Checking Magic

It's that time, going into the spell lists and making sure the actual spell list matches up to the text of spells, making sure the asterisks signifying reversibility are all consistent, that sort of boring stuff, plus making notes and changing things that were only ever there "just because," and not because they made sense.

For example, going through and standardizing "Permanent" durations (which can be dispelled) and Instantaneous durations (which don't go away but can't be dispelled).

Then throwing in little bits of mischief like making the Death spell Permanent but not Instantaneous just so players and Referees can mess with each other more in the game.

(bringing to mind one possible recipe for Lichdom: Cast Death on yourself. Your corpse must then be prepared in specific ways and then entombed in a specific manner. After being dead for a specific amount of time, long after the body has begun decomposing, the Death spell must be dispelled. If not done properly, lichdom is not achieved, but the revived mage instead is simply awakened to die in agonizing pain since all of his organs are rotted and useless. Good luck setting this one up, you mad, mad wizard you!)

I also changed around how Bless and Prayer work because in a game not about combat, it doesn't make any damn sense to make these things nothing but combat aids. Bless is now a first level spell (Resist Cold got moved to second level) and gives the subject "points" to "spend" on die rolls (pretty much anything other than damage), sorta how Karma worked in the old Marvel Super Heroes game. Makes it an actual useful thing with general applicability instead of a near-negligible combat boost - and yet another option to discourage Cure Light Wounds as the no-brainer first level choice.

Also, many of the duplicate spells between the two Cleric and M-U lists have been removed from one class or the other, focusing what each of them is magically for. For instance, the Cleric is now more strongly an anti-magic class. One classic complaint about the ol' Vancian magic system is its lack of fickleness and danger. Valid, in some ways, but introduce through spells more ways to mess with each others' magic, and, well, problem solved, shall we say. Nothing too major, but by planting the right scrolls for the players (and assigning the right spells for NPC spellcasters), Magic-Users get to sweat things that much more.