Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Level: Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: 20-ft.-radius spread
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Spell Resistance: Yes
Ok. Now, that's a lot of shit. It's fat, it's ugly and I'd like to condense that down into one short line. Now, what I thought would be to have a set of defaults. For instance, a spell is instantaneous, standard action casting time, offers SR and is assumed to have components: V,S unless stated otherwise. You also have various types of spells like Ray, Touch, Targetted, etc. And they have various standards, so a ray would always require a ranged touch attack, a targetted spell hits one creature automatically and so on.
A series of modifiers would further define the spell. So for instance if you wanted a verbal only spell, you'd just write some descriptor like "verbal". PUtting down "material" means the spell requires a material component. It'd take a bit to learn what all the descriptors mean, but I don't figure too long.
Durations would have descriptors: like Combat (for 1 round/level spells), Adventure for (1 min/level), extended (for 10 min/level) and so forth. Really I want to get rid of these cumbersome durations too, but for now just figure that there are descriptors for duration.
To simplify matters every descriptor is one word, or one hyphenated block, so people know what goes with what. Spaces indicate that you've moved on to another descriptor, so it would be reflex-negates so people know that's one individual part of the spell header.
Certain things have also been eliminated, like spell level. Honestly it was meaningless in 3E because the level depended on what class handed it out. So I'm letting that be something stored in the class block (or I may just do away with spell levels entirely).
So you'd get a header that looks something like this.
Fireball Evoc (fire) [long spread(20) material Reflex-half]
or for some other spells:
Divine Power Evoc [personal focus Combat]
Eagle's Splendor Trans [touch material adventure Will-negates]
Enervation Nec [Close Ray]
Baleful Polymorph Trans [Close Targeted Fort-negates/Will-Partial]
Bigby's Crushing Hand Evoc (force) [Medium effect Material Focus Combat]
Horrid Wilting Nec [Long Multi-Targetted(60,Living-only) Material/Focus Fortitude-half]
Could something like this work or do you feel that it's too complicated to read because of all the one word descriptors?
