Recommend me a spell

[Kurgan]

Maybe a spell that leaps from enemy to enemy (no friendly fire risk). It could be some kind of magical fire or electricity or even some kind of laser beam or ghost swarm (use your imagination).

Perhaps it has to have Line of Sight to the first monster, but also hits any other monsters who are directly adjacent (or diagonally adjacent, without squares in between) to that monster. Let's say it does 2d6 damage and each monster has to roll a 5 or a 6 on 1 red die to resist. Or maybe it could be an automatic 2d6 damage and the monsters roll defense. It could travel through open doors and even down hallways, so long there is is no solid object blocking line of sight to the next adjacent/diagonal enemy!

OR maybe you could say that a monster successfully blocking the spell (and thus taking no damage) breaks the chain. Maybe the chain continues even if the monster is just within LOS of the previous monster, and keeps going and going (only stopped by walls or closed doors) until a monster successfully defends?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

3 of the 48 spells provided in the original edition (actually 47 because Lightning Bolt was duplicated), already used an area effect concept with templates; Lightning Bolt, Death Bolt, Earthquake

I expanded this "area effect" mechanism for some offensive spells (bearing in mind I'm still using the "classic" 1989 edition with some tweaks, see my signature for details) because I felt like there weren't enough "dimensions*" for offensive spells to give the needed variety.

*By "dimensions" I mean different aspects or attributes that you can vary to create variety. For example if you think of standard weapons, if they were all one dimension, attack on adjacent squares only, then you could really only create 4 different weapons, varying only the number of attack dice, but once you include another dimension, the diagonal that doubles to 8 possible variants, add another dimension of missile weapons and the number of variants increases to 12, if you see what I mean!

But I applied a similar mechanism below to the Ball of Flame and Skulls of Doom

The spell affects any characters (heroes and monsters) on the target square AND the eight surrounding squares (diagonally and orthogonally adjacent) excluding any that are blocked by a wall, closed door or blocked square tile. Roll for damage on each affected character individually.

I later adapted this same general rule and applied it to the existing "Holy Water" treasure item and a new purchasable equipment item "Alchemist's Fire Flask" which are now both thrown area effect "Flasks", the former dealing 2CD of damage (no defend) on Undead only and the latter dealing 2CD of damage (no defend) on all characters affected.