| Post/Author/DateTime | Post |
|---|---|
| not Yoda05-25-07, 09:16 AM | I'm starting this thread to rethink magic as we use it in D&D. Hopefully giving people room to field their ideas on how magic can be more ________. I am looking forward to seeing where this goes. One thing that I would love to see come out of this is a faster/simpler/more balanced magic system. Or you can just post chnges you would like to see in the current system. Nerfed spells/retooled mecanics as they apply to spells or items/clearly defined limitations on spells for example. |
| starfire31105-25-07, 09:26 AM | lol, looks like we both ahd the same idea. Oh well. |
| not Yoda05-25-07, 10:03 AM | It just occured to me one of the things that is most inconsistent in D&D is range when you compare spells and ranged weapons. IMO spells should have much shorter range than 400+ feet. OR perhaps spells chould have ranges resolved like weapon ranges. Fireball having a range increment of 100' or so lending a bonus to saves or a penalty to damage for each range increment between the caster and target. If it's hard to hit a guy with a bow at 600' wouldn't the guy have an easier time dodging out of the way of a fireball? |
| SlinkyTWF05-25-07, 10:25 AM | Speaking of ranges, I've never figured out why spells with variable ranges have a "short, medium, and long" tag in the first place, except that those labels correspond to either 25'+5'/2 caster levels, 100'+10'/caster level, and 400'+40' caster level respectively. Seems superfluous to me unless I missed something in the rules. |
| starfire31105-25-07, 11:23 AM | Speaking of ranges, I've never figured out why spells with variable ranges have a "short, medium, and long" tag in the first place, except that those labels correspond to either 25'+5'/2 caster levels, 100'+10'/caster level, and 400'+40' caster level respectively. Seems superfluous to me unless I missed something in the rules. it may seem superfluous, but I use it alot, if someone asks me the range of a fireball I say long, I dont say 400'+40' per caster level. |
| SlinkyTWF05-25-07, 01:58 PM | Guess that makes sense then. Back to the point, I'm thinking that if increments were applied to ranged touch attacks, it could be listed as such in the spell description: Spell Name YadaYadaYada Range: Short (25' + 5' / caster level) (I*) *where I=Range Increment (unless "I" has already been used for something else)? |
| Feeb05-25-07, 02:15 PM | It just occured to me one of the things that is most inconsistent in D&D is range when you compare spells and ranged weapons. I always assumed this was an artifact from D&D's CHAINMAIL and wargaming roots. |
| RobbyPants05-25-07, 02:25 PM | It just occured to me one of the things that is most inconsistent in D&D is range when you compare spells and ranged weapons. IMO spells should have much shorter range than 400+ feet. OR perhaps spells chould have ranges resolved like weapon ranges. Fireball having a range increment of 100' or so lending a bonus to saves or a penalty to damage for each range increment between the caster and target. If it's hard to hit a guy with a bow at 600' wouldn't the guy have an easier time dodging out of the way of a fireball? Interesting idea... and I like it. It reminds me of this thread from a while back when people were debating whether or not a wizard should be able to perfectly plop down a fireball that hits the maximum number of monsters and no PCs, based on player information obtained from a top-down view of a battle grid. One thing you could add, if you wanted, would be some sort of ranged attack roll (with range increment penalties) for AoE spells. If the "attack" misses, then you have to find the new center of the spell per grenade-like missile rules. Thus, a missed fireball still goes off - but where!?! :eek: This is the kind of thing that could be either really cool or really stupid, depending on your game... :P |
| Dungeonrenter05-25-07, 02:32 PM | I think that the dnd magic system is a dinoaur. It works, but it long ago stopped being fun or even close to the quality that so many other games have come up with. I don't think magic spells are imbalanced at the moment, for the most part. Instead, I think that all the rules surrounding magic are a little messed up. People play spellcasters to get to cast spells. Being a level 1 wizards is terrible. I have never played with anybody that did not house rule more spells to low level casters. Being a high level spell caster can occasionally be to easy. Eitherway, I think dnd magic needs to do some leveling out. Additionally, the way the spell slots work generate a magic system and style of play where the players stop and rest all time. Either that or they forge ahead and the casters can't do much. I would prefer a system that made spell caster combat spells a little bit more usable, so that they get them back without stopping to rest. Even if these means the spells have to get a little weaker over all. Addiontionally, spells that are for use out of combat, or are long term buffs need to be reworked so that they can be used but not abused. Finally, I think that the ability of spell casting characters to do minor magical effects that are interesting affect gameplay but not combat need to be more allowed, demonstrated, and defined. Think of the scene in return of the jedi where luke makes C3PO hover. In dnd this would require a relatively high level spell, that the character would have needed to have memorized before hand. It would be nice if it was easier for players to use magic for effect like this (possibly earning +2 or -2 to checks etc), without having to reduce their combat ability to nill. Additonally, most players are pretty good at picking their spells to be effective, however they do not know what they are going to be up against, so they pick spells with wide application and take a fair number of damage spells. They often don't take specilist spells. |
| not Yoda05-25-07, 03:39 PM | Interesting idea... and I like it. It reminds me of this thread from a while back when people were debating whether or not a wizard should be able to perfectly plop down a fireball that hits the maximum number of monsters and no PCs, based on player information obtained from a top-down view of a battle grid. One thing you could add, if you wanted, would be some sort of ranged attack roll (with range increment penalties) for AoE spells. If the "attack" misses, then you have to find the new center of the spell per grenade-like missile rules. Thus, a missed fireball still goes off - but where!?! :eek: This is the kind of thing that could be either really cool or really stupid, depending on your game... :P Ouch. Freindly fire isn't freindly is it? Thinking like this reminded me that F/R/W saves, and spells that require them, are almost an invitation to metagame. PC: Hey, look that guy in leather armor just stabbed our tank so hard he soiled his armor. I thik we should hit him with will save or fort save spells. |
| LostMage05-25-07, 05:41 PM | One thing I saw (can't remember where) is that spellcasters would prepare spells, but would also have certain things that they could just do with magic already, that didn't work on spell slots or points. |
| Dracomortis05-25-07, 06:01 PM | One thing I saw (can't remember where) is that spellcasters would prepare spells, but would also have certain things that they could just do with magic already, that didn't work on spell slots or points. A lot of custom sorcerer classes give them prestidigitation at will, or allow them to pull off similar things that don't have much of a practical use but are nevertheless interesting and add a bit of flavor. |
| LostMage05-25-07, 07:35 PM | Yeah, but I think the idea here was to give a wizard, say, the ability to attack with magic whenever he wanted, without giving him the full power of a spell. I think... I can't seem to find the article that said this. |
| Flynnwd05-25-07, 08:29 PM | I've seen some people that remove the level component of the range descriptors, and come up with standard distances for ranges. For example: Close range is 30', Medium Range is 150' and Long Range is 600', or something like that. Might make matters easier on new players. Just a thought, Flynn |
| Zyrusticae05-25-07, 08:46 PM | Thought: In order to reduce the impact of caster level on the general power level of spells, why not raise the level before things start to actually see an increase? For example, let's take the magic missile spell. Let's say it starts out at three missiles rather than one, and you don't get another missile until level 7 and level 11. This spreads out the power spectrum of said spell considerably, and rather than being utterly pitiful at first it's at least somewhat useful. Do similar things with other spells, evening out the effect of caster level to prevent the exponential power increase that's the cause for so many headaches in D&D's wizardry. Of course, this isn't all I'd do. I use the New Ultimate Classes (http://www.liquidmateria.info/wiki/index.php?title=Ultimate_Classes), of course. In it, casters all get a limited number of spells per level, and nobody can cast level eight or nine spells, but they are all spontaneous casters - that is, they can cast any spell of a particular level as long as they have slots left in that level for casting. (To make the wizard stand out more, they can cast any spell - though, like everyone else, can only know a limited number at each level). It also makes use of incantations, which helps prevent spellcasters from becoming completely useless later in the day (although they'll still be weakened considerably). |
| Nathreet05-25-07, 10:30 PM | Here's something I posted a little while back. In order to deal with the power of high level casters, the problems with multiclassing a caster, and novas: completely eliminate caster classes. Instead, allow any class to craft a spell with the proper instructions, standard material components, and an additional material component costing 25gp x caster level x spell level. The DM may give these material components out as treasure, as well as completed spells. While most are rare, not all of them appear valuable at first glance. To prep a spell you craft it, which takes time, but using the prepped spell takes the usual casting time. The prepped spell could take the form of a potion (CLW), a bead (fireball), etc. These replaces the standard DnD expendable magic items. Even so, certain classes with the right skill list still have an advantage. The following skills are involved in prepping spells: appraise (assessing the value of rare items, which affects the effective caster level of the resulting spell) alchemy (making potions), survival (finding rare plants), knowledge (arcana) (knowing which rare items are spell components), spellcraft (recognizing the shiny orange bead to be a prepped fireball). This variant would also open up some room for flavor based on: the rare components, the incantations used while prepping the spells and the final form of the spell. It also lets the DM hand the players a bunch of oddball spells as treasure (either the rare component or the finished spell), which they could find interesting uses for. Or sell. Here's another magic system: Grant a different versatile spell-like ability each level. The player can choose any ability from the list of 20, no matter what their level. This system is multi-class friendly and prevents casters from becoming too powerful at high levels. It can even be used side by side with the other magic system above. Such a class would be good at that system too, as it would likely give alchemy, knowledge(arcana) and spellcraft as class skills. Perhaps more. |
| not Yoda05-25-07, 11:00 PM | Here's something I posted a little while back. In order to deal with the power of high level casters, the problems with multiclassing a caster, and novas: completely eliminate caster classes. Instead, allow any class to craft a spell with the proper instructions, standard material components, and an additional material component costing 25gp x caster level x spell level. The DM may give these material components out as treasure, as well as completed spells. While most are rare, not all of them appear valuable at first glance. To prep a spell you craft it, which takes time, but using the prepped spell takes the usual casting time. The prepped spell could take the form of a potion (CLW), a bead (fireball), etc. These replaces the standard DnD expendable magic items. Even so, certain classes with the right skill list still have an advantage. The following skills are involved in prepping spells: appraise (assessing the value of rare items, which affects the effective caster level of the resulting spell) alchemy (making potions), survival (finding rare plants), knowledge (arcana) (knowing which rare items are spell components), spellcraft (recognizing the shiny orange bead to be a prepped fireball). This variant would also open up some room for flavor based on: the rare components, the incantations used while prepping the spells and the final form of the spell. It also lets the DM hand the players a bunch of oddball spells as treasure (either the rare component or the finished spell), which they could find interesting uses for. Or sell. Here's another magic system: Grant a different versatile spell-like ability each level. The player can choose any ability from the list of 20, no matter what their level. This system is multi-class friendly and prevents casters from becoming too powerful at high levels. It can even be used side by side with the other magic system above. Such a class would be good at that system too, as it would likely give alchemy, knowledge(arcana) and spellcraft as class skills. Perhaps more. Bold moves Nathreet very, very interesting. I may have to give those a shot. I'm not sure I would replace the current magic system with it, every time, but I may use it, every now and then. |
| Nathreet05-25-07, 11:06 PM | Bold moves Nathreet very, very interesting. I may have to give those a shot. I'm not sure I would replace the current magic system with it, every time, but I may use it, every now and then. Let me know how it turns out. PM me or something. I came up with it fairly recently and have never tried it. So I'd be very curious to see how it'd work out, if it needs rebalancing, etc. For example, the spell costs are half normal, or the same as what a caster would pay for a scroll. This might be a bit high or, since other classes don't face the restrictions that a caster does, it might be low. |
| PainTrain05-26-07, 01:31 AM | hehe well at least when you finish, if you ever are studying to get a PHD in anything, writing your disseration will be like a walk in the park.:D |
| not Yoda05-26-07, 12:17 PM | I came up with a blended style last night. using mana points, skill checks, and Recharging similar to ToB. FIrst allow me to explain the mana, how it is calsulated, it's use and its recovery. A caster has mana points equal to his/her level, plus the modifier from the relevant ability score. Raistlin is a 7th level Wizard with an 18 intelligence his mana pool is 11 points ( level 7 + Int bonus +4) Spells from level 0 to 3rd cost mana equal to their spell level. Spells with a duration longer than instant (ie. Rounds, minutes, hours, permanent) Reduce your mana pool maximum by one until the duration expires. Raistlin has cast Greater Mgic Weapon on his friend's weapon and cast Mage Armor on himself. Both have durations listed in hours. His maximum mana pool is depleted by 2 because he has 2 active spells. His temporary maximum is 9. Until those splle expire or are dismissed or dispelled. Mana returns at a rate of one point per round in which no mana is spent. Raistlin mana pool is currently at zero because he has been casting for several rounds now. He can still cast 0 level spells ( since their mana cost os 0). He chooses to do so, and at the beginning of his turn next round, he will have one mana point available. Now on to spells of 4th to 6th level. Mana is not used on these spells. The arcane forces are too great for mortals. Instead casters must beat a Concentration check DC to cast them or become Fatigued. The DC is set at the level of the spell (-4 to the check if the spell is the highest level that you an cast) DC's are cumulative until a caster receives 8 hours of rest as are the penalties. Raistlin, still 7th level, has a Concentration check modifier of +11 (10 ranks +1 From his relevant ability; Constitution 12). He will be able to cast 2, 4th level spells before he has to make a Concentration check when he casts a 3rd he has to make a check. (The DC is now 12 his roll is at a -4 because it is the highest level spell he can cast) This is a spike in power compared to the current system but it catches up with them, I assure you. Spells 7th-9th level have the same drawbacks and restrictions that 4th-6th have except that if you fail the DC you become Exhausted. Raistlin, now 18th level, has a Concentration check modifier of 27 (21 ranks, +4 ability Constsitution 18 +3 skill focus) Raistlin has cast 1-4th level spell, 2- 6th level spells and a 9th level spell His total DC so far is 25 easy enough to beat with a +27 (his last spell was cast at -4 to the roll because it was the highest level he could cast so he only needed a 2 or better) But things are going bad and he needs to PLane Shift his comrades out of danger the DC he has to meet is 32 (25 so far +7 for Plane Shift) He will need to roll a 5 or better to succeed in casting the spell save his comrades and avoid total exhaustion. His Bardic friend plays a tune to inspire him (just in case) adding +2 to the skill check. Raistlin now only needs a 3. He rolls a 16 (yeah, I had to do it) and saves the day. This method greatly expands the spellcasting ability at low levels while bringing higher level spells (that can be game beaking) back under control. I'd like to hear what you guys think about this one.:) |
| Dracomortis05-27-07, 10:19 AM | I don't know if it's been mentioned yet or not, but the various reserve feats (Complete Mage) can help arcane casters keep at least one ability reserved that they can use repeatedly. Basically, as long as you have at least one spell prepared of a given type and level (for example, one feat requires a spell of at least 2nd level with the fire descriptor), you can use a certain ability at will as a supernatural ability (the above example lets you shoot a bolt of fire that does 1d6 damage per level of the spell prepared). |
| highbulp05-27-07, 10:53 AM | What I find interesting is the number of systems that are moving away from the "per-day" encounter balance. The Warlock, ToB classes, and Binder (ToM) all have abilities that can be used an unlimited number of times per day. The Warlock is limited bythe power and number of those ability, and the ToB classes and Binder are limited both in the selection of abilities and how often they can be used (until recovered, or once every 5 rounds). I find that I really enjoy the systems behind these classes. You are never "out of things to do," and theoretically you are at the same power level if you fight a single battle in a day or 10 battles in a day--you can't really "nova" anymore. So I'd really like to see a magic system that worked on that basis--where each ability was balanced on a per-use basis, not on a per-day basis. |
