we were like, hey, what if we just did a setting where everyone could fly at like 10 feet per round and create temporary objects? It has everything to do with the setting taking place in largely the Astral Plane.
“…like I just don't I just don't like it uh it it loses all uniqueness…”
So just slap on a lazy, uninspired mishap gimmick and call it a day, yeah? Maybe shoehorn in a spell that could, through a series of undesirable rolls, “end the campaign”?
“…and um and and well what makes it magic magic is supposed to be the this thing that is not properly understood…”
Except wizard schools are a common trope, wizards teaching other people, wizard libraries, wizards writing all their shit down in books that you can find and translate and copy and trade. Yeah, none of that is “properly understood”.
Somehow.
Figuratively and perhaps literally magically.
Even in ShallowGrift you can use scrolls to try and learn spells, so how does that work? The wizard just stares at it for an entire day, shrugs, the scroll crumbles to dust because why the fuck not and then he just maybe happens to know exactly how to cast the spell? It only takes a day, regardless of level, so it’s not even an especially time-consuming or risky process.
“…but is like changing the very fabric of reality of the game world…”
Yeah, magic missile, charm person, tenser’s floating disk, mage armor, etc are really changing the fabric of reality.
I dunno, personally I would reserve that description for a magical effect that distorts time and space. A wizard’s tower that transforms the surrounding landscape in some fashion. Mutates plants, animals, and people just by existing. Bigger on the inside than the outside. Magic that creates long term ripples that conjure an ameobic sea that doesn’t just appear for a few rounds before vanishing without even short-term consequences.
But then I’m not a ShallowSimp.
“…and why does all the characters why why why are all characters able to do that I don't know…”
Easy: the character chose a class feature that grants access to magic.
But then it’s not like all characters get access to magic just by virtue of existing. There are two other fighter archetypes that don’t have that, so you can just ban that one. Or play a better game.
Also ShallowGrift added in a spellsword-edgelord class in The Cursed Scroll, so now you can have your fighter/wizard hybrid bullshit at the start of the game. Yeah, you gotta wait until 3rd-level to get spells—you know, same as in 5th Edition—but you can still activate “demonic possession” three times a day for a damage boost while you wait because that’s the best Kelsey could come up with for being possessed by a demon.
Wizards in ShallowGrift aren’t any scarier than in Groomer D&D, just because you might hurt yourself a bit or waste a few rounds doing fuckall. In fact, in Groomer D&D they’d be scarier because they can do more, and are not occasionally burdened by a shallow mishap gimmick.
Around 14 minutes he finally ends things with:
“I want the the magic using character or player in my party to like be someone that I the game master have to worry about…”
Why, and in what way? Because in ShallowGrift spells only go up to 5th level and the only maybe crazy options like planeshift and polymorph are present in Groomer D&D as well. But some normally iconic options are heavily neutered, such as prismatic orb, which merely inflicts a pittance of one of three types of energy damage, as opposed to all the crazy shit it does in D&D.
The only outlier I noticed was that if you get to 9th-level you can choose wish, which does anything you want and it’s up to the GM to limit/screw you over on it if possible. The only downside is that a failure is always a mishap, and since it’s a level 5 spell you roll on the mishap table where there’s a chance you’ll permanently lose a spell.
But then in other editions of D&D spells could do so much more, and reliably to boot. You want to talk about “worrying” about the wizard? In 3rd Edition at a certain point you had to design dungeons in a way to circumvent or at least someone mitigate the the myriad of ways a wizard could just ignore/bypass various traps, encoutners, and obstacles through creative thinking.
For example, the first time I ran Age of Worms in 3rd Edition, a guy played a dread necromancer, they killed an umber hulk, he animated its skeleton, and they used it to burrow around dungeons to avoid lots of stuff. Then when they encounter a mind flayer, while the rest of the party distracted it, he had the umber hulk skeleton tunnel above the mind flayer and then fall onto it, nearly one-shotting it due to its sheer weight.
