My Fix for Silence

As I've mentioned before, the silence spell has been one of my pet peeves for a very long time. It was intended as an easy, low-level stealth spell for wizards, but very rapidly morphed as a loophole was discovered - because the spell didn't allow any other spells with Verbal components to be cast while in the area of effect, it because a very quick and easy way to shut down enemy spellcasters.

Pretty much ever since, there have been efforts put in place to get around this issue - the vocalise spell, the Silent Spell metamagic feat, and so on. The problem being that these have tended to be either very situational, or too high cost, or otherwise of limited usefulness.

My fix for the issue is rather simpler - the silence spell negates any unintentional or incidental noise in the area. So, a character under the effect of the spell won't have to worry about their armour clanking, and won't cause a massive cascade of noise as he falls over the drum kit someone left lying around.

But the spell is easily cancelled by anyone in the area - simply clapping one's hands, or speaking clearly, or giving a shout will end the spell. (Or, indeed, kicking over that drum kit. The key bit is that the noise being made is intentional.)

This, of course, massively reduces the power level of the silence spell. But that's probably a good thing - it makes it rather closer in scope to invisibility, which likewise masks the caster from one detection by one of the senses, and which is also second level. (There's also an argument for a higher-level improved silence which retains the offensive applications now removed from silence itself. But that's a discussion for another time...)