| SKid405-27-07, 01:32 PM | Here's a completely untested idea that I had based on the psionic focus mechanic. MAGICAL FOCUS A magical focus allows spellcasters to cast and maintain spells. Each magical focus is associated with a specific spell level, and a spellcaster gains access to a magical focus whenever he would normally gain access to its associated spell level. For example, a 1st-level wizard has access to 0- and 1st-level spells, so he also has two magical foci: a 0-level magical focus and a 1st-level magical focus. A 4th-level paladin, however, has access to only 1st-level spells, so she gets only one—a 1st-level magical focus. The level of a magical focus determines the maximum spell level that can be cast with that particular magical focus. (So a 4th-level magical focus can be utilized to cast and maintain a single 0-, 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd-, or 4th-level spell.) Spellcasters that cast spontaneously, like sorcerers and bards, can utilize a magical focus to cast any spell they know. Spellcasters that don’t cast spontaneously, like wizards and clerics, can only utilize a magical focus to cast a spell that has been prepared (their daily allotment of spells acts as a spontaneous caster’s spells known). Utilizing a magical focus takes no time and is considered part of casting a spell. Once a spell has been cast, you can’t utilize the same magical focus until the spell’s duration ends and the magical focus has been replenished. Replenishing a magical focus requires a successful Concentration check (DC 15 + associated spell level) and takes 5 minutes per associated spell level (2 1/2 minutes for the 0-level magical focus). A spellcaster can choose to partially replenish a magical focus in order to cast a spell of a lower level sooner. The feats below enhance the use of magical foci. FOCUSED MEDITATION You can replenish a magical focus more rapidly. Prerequisites: Wis 13, Concentration 7 ranks. Benefit: Reduce the amount of time it takes you to replenish a magical focus by 1 minute per associated spell level (by 30 seconds for the 0-level focus). Special: You may select this feat up to four times, reducing the time it takes you to replenish a magical focus each time. FOCUSED MIND You can replenish a magical focus with ease. Prerequisites: Wis 13. Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus on Concentration checks to replenish a magical focus. |
| Ashanti05-29-07, 06:03 AM | I have been thinking about a per encounter method of managing spells. If we redo the spell progression table to something like this: Spells/encounter/level Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 3 1 5 3 2 6 3 3 7 3 3 1 8 3 3 2 9 3 3 3 10 3 3 3 1 11 3 3 3 2 12 3 3 3 3 13 3 3 3 3 1 14 3 3 3 3 2 15 3 3 3 3 3 16 3 3 3 3 3 1 17 3 3 3 3 3 2 18 3 3 3 3 3 3 19 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 20 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 This means low level wizards can do more than cast off their one spell a day system to a more user friendly one spell per encounter system but also the uber nature of high level casters in reduced. When not in combat you can cast spells as normal but each spell cast will reduce the number of spells available for the next encounter. This does not work well with Sorcs, but I don't really use them muchh in my game. Any comments? |
| Skeetweasel05-29-07, 08:28 PM | I agree that something needs to be done about spellcasting. I loathe the per day abilities of all classes as a player, which I rarely am, but more as a DM, almost every week. As a player I hate running out of spells. Or having to hold back that fireball because it might be more useful later. I want to contribute to every battle as a spellcaster, not just the "big" ones. As a DM, per day abilities eliminate the chance of having balanced encounters every time. When the players are fresh, sure they can handle that tough encounter. But if they adventure just one room too far, it could be a TPK because they were almost depleted from the start of the encounter. I let the players roll all the dice, so it is hard to pull back on the reigns if they aren't fresh or beef up the encounter because the caster went nova. And of course spellcasters with enough time are more dangerous than their CR, because enemy spellcasters always go nova. Enemy barbarians always rage too. Then I played a swordsage and it all became clear. This has to be the way to do spells. Tone them down. No more scaling. No more 400' + 40' per level distance. No more long durations. No more unbelievable per round damage that is "balanced" by per day uses. But let the spellcaster cast any known spell every encounter. You don't have to hold back. You might not be able to kill everything in 3 rounds, but you can be effective every round. Well you would have to recover spells like one of the martial adepts but from round one, you are helping, every encounter. I am glad others are concerned as I am. I am really fed up with D&D and I need to change my game to enjoy it again. Even before I read this I was going to tackle this problem with a couple of friends who I DM for. We will slowly develop the spellcasting classes and adapt both class and spell to the ToB style. This will be a slow process trying to balance it all. This will be a complete purge of per day uses accept magic items which do seem to be the right things in which to save for the right moment. If anyone has any opinions about this, I will read this thread daily or start a new one if needed. You may e-mail me at khrayt@gmail.com if you want direct contact. Thanks to anyone you even begins to think about a new method. |
| Werral05-30-07, 05:29 PM | How about grouping all the spells by type and make them a bit like feats. So to get Fireball you'd need to first take Burning hands then Flaming spere. To get Fly you'd need to take Mage Hand then Levitate and so on. You could encourage certain spell choices by the way you set up Spell Trees. Alternatively... Someone èointed out on another thread that if spells had a DC then you could have lots of casting and balance comes from the fact that you can fail to cast a spell. Here's my take on that idea: The DC could be based not just on the level of the spell but also on it's power (so you could cast a 5D6 fireball at a much lower DC then a 10D6 fireball). You could say that each type of magic is a seperate skill (though you'd buy them with Spell Points rather than Skill Points). Fire Spells say, Teleport spells, Illusion Spells... As you cast more spells the DC for spells of that type goes up. So after you cast Fireball the DC for all fire spells goes up till you rest. This would encourage spell casters to vary the kinds of spells they use. Counterspelling could be an opposed Spell check between spelcasters. Rather then spells having a duration the spellcaster could pay Manapoints to maintain them. If the spellcaster stops spending them or is knocked out/killed then the spell stops. So taking out the Buffer would end all the buffs she'd put in place. Spell Resitance adds to the DC of any spell cast against that creature (so SR would be measured by the bonus/penalty it gives) |
| CrazyOzzy05-31-07, 05:47 AM | I agree with everyone on this thread. The current magic system is outdated, rough and not fun for either players or DMs. There are alot of "magical" ideas here, keep it up! Personally, I have adopted the Ultimate Classes Zyrusticae was talking about which grant spellcasters invocations castable at will albeit at a lower CL. This gives casters a base pool of spells that they can draw from when they either do not have the proper spell prepared and they have no spell slots left. However I think I will try and add on this something along the lines of what not Yoda has suggested with casting causing Fatigue or Exhaustion. Either this, or implement spell points based on spells per day and add a new Stat called Mental Drain. This would be equal to your HP and every spell cast would cause your Mental Drain points to go up towards your threshold, in the same manner Non-Lethal works. |
| General Felire05-31-07, 11:43 PM | I too agree with the above posters. The current magic system needs to go, I think its clunky and no longer fits in current cultural standards of how magic works. Most people today want the type of magic system seen in Harry Potter rather than the fire-and-forget method that currently exists. I would be highly interested in working with you all to try and come up with another type of magic system. Some ideas. I should note that I would want a magic system where nothing truly is banned. What I mean by this is that mages must be able to cast healing magic and whatnot. I wouldn't mind a skill roll to see if one can gather enough magical energy to cast a spell. Nor would I mind using the concept of spell points, if that is the direction most want to go. Another thing I want is that the magic has no alignment - none of this negative energy is Evil and positive energy is good garbage. (Heck, a person dies just as surely by positive energy over saturation as they do because of negative saturation). Following that I think we would need to remove the concept that necromancy is bad, actually, the healing spells that I would want could fit under their almost perfectly. |
| Dracomortis06-01-07, 08:14 PM | Well, General Felire, if we went with the idea of skills that represent proficiency in magic, I think your idea of allowing mages to heal would actually work out - the skill dictating healing magic would simply be a cross-class skill for arcane casters, meaning that while they can cast it, they're not going to be able to cast it as effectively as, say, a cleric. So...how do we break down the spells into skills? Breaking them down by school seems to be the simplest way to do it, but then we have the problem of clerics being as adept at evocation as wizards, and wizards healing as well as clerics. Breaking them down by subschool would be very tedious and create some groups with very limited application (there's maybe five acid spells tops in core), although it does keep divine and arcane spells seperated rather nicely. It would seem that an entirely new classifying system is needed. Hmm. Could something like the skill system from the Elder Scrolls games work for what we want? It seems to cover just about every spell, allows for different classes to more easily cast certain types, and does not divide them into dozens of groups. |
| Ra-Tiel06-01-07, 08:39 PM | [...] Hmm. [...] Well, you could always keep the spell lists "as is" and transfer them directly to skills. Read: spellcasting(wizard), spellcasting(cleric), spellcasting(druid), etc. |
| Dracomortis06-01-07, 08:48 PM | Well, you could always keep the spell lists "as is" and transfer them directly to spells. Read: spellcasting(wizard), spellcasting(cleric), spellcasting(druid), etc. You know, that might actually work out rather well. Have a Spellcasting skill broken down into several different groups, much like the Knowledge skills. Paladins could use the cleric list and rangers could use tha druid list, with a limit on how high of a spell they can cast. Actually, this way we really need only four skills (possibly five, if we'd like to seperate sorcerers from wizards): Spellcasting (arcane): used for sorcerers and wizards. Spellcasting (bardic): used for bards. Spellcasting (divine): used for clerics and paladins. Spellcasting (natural): used for druids and rangers. Bard could possibly be folded into arcane, but they have enough unique spells on their class list that I feel they warrant their own group. |
| General Felire06-01-07, 10:37 PM | Well, General Felire, if we went with the idea of skills that represent proficiency in magic, I think your idea of allowing mages to heal would actually work out - the skill dictating healing magic would simply be a cross-class skill for arcane casters, meaning that while they can cast it, they're not going to be able to cast it as effectively as, say, a cleric. So...how do we break down the spells into skills? Breaking them down by school seems to be the simplest way to do it, but then we have the problem of clerics being as adept at evocation as wizards, and wizards healing as well as clerics. Breaking them down by subschool would be very tedious and create some groups with very limited application (there's maybe five acid spells tops in core), although it does keep divine and arcane spells seperated rather nicely. It would seem that an entirely new classifying system is needed. Hmm. Could something like the skill system from the Elder Scrolls games work for what we want? It seems to cover just about every spell, allows for different classes to more easily cast certain types, and does not divide them into dozens of groups. I like the concept of spells being like skills. It would allow characters to utilize their spell to the best of their abilities. Another aspect is that because a spell has levels than a check would be required. And since a chance of failure is always possible, it could make it more balanced. I personally think that we break it down by going through the spells of the core rulebook and deciding where it goes. If it doesn't make sense for a particular caster type to have it they don't get it. This would stop wizards having spells that say something like "you call down the god's to bless your people." Though I think to do this we will have to differentiate 'mundane skills' and 'magical skills.' I mean a magical class should not be penalized in his mundane learning because he spends his skills on magic. So, like normal, a spellcaster gets a certain amount of Skill Points per level. This can ONLY be used to increase the rank of mundane skills. In addition, spellcasters get access to Spell Points which are used to provide ability in a spell skill. Of course, then the question comes of what does having 7 ranks in a spell do to me compared to having 3 ranks. I am also guessing that a character cannot purchase ranks in a spell until he has access to that Level. Personally, this sort of magic works best with a 'spell point' system rather than a 'spell per day' system. I think that a big difference needs to be maintained between divine casters and arcane casters. I don't mean arcane magic and divine magic, but the people who use them. I think that if you are a cleric of a certain god you should only get powers based on what fits the god. So, maybe have all Gods spells in a number of categories - General, Battle, Civic, etc. This would stop a cleric of a god of trickery from having a spell that doesn't make sense for that god. It would also differentiate the difference between wizards and clerics - wizards have any spell they want, clerics have only those spells that their god allows. Actually, this could make having a party of 4 clerics from four different gods an interesting thing. If each cleric has entirely different spells than the others (except for some General spells) then they would be able to be individual rather than overlap. Well, you could always keep the spell lists "as is" and transfer them directly to spells. Read: spellcasting(wizard), spellcasting(cleric), spellcasting(druid), etc. I agree that we shouldn't change that much of individual spells. I think their is enough room in the spell rules for us to leave them as is. You know, that might actually work out rather well. Have a Spellcasting skill broken down into several different groups, much like the Knowledge skills. Paladins could use the cleric list and rangers could use tha druid list, with a limit on how high of a spell they can cast. Actually, this way we really need only four skills (possibly five, if we'd like to seperate sorcerers from wizards): Spellcasting (arcane): used for sorcerers and wizards. Spellcasting (bardic): used for bards. Spellcasting (divine): used for clerics and paladins. Spellcasting (natural): used for druids and rangers. Bard could possibly be folded into arcane, but they have enough unique spells on their class list that I feel they warrant their own group. First I want to say that I think Bardic and Arcane should be kept very very separate from each other. To me bards do magic differently even though they use the spell rules. I think that sorcerers and wizards should be rolled into one class. I personally don't see the need to have them be different in this system. Using this system all spellcasters are spontaneous and no preparation is required and so the main difference between sorcerers and wizards are removed. ++++ Using the above the things I think we need to work on collectively are: 1) First, I think we need to differentiate arcane casters from divine casters in a big way. Right now it is only the fluff that separates divine casters from arcane, in that they both use the same spell system. For divine casters, since its the gods that give them powers, they should not have to roll a DC check to see if they succeed. Its the power of the gods that are granting them their power, not their own personal ability. Second, I think we need to limit what clerics can cast to only what their gods would give them. This gives much greater differences between clerics - some clerics do battle very very well, some clerics heal very very well, some clerics are good talkers, some clerics are good at providing things to the poor, etc. 2) Personally, I really like the idea of using the Prestige Bard and Prestige Paladin found in Unearthed Arcana. To me both type of casters are something one becomes later (a holy warrior is a standard fighter on steroids, or a priest who has answered the call of battle). I am highly able to remove this concept. 3) I think spell point system needs to be implemented. Casters have magical energy they use to cast spells which recharge at a rate that varies. 4) A magical skill point system should also be used. This would make it so that we could tell the difference between having 3 ranks in Fireball and 9 ranks in fireball. 5) Roll the Sorcerer and Wizard class into one caster. 6) All casters are spontaneous casters with unlimited ability to use spells and know spells. Of course a caster check needs to be made to cast a spell, failure could cause problems. In addition, characters need to have ranks in the magical skill of their spell otherwise they cannot use it. 7) Speaking of skill, we need to give all spellcasters 'spell skill points' so that they can have magical spells without impacting their normal skills. In low magical games DMs can assign lower numbers of points, in higher magic games more points can be given to characters. 8) I like the ability of using ones constitution if one runs out of spell points - this could use the Vitality System. It will allow for the concept of casters that are pretty much out of it, finding just the last amount of energy they need to cast a spell, but them falling unconscious right after. 9) I just realized something, did you mean that each spell they have is a separate skill or that certain magical skills cover multiple spells. If the first then that is what I answered. If the second, then oops, I misunderstood what you first typed. I kinda like my first thought that each spell is a separate skill, though the second method could work as well. So, with all the above written, what do you all think. |