Can’t do that in ShallowGrift, since aniamte dead only animates humanoid creatures, plus they only last a day, anyway. Maybe just hope I roll the “advantage when casting a specific spell” when I get wish and just spam that all the time? Nah, I have no interest playing Groomer D&D, much less a fifth of 5th Edition.
“…like what is this guy going to do…”
Perhaps, and this is a longshot I know…cast a series of predictable spells with predictable effects.
Do players in ShadowSimpLord Matt’s games not tell him what spells they have? Does he not bother reading what spells do? Does he not hand out spells at all? Or does he just say “there’s a spellbook in this treasure hoard but why don’t you just put whatever in there and don’t bother telling me until you use it”.
“…um so having um magic be scary unique dangerous…”
If ShadowSimpLord Matt thinks that ShallowGrift and Lamentations magic is “““““scary”””””, unique and dangerous, then so is Groomer D&D because it’s basically the same thing.
“I think really add something special to your campaign that you're not getting with wizards of the coast…”
Casting locate object in Lamenations gives you something that you don’t get in other D&D because…reasons?
“…you're not getting with uh these high fantasy super hero type games…”
Remember, being able to select a fighter subtype at 3rd-level that replaces all other fighter subtype options in exchange for a handful of spells makes you a “super hero”.
But being able to pick a fighter/wizard hybrid in ShallowGrift at 1st-level which also grants spells at 3rd-level does not because…reasons?
“Um certainly if that is something that you're looking for in the campaign that you're putting together then by all means use that…”
Yes by all means use an option that requires you to forgo another option. Ie a meaningful choice.
“…but it's going to come at a cost Magic's going to be kind of bland…”
Not for any reasons ShadowSimpLord Matt can articulate, merely because he says so.
And, again, you can just be a fighter/wizard in ShallowGrift that grants “demonic possession” three times a day right from the start.
“Whereas the The Sword and sorcery of Shadow dark or the weird horror of Lamentations magic is like something to be be afraid of…”
Fear the ShallowGrift wizard because he might try to zap you with a magic missile and glow brightly. Or hit himself with it. Yes, truly terrifying.
If anything I’d be more worried about the Lamentations wizard because his spell reliability works and it does more damage. But then there’s nothing inherently “weird horror” about it at all. Like, yeah, there’s a melting skull in the corner of the page but knock still just opens a door without any weirdness or horror about it.
Hell, even haste doesn’t rapidly age you like it did in 2nd Edition, and glass eye doesn’t have any weird/scary visuals like I expected. Ditto for faithful hound. It’s actually disappointing how banal it all is, but given who keeps praising it I’m not surprised.
“…um and I just think it makes for a great campaign so and a great game whether it's a one shot or a campaign…”
To summarize:
ShadowSimpLord Matt thinks ShallowGrift is better due to a lame mishap gimmick, and Lamentations is better because…uh…I guess some of the spells are tweaked from 3rd Edition. Oh, and there’s a spell that can maybe end a campaign.
You know, if you choose it, use it, and suffer a string of bad rolls.
Frankly, if you’re looking for dangerous magic you’re better off going with DCC or making your own. Hell, if you’re going to steal so much from existing systems, might as well go with the ones that at least somewhat tried.
Also, if you want weird horror magic that is actually weird and horrofic, don’t largely copy-paste from the D&D SRD. I’d look into Lovecraftian horror for ideas, think about where the magic comes from first before creating mechanics and spells, you know, create rules that actually evoke the flavor behind your magic, and then attach some side effects and consequences.
For example, an enlarge spell might cause you harm, or have a chance to. Maybe you have to make a save, and on a failure muscles are pulled or bones break. Maybe invisibility has a chance for you to become partially incorporeal for a time. Maybe fireball can go out of control, exploding before you want it to, or being larger or smaller than expected.
Maybe botched healing magic causes you to writhe in agony for a bit, or exhausts you. Or does the whole cancer thing.