# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 >  Help me balance and set a level for homebrew spells

## lolcat

As the title says: Would you let these spells be invented on your tables? What would you change and what level would you assign them?

Thanks for the input!

Annatars Elementary Exlporation
Divination
Level: 
Components: V, S, M,
Casting Time: One full round action
Range: Personal
Area: burst of 100 ft. per caster level
Duration: Instantaneous

The caster concentrates on a blank piece of parchment and a masterwork mapmakers toolkit while casting the spell. This causes the toolkit to become magically animated and draw a basic map of the area around the caster of an area with a radius of 100 ft. per caster level. Structures and landscapes not roughly on the same horizontal plane will not be depicted in detail but will only be symbolized (i.e. symbol of a tower or entry to a dungeon, but no details on its levels).
This spell creates a basic map of all openly accessible areas. Areas behind closed doors or walls are not depicted. It is made with the quality of a check in search, spot and craft mapmaking check of the caster level (maximum 10) and can not see through magical illusions, invisibility or similar effects.



Annatars Annotated Map
Divination
Level: 
Components: V, S, M,
Casting Time: varies
Range: Personal
Area: burst of 1 mile per hour of casting time
Duration: Instantaneous

The caster concentrates on a blank piece of parchment and a masterwork mapmakers toolkit while casting the spell. This causes the toolkit to become magically animated and draw a detailed map of the area around the caster within a burst of at least one mile. Structures above or below ground are depicted on separate sheets of parchment annotating how they connect to each other.
The casting time of this spell is at least one hour. Per caster level, the caster can choose to extend the casting time of this spell by one hour. Extending the casting time has two effects. First, it extends the area covered by one mile radius per hour. Second, the quality of the map made increases. With a casting time of one hour, the map created has a quality and level of detail as if made by a character with a skill check result of 10 in search, spot and craft mapmaking. For every additional hour spent casting, this increases by 1. This means that with long enough casting time, the map can also include magical traps and other features only detectable with a very high search check.

----------


## Vaern

Compared to existing spells...  

Lay of the Land instantaneously grants the caster knowledge of terrain, noteworthy landmarks, and settlements within a 50 mile radius at bard 4 / druid 4 / ranger 1.  Based on that, elementary exploration, effectively creating a mundane map of a relatively small area (albeit, it seems to function indoors where lay of the land does not), could probably land itself at bard 2 / cleric 2 / druid 2 / ranger 1 (rangers don't get 0s, and it's probably still too strong to be a cantrip anyway).

Find the Path lets you know the shortest path from point A to point B and alerts you to various traps and whatnot along the way at bard 6 / cleric 6 / druid 6 / various domains 6.  Annotated map takes significantly longer to cast for the potential to gain similar kinds of information.  It'd probably be safe to leave it at the same level as Find the Path, maybe toss ranger 4 onto the list as well.  I might suggest going 7th level with it due to it hitting a much wider area than find the path and potentially granting more information but bards don't get access to 7th level bard spells without going Sublime Chord, plus the fact that you'd have to spend 10-20 hours casting for a high enough spot check to uncover basically any traps seems like a fair balancing point.

----------


## lolcat

> Compared to existing spells...  
> 
> Find the Path lets you know the shortest path from point A to point B and alerts you to various traps and whatnot along the way at bard 6 / cleric 6 / druid 6 / various domains 6.  Annotated map takes significantly longer to cast for the potential to gain similar kinds of information.  It'd probably be safe to leave it at the same level as Find the Path, maybe toss ranger 4 onto the list as well.  I might suggest going 7th level with it due to it hitting a much wider area than find the path and potentially granting more information but bards don't get access to 7th level bard spells without going Sublime Chord, plus the fact that you'd have to spend 10-20 hours casting for a high enough spot check to uncover basically any traps seems like a fair balancing point.


What would you change to make it a lvl 4 spell?

----------


## Vaern

> What would you change to make it a lvl 4 spell?


Divination is a 4th level spell and allows you to ask a single question with up to a 90% chance of gaining correct information plus a chance that the information may be cryptic in some way.  A party using this to gain information on a dungeon they're about to enter might learn that there is a _particularly_ deadly trap they should watch out for, at best.  More likely, they'll be told that there are unseen dangers ahead, which might range from traps to invisible or well-hidden enemies.  At worst, the spell fails and they get nothing out of it.

To be on par with this level of power the map needs to give less information, or at least be less specific with it.  As is, you basically know where most things are automatically. By CL 10 you effectively have a 20 in search, which hits the seach DC of roughly half the traps listed on the SRD, albeit you're taking a day to cast it.  Maybe put a hard cap on how high the search result can be(probably 10 + cl, max 20), or remove the ability to detect traps (though allow it to still detect other things like hidden doors with high enough search), or specify that the map marks that there's something of interest hidden in a room but does not specify what's hidden or precisely where in the room it is.  Maybe just grab all three of those nerfs to create a new 4th-level spell (ranger 2) to fit between the two you already have.

----------