| Xaer06-01-07, 11:15 PM | 1) I do indeed like that idea, though I'm not entirely sure how'd you put that together without abuse(aka, how "really" is "really good", and how much would the caster lose in places outside his or her religious domain). 2) Not entirely sure about the prestige bard, but I generally like the idea of a paladin being a fighter or cleric that decides to go further rather than a poor orphan who wants to do good in the world and becoming a first rate fighter/divine caster immediately. 3) I generally play MP style set up where the MP costs are: 0th - 1MP 1st - 2MP 2nd - 3MP 3rd - 5MP 4th - 7MP 5th - 9MP 6th - 11MP 7th - 13MP 8th - 15MP 9th - 17MP and the players gain MP as per an MPDie(like HP). Noncasters gain a d4 per level, low casters(ranger/pally) get a d6, midcasters(bard) gain d8, and full casters(cleric/druid/sorc/wiz) get a d10. Similar to a CON boost, anyone in a caster class also adds 1/2 their spellcasting ability modifier to the amount every levelup. Thoughts? 4) Possibly for some campaign worlds, though I think for standard dnd, keep with the usual caster level system. 5) I tend to agree with this, despite the whining of my players, as under the MP system, there's not too much difference between the two until higher levels, where wizards win hardcore. 6) All casters are spontaneous, though there would the the MP that limits spells per day. However, as a character levels up, casting a cantrip or level 1 spell is very easy to deal with, especially when the character gets to triple digits. 7) See point 4. 8) As point 4, generally I like this for the world idea of "magic isn't easy", where casting magic is strenuous, and after using your energy, it begins to damage physically. 9) I think he meant the second one, though I could see the merits of both. Under the skill per spell one, it would be very useful in a limited caster setting, where casters are powerful, but don't know many spells. An epic sorc could have trained for years to have the most potent fireball possible, but couldn't do flip with other spells. I do think this would be hard on beginner players, though, and it causes issues for tree spells(Summon 1,2,3...). Perhaps a change on how those work, so that you could have the summon monster skill, and adding ranks increases the HD(and therefore the type) of things you could call. If it was skills for overall, then there's not too much point, as the caster would just throw his skill points into his skill and move along. It could prompt fun things with classes if you allow the skill to be crossclassed after taking a level in the class that opens it initially, so even when leveling something like a fighter, a sorceror could keep leveling spells to an extent. |
| General Felire06-02-07, 01:41 AM | 1) I do indeed like that idea, though I'm not entirely sure how'd you put that together without abuse(aka, how "really" is "really good", and how much would the caster lose in places outside his or her religious domain). 2) Not entirely sure about the prestige bard, but I generally like the idea of a paladin being a fighter or cleric that decides to go further rather than a poor orphan who wants to do good in the world and becoming a first rate fighter/divine caster immediately. 3) I generally play MP style set up where the MP costs are: 0th - 1MP 1st - 2MP 2nd - 3MP 3rd - 5MP 4th - 7MP 5th - 9MP 6th - 11MP 7th - 13MP 8th - 15MP 9th - 17MP and the players gain MP as per an MPDie(like HP). Noncasters gain a d4 per level, low casters(ranger/pally) get a d6, midcasters(bard) gain d8, and full casters(cleric/druid/sorc/wiz) get a d10. Similar to a CON boost, anyone in a caster class also adds 1/2 their spellcasting ability modifier to the amount every levelup. Thoughts? 4) Possibly for some campaign worlds, though I think for standard dnd, keep with the usual caster level system. 5) I tend to agree with this, despite the whining of my players, as under the MP system, there's not too much difference between the two until higher levels, where wizards win hardcore. 6) All casters are spontaneous, though there would the the MP that limits spells per day. However, as a character levels up, casting a cantrip or level 1 spell is very easy to deal with, especially when the character gets to triple digits. 7) See point 4. 8) As point 4, generally I like this for the world idea of "magic isn't easy", where casting magic is strenuous, and after using your energy, it begins to damage physically. 9) I think he meant the second one, though I could see the merits of both. Under the skill per spell one, it would be very useful in a limited caster setting, where casters are powerful, but don't know many spells. An epic sorc could have trained for years to have the most potent fireball possible, but couldn't do flip with other spells. I do think this would be hard on beginner players, though, and it causes issues for tree spells(Summon 1,2,3...). Perhaps a change on how those work, so that you could have the summon monster skill, and adding ranks increases the HD(and therefore the type) of things you could call. If it was skills for overall, then there's not too much point, as the caster would just throw his skill points into his skill and move along. It could prompt fun things with classes if you allow the skill to be crossclassed after taking a level in the class that opens it initially, so even when leveling something like a fighter, a sorceror could keep leveling spells to an extent. 1) I gotta say I really like number 1, though it truly has more to do with class changes than magic system changes. This will be something that I think I need to look into. Maybe when I get some more free time I will make a thread about it. I will say this, its the DM that makes the clerical spell list for that deity, not the player. This means that the player won't truly have a say in it, though if they find a spell that completely fits in the concept of the god, well, they should get the spell. Number wise, I figure that it will be balanced around a particular number of spells that all get. For example, (and I am throwing this out through randomness) I could say that all clerical spell lists have 50 spells. That means all clerics have that many spells, now which 50 spells each cleric gets is different depending on the concept of the gods. Looking at the above, I really think I need to make a thread. Oh, well eventually. :) 2) I am of mixed thought on the Bard. I have no problem with the magical musician and lore master I just dislike them having spells in the same sense of wizards. One idea I could do on this is to look at some of the other newly designed magic systems and see which one best captures the 'feel' of bardic knowledge to me. About the Paladin, yeah, I've always thought the same. Paladins, too me, are experienced holy warriors that have years of both priestly devotion and combat under their belt. Them being a core class ruins that feel for me, but making them a 15th level Prestige Class fits perfectly, especially if some of the precursor levels are in a combination of Fighter and Cleric. I think I like that actually, hmm. 3) I gotta ask, and I've never understood this, but why not make the cost of a spell equal its level (so a level 1 spell costs 1 point, and a 9th level spell costs 9 points). Why do I need to have such complicated math. I must say though that I like the concept that all individuals get spell casting ability, even if quite limited. I think it has a great deal of sense and fits a lot of settings. So, I very much like that concept you presented. 4) Isn't that with everything though, no single system with satisfy all games. Its probably better to design a middle of the road system so that people on either side of the spectrum (both low and high) can use the rules with just slight modifications. 5) Yeah, exactly. Currently, the majority of the difference is in the fluff text, and in many of my games only those with a certain ability to touch magic can be a wizard. So, I figure that make them one and allow for prestige classes if individual players want to do it differently. 6) I think its good that all spellcasters are spontaneous. I don't think there should be limits on how many spells per day. I mean as long as you have the spell points you should be able to cast whatever spell you choose that on your list. People complain about novas but just thing about it, if a player uses all the spell points by casting the same massive spell then they won't have any spell points for other spells and battles during the recharge period. Thus there is no problem. If you make the higher and highly dangerous-in-the-hands-of-players powers cost XP or have some sort of restriction or penalty then the problem is even more removed. I just don't see a problem with allowing a spellcaster to use his spells as many times as he wants until he runs out of spell points. What you could do is make it so that all 9th level spells have a limit. Or you could make it so that rolls need to be cast, and failure on it costs constitution damage or whatever kind of damage. Maybe I am missing something that has not occurred in the almost-dozen games I have both been in and run. :) 8) Yeah, its a great concept and works even in high magic campaigns. It works especially well in low magic campaigns as well. I figure what you do is either decrease (for low magic) or increase (for high magical campaigns) the amount of spell points you get. That way a player is not at risk in a high campaign until the very bottom of the very huge barrel. In a low magic game the small pool will cause players that cast to much time to constantly reach into their personal ability when casting spells. Thus it works for almost all sorts of games. 9) First i want to say that yeah I figured he meant the second type, oops. :) Second, I like the concept of a character slowly increasing spellcasting even though he has multiclassed into another class. It would allow a predominant fighter to have a small ability to cast spells because he took a single level, it would be a very very slow rise but it would allow him to gain things without having to loose his main focus. This sort of thing would only work in campaigns in which magic is something somewhat common or where the multiclass is representing not the wizard leaving being a wizard but rather him trying to learn something new. Even though he loosing some of his spellcasting growth speed he still does gain levels of magical ability over time. I very much like that. About skill per spell. Well the amount of spells a character could have would be based on the amount of 'magical skill points' that is given to them based on class. If you have a small number then it means you only could know a small number of spells. If you are given a large (or extremely, hugely large) number of points then you could learn a lot. Less points equal less magic, or less spells per wizard. More points could mean more magic in the world or more spells known by the various spellcaster classes. Again, this system would be somewhat modular and allow various DMs to modify it as they see fit. I think that the higher the skill levels in a spell the more that you could do with it. Using your summoning example by having a certain number in the base spell will allow me to get access to the second spell in the list. Which is exactly like you suggest and I like. I think there is nothing wrong with a character having a lot of spells with low skill totals, a character with small amount of spells with high totals, or a character having a mixed number of spells with both low and high totals. I think it balances it out in the long run. In addition, if a GM knows that a player has spent the majority of his spell skills in a fireball spell then he has the right to make the major enemy they face resistant to fire. It will teach a player not to be dependent on one particular ability at the expense of other abilities. |
| Dracomortis06-02-07, 10:42 AM | I think the skills should govern groups of spells, rather than a single individual spell, if only because having one for each spell creates far too many skills (especially if you're a generalist and you want to have a wide range of spells, albeit with low ranks in the skills, you'd have to keep track of literally dozens of different skills). As said before, more ranks in a skill could unlock additional abilities in a given spell. For example, perhaps when you have 10 or more ranks in "Fire Casting", the radius of your fireball spells increases by 10 feet, or perhaps the damage cap on burning hands goes up. 20 ranks in Fire Casting might let you treat the level increase of spells using metamagic by 1 (to a minimum of +0), so that you could apply Silent Spell or Still Spell to spells of the fire class for no adjustment. |
| Xaer06-02-07, 02:34 PM | Thoughts on that idea: Have the skills for spell types: things like fire casting, illusion, etc... Have that as you level in a magic class, you gain an increase to the max amount of points you can put in that classes' skills, and the class gains bonus skill points that can only be applied to those spell skills. If a wizard takes a level of fighter, he'd have to spend normal skill points on those skills, and he couldn't increase past his skill point cap. As for improving spells as the ranks go up, it would depend on the spell type, but I imagine a bulk descriptor for the topic such as this: Fire Casting Components: S,V Save: Reflex Half Duration: Instantaneous Range: 40ft+5ft per rank Area: 5ft+5ft per 2 ranks Damage: 1d6 per rank So someone casting a fire spell with 8 ranks in it could deal up to 80ft range, 25ft area, and 8d6 damage. Note that casters would be allowed to cast spells as if they had less ranks in the skill, thus downplaying all three factors. I would think under this system that the spells go towards a casting exclusion idea of MP, where casters have a set amount of MP, maybe minorly changed by casting attribute, but instead of spells growing in MP cost, spells of a certain rank go down in cost based on the caster's ranks in the spell skill. Obviously casting a rank 1 fire spell is no effort to a caster than can throw a rank 20 spell. Thoughts? |
| Werral06-02-07, 06:27 PM | Instead of a set effect per rank why not just give each effect a DC? That way the spellcsater decides whether to go for a weaker effect that'll work for sure or a more powerful effect that mght no work at all. Rather then having Magic Points just use circumstance penalties: Every use of a spell gives you a circumstance penalty to further spellcasting. That way as you cast spells the effective DC's go up and you're first forced to use easier spells and then to stop. Resting removes the penalties. |
| General Felire06-02-07, 09:59 PM | I think the skills should govern groups of spells, rather than a single individual spell, if only because having one for each spell creates far too many skills (especially if you're a generalist and you want to have a wide range of spells, albeit with low ranks in the skills, you'd have to keep track of literally dozens of different skills). As said before, more ranks in a skill could unlock additional abilities in a given spell. For example, perhaps when you have 10 or more ranks in "Fire Casting", the radius of your fireball spells increases by 10 feet, or perhaps the damage cap on burning hands goes up. 20 ranks in Fire Casting might let you treat the level increase of spells using metamagic by 1 (to a minimum of +0), so that you could apply Silent Spell or Still Spell to spells of the fire class for no adjustment. Well, you would have to keep track of all your spells anyway, so keeping track of the skill level of each spell wouldn't be that much harder. At least thats my thinking. But having groups of spells have a single Skill makes sense and I have no problem with it. I still think that the points for spell skills should come from a separate category them normal skills. Thus this won't penalize a spellcaster by having him reduce the number of normal skills he can have. I like your ideas for skill ranks, I think they make sense and are very worthwhile. Thoughts on that idea: Have the skills for spell types: things like fire casting, illusion, etc... Have that as you level in a magic class, you gain an increase to the max amount of points you can put in that classes' skills, and the class gains bonus skill points that can only be applied to those spell skills. If a wizard takes a level of fighter, he'd have to spend normal skill points on those skills, and he couldn't increase past his skill point cap. As for improving spells as the ranks go up, it would depend on the spell type, but I imagine a bulk descriptor for the topic such as this: Fire Casting Components: S,V Save: Reflex Half Duration: Instantaneous Range: 40ft+5ft per rank Area: 5ft+5ft per 2 ranks Damage: 1d6 per rank So someone casting a fire spell with 8 ranks in it could deal up to 80ft range, 25ft area, and 8d6 damage. Note that casters would be allowed to cast spells as if they had less ranks in the skill, thus downplaying all three factors. I would think under this system that the spells go towards a casting exclusion idea of MP, where casters have a set amount of MP, maybe minorly changed by casting attribute, but instead of spells growing in MP cost, spells of a certain rank go down in cost based on the caster's ranks in the spell skill. Obviously casting a rank 1 fire spell is no effort to a caster than can throw a rank 20 spell. Thoughts? It seems most want a small number of extra skills that cover extensive categories. That's cool and I have no problem with that. I really like the idea of a base wizard getting skill spell points that can be used to boost magical skills. But that if he multiclass he must use his normal skill points instead of having extra numbers. I like that, it is balancing and allows a player to continually improve his magical abilities even if he does nto have a magical class - at the expense of normal skills. I like this idea, the basic way that ranks work make sense. I'm not sure what you mean by the casting exclusion - if you mean that you can't cast the same spell over and over agin, then I strongly disagree with that. If you have the points then I think a player has every right to choose to utilize any spell he has. The penalty comes in that if he spends a lot of points on a high level spell over and over again he won't have any points left over for other effects later on in the day. I don't think players should be banned from casting their highest spells as much as they want - as long as they have the points to cover the cost. I also like the fact that a character can choose to reduce his apparent rating in a spell skill. This makes sense, and is pretty much providing a scaling option, which is always good. Instead of a set effect per rank why not just give each effect a DC? That way the spellcsater decides whether to go for a weaker effect that'll work for sure or a more powerful effect that mght no work at all. Rather then having Magic Points just use circumstance penalties: Every use of a spell gives you a circumstance penalty to further spellcasting. That way as you cast spells the effective DC's go up and you're first forced to use easier spells and then to stop. Resting removes the penalties. I don't like circumstance penalties, I dislike it immensely. I like magic point systems and I think that a player has the right to cast whatever spell he wnats over and over again. Some of those really extreme spells should have added costs - expensive components, long casting times, high costs, experience points, etc. I don't think that they should actively be said to only use a given spell once or twice. I don't like that, its limiting, restricting and not the way I think this needs to go. In addition, while I have no problem with DCs for spells, this will mean that we have to go over every spell and add DCs. That could be very hard to do. Keeping spell levels allows us to use the basic rules already present. I just want to note, by the way, that my vehement hatred of casting restrictions is not an attack on any person here. I do have a question though, what will be the renewal for magic points be. Days, hours, constant, or something else. Personally, I think we should remove the rest before return and replace it with an almost constant recharge of points. |
