D&D 1E Holy Symbol Spell Purpose?

santosud37 said:

There r rituals in AD&D! What u don't think sacrificing animals to gods, demons, devils, weddings, atonements, exorcisings, etc. r not rituals? These r just high level components of the game. Just bc u don't see them in your campaigns don't mean they don't exist within the game. Creating Holy water, blessing holy symbols, and the like is no different than a blacksmith, weapon maker, and fletcher making bows, and the like. They don't need to have a spell to make them unless they r magical items. Holy symbols r not magical items like that. They just need to b blessed by a god through a Cleric/Paladin.

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I suspect you're deep into houserule territory here unless you've got page references to back any of this up.

santosud37 said:

Holy Symbol and Death's Door are, in my opinion, wasted spell slots.

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Curious - why do you think Death's Door is a wasted slot?

santosud37 said:

In other words, it's like having to use a spell to make Holy Water. It isn't needed. Just a normal ritual for any Cleric would suffice for a Holy Symbol.

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1e didn't have rituals.

The process for making holy water in 1e was detailed in the DMG. It was expensive, required a holy font made of precious materials, and took significant time.

Lanefan said:

Curious - why do you think Death's Door is a wasted slot?

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Death's Door has been removed as a Spell bc in 1ed it was a common idea that if u fell below 0 HPs u did not auto die and fell unconscious. When u get hit over the head by a bat 3 times u don't auto die for instance. If u get hit on the head with a bat 100 times then yes u will die. So most players autp said that just bc u get sliced once with a sword as a burly 100 HP character or even a 15 HP Fighter u r not hoing to just die and end your adventuring career. U will fall unconscious (once u hit 0-9 HPs), and after healing,, bed rest, etc, live. U don't need to make spells to waste slots for others that u do need, like Telepathy, which should have been in 1ed, but they made it a Psipnic instead. It should be both like Teleport is. Planar telepathy should be different than a Material World Telepathy. An example of this comes from LoTR where JRR Tolkien had Galadriel and Gandalf using telepathy to communicate about the deceit going on with Saruman. And, sonce D&D is a byproduct of LoTR, in my opinion, it would make sense to have the same. Without LoTR D&D would have never been in existence is my belief.

santosud37 said:

I don't understand the purpose of this being q spell. Isn't making a Holy Symbol into a spell to make every Cleric waste a Spell slot? Additionally, it is a 2nd level spell. What about the 1st level spell components requiring a Holy Symbol for it's Material Component?
In my opinion, this should NEVER be a spell but a normal ritual for any Cleric/Paladin.

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If your group doesn't want to use it, then don't. You can play the game however your group wants.

santosud37 said:

Death's Door has been removed as a Spell bc in 1ed it was a common idea that if u fell below 0 HPs u did not auto die and fell unconscious.

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And then bleed out if untended, at one point per round as I recall, until you got to -10 and died.

santosud37 said:

When u get hit over the head by a bat 3 times u don't auto die for instance. If u get hit on the head with a bat 100 times then yes u will die. So most players autp said that just bc u get sliced once with a sword as a burly 100 HP character or even a 15 HP Fighter u r not hoing to just die and end your adventuring career. U will fall unconscious (once u hit 0-9 HPs), and after healing,, bed rest, etc, live.

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Death's Door was, I believe, intended to speed up this process considerably.

santosud37 said:

U don't need to make spells to waste slots for others that u do need, like Telepathy, which should have been in 1ed, but they made it a Psipnic instead. It should be both like Teleport is. Planar telepathy should be different than a Material World Telepathy. An example of this comes from LoTR where JRR Tolkien had Galadriel and Gandalf using telepathy to communicate about the deceit going on with Saruman.

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There's magic items that can fill this niche as well; for example one could argue that as Gandalf and Galadhriel were both Ringbearers their telepathic ability came from the rings they wore.

santosud37 said:

And, sonce D&D is a byproduct of LoTR, in my opinion, it would make sense to have the same. Without LoTR D&D would have never been in existence is my belief.

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I don;'t think it's quite as absolute as that.

santosud37 said:

there are things in this game that make absolutely no sense.

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Yep, they make no sense to you and to some other people out there. But they make sense to me, and some other people out there. Myself and the second group are no better off hearing your opinion than we were before we heard it.

santosud37 said:

Nah, I look at common sense!

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It isn't common sense. It's just your sense.

This thread sucks.

Senior_WotC_Janitor said:

This thread sucks.

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You can't just declare this like that. You first have to build an electrum basin over a period of 2d4 weeks for a cost of (1d6+1) x 1000 gp. Then you have to cast in sequence: vacancy, cacodemon and crystalbrittle and, only then, you have a percentage chance of successfully making the declaration equal to 50 + 2d12 + 1 for every point of intelligence, wisdom and charisma above 14.

Nikosandros said:

You can't just declare this like that. You first have to build an electrum basin over a period of 2d4 weeks for a cost of (1d6+1) x 1000 gp. Then you have to cast in sequence: vacancy, cacodemon and crystalbrittle and, only then, you have a percentage chance of successfully making the declaration equal to 50 + 2d12 + 1 for every point of intelligence, wisdom and charisma above 14.

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...and believe me, you really don't want to know what happens if the declaration attempt fails.