T w e n t y S i d e d
In the comments of this post a reader notes their overlong comment and remarks that they posted a “wall of text”.
Reader Zaghadka responds:
“Wall of Text” (Illusion, Bureaumancy)
Upon casting this spell the mage bathes a 10′x10′ cube/lvl. area with mindless mutterings, ranting, copious formulaic backstory, or repeated iterations of “Romani ite Domus!”
Anyone in the area of effect must make a will save or suffer one of three effects: Confusion, Emotion of Hopelessness, or their head explodes. Blind targets are not affected. Dyslexic targets save at +3.
Counterspell: Erase
Perfect. I’m still laughing.
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Pure genius! Of course illiterate people (uneducated commoners and the like) would be unaffected. Maybe another effect of the spell would be to “Fascinate” the reader as they read all of the writings in the hopes of figuring out what the general message or meaning of the rant is (of course its all just a load of senseless mumbo jumbo).
Ooooh I think I’m first! not that it matters at all….
It would also be fun to have a 1 in 20 chance that when you cast the spell, all that appears is the word “first”
Wow that’s perfect!!! It reminds me of the 1/2 level spells printed in an old Dragon magazine from the 80’s. I’ll pull one from memory (if I can)
Purify Food
Casting Time: 1 Minute
Components: Material, Somatic
Materials: Salt, Ketchup
Description: Before consuming food, apply liberal doses of salt and ketchup to each item to be eaten. You can eat anything with enough salt and ketchup on it.
They had 5 in the issue I think, but that’s the only one I remember. Obviously, “Wall of Text” is a much more powerful and potent spell!! That is absolutly hilarious!
A
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
So, non multi-classed barbarians are immune?
Telas Says:
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”
Umm … huh? I’m guessing Latin, but I can’t find a translator for it >.
Ok correction: I can’t find a DECENT Latin translator for it lol.
A
Other Aaron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum
The “Lorem ipsum” text is entirely nonsense based on latin. Here’s the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum
Yep, someone already posted it. Whoops.
That block of latin text is Lorem Ipsum. It’s a heavily butchered fragment from a book by the ancient Roman statesman Cicero. The butchering is why you can’t get anything meaningful out of a translator.
Lorem Ipsum is widely used as an example text for layouts and such. It looks real and has similar letter frequencies to English, but it’s not actually readable so it doesn’t distract from the layout.
…right.
I should’ve known better than to take my time writing a post, and not expect someone to beat me to it.
Isn’t there a list out there of goofy D&D “spells” that are mainly meant to be amusing? I’d swear I found that link through here (either a post or a comment), but I don’t remember anything else for the life of me.
I knew a group of computer-literate gamers would grok it out pretty quickly. (Or did they suss it out? Hmm.)
FWIW, I googled for “latin filler text”, and used the first link, here.
Telas
Aw, drat. This is hilarious, but the first thing I post after The Thread, and it’s a nitpick. Maybe an Errata for a new version of the spell? The mistaken graffito was “eunt domus” and the wall of text was “ite domu_m_”.
Mind you, the Lorem Ipsum version is pretty funny too. I’d love to see a DM start spouting that to demonstrate the effect!
Okay, since I walked into it, IMTS “an erratum”, all right?
I think I failed my roll but I am not quite so sure due to my uter confusion.
Sorry, Shandrunn. I won by being lazy!
Truly inspired. It’s almost as fun a spell as “void bowel.” I forget the specifics, but basically it was a spell with a range of touch that the target either made a fortitude save against or else they shat themselves, causing temporary penalties to their Cha and Dex due to how uncomfortable they were.
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”
Yeah, sure, that’s easy for *you* to say…
(Incidentally, my next NPC mage bad guy’s going to have the Wall of Text spell!) :)
Summon Monster 1/2 (V)
Casting time: 1 segment
Consists of the following phrase, spoken loudly.
“WhatEVER shall I do with these THOUSAND GOLD PIECES I just found? Maybe I’ll buy a NEW SWORD to REPLACE the one I LEFT AT HOME.”
This spell would be great in a Cthulhu game. You could add an effect of losing SAN points when you read it. Say, at least 1 point per minute of concentrating on the text.
Please enjoy this as well:
http://arb0rv1tae.typepad.com/bookworm/2007/01/romani_ite_domu.html
Mon dieu don’t we *all* feel like that sometimes.
“Domum, sir! Domum! Please don’t cut my balls off!” ;^)
Bah, people have been using this forever. I’m often getting assaulted by them. They crit a lot, doing 9999 damage.
This brings me back to when I first started playing D&D.. with the 3 booklets… then the first DMG… You could tell back then where the ideas for the spells came from and how they implemented them with their miniatures..
My favorite was stinking cloud.. I’ve played with guys that had that spell down pat… that spell could send the campaign into a tailspin…
Back then you could almost experience another’s campaign via the new spells they submitted to the Dragon.
@1, MONKEEYYY
No. If illiterate targets were unaffected the spell would have indicated it. I’ve met enough illiterate people on web forums (and Usenet) to know that they are equally affected by this spell. };^>
Next spell: “Wall of Braille” – (affects the blind as well)
Mat. component: Poison Ivy.
@16, Romana
OMG! I am soooo sorry. I must have seemed a remarkably bad sport posting #23 (“Domum, Sir!”) but I hadn’t yet seen your post nor realized I had made the mistake!
And a bloody stupid mistake it was too, because I looked it up and was literally typing it from a tee-shirt I had found on another site, flipping back and forth between two Firefox tabs. I can’t even claim a typo as “s” is nowhere near “m.”
Double brain fart. I should have had K-9 type it for me. ;^)
#23 was directed to the whole group so they could enjoy the scene from “Life of Brian,” and not toward you.
Does Vaarsuvius from Order of the Stick get this spell to cast for free?
If not, that’s an awful lot of spell slots spent on just going about the business of appearing in a comic…
As I recall from my early days of gaming (back in the old 1st edition days) there was a BUerocrat class in one of the April Fool Issues of Dragon. I have the Dragon Archive, but am still unpacking from mving house and have no current idea f it’s location.
Where is that damn Locate Object scroll…..
Dig 1/2
Components: Material, Verbal
Description: Creates a hole in soft or hard packed earth. The digging is slow, taking the same time as if digging it yourself.
Material components: A shovel, a dumb fighter.
Wish 1/2
Components: Verbal
Oh, I WISH I had more experience points. I WISH I had more gold, I WISH…
Who the hell in their right mind would make their character dislexic?
I would. Of course, I’ve often wanted to make my characters be narcoleptic.
That might be a lot of fun in the right hands, especially if the DM had a few Walls of Text prepared ahead of time as part of the game papers. They'd mostly be inane babble, so the players wouldn't want to read them every time they cast the spell, but if just one or two had some useful hints embedded in them…I can really see the poor guy sitting there casting Wall of Text repeatedly while the rest of the party prods at him, hoping for another tip.
@25 Dave.
We get that spell effect by feeding the GMs dog our junk food.
@31 Joshua
Anyone who thought of a good way to use it to mess with the GM.
@32 Cors
@25 Dave.
We get that spell effect by feeding the GMs dog our junk food.
@31 Joshua
Anyone who thought of a good way to use it to mess with the GM.
@32 Corsair
One of the players in our group always has narcoleptic charicters, as he often crys off at the last moment, so we made him have it as the excuse of “you were asleep” saves us telling him what happend and has the side effect that the GM ignores encumberence rules so we can carry him (and we abuse that for loot)