| Xaer06-02-07, 10:31 PM | By casting exclusion, I didn't mean to stop repeated castings. I meant that as casters reach high level, their older spells that used to be very hard to do are now easy, so easy that they can recover that amount of mana by the next round, costing essentially 0MP. For the requirements for excessive spells, I simply think notes should be given on effects, such as casting a wish spell has a 5000XP cost. For example, a Polymorph spell skill could make a note that casting at a rank high enough to replicate shapechange would cost that expensive focus. Personally, though, I don't play with material components, so I'm not the best arguer about it. DCs I assumed that it would be based upon the effective spell level recreated. Example: A wizard casts a fire spell that has three ranks in the skill. The DC would be as a 2nd level spell, as that would be the effective spell replicated. Recharge I'm not sure on. While the idea of recharge is tempting, it's much less binding than perday points, and leaves itself open to abuse. I'd rather try to find a good idea of how MP would work before deciding how to replenish it. |
| General Felire06-02-07, 10:49 PM | By casting exclusion, I didn't mean to stop repeated castings. I meant that as casters reach high level, their older spells that used to be very hard to do are now easy, so easy that they can recover that amount of mana by the next round, costing essentially 0MP. For the requirements for excessive spells, I simply think notes should be given on effects, such as casting a wish spell has a 5000XP cost. For example, a Polymorph spell skill could make a note that casting at a rank high enough to replicate shapechange would cost that expensive focus. Personally, though, I don't play with material components, so I'm not the best arguer about it. DCs I assumed that it would be based upon the effective spell level recreated. Example: A wizard casts a fire spell that has three ranks in the skill. The DC would be as a 2nd level spell, as that would be the effective spell replicated. Recharge I'm not sure on. While the idea of recharge is tempting, it's much less binding than perday points, and leaves itself open to abuse. I'd rather try to find a good idea of how MP would work before deciding how to replenish it. First of all, cool. I like the idea of decreasing the hardness of casting as one goes up in ability. It makes perfect sense that by the time I get to cast really high level spells my medium and low spells will be so easy as to be effortless. Practice makes perfect and the wizard is quite beyond the basics. So, yeah, on that I absolutely 100% agree with you. Cost on repeating spells need to be paid, and so I agree with you. In addition you must follow the rules of the spell, which trumps general rules. So, say, in general, that a spell can be cast as many times as one wants. Well, say that a particular spell (say Wish) has it in the rules for the spell 'do to the nature of this magic, this spell can only be cast x amount of times per day" Well, that rule overrules the original rule of 'as many times as one wants.' Thus balance is achieved. I also do not use material components and so I am not the best judge on it. Right, I get you concept for DC. But then we will have to come up with what the DC for 2nd level spells is. I wouldn't have a problem with keeping the recharge rate to be after a 24 hour period. I just think it would be better and 'more' realistic if one recharges much quicker. But this is something I won't fight about as it truly does not bother me. Not like the repeat restrictions, the preparation removal, the adoption of some sort of spell point system, etc. |
| Xaer06-02-07, 11:12 PM | For DCs, I assumed we'd keep the 10+Spell Level+Ability, so a wizard's rank 3 spell would be 10+2+INT. How's this for a starter idea on MP? Casters have 50MP, +2 times the casting ability modifier. A spell costs 10MP, minus one for every rank that spell is under the max rank for that spell. For example, casting a rank 1 fire spell when the caster can cast up to rank six would only be 5 MP. MP would replenish at the rate of 1 per round. Benefits: No set limit on spells, casters can mix and match, and are even encouraged to not use their highest level spells. Consequences: A caster has duration issues, and will run out of spells much quicker than a normal system, though he regenerates it much faster. Rank system idea A caster gains 6 spellskill points, which can be allocated among various spell trees. The max rank of points in the spelltrees is dependant on the classes that grant those specific trees. Example: Bob the mage levels up five times in sorceror. He now has a max rank of 5 in sorcerous spell trees, such as fire magic or illusion magic. Bob then gains a level of cleric. In trees that overlap, such as fire magic, he can now have 6 ranks. However, in exclusive trees, such as healing magic, he can only have 1 rank. Thoughts? |
| General Felire06-03-07, 12:04 AM | For DCs, I assumed we'd keep the 10+Spell Level+Ability, so a wizard's rank 3 spell would be 10+2+INT. How's this for a starter idea on MP? Casters have 50MP, +2 times the casting ability modifier. A spell costs 10MP, minus one for every rank that spell is under the max rank for that spell. For example, casting a rank 1 fire spell when the caster can cast up to rank six would only be 5 MP. MP would replenish at the rate of 1 per round. Benefits: No set limit on spells, casters can mix and match, and are even encouraged to not use their highest level spells. Consequences: A caster has duration issues, and will run out of spells much quicker than a normal system, though he regenerates it much faster. Rank system idea A caster gains 6 spellskill points, which can be allocated among various spell trees. The max rank of points in the spelltrees is dependant on the classes that grant those specific trees. Example: Bob the mage levels up five times in sorceror. He now has a max rank of 5 in sorcerous spell trees, such as fire magic or illusion magic. Bob then gains a level of cleric. In trees that overlap, such as fire magic, he can now have 6 ranks. However, in exclusive trees, such as healing magic, he can only have 1 rank. Thoughts? I like the ideas you present, I think they are very good and make sense. Why would the DC the character has to beat be increased based on the ability score of a character. That is penalizing a character for being smart, that doesn't make sense. I think (10 + spell level) could work though it means the highest rank spells (9th level) only has a DC of 19. This seems kinda low for a DC check. I think we need to increase DCs. First, why 50 MP. Can I ask where you got that number. It seems low. Maybe it would be better to have MP (I like using the word magic point and will adopt it from now on in this thread) that depends on character level. Kinda like the way it currently exists in the spell point variants. I think spells of various levels should cost more than those of lower levels. Maybe have a cost for the spells be something like [10 + (spell level x2)]. Thus level one spells cost 11 points and level 9 spells cost 28. One then reduces this by the ranks they have in the relevant spell skill. Beyond that I like it, I think ti works and I think it covers a lot of ground. I have no problem with the concept that the highest skill in a magical skill equals that of the class level. Actually, thinking about it, maybe we should make the highest skill point equal to (spellcaster class levels + 1/2 non-spellcaster class levels). This allows a character to contiunue to develop his magical potential (at a much slower rate) even if he stops taking spellcasting classes. It should be noted that spellcaster classes give spell skill points per level while nonmagical classes don't. Thus a character that wants to increase his spellcasting ability without taking more levels of a magical class needs to use his precious normal skill points. Example: A 5th level Wizard will be able to have up to 5 levels in a magical skill. Example 2: A 5th-level Wizard/4th-level Fighter will be able to have up to 7 ranks in a magical skill. One of the things I think needs to be implemented is the removal of stupid restrictions on what casters can cast. By this I mean wizards should be able to cast healing spells completely normally. Their is no practical reason why they can't and I think that the division needs to be removed. I also think that sorcerer and wizard should be rolled into one class. The differences that make them 'okay' in normal are removed from this variant. +++ Maybe we should come up with the kinds of Spell Skills that will be used. -Elemental - (one can break this up into the different elements if one wants to, some games that won't be needed) -Illusion -Conjuration -Healing -Summoning -Divination -Transmutation Or we could make it even more smaller grouped. |
| Xaer06-03-07, 09:57 AM | A more expanded list, covering all the types of magic I could find. The top list is all the spell types based off of the sorceror list, and the rest are the extra types for clerics and druids. Fire Magic(Various) Ice Magic(Various) Lightning Magic(Various) Acid Magic(Various) Sonic Magic(Various) Detection Magic(Divination) Comprehension Magic(Divination) Foresight Magic(Divination) Summon Magic(Conjuration) Rune Magic(Conjuration) Fabrication Magic(Conjuration) Manipulation Magic(Enchantment) Morale Magic(Enchantment) Light/Darkness Magic(Evocation) Force Magic(Various) Masking Magic(Illusion) Image Magic(Illusion) Death Magic(Necromancy) Drain Magic(Necromancy) Undead Magic(Necromancy) Buff Magic(Transmutation) Item Enhancement Magic(Transmutation) Polymorph Magic(Transmutation) Time Magic(Transmutation) Cleric Magic(Possibly a skill for each domain the cleric has taken?) Smite Magic(Various) Holy Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Bane Magic(Various) Negative Magic(Various) Harming Magic(Conjuration) Druid Magic Animal Magic(Various) Plant Magic(Various) Elemental Magic(Various) Object Maniplulation Magic(Transmutation) Weather Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Still need to figure out what to do with wish spells. As for the DCs, I was thinking of save DCs, not casting DCs, sorry. Thoughts? |
| Dracomortis06-03-07, 10:05 AM | Maybe we should come up with the kinds of Spell Skills that will be used. -Elemental - (one can break this up into the different elements if one wants to, some games that won't be needed) -Illusion -Conjuration -Healing -Summoning -Divination -Transmutation Or we could make it even more smaller grouped. Actually, I think we could consolidate this a bit. Most conjuration spells are either going to be elemental (i.e. wall of fire, orb of electricity) or summoning (summon monster, summn swarm), so summoning could probably fold into conjuration. We'd also need a group for necromancy, one for abjuration (its possible that most of these could fold into other groups), and one for enchantment. Evocation is pretty much covered by the other groups. |
| Xaer06-03-07, 10:52 AM | I was thinking the increase simply due to the menagerie of spell types thrown into each catagory. A polymorph spell is radically different from a time stop spell, yet they're both in transmutation. One transmutation catagory doesn't really cover it. |
| Werral06-03-07, 12:07 PM | Spells themselves could function like Skill Tricks (Complete Scoundrel). Wish could require high ranks in ALL forms of magic. It's a kind of Uber spell so it should recquire a complete mastery of magic. Limited Wish would be similar, but recquire lower ranks. |
| SKid406-03-07, 01:47 PM | I don't know if this will help at all, but Unearthed Arcana included rules on making new incantations, including starting DCs & modifiers for the 8 schools of magic. That's a bit like the spell DCs you've been considering, and the ranges and durations of incantations are much more uniform. There's also the magic rating variant that replaces caster level. Again, I don't know if any of this helps or if it's too different from the direction things are being taken. I'm just interested in the final result, even if it's starting to look like some 3rd party products that have already come out. |
| Xaer06-03-07, 03:16 PM | Werral: Please explain skill tricks, I don't have that book. As for wish, perhaps a requirement of having several spells of rank 17, just to say that you need to have reached high magic in several things, not just spread your skill points around to have all spells but only at rank 8 or so. For the other universal spells, permanency and limited wish, I assumed limited wish would work like wish wit hless requirements, and permanency would be an offshoot of time magic. SKid4: The magic rating variant is similar, though not quite like what we had in mind. We were working towards where if a noncaster class wanted to add points to spells, he would have to sacrifice skill points for it, something that the rating system doesn't bother with. |
| General Felire06-03-07, 03:59 PM | A more expanded list, covering all the types of magic I could find. The top list is all the spell types based off of the sorceror list, and the rest are the extra types for clerics and druids. Fire Magic(Various) Ice Magic(Various) Lightning Magic(Various) Acid Magic(Various) Sonic Magic(Various) Detection Magic(Divination Comprehension Magic(Divination) Foresight Magic(Divination) Summon Magic(Conjuration) Rune Magic(Conjuration) Fabrication Magic(Conjuration) Manipulation Magic(Enchantment) Morale Magic(Enchantment) Light/Darkness Magic(Evocation) Force Magic(Various) Masking Magic(Illusion) Image Magic(Illusion) Death Magic(Necromancy) Drain Magic(Necromancy) Undead Magic(Necromancy) Buff Magic(Transmutation) Item Enhancement Magic(Transmutation) Polymorph Magic(Transmutation) Time Magic(Transmutation) Cleric Magic(Possibly a skill for each domain the cleric has taken?) Smite Magic(Various) Holy Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Bane Magic(Various) Negative Magic(Various) Harming Magic(Conjuration) Druid Magic Animal Magic(Various) Plant Magic(Various) Elemental Magic(Various) Object Maniplulation Magic(Transmutation) Weather Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Still need to figure out what to do with wish spells. As for the DCs, I was thinking of save DCs, not casting DCs, sorry. Thoughts? For wish and other such uber spells I like the below idea of making it a sort of Arch school in which one needs to have a certain minimum in a certain number of categories. Wish is pretty much going past normal spellcasting and connecting directly with magic - a feat that requires extensive knowledge of all other forms of magic. I've said this before and I'll say it again (:)), but I think Wizards should get every category that is not directly related to the gods. So such magic like Bane, Holy, Smiting, and Clerical would be banned but not the rest. Wizards should have no problem healing or talking to animals, or anything like that. I do want to ask what Negative Magic is, is it an effect that uses negative energy. If so then shouldn't a Positive Magic category be created for the use of positive energy. Other than the above comments I don't really have a problem with the categories that you presented. I think they work. Personally I think Wizards should get around 12 spell skill points a level. This will allow the boosting of a lot of categories. It can be decreased or increased for low magic or high magic games. Low Magic - 6 points High Magic - 18 or even 24 Oh, save DC okay. I get that. :) But we are still using caster level so I think that should still apply, at least somewhat. Actually, I think we could consolidate this a bit. Most conjuration spells are either going to be elemental (i.e. wall of fire, orb of electricity) or summoning (summon monster, summn swarm), so summoning could probably fold into conjuration. We'd also need a group for necromancy, one for abjuration (its possible that most of these could fold into other groups), and one for enchantment. Evocation is pretty much covered by the other groups. I gotta say that I honestly like Xaer's choice of spell categories. Its a lot but I figure that if the character gets a lot of spell skill points he should be fine. I was thinking the increase simply due to the menagerie of spell types thrown into each catagory. A polymorph spell is radically different from a time stop spell, yet they're both in transmutation. One transmutation catagory doesn't really cover it. I agree. I think spells need to be where they are closest and because of that broad categories are not the best. Idea, maybe knowledge of two or more categories can provide synergy bonuses. Spells themselves could function like Skill Tricks (Complete Scoundrel). Wish could require high ranks in ALL forms of magic. It's a kind of Uber spell so it should recquire a complete mastery of magic. Limited Wish would be similar, but recquire lower ranks. I would love to look into your suggestion of Complete Scoundrel, but its seems I never bought it. :) Can you explain it a little bit. I like your idea on the Wish and Limited Wish spells. Currently they are 9th level and so the highest level possible. But making it this way will make it even harder, though the hardness will come and help the wizards in other ways over time. So, yeah, I think we should so something like that - make all categories known at a certain level before one can learn the spell. I don't know if this will help at all, but Unearthed Arcana included rules on making new incantations, including starting DCs & modifiers for the 8 schools of magic. That's a bit like the spell DCs you've been considering, and the ranges and durations of incantations are much more uniform. There's also the magic rating variant that replaces caster level. Again, I don't know if any of this helps or if it's too different from the direction things are being taken. I'm just interested in the final result, even if it's starting to look like some 3rd party products that have already come out. Actually SKid4, it helps. In fact it is quite useful for it provides us with a basic DC range of the various schools. This could be used as a basis for what we are doing in our spell category system. Again, it is useful. Actually, the magic rating is extremely useful. It allows us to have a mechanic for the continued growth of magical ability even when not taking magical classes. I like this variant and think that we should use it. What 3rd party products does this look like? I ask cause I might own them and then I could use some of the ideas presented there to guide this. :) Werral: Please explain skill tricks, I don't have that book. As for wish, perhaps a requirement of having several spells of rank 17, just to say that you need to have reached high magic in several things, not just spread your skill points around to have all spells but only at rank 8 or so. For the other universal spells, permanency and limited wish, I assumed limited wish would work like wish wit hless requirements, and permanency would be an offshoot of time magic. SKid4: The magic rating variant is similar, though not quite like what we had in mind. We were working towards where if a noncaster class wanted to add points to spells, he would have to sacrifice skill points for it, something that the rating system doesn't bother with. I agree with you for Wish and other like spells. I think high levels in a lot of categories would be needed. I am not sure about permanency, though it could probably be the same. Right, funny enough, I forgot about that aspect. Though I do like the magic rating variant I like the way we have done it ourself. That means that a Wizard/Fighter could continue to grow in magical knowledge but must use his regular skill points and so has access to less regular skills. |
| Werral06-03-07, 04:13 PM | Werral: Please explain skill tricks, I don't have that book. As for wish, perhaps a requirement of having several spells of rank 17, just to say that you need to have reached high magic in several things, not just spread your skill points around to have all spells but only at rank 8 or so. For the other universal spells, permanency and limited wish, I assumed limited wish would work like wish wit hless requirements, and permanency would be an offshoot of time magic. Skill Tricks are similar to feats in that they have prerequisites but are bought at a cost of 2 skill points and enable a special use of that skill. So rather than going from tumbling rank 10 to rank 12 you could learn a skill trick that say, lets you bounce of the wall as a special manouver. So Fire magic could be quite general but a wall of fire could be a spell trick (since it's an unusual use of fire). I agree as to Wish, Limited Wish and so on, though I think permanency isn't so much an effect of Time Magic as a kind of Metamagic Spell. Maybe Metamagic could be a list too, and include teh metamagic feats? Otherwise you could just recquire a minimum number of ranks in a given spell in order to apply permanency to that effect (so they'd be no permanency spell, it would be an effect of complete spell mastery). |
| Xaer06-03-07, 04:19 PM | I'm a little unsure about taking the naturey spells and giving them to wizards, simply due to the fact that those are the reason for druids, and making those spells nonexclusive would nerf the druid a lot. Negative magic is simply the channeling of negative energy. Things such as an energy drain spell or a curse spell would go here. 12 skill points seems good, I have 36 spellskill catagories so far, and 24 for sorcerors alone, so that would make a sorceror proficient in half of his domain. As for wish, that would mean something like 10-12 catagories needed 17 ranks in them before you could take wish. -------------------------- For metamagic, I think it would work like normal, where you add on spell ranks for applying a metamagic. So a silent spell would take up 2 ranks higher, and thus the effect would be two ranks lower for the same MP. Next Question: We seem to have a good idea for spellskills, what should we do for MP? Thoughts: - Lower level spells should be very easy to cast at higher levels, perhaps even a 0MP cost. - Spells can be cast as if from a lesser rank, and therefore the caster can conserve MP. - The effect on how hard a spell would be to cast would be based on the rank in that spellskill. A spellskill with only 1 rank would be harder to cast than casting a rank 1 spell in a spellskill where the caster has 10 ranks. ------------------ EDIT: Got an idea for the MP based casting. Casters gain an MP die+casting ability in MP per level. Spells cost an MP equal to twice their rank, MINUS 1 for every rank under your maximum rank allowed. Example: Bob is casting a rank 6 fire magic spell, and he has 12 ranks in fire magic. The spell costs (6*2)-(12-6), or 12-6, or 6 MP. Likewise, if Bob casted a rank 12 fire magic spell, the spell would cost 24MP. Still haven't tested amount of MP needed for higher level spells versus max MP at high levels, but it appears to be about what I wanted from the system(spells are cheaper the higher you get, but only the first couple of levels acutally reach 0MP) |
| General Felire06-04-07, 01:08 AM | Skill Tricks are similar to feats in that they have prerequisites but are bought at a cost of 2 skill points and enable a special use of that skill. So rather than going from tumbling rank 10 to rank 12 you could learn a skill trick that say, lets you bounce of the wall as a special manouver. So Fire magic could be quite general but a wall of fire could be a spell trick (since it's an unusual use of fire). I agree as to Wish, Limited Wish and so on, though I think permanency isn't so much an effect of Time Magic as a kind of Metamagic Spell. Maybe Metamagic could be a list too, and include teh metamagic feats? Otherwise you could just recquire a minimum number of ranks in a given spell in order to apply permanency to that effect (so they'd be no permanency spell, it would be an effect of complete spell mastery). The idea of skill tricks is interesting. Whats more is that it proves that something like what we are doing has precedence in official rules and that the system can handle it. At the same time, personally, I think we should leave spells alone. What I mean by that is that individual spells remain in the same format and gotten in the same way as before. This way we won't have to change the write-up of the majority of spells. I agree with you on permanency. In fact I think that making permanency an aspect of spell mastery is a really good way of doing it. It could be described as 'you know the flows of magic so well that you are able to bind it so that it becomes permanent.' I think a reduction of experience points to the cost will be needed to make something permanent. Maybe we could also do it that dispel magic only works on a permanent spell if the dispel magic user has a higher level in dispel magic than the cater of the permanent spell. Actually, that makes me thing of dispel magic. I think that this spell should be a category of its own. I think skill is needed in the unraveling and unbinding of spells. I'm a little unsure about taking the naturey spells and giving them to wizards, simply due to the fact that those are the reason for druids, and making those spells nonexclusive would nerf the druid a lot. Negative magic is simply the channeling of negative energy. Things such as an energy drain spell or a curse spell would go here. 12 skill points seems good, I have 36 spellskill catagories so far, and 24 for sorcerors alone, so that would make a sorceror proficient in half of his domain. As for wish, that would mean something like 10-12 catagories needed 17 ranks in them before you could take wish. -------------------------- For metamagic, I think it would work like normal, where you add on spell ranks for applying a metamagic. So a silent spell would take up 2 ranks higher, and thus the effect would be two ranks lower for the same MP. Next Question: We seem to have a good idea for spellskills, what should we do for MP? Thoughts: - Lower level spells should be very easy to cast at higher levels, perhaps even a 0MP cost. - Spells can be cast as if from a lesser rank, and therefore the caster can conserve MP. - The effect on how hard a spell would be to cast would be based on the rank in that spellskill. A spellskill with only 1 rank would be harder to cast than casting a rank 1 spell in a spellskill where the caster has 10 ranks. ------------------ EDIT: Got an idea for the MP based casting. Casters gain an MP die+casting ability in MP per level. Spells cost an MP equal to twice their rank, MINUS 1 for every rank under your maximum rank allowed. Example: Bob is casting a rank 6 fire magic spell, and he has 12 ranks in fire magic. The spell costs (6*2)-(12-6), or 12-6, or 6 MP. Likewise, if Bob casted a rank 12 fire magic spell, the spell would cost 24MP. Still haven't tested amount of MP needed for higher level spells versus max MP at high levels, but it appears to be about what I wanted from the system(spells are cheaper the higher you get, but only the first couple of levels acutally reach 0MP) I agree with you that Druids should be able to do more with nature than wizards. I just think that the basic abilities of nature magical should be available to them. Control over the universe is part of what wizards do an nature is a part of the universe. Like I said, I have no problem with making the really powerful, major and awesome spells Druid (and nature Cleric) only, I just think that wizards should have access to the low and middle rung of the ladder of nature magic. I figured that Negative Magic uses the negative energy plane, no problem with that. I think that Positive Magic should also exist that utilizes the Positive Energy Plane. What of the things I think we need to do is remove the stupid stereotypes of Positive Energy = Good and Negative Energy = evil. I mean positive energy will kill you just as negative energy does. In addition negative energy could be used for a number of useful and not evil ways. Plus, there is no reason that mindless soulless undead (such as skeletons) should be evil. I like 12, I think its a good number that I actually god by halving the numbers of groups you made. hehe The number of spell skill points should actually be 12 + Int modifier, just like regular skills. No problem with your suggesstions on Wish. I think it should only be available to near-epic characters. I mean a caster is grabbing at pretty much raw magic and shaping it to whatever effect he wants - that is pretty power and should only come with mastery over the individual categories. I don't think we need to change that which works, and metamagic feats as is work fine. So I think your suggestion of them both increasing level and thus increasing cost makes sense. MP Thoughts 1) I agree and like 2) Yes, definitely yes. 3) could you clarify please. I think I get it but the wording is confusion. If your saying that it is easier to cast a spell when the spellskill is higher compared to casting a spell when the spellskill is lower, then yes I agree. Question, when you say 'rank 6 fire magic spell' do you mean a spell of 6th level? Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I thought that we were leaving spell levels (0-9) in place. MP Cost Spell Level Cost 0* ________ Special, some 0 others 2. 1 _________ 2 2 _________ 4 3 _________ 6 4 _________ 8 5 _________ 10 6 _________ 12 7 _________ 14 8 _________ 16 9 _________ 18 10** ______ 20 * A certain number of 9-level spells are free based on class + Int modifier. All other castings are considered level 1 spells. **Maybe used for metamagic ability. I honestly think I am missing something, and will go over the board again for clarification. I am going to post this now and maybe edit it later when I understand clearly. Maybe we should make a list of all things we are changing and all things we are leaving alone. I'll begin -Leaving Alone- BAB Fort Ref Will Class Hit Points Normal Skills -Modifying- making Wizard and sorceror one class All casters are spontaneous; preparation is gone a spell point system, also known in this thread as Magic Point (MP) All spells defer to a category that is pretty much a skill that shows a spellcaster's mastery of the spell category. This is called Spellskills Wizards have 12 + Int modifier points to be used in Spellskills each level Wizards may now utilize healing magic |
| Werral06-04-07, 05:52 AM | Rather than having one catch all Dispel Magic you could use your ranks in any given school of magic to dispel spells IN THAT SCHOOL. It makes sense to me that if you know a form of magic really well you can dispel it better than if you don't know that form of magic at all. Only once you have a certain number of ranks in a few schools you should be able to dispel magic of any school. |
| Xaer06-04-07, 11:07 AM | I figured the evil thing would be up to a DM, but yes, note that the positive magic is a separate skill from healing magic for a reason. I forgot about the modifier adding, so an idea. Make it 8+INT then, as you know a caster will throw his casting ability through the roof. Best INT build with a human gets up to 34 INT by level 20, and that would make it to where the caster has a ridiculous amount of spells. True, many players won't try to min/max to get there, but remember that a player only needs an 18 to get back up to our original 12. MP Thoughts 3: I posted a temporary formula that explains the idea. For recap: Got an idea for the MP based casting. Casters gain an MP die+casting ability in MP per level. Spells cost an MP equal to twice their rank, MINUS 1 for every rank under your maximum rank allowed. Example: Bob is casting a rank 6 fire magic spell, and he has 12 ranks in fire magic. The spell costs (6*2)-(12-6), or 12-6, or 6 MP. Likewise, if Bob casted a rank 6 fire magic spell and his max rank was 6, the spell would cost 12MP. Still haven't tested amount of MP needed for higher level spells versus max MP at high levels, but it appears to be about what I wanted from the system(spells are cheaper the higher you get, but only the first couple of levels acutally reach 0MP). Thus, spells under your max rank cost less than if they were casted at max rank. Yah, there was a misunderstanding in ranks here. I assumed that we were going to set up ranks like caster levels in a sense, so that at level 20, a sorceror could have a max spellskill rank of 20. Spell levels would be set up at ranks 1,3,5... as usual with the caster levels. On your mention of wizards being able to use healing magic, I think a limit would be in order(this also works for nature magic). Make healing and nature magic akin to crossclass spellskills. Thus, at level 20, a wizard could have up to rank 10 in healing magic, though it would cost 20 points. Just thought I should limit it's power outside the classes that are supposed to use them best. ---------------------- I like that idea. Perhaps a circumstance bonus of 1/4ranks in a school to dispel spells from that school? |
| General Felire06-04-07, 04:41 PM | Rather than having one catch all Dispel Magic you could use your ranks in any given school of magic to dispel spells IN THAT SCHOOL. It makes sense to me that if you know a form of magic really well you can dispel it better than if you don't know that form of magic at all. Only once you have a certain number of ranks in a few schools you should be able to dispel magic of any school. I agree. That's pretty much all I need to say as I completely like the concept and think it makes sense. Its hard to unweave somethign you do not know, but once you understand the nature of a certain category of spell then it should be very possible to remove said spells. I figured the evil thing would be up to a DM, but yes, note that the positive magic is a separate skill from healing magic for a reason. I forgot about the modifier adding, so an idea. Make it 8+INT then, as you know a caster will throw his casting ability through the roof. Best INT build with a human gets up to 34 INT by level 20, and that would make it to where the caster has a ridiculous amount of spells. True, many players won't try to min/max to get there, but remember that a player only needs an 18 to get back up to our original 12. MP Thoughts 3: I posted a temporary formula that explains the idea. For recap: Got an idea for the MP based casting. Casters gain an MP die+casting ability in MP per level. Spells cost an MP equal to twice their rank, MINUS 1 for every rank under your maximum rank allowed. Example: Bob is casting a rank 6 fire magic spell, and he has 12 ranks in fire magic. The spell costs (6*2)-(12-6), or 12-6, or 6 MP. Likewise, if Bob casted a rank 6 fire magic spell and his max rank was 6, the spell would cost 12MP. Still haven't tested amount of MP needed for higher level spells versus max MP at high levels, but it appears to be about what I wanted from the system(spells are cheaper the higher you get, but only the first couple of levels acutally reach 0MP). Thus, spells under your max rank cost less than if they were casted at max rank. Yah, there was a misunderstanding in ranks here. I assumed that we were going to set up ranks like caster levels in a sense, so that at level 20, a sorceror could have a max spellskill rank of 20. Spell levels would be set up at ranks 1,3,5... as usual with the caster levels. On your mention of wizards being able to use healing magic, I think a limit would be in order(this also works for nature magic). Make healing and nature magic akin to crossclass spellskills. Thus, at level 20, a wizard could have up to rank 10 in healing magic, though it would cost 20 points. Just thought I should limit it's power outside the classes that are supposed to use them best. ---------------------- I like that idea. Perhaps a circumstance bonus of 1/4ranks in a school to dispel spells from that school? Yeah, the good evil thing is something that is GM, we should remain neutral. I agree that using positive energy is not the same as healing. Spellskill points. Maybe we should make it 10, its a nice rough number and it halfway between your 8 and the 12. I think that is a little bit better. Though I think we should give guidelines on reducing the points for low magic and increasing it for high magic worlds. Okay, I agree that spellskill ranks (in categories) go up to the same extent that normal skills do. Maybe we should work on spells, that way we can be clear on how spellskill ranks relate to them. Personally, I don't like the restriction on half skill. Now, if that is what a lot of people want them I'll go for it (no use in arguing it, :)) but I prefer that wizards just get it normal. I should note though that this does not mean resurrection magic which remains divine only. One needs contact with the gods to bring back the souls and thus normally wizards cannot do it. |
| Dracomortis06-04-07, 04:41 PM | I gotta say that I honestly like Xaer's choice of spell categories. Its a lot but I figure that if the character gets a lot of spell skill points he should be fine. It's not so much the number of skills, but having to keep track of all those skill points. In order to cover all of the schools of magic you want to give a wizard using Xaer's system, the wizard would need to be bringing in 12 skill points every level just to keep half of those skills maxed out. That's a lot of skill points to be trying to keep track of every level, in addition to having to check every spell every time you get more ranks in it to see what new abilities you've unlocked. I'm not saying it can't work, I'm just saying it's a lot more variables than I'd want to have to keep track of in addition to all the things a wizard already has to worry about. |
| Xaer06-04-07, 04:51 PM | My thoughts on the wizard spell allowances(which echo the responses I got on my site) are that certain things must be done for game balance. While a wizard, in a theoretical sense, may be capable of doing a lot more things, in a game sense, it ruins the other casting classes greatly if you allow a wizard to do almost everything like that. Let the wizard keep his 24 class spellskills, and the cleric his 24, and the druid his 24. As for the confusion idea, I think it's simply a different method of madness. People like the dnd spell list, so we're trying to apply it in a way that makes more sense. The problem is that the dnd spell list is very diverse, and so that causes problems. As for the having to check every spell every time a new rank is gotten, so too did a player have to go pore through the PHB to find out what new spells he can get upon levelup. Some of the spell ranks are even more simplified, and follow a generic formula presented below to make the process easier, while some are presented similar to cleric domain lists. Spellskill example type one: Formulaic Fire Magic Components: S,V Casting Time: 1 standard action Range: 40+5/rank Area: 5 + 5/2ranks radius Duration: Instantaneous Save: Reflex Half Effect: 1d6 fire damage per rank Under some spells, the spell simply does damage, and that damage goes up. Rather than say, a fireball at spell level 3 or a DBF at spell level 8, now you just have a fireball that increases in power as you level up. Spellskill example type two: Spell List Detection Magic Components: S,V Casting Time: Various Range: Various Area: Various Duration: Various Save: Various Effect: 1: Detect Magic, Detect Poison 2: Detect Undead 3: Detect Secret Doors 4: Detect Thoughts 5: Arcane Sight 7: Arcane Eye 9: Prying Eyes 11: True Seeing 13: Greater Arcane Sight 15: Greater Prying Eyes With some spell types, the spells offered are a myriad of possibilities, and are represented better by access to new spells at different ranks. Thoughts? |
| General Felire06-04-07, 09:03 PM | It's not so much the number of skills, but having to keep track of all those skill points. In order to cover all of the schools of magic you want to give a wizard using Xaer's system, the wizard would need to be bringing in 12 skill points every level just to keep half of those skills maxed out. That's a lot of skill points to be trying to keep track of every level, in addition to having to check every spell every time you get more ranks in it to see what new abilities you've unlocked. I'm not saying it can't work, I'm just saying it's a lot more variables than I'd want to have to keep track of in addition to all the things a wizard already has to worry about. Honestly, I don't really see the problem. I mean I don't think its any more work than that which already exists. The need to check up on new spells is only once per level. Sine most players don't level up each session that is not that much I don't think anyway. My thoughts on the wizard spell allowances(which echo the responses I got on my site) are that certain things must be done for game balance. While a wizard, in a theoretical sense, may be capable of doing a lot more things, in a game sense, it ruins the other casting classes greatly if you allow a wizard to do almost everything like that. Let the wizard keep his 24 class spellskills, and the cleric his 24, and the druid his 24. As for the confusion idea, I think it's simply a different method of madness. People like the dnd spell list, so we're trying to apply it in a way that makes more sense. The problem is that the dnd spell list is very diverse, and so that causes problems. As for the having to check every spell every time a new rank is gotten, so too did a player have to go pore through the PHB to find out what new spells he can get upon levelup. Some of the spell ranks are even more simplified, and follow a generic formula presented below to make the process easier, while some are presented similar to cleric domain lists. Spellskill example type one: Formulaic Fire Magic Components: S,V Casting Time: 1 standard action Range: 40+5/rank Area: 5 + 5/2ranks radius Duration: Instantaneous Save: Reflex Half Effect: 1d6 fire damage per rank Under some spells, the spell simply does damage, and that damage goes up. Rather than say, a fireball at spell level 3 or a DBF at spell level 8, now you just have a fireball that increases in power as you level up. Spellskill example type two: Spell List Detection Magic Components: S,V Casting Time: Various Range: Various Area: Various Duration: Various Save: Various Effect: 1: Detect Magic, Detect Poison 2: Detect Undead 3: Detect Secret Doors 4: Detect Thoughts 5: Arcane Sight 7: Arcane Eye 9: Prying Eyes 11: True Seeing 13: Greater Arcane Sight 15: Greater Prying Eyes With some spell types, the spells offered are a myriad of possibilities, and are represented better by access to new spells at different ranks. Thoughts? First, I want to say that I don't bye the balance issue. I think it is a crock of ****, if having access to healing unbalances a class of spellcasters than other things need to be looked at. But that truly is not something directly related to this thread so I won't battle it. I will say that I will accept the adopting of a penalty on healing skill checks, but I do not want it to be outright banned (I'm not saying you said that, I'm just saying my position). See, as it stands, there are many spells that the Cleric gets from the Wizard list but there are very few spells that the wizard gets that are cleric. I find do not find that right. I agree with you on the difficulty of this system. I think the system is harder to build then it will be to play once its complete. I agree that terminology is an issue and that is why I created the list of things we are doing and what things mean. Could you add to that? I get what you talking about, spell level is no longer an intrinsic thing of a spell but rather it is a general thing that covers when a spell becomes available. Your fire example makes perfect sense, a fire ball is a fireball no matter what you call it. On the otherhand, some categories have a variable number of spell effects that are pretty much unique except for them being under the same category. So your second example works for such broad effects, though in some cases it will cover even more than just one effect per spellskill level. |
| Xaer06-04-07, 09:17 PM | A more indepth on your modifying list, felfire, to show what I wanted to do. 1) making Wizard and sorceror one class 2) All casters are spontaneous 3) a spell point system, also known in this thread as Magic Point (MP) Wizards, Clerics, Druids gain d10+modifier MP per levelup. Bards gain d8+modifier MP per levelup. Paladins, Rangers gain d6+modifier MP per levelup. All noncaster classes gain d4 MP per levelup. 4) All spells defer to a category that is pretty much a skill that shows a spellcaster's mastery of the spell category. This is called Spellskills 5) Wizards, Clerics, Druids have 10+modifier spellskill points per level. Bards have 6+modifier spellskill points per level Paladins and Rangers have 4+modifier spellskill points every other level, beginning at 4th level. 6) Wizards may now utilize healing magic and nature magic, though these spellskills are cross class(max rank = 1/2 level) 7) Clerics and Druids may now utilize more arcane magics, though these are also crossclass. 8) All full casters have 24 class spellskills and 12 crossclass spellskills. Clarifier point 4: Paladins and Rangers have a caster level of 0 until level 4. Therefore it makes sense to deny spellskill points until then. In response to the cleric/wizard argument, there are very few wizard spells that the cleric gets. The main idea to make is that wizards are the ones with the best destructive power, clerics are best at divine/negative spells, and druids are best at nature spells. I think that by applying a straight number of class spellskills(see point 8), this should balance out nicely. As of yet unsure of how many spellskills the lesser classes end up with, and therefore exactly how many spellskill points they should get. |
| General Felire06-05-07, 03:05 PM | Xaer, About the gaining of MP per level. I don';t have a problem wityh the base number (10/8/6/4) but I do have a problem with the fact that they ahve to roll dice. I don't like the fact that a bad roll on that dice could screw things up. Everything else is find and makes sense. I like it. |
| Hugin06-05-07, 04:01 PM | I'll have to post my spell casting system once I get home as I think it may give you guys some ideas. I would LOVE to be able to get rid of the 'per day' regime as well but I'm not sure how to. How would Wizards and Sorcerers remain differentiated? Plus there is the problem of keeping them from just repeatedly casting Magic Missile or Fire Ball, etc. I have a few thoughts bouncing around but I'll mull them over a bit and post with the rest. |
| Xaer06-05-07, 04:41 PM | Felfire - On the MP die, I did it to match the HP die system. Likewise with HP, bad rolls can mess you up. Take note, however, I based the MP formula off of the AVERAGE MP gain(with a d10, 5.5 per levelup). Hugin - IlLook forward to seeing it. |
| Hugin06-05-07, 06:12 PM | Alright, here it goes. I hope this will mesh with other 3rd Ed material. The system begins with using the Magic Rating from UA (this basically replaces caster level). The Magic Rating plus the character's spell casting ability modifier gives him his OMR (Offensive Magic Rating). A character's DMR (Defensive Magic Rating) is 15 plus their CHA modifier. To cast a spell the caster uses their OMR and adds their ability modifier that the spell is based on. The roll is penalized by 2x spell level. The ability associations were decided on according to how I envisioned magic working IMCs so some will naturally disagree with these. Here is a repost of that from another thread: Abjuration - Wisdom; Clerics are known for their healing and protection aspects so I wanting them to be better at protection spells then most other casters. Wisdom is a lot about perception and understanding, excellent qualities for basing defense on. Conjuration - Charisma; This deals a lot with living creatures and using power of being to dominate another. Plus, I wanted wizards and sorcerers to have a bit of a stereotype to them; sorcerers being more apt at exerting their will over other creatures, thus summoning and charming. Divination - Wisdom; This is pretty much a no-brainer and I wanted clerics to have the advantage here. Enchantment - Charisma; Again, due to my vision of sorcerers, I wanted them to be better at influencing other being through power of presence. Charisma was perfect for my needs. Evocation - Constitution; I didn't want any arcane caster to out-shine another in this school due to the nature of the spells. I reasoned that forming and controlling raw magical energy is hard on the body and so used constitution. Illusion - Dexterity; Basically to even things out a bit I used the AD&D notion that Dex is tied to Illusion. I just rationalized that creating illusions is a bit like a craft and these spells are very sensitive to slight motions or manipulating of material. Necromancy - Intelligence; The last two are mostly just a result of how I wanted my magic to work IMC but I can easily reason that this school relies on intricate knowledge of physical bodies and how they operate. Transmutation - Intelligence; Basically identical to Necro but less about biology and more reliant on knowledge of physics and its manipulation. Eg: a 3rd level Wizard with a +3 INT and a +1 CHA has a Magic Rating of 3, OMR of 6, DMR of 16, and would add +3 to his casting check to cast Daze Monster (a 2nd level Ench spell uses CHA and takes 4 off his casting check). The DCs for any spell casting check depend on target type but are based on a DC of 15. The target types are: - Inanimate Object; simple DC 15, - Point in Space; DC 15 but requires a spellcraft check for accuracy, - Creature; DC 15 modified by the creature's CHA (i.e. it's DMR). What this means is that the highest level of spell that can be cast remains somewhat difficult but the lower level spells become increasingly easier. Missing the DC does not automatically mean you lose the spell though, such as missing the DC by greater than 5. Failure means you are struggling to get the spell off and are still casting. I use a both a secondary casting at -5 (like BAB) which can be used to either attempt another spell or have a 'second go' at trying to cast one in which you are struggling with. If a struggling spell is canceled by the caster, it is not lost. There are some more details I'll tell you about (like 'magik grappling' and my 'crit failure, misfire, and crit hit') but I have to go. |
| General Felire06-05-07, 06:28 PM | I'll have to post my spell casting system once I get home as I think it may give you guys some ideas. I would LOVE to be able to get rid of the 'per day' regime as well but I'm not sure how to. How would Wizards and Sorcerers remain differentiated? Plus there is the problem of keeping them from just repeatedly casting Magic Missile or Fire Ball, etc. I have a few thoughts bouncing around but I'll mull them over a bit and post with the rest. I would be quite happy to see your spellcasting system for it could be quite useful. :) See, to me th easy way to stop the problem of Wizard-Sorcerer is to remove the Sorcerer and make the Wizard the only true arcane caster. This doesn't mean that other type of arcane casters couldn't exist - but they would emphasis the dragon blood or demon blood or whatever other blood that is intrinsic to the sorcerer class. Like I said, I'll be glad to read them. ++ Well, it seems that you posted it before I could post my comment. First I want to say that I really like your tying of schools to abilities. I think that is cool. Second, I like that you made Evocation Constitution, and I think it makes sense for the exact same reason you used. Magical energy going through the body is touch on mortal form and I think this best emphasizes it. I don't really like the use of three ratings - Magic Rating, DMR, OMR. I thin only one rating is good enough. Other than that I find this interesting and useful. Felfire - On the MP die, I did it to match the HP die system. Likewise with HP, bad rolls can mess you up. Take note, however, I based the MP formula off of the AVERAGE MP gain(with a d10, 5.5 per levelup). Hugin - IlLook forward to seeing it. Yeah, HP uses a die roll but every other spell point system I have ever seen uses a straight up number. I feel that we should use that rather than the chance of a low roll. Honestly, I hate the fact that a character whose main focus is on spellcasting could get screwed by the simple roll of the dice. Oh, by the way, just so you know its Felire not Felfire. :) Its no big deal I just wanted to let you know. |
| Werral06-06-07, 05:41 PM | An idea for Sorcerers. Flavourwise, they're not learned magicians, but those gifted with powers, no training and self taught with chaotic tendencies. Yet the class in the PHB is predictable, limited, not very chaotic at all. So how about: Sorcerers get more MPs (and they're CHr based) but much less spell points (half Spell points? 1/3 Spell points?) So less knowledge but more innate power. Sorcerers also get a kind of Wild Card magic skill - say 1D6 per 2 levels. They can attempt any spell using their wildcard. How it might work (the numbers probably need balancing, this is just an idea, NOT a developed system). The Sorcerer declares that he wants to cast Spell X (or Dispel spell X) using his wildcard (the Sorcerer has no ranks in that spell). The Sorcerer rolls his wildcard and uses the result as if it were a skill rank. The sorcerer takes half the wildcard roll as nonlethal damage. The Sorcerer can also roll more wildcard dice (up to 1D6 per sorcerer level) but any 6's rolled are treated as lethal damage. This makes Sorcerers more flexible and less predictable. As for those that keep on casting the same old Fireball/Magic Missile spells - why not make Dispel Magic easier the second time round? What I mean is if you keep casting the same spell, any caster attempting to dispel gets a bonus to dispel attempt (say +2 per repeat casting per encounter, bonuses from the same encounter stack). So if Bob the wizard always casts fireball his enemies are going to find dispelling them easier. Plus the more mages have high Fire magic ranks, the easier it is for them to counerspell/dispel firemagic too. |
| Dracomortis06-06-07, 06:34 PM | Hmm. I like where you're going with this Werral. As said, the numbers would have to be tested, but the concept itself seems relatively solid, although I might suggest a new name for this "Wildcard" ability :D. |
| Xaer06-06-07, 08:16 PM | Needs acid testing, of course, but these numbers seem to be around correct for such an idea: Spellskill points: 6+CHA(maybe 8+CHA?) MP: d12+CHA Overburn(Wildcard): 1d6 per 3 levels As for the overburn rolling, make it so the sorc takes the dice total in nonlethal damage unless he emulates a spell higher than his max spellskill rank says he should. In that case, it's lethal damage. Don't allow the 1d6 per level rolling, that is rife for fun abuses(Cast a CON+ spell before overburning, you have the HP to take it). The 1d6 per 3 levels is due to the fact that d6 averages to 3.5 per roll, so an average roll wouldn't be too far over the normal limit, and comes with consequences attached to balance it. Perhaps on the multicast dispel, the dispeller makes a spellcraft check versus the spell's DC if it's not the first time they've seen that spell cast by that caster. If the check succeeds, they gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the dispel check. If the caster can cast that spell themselves, it instead becomes a +4. Thoughts? |
| thkaal06-07-07, 12:09 AM | Ahhh, the magic system. This has been a stone in my craw since '81. Yes, I'm that old. I always asked why a fighter can swing his sword an infinite number of times and the magic-user could not cast a spell except once per day even if both are level 1. Then along came a thought. But that will have to wait. The rules I use in-house have been play tested with 1st and 2nd editions, and having recently and grudgingly co-opted into 3.5, I have translated the system over and made considerations for various feats and now having TWO magic-user classes. |
| Cheza06-07-07, 07:41 AM | Ahhh, the magic system. This has been a stone in my craw since '81. Yes, I'm that old. I always asked why a fighter can swing his sword an infinite number of times and the magic-user could not cast a spell except once per day even if both are level 1. Then along came a thought. But that will have to wait. The rules I use in-house have been play tested with 1st and 2nd editions, and having recently and grudgingly co-opted into 3.5, I have translated the system over and made considerations for various feats and now having TWO magic-user classes. D&D is a powergame made for players... not for roleplaying. If you search Crystal Keep (http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/index.php), you will find a 191 page feat list. And one part of a powerful gaming is the D&D like magic system. How many pages are written about how a world would look like, when you can create infinite water, food, heat, light with magic. And EACH of your characters will have possessions that could equip a whole army of 10.000 men (and still find someone to sell it *lol*). So for a 'player friendly game' it's just normal, that your character don't know weaknesses or drawbacks and wizards / sorcerer have the most powerful spells. In such a game, noone wants to cast many spells per day, if a single spell can kill ALL opponents at once!! Why not desintegrating the evil king or turn any low-will creature into a HD1 animal and any low-fortitude creature into stone??? - ANd your characters will find enough feats that make successful saves / spell resistance nearly impossible. The advantage of D&D is, that in most cases you don't need to spend a great amount of time with combats, because the damage potencial is high enough to make them very fast. Demons are killed in one round... just by casting an impr. invisibility on a rogue. Do you know a second game, where invisibility differs if you 'hit' an opponent with a spell. 'Cause any spell like summoning spells can still be cast. So how did your spell realizes what you do??? So if you want to make spells similar to normal attacks, you have to say goodbye to these things. Sure, you can use the Warlock as the only available magic class OR use magical items. (Hand of the mage and Hat of Disguiseare good examples of how cheap unlimited uses per day can be.) I played Earthdawn (http://www.earthdawn.com/) for several years and this game uses an unlimited-spells-per-day mechanic. Disadvantage: Low damage & limited number of different spells ready. So I decided to create my own alternative magic system. The main differences: - Spellpower bases on your ability score, not on caster-level. - Spells have different power-levels (like each +1 effect from greater magic weapon), but these boni increase spell level (no 1d6/spelllevel power-up for the same spell level). - Any other shaping options (area effects, increased duration) must be paid in addition. - There is a power maximum, so most spells have additional side effects (fire => blinds; ice => slows; lightning => stuns,...) So you either have a high-damage spell OR an area effect and not both (see area, damage, range, 'to hit-chances' *lol* of a fireball) Spellcasters need to make an attack role (caster-level check) for any spell, so the DC for saving throws don't base on spell level. I adapted the saves so they are similar to AC. I changed non-spellcasters too. I never seen an archer who can draw (from a quiver) and shoot 2 arrows in 6 sec. Any lvl 1 character can do this (rapid shot). But the best improvement is not measurable.... my players use brain & speech more often and even enjoy the problems to get through a desert... totally without 'endure elements', 'create water' and 'summon mount' spells. But D&D have fundamental spells (magic missile, fireball, ...) or mechanics, so you won't see any changes. |
| Hugin06-07-07, 10:50 AM | I've talked to one player in my group so far about possibly using an over-limit ability whereby a caster can attempt to cast a spell even though they have used all their spells of that level. For instance, a wizard has cast all his second level spells but feels the situation calls for another second level spell. If successful (I use a DC based casting system), the caster loses 1xspell level of wound points (in this case, 2 wound points). Failure doubles the cost. I just realized this probably won't help very many people because I use a hit point / wound point system. Plus, losing a wound point causes fatigue and they only heal back at one per day (two per day in ideal circumstances and with certain magic). This would give a caster the ability to cast more spells if needed, but at a price, and the way in which wound points are recovered provides a descent control. As a side note, losing all wound points while still having hit points results in exhaution. |
| General Felire06-07-07, 03:13 PM | Werral, You make two points here. 1) Sorcerors - This is interesting and quite potentially useful. I like. The increase in MP makes sense, they are much more inherently 'magical' then wizards. The decrease in spellskill points also make sense, for the reason you posted. I like the wildcard ability, I think it makes sense that a inherent caster can use any spell, though at personal risk. I do disagree with you on the concept that they are chaotic. To me a sorceror is a sorceror cause it has the blood of magical creatures running through its veins and not because it is inherently chaotic. Thus I disagree if you were ever planning on making alignment restrictions. Second additional point, I think that we should increase the hit points a Sorceror gets. Since they don't need to spend time in dusty libries learning they can be out and about. In addition, since hit points is useful to them (in the sense of nonlethal/lethal damage) I think that they would try their best to increase it. I also think they should still get Familiars as that seems to be a staple of arcane magic users. All in all I like this class idea. 2) Easier dispelling through multiple uses - I really like this. It is not a hard limit on repeat spellcasting, which is great. But at the same time it produces a means of balancing out the reuse of old spells. If a caster can be easier dispelled their will come a time when most others in a pitched battle can stop his spells. And so he needs to vary them. I do think that the emphais needs to be on - repeating the same spell. And not repeating the same category of spellskill. That difference is the main point. I like this, it makes sense from both a in-game and out-of-game sense and it is not truly a limit or restriction, just a penalty. Very nice, I think we should definitly use it. Dracomortis, Yep, I agree. Changing the name Wildcard could be useful to remove the 'chaotic' aspect that I find distasteful, but I think it is more important to get the rules right then the name. :) Xaer, I really really dislike the the fact that we need to roll for MP each level. I think tat is a really bad idea. I say we give a streight up number of points. 10 for Wizards and clerics, 12 for Sorcerors and less for other lesser spellcasters. Something that important should not be left up to the roll of dice. I vehemently think that and while I decided on stop pursing some of my changes, this is not one of them. I do not think we should have it based on a dice roll and will continue to try and get it changed. As always, this was brought to you with a friendly :). On your idea of overburn, I like. On multicast dispel, I think the penalty should keep going up in an encoutner for as long as you keep casting the same spell. That way players will realize that they really need to start casting other spells before their spell becomes useless. Thkaal, Could you post your modifications, if not here than in its own thread. I would like to see them. I also like the concept of the fighjter swinging all he wants but a spellcaster unable to use magic, its a good one. Cheza, I don't know what to say. The orgional designers thoughts have no bearing to me on what I can or cannot do. Neither does tradition or anything like that. I want the game to be fun, and the current magic system (though bearable) is not truly fun for me. The fire and forget pissess me off to no end as does the need to prepare such a small measly number of spells. Because of that I plan on changing it, and it seems that others agree. In adidtion, one can see that Wizards is slowly expanding away from the core Vancian system. They ahven't touched the central spellcasting, but they have begun to add many additional magic systems at the periphery that uses other magic systems, some to greater extned and less limit. They are realizing that modern players seem to dislike the ocre magic and what it changed, and yet they are not going to risk it. That is actually quite fine, I don't care if the type of spellcaster I want is core or fringe, if its available then I am going to use it. Hugin, I actually like the idea of overcasting causing problems and taking hit points as a sacrifice. I think it makes sense in the sort of "I reach deep into my being and try and grab my last reserves of strength to cast the spell." It does work in that one can take points form nonlethal or lethal damage. Personally, I think this is great and provides even more options for spellcasters down on their luck. The tradeoff is that they become weaker but that is somethign they have to chance. I think that the concpet that a spellcaster can use his hit points to cast a spell even if he runs out of MP should be adopted into this rules modification. |
| Shyressa06-08-07, 04:21 AM | After toying with various systems, some with good points, some with horrid ones, I came up with this system, which so far e have all really enjoyed. No longer will any casting class be limited to a few spells per day, which as we all know severely hampers the fun in playing a caster, and has almost since the creation of D&D. Instead, all casters cast in a manner similiar to sorcerers, using spells they have in their mind at will (more on this later). First, the basics, while this system seems a little overpowered at low-levels granting wizards the use of magic missile and other spells in every fight, and weaker at high levels, you have to remember that as you rad the Spell Point pools of each character are regenerating continuously, so while at 20th level a cleric with a 23 Wisdom, as example, has less than the total number of Spell Points it would cost to cast every spell, those points are regenerating and eventually will allow that cleric to cast more spells per day than he could have before. SPELL POINT POOLS Each spell-casting class receives a pool of Spell Points that increases with level and abilities. These points regenerate on an hourly basis. Pools are figured up the following ways: Bards gain 25 Spell Points + 5 SP per point of CHA modifier at first level. At each level after first they gain 5 SP + 5 SP per point of CHA modifier. Paladins gain 5 SP + 5 SP per point of WIS modifier at 4th level, and they gain additional Sp at the rate of 5 SP + 5 SP per point of WIS modifer at every other level (6, 8, 10, etc). Rangers gain 5 SP + 5 SP per point of WIS modifier at 4th level, and they gain additional Sp at the rate of 5 SP + 5 SP per point of WIS modifier at every other level (6, 8, 10, etc). Clerics gain 100 SP + 10 SP per point of WIS modifier at first level. And gain 5 SP + 10 SP per point of WIS modifier each level after first. Druids gain 100 SP + 10 SP per point of WIS modifier at first level. And gain 5 SP + 10 SP per point of WIS modifier each level after first. Wizards gain 75 SP + 10 SP per point of INT modifier at first level. And gain 5 SP + 10 SP per point of INT modifier each level after first. Sorcerers gain 150 SP + 10 SP per point of CHA modifier at first level. And gain 15 SP + 10 SP per point of CHA modifier each level after first. Recharging Spell Point Pools Spell Point pool regenerate continuously, letting the characters regain points equal to character level (not ECL) times the relevant Ability modifier. Thus a 20th level cleric with a 23 WIS regains 120 SP per hour. As always, a full nights rest (8 hours) completely refills the Spell Point pool. Spells in Memory In order to help balance this system, there had to be a restriction of some sort on the spells a caster can use at any given day. Thus all spell-casting classes have to commit spells to memory. These are the spells they can cast continuously through-out the day. Each class is allowed a max of 3 spells + 1 additional spell per point of the relevant Ability Modifier per spell level. In addition, Clerics also get all Healing spells of the levels they can cast in memory to represent their use of Spontaneous Casting. Clerics may also commit to memory any domain spells of the levels they are allowed to cast. Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers all get to freely pick any spell they want to commit to memory from their spell lists. Wizards are limited to the spells they know and have in their spellbooks. Bards and Sorcerers are the exception to this. Since they are already limited to the number of spells known those charts determine how many spells of each level they know(have in memory) at any given time. While this can seem a hinderance at lower levels and a huge boon at higher levels, using the Spells Known charts for Bards and Sorcerers helps to further show the truly innate abilities they have. Spell Point Costs The following is a chart showing the base costs of each spell per level. While some might seem to think it would be far easier to just make it cost the level of the spell, that hinders the ability to further customize this system. Spell Level Point Cost 0 5 1st 10 2nd 15 3rd 20 4th 25 5th 30 6th 35 7th 40 8th 45 9th 50 These Spell Point costs could even double as a DC for Strenuous Casting, such as casting when out of Spell Points and cannibalizing your health and body to complete the casting. But this is a part of the system I am still developing. Metamagic Costs This seems to be the one area that everyone has overlooked in the systems they have presented. Since Wizards especially given free Metamagic feats, these really need to be included. Empower Spell adds an additional 10 Spell Points to the base spell cost. Enlarge Spell adds an additional 5 Spell Points. Extend Spell adds an additional 5 Spell Points. Heighten Spell adds an additional 5 Spell Points per level increase desired at the time of casting, this does no longer have to be a set number each time. Only limit is you can not Heighten a spell to a spell level higher than you can cast of course. Maximize Spell adds an additional 15 Spell Points. Quicken Spell adds an additional 20 Spell Points. Silent Spell adds an additional 5 Spell Points. Still Spell adds an additional 5 Spell Points. All Metamagic costs stack with each other when more than one is applied to a spell at once. Thus a Fireball Heightened to 5th level and Maximized would cost 45 Spell Points (20 base + 10 for Heighten 2 levels + 15 for Maximize). In addition, spells that require concentration each round, drain Spell Points per round equal to the cost of the casting. This is as far as I have gotten with the new revisions I am working on, but I hope some of you find it useful. |
| Werral06-08-07, 08:55 AM | Hmm. I like where you're going with this Werral. As said, the numbers would have to be tested, but the concept itself seems relatively solid, although I might suggest a new name for this "Wildcard" ability :D. How about: "Raw Magic" since that's what it is - magic in its purest, most dangerous form. Wildcard wasn't meant to make it sound chaotic by the way, just to represent the fact that it was a kind of "Joker" in the sorcerer's pack. The ability to risk lethal damage for more power would be "Overburn". Needs acid testing, of course, but these numbers seem to be around correct for such an idea: Spellskill points: 6+CHA(maybe 8+CHA?) MP: d12+CHA Overburn(Wildcard): 1d6 per 3 levels As for the overburn rolling, make it so the sorc takes the dice total in nonlethal damage unless he emulates a spell higher than his max spellskill rank says he should. In that case, it's lethal damage. Don't allow the 1d6 per level rolling, that is rife for fun abuses(Cast a CON+ spell before overburning, you have the HP to take it). The 1d6 per 3 levels is due to the fact that d6 averages to 3.5 per roll, so an average roll wouldn't be too far over the normal limit, and comes with consequences attached to balance it. How about this: Pure magic Dice: 1d6 at first lv, 2d6 at 4th, 3d6 at 8th and so on. Overburn: max double they number of dies. Sorcerer takes the die roll in Lethal damage. This damage ignores: Temporary HP (whether from say Tenser's Transformation, magical Con increases (including items), Barbarian Rage or similar. Furthermore Overburn damage cannot be healed magically, only natural healing is allowed. (Maybe that's a bit harsh, but you know). Alternatively: Sadist DM System: Overburn: Max double usual Raw Magic allowance as above. If 1 6 turns up in the rolls the spell has the WORST POSSIBLE EFFECT for the Sorcerer or is actually REVERSED (DM choice). The sorcerer might fireball himself, turn his enemies invisible, harm instead of heal. Obviously the more dice you roll the more chance of a "6" turning up. Basically close all the loopholes that allow it to be abused. The penalties should be high enough that sorcerer's rarely use their full Overburn limit. Perhaps on the multicast dispel, the dispeller makes a spellcraft check versus the spell's DC if it's not the first time they've seen that spell cast by that caster. If the check succeeds, they gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the dispel check. If the caster can cast that spell themselves, it instead becomes a +4. Thoughts? I'd keep it simple - no bonus first dispel that encounter attempt, +2 2nd, +4 3rd and so on. Stacks. I do disagree with you on the concept that they are chaotic. To me a sorceror is a sorceror cause it has the blood of magical creatures running through its veins and not because it is inherently chaotic. Thus I disagree if you were ever planning on making alignment restrictions. Second additional point, I think that we should increase the hit points a Sorceror gets. Since they don't need to spend time in dusty libries learning they can be out and about. In addition, since hit points is useful to them (in the sense of nonlethal/lethal damage) I think that they would try their best to increase it. I also think they should still get Familiars as that seems to be a staple of arcane magic users. All in all I like this class idea. I certainly never wanted alginment restrictions, I was just refering to the PHB flavour text that says they tend more towards chaos. Lawful sorcerers are fine by me. Still I think their magic should be much more "fast and loose" than wizards', regardless of AL. Someone who finds they can cast spells after puberty is going to have a different attitude to magic to someone who studied their guts out trying to learn their first spell! 1D6 HP per level could work - same as your average guy or gal. Familiars are pretty much de rigour. 2) Easier dispelling through multiple uses - I really like this. It is not a hard limit on repeat spellcasting, which is great. But at the same time it produces a means of balancing out the reuse of old spells. If a caster can be easier dispelled their will come a time when most others in a pitched battle can stop his spells. And so he needs to vary them. I do think that the emphais needs to be on - repeating the same spell. And not repeating the same category of spellskill. That difference is the main point. On multicast dispel, I think the penalty should keep going up in an encoutner for as long as you keep casting the same spell. That way players will realize that they really need to start casting other spells before their spell becomes useless. I agree, it should be the same spell. The counterspeller expecting yet another fireball gets no bonus VS Wall of Fire. On another note: Scrolls: The Wizard/Sorcerer (with Scribe Scroll Feat) makes their Spellcasting check when Scribing the scroll. They can take 10 on this roll (they can't take "20" though they can keep scribing and paying XP till they roll a 20). Potions: As scrolls but the max Spell Ranks used cannot exceed the brewer's ranks in Craft(Alchemy) or Profession (Herbalist) - the brewer chooses which skill to use. |
| ShinoAburame06-09-07, 04:28 PM | Here's the spellsystem i've concocted. All spells are spontanous (this rule can be ignored) and there are no spellsperday or spellpoints. A caster whenever he would cast a spell only need make a spellcraft check with a DC of 11+the spell's level. Failure can mean a slew of things, maybe consult a 100 table. 1-Nothing at all happens. 2-10: The caster becomes fatigue. 11-13: The caster becomes shaken for 1d12 rounds. 14-18: The caster becomes frightend for 1d10 rounds. 19-21: The caster becomes stunned for a round. 22-32: The spell has a radical altered effect that isn't bennefical. 33-40: An entirely differant spell is cast. 41-50: The caster cannot cast spells for 1d8 rounds. 51-60: The caster loses 1d4hp per spell level. 61-71: The caster becomes confused for 1d4 rounds. 72-89: The caster becomes asleep for 1d3 rounds. 90-99: The caster becomes dazed for a round. 100-Nothing at all happens. |
| General Felire06-09-07, 05:57 PM | Shyressa, I like your spell point pools, your recharge rules and your metamagic rules. I dislike your spells in memory rules, but that is because I dislike having to use spellbooks, preparation and stuff like that. Other than that, it looks pretty good and provides some ideas for use in the system being made by this thread. Werral, As one can probably tell, I am not so stuck on the name for the magic. So, in a sense I don't care which we use. But Raw Magic works and has a nice feel to it and is a major way of making the sorceror and wizard different. I also agree that the use of lethal damage could be called Overburn, it too has a nice ring to it. I'm fine with the Overburn rules as your put them. They work for me. Also, I agree that this cannot be magically healed, it was caused by magic and thus is immune to magical healing. On the dispel check, maybe we should have +0s be equal to the Main Ability Modifier + 1. After this then the penalty gets put on. Thus, a character with a 13 Int (+1) can cast a spell twice (1 + 1) before penalty. On the third try his enemies get a +2, on the fourth they get a +4, etc. This makes sense when one takes into account the a higher level caster should be able to repeat spells because they knowledge of magic allows them to weave it in various waves. About alignment, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound that I thought that you were making the Sorcerer chaotic. Its a pet peeve of mine that most people want to make their magic come from chaotic and evil sources, like the Warlock, which I see no need for. Sorry that I jumped the gun on that. :) I do agree that their magic should be more free and loose, less restricted and organized. D6 is fine, actually anything is fine as long as it is higher than the base wizard. I really think that a character who spends hi day in a library indoors should have less hit points then a character who operates in the world like normal people. Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion - I agree completely with you. At the same time I think we should make a couple of feats that allow a character to boost the ability. Say it could be considered Taking 15, or something. I think that the better you are in a spell the easier time you should have in crafting a scroll. ShinoAburame, I'm sorry, but I can't say I really like such great penalties. I mean a fighter who fails to hit doesn't loose hit points nor do I think a Wizard who misses should be penalized for the stupid roll of the dice. This sort of thing can get tiring and take the fun out of a player who continually rolls poorly. At the same time I do think that their are occasions and class concepts where such penalties should exist. This sort of thing could be used on those. |
| Werral06-10-07, 06:51 AM | General Felire: I think that the Higher Level caster should avoid the penalty by simply varying their spell use - fireball, then wall of fire then flaming rays. I'd probably say that the same spell with different Metamagic counts as a different spell though. Thus a high level fireball addict can simply vary between Maximised, Quickened, Silent Fireballs and so on. Avoiding the penalty with high Int scores doesn't reflect level and doesn't deal with the problem of Johnny One Spell (though Johnny could use the Metamagic loophole). Shino: Critical failures could be cool if they're also being used for melee. If the fighter can fumble his sword then the wizard can fumble his spell. If melee doesn't use it then magic shouldn't either. Maybe only on a natural 1 and then the mage rolls to "Confirm" the fumble (failure on the second roll leads to dire results). Your table should also reflect the power of the spell (a balls up with Meteor Swarm or Gate should be worse than one with Magic Missile or Shield). The table could be 1d10+spell level? There should also be the possibility to Crit with a spell under such a system though! |
| Xaer06-10-07, 10:48 AM | It is possible to crit with a weaponlike spell(a spell where you have to roll an attack roll). In such a case, it's treated as an X2 weapon that threats on a natural 20. |
| mkill06-10-07, 12:19 PM | I've posted a draft in another thread (here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=863597)), with ideas to make metamagic easier and integrate the whole system better. |
| Rhialto06-10-07, 12:38 PM | In general, critical failures are Not Fun(tm). However, there is an exception. Critical failures for normal attacks shouldn't exist, but if a player chooses to have his character over-stretch himself, then there chance for a critical failure should exist. This would include such things as a warrior going for an all-out attack and ignoring defence, or a wizard burning all the way through his mana reserves and then some more. |
| Werral06-10-07, 02:31 PM | It is possible to crit with a weaponlike spell(a spell where you have to roll an attack roll). In such a case, it's treated as an X2 weapon that threats on a natural 20. True, but that's only because in the Core system there's no roll involved to cast say Fireball. Since in our system there is a casting roll why not say that a natural 20 is a critical fireball? maybe bigger, maybe 1D6 more damage, maybe maximised, maybe half cost. Whatever. I like the overstretch idea. How about allowing spellcasters to cast spells of higher levels if the die roll is equal or lower than the difference than it's a critical failure (so if the spell is 3 levels higher then a roll of 1-3 is a critical failure) Maybe someone can come up with a better mechanic? |
| General Felire06-10-07, 10:30 PM | Werral, Maybe, I just think that the higher level you are the more times you could cast the same spell without worring about the penalty. It deals with Johnny One Spell because it still limits how many times he can cast. Say, he has two free repeat spots and casts fireball three times. Well the first two take no penalty, but the third is at a -2. How is this in anyway unblancing? Not only that but the rules in the spell point variant in Unearthed Arcana has such a rule. mkill, Giving your idea a read. Some ideas from it could be used here. I'll write my thoughts after a deeper read their. Critical Failure Honestly, I don't like it for regular spell use. I don't think that there needs to be such a major failure when not hitting or not casting is failure enough. I do think that if you use your hit points (or whatever means of overchanneling we make) then failure such as that could be quite interesting to enforce. |
| Werral06-11-07, 05:47 AM | Werral, Maybe, I just think that the higher level you are the more times you could cast the same spell without worring about the penalty. It deals with Johnny One Spell because it still limits how many times he can cast. Say, he has two free repeat spots and casts fireball three times. Well the first two take no penalty, but the third is at a -2. How is this in anyway unblancing? Not only that but the rules in the spell point variant in Unearthed Arcana has such a rule. Sounds like you're appying the penalty to the caster or am I readin you wrong? I did propose such a system way back but no-one liked it so I ditched it. The system I proposed was to give a bonus to dispellers. That means spellcasters only need to worry about it VS other spellcasters who can dispel them and if the potential dispeller is lower level (or has lower Spell ranks) then the dispeller will still have trouble even with the bonus. I think free repeats, while they don't affect balance render the bonus pointless at high levels unless spell combat is very long. I prefer it that the bonus is an immediate edge that can make the difference between spellcasters of near equal ability. |
| Hugin06-11-07, 10:19 AM | Critical Failure Honestly, I don't like it for regular spell use. I don't think that there needs to be such a major failure when not hitting or not casting is failure enough. I use a 'criticals' chart for magic but it is rather moderate compared to what some would call 'critical'. Since I use what basically amounts to a DC system for casting spells, there are 3 columns. Each uses a '2d12 minus spell level' format. Also of note is that failure of the spell roll does not mean the spell is lost, just that the caster is still manipulating magic / praying. Rolling a natural 1 indicates a critical mistake; something has happened affecting the caster. Results of the 2d12-spell level roll range from an increased DC, to spell loss, to temp ability damage. Rolling exactly what is needed to cast a spell indicates a misfire; something has happened affecting the spell. Results show variations in spell attributes. For instance, duration or range, etc., may be different then expected. Mostly it is just a descriptive change that makes the spell more noticable and obvious. Some magical energy 'escapes' the caster's control and manifests itself in various ways. I have a little guide-note that gives possibilities based on the spell's school. This is mostly just for fun and allows me to get creative. Rolling a natural 20 indicates a critical success; something has happened affecting the targets. Results range from... hmmm, I can only remember the increased magic level ones off the top of my head (at work). This basically means the caster is treated as having a higher caster level for any aspects of the spell that rely on that, such as damage, HD affected, duration, etc. Anyhow, there's some more ideas for you to consider. |
| Tomkin06-13-07, 11:30 AM | A magic system which I have been working on (as part of a vastly simplified ruleset) uses magic based on skill checks. Magic as a skill is divided into nine subsets - Abjuration (Wis), Conjuration (Int), Abjuration (Wis), Conjuration (Int), Divination (Wis), Enchantment (Cha), Evocation (Cha), Illusion (Int), Necromancy (Cha), Transmutation (Int), and Transportation (Wis). The reason for Transportation is that I think that some spells (like teleport, telekinesis, fly) don't really fit into transmutation/conjuration. I adopted some of the spellcasting mechanics from various other d20 sources, mainly Tome of Battle. Spellcasters gain knowledge of spells by taking the Spell Knowledge feat, which allows them to learn a number of spells equal to 1 + their Int modifier, and gives them one additional spell slot. Each morning, a spellcaster may choose any spell he or she knows to occupy a spell slot. Each spell slot can be used once per encounter, so a caster may want to prepare his favorite spells multiple times. Rather than expending his spell slot normally, a caster may expend a spell slot for the entire day to get a more powerful effect. For example, the per-encounter effect of fireball is rather tame - a radius-2 burst at the moment - since it can be used once per encounter, but the big effect can carve out swaths of enemies. This retains the feel of "going nova" somewhat, while simultaneously giving a mechanism to balance spells like teleport that are almost never cast in combat, and introduces an element of resource-management as well. To regain spells in the middle of an encounter, the caster must make a Wisdom check as a full-round action that provokes AoOs (I haven't decided on the DC yet, or whether this should be a skill check or just raw Wisdom, but I'm leaning towards the latter). The actual process of casting a spell is simply a skill check. The higher your check, the more powerful the spell. This way, spells scale quite nicely without all of that "levels" business. The save DC of a spell, when necessary, is 10 + 1/5 the skill check + Charisma modifier. (This formula is under revision and subject to change.) Optionally, if the caster rolls a natural 20 he does not expend his spell slot, and if he rolls a natural 1, he expends the slot for the day. Fluffmuffin the 3rd-level gnome spellcaster specializes in evocation. He has an Int of 14, a Wis of 13, and a Cha of 15. He has taken Spell Knowledge once, so in addition to his base five Wizard spells known and four prepared, he knows three more spells and can cast one more per encounter. With his total of 24 skill points, he put three ranks in every school except Necromancy. He knows magic missile, ray of frost, detect magic, color spray, sleep, enlarge person, bull's strength, and shocking grasp. He chooses to prepare magic missile twice, color spray, bull's strength, and enlarge person, since he knows he will be facing some high-AC fighters with weak Will saves, and he wants his Barbarian teammate, Strog, to be able to take them on. Just as Fluffmuffin finishes preparing his spells, he and Strog are set upon by an angered wolverine. Fluffmuffin quickly casts enlarge person on Strog. He rolls 13 on a d20 and adds 3 (skill ranks) + 2 (Int mod) for a total of 18. Looking at the table for the enlarge person spell, he sees that this is enough to increase Strog to Large size. On his next turn, Fluffmuffin tries to cast magic missile on the wolf. He rolls his Evocation check and gets a natural 1! Not only is this too low to deal any damage, but his magic missile slot is expended for the day. Good thing he prepared it twice! Later in the afternoon, Fluffmuffin and Strog encounter a horde of goblins. Knowing that most goblins have poor Will saves, Fluffmuffin decides to expend his color spray for the day. This allows him to affect the goblins as if they had two fewer Hit Dice. On his Illusion check, he rolls a total of 17, meaning that the save DC is 10 + 1/5 * 17 + Charisma mod, or 15. The goblin horde is devastated, as three-fourths of them are now unconscious, blinded and stunned! Strog runs around mopping up the survivors, and they return to their favorite tavern for a much-needed drink. Well, that's the spell system. It makes spellcasters suitably MAD, and stops them from just being "good at everything". Any comments/opinions would be welcome, as long as they provide sufficient reasoning and though (i.e. no "This system sucks just because", please. Note: All parameters of specific spells mentioned herein are very much subject to change. Most notably, I am considering granting all spellcasters the ability to roll 3d6 or even 4d4 rather than 1d20, to lessen the randomness of spells "fizzling". EDIT: Sorry, I need to work on my not-writing-novels skills. |
| General Felire06-13-07, 06:34 PM | Werral, You are right, I did think it was going to a flat penalty due to repeating. Honestly, I like penalties more than I like hard restrictions. That said whether the penalty is placed on the caster or the person dispelling doesn't matter in the end. I just think that the more capable you are the more you are able to modify your spellcasting in minute ways so as to make it harder for others to dispel. I used Intelligence modifier as that is the base for a Wizard but it can be anything really. It can also be 1/5th caster level. Thus a 20th level Wizard can repeat a single spell 4 times without penalty, but the fifth time is at -2 for dispel attempts. Honestly, I like my original thought, that the penalty goes to all acts of casting that spell. I hear you, I do, I just don't see the point. Maybe we could give a person of equal or higher class levels in a spellcasting class the ability to roll to see if they can stop the similarities despite the fact that the other person has modified his spells a little bit. Maybe make it a spellcraft check with a DC equal to something or other. :) Hugin, This I don't really have a problem with. I mean I don't like it in the sense that I think it is great and needs to be implemented immediately, but I don't hate it either. And do note, that this is not your system that I don't really like its the entire concept that a spellcaster can have something go wrong just because the roll of a fricken dice. I have seen a lot of critical chart and I gotta say yours is one of the more interesting. It has something that effects negatively both the caster and the spell, as well as having something that is a boon for the caster if he rolls really well. I like that. I would honestly consider adopting this as it makes sense that by gathering the energies of magic one could modify through chance. I would have to say that another good boon should occur between the last and the second. Tomkin, First, I gotta say that I have no problem with where you placed the abilities. I think they make sense. Second, I like how anybody can have access to spellcasting. I think that is a nice effect for a magic rich world or a world in which one uses magic no matter the class they have. Since they are taking a feat to do this it becomes somewhat balanced. :) How many times can a caster cast a spell outside of an encounter. Another question, having each spell be cast only once seems artificially limiting. I know that it is like the rules of Tome of Battle, I didn't like it their either. I really thing it should be something like 1 + some modifier or something. That way, the higher you are the more you can cast but not so outrageously. That is just my opinion of course. Nice example, I like. Not sure what MAD stands for. Despite being here for a long time I have still not gotten all of the site's lingo. :) I agree, seeing a post with "this system sucks" is useless, stupid and petty. Since a person who wrote that doesn't have anything to say, why even say anything at all. With all the above said, I gotta say I recently purchased Tome of Battle and really like the system they present their. Which is a plus for you using it, :). I too have examined using it for the basis of one of my variants. So, yeah, I think this works and works very well. The thing that is going for you is that many of the rules are already written and (probably) playtested for balance. So you will probably have an easier time of it, Also, I like the concept of "per encounter" compared to "per day" I think it is an interesting direction for the writers to take D&D into. I think that they still need to fix some kinks, but beyond that I think it has potential and could work. I, for one, would like it so much better than the current system. Cause, even if a caster can cast a spell only once in a given encounter, that's like less than fifteen minutes real time or something. It is definitely not fire-and-forget and it is not vancian, which I think is a win. |
| ShinoAburame06-13-07, 06:58 PM | I love this idea Tomkin, had a simaler idea myself, but flavor wise I'd change the schools in relation to mental stats.. Wisdom based: (Abjuration) (Necromancy) (Transmutation) Charisma based: (Enchantment) (Evocation) (Illussion) Intelligence: (Divination) (Conjuration) (Universal) |
| Tomkin06-13-07, 07:18 PM | General Felire: Thanks for the input. I did notice that you said spells failing because of a die roll was bad, so I take it you stand on the mult-die side of the 3d6/4d4 vs. 1d20 question? Hmm... on second thought, ShinoAburame, I'd say: Wisdom: Necromancy - requires willpower to keep from going insane Abjuration - requires willpower to keep up wards against attacks Divination - requires good perception Transportation - not sure about this one Charisma: Enchantment - this one's a no-brainer Evocation - force of personality = force of spells Intelligence: Transmutation - you need to know how all of those muscles, bones, skin etc. works Conjuration - not sure Illusion - it just seems like you need Int Wisdom gets four schools because it has the leas effect on casting right now, and Divination is the weakest school anyway (although I'm looking to change that). If you have other thoughts, and can explain the reasoning (I don't mean to sound hypocritical, I didn't explain mine because I am not sure of the reasoning and needed to save space), I would consideryour point of view as well. Although really, it might be a matter of DM preference. Be careful to mix up the schools though, we don't want all the most powerful spells dependent on the same ability score. EDIT: Each time you take Spell Knowledge, you now gain 1 + Int mod spells, and 1 + Wis mod slots. Or should it be the other way around? Should I split it into Spell Knowledge (Arcane) and Spell Knowledge (Divine)? Which scores go where? |
| General Felire06-13-07, 07:30 PM | Tomkin, Yeah, I think more dice is better. I also like the concept of having a particualr number and then adding dice. So something like (number pulled out of my ass) 10 + 4d6. With the 10 spot going up as one goes in levels, making it harder for the more knowlegeable to fail, though never acutually removing the chance. Necromancy - Usually Necromancy is given to Intelligence, which I think makes sense. But this is nothing more than an opinion. :) Just a note, but don't forget Constitution. It could be used for spellcasting as I think it sometimes fits. Spells, The amount of spells you know should be based on intellignece. So I say leave that at 1 + Int mod. The amount of times you can cast a spell is based on willpower, so wisdom, and I like having it 1 + Wis mod. I definitly think that arcane-divine should be split. How one is getting the magic is completely different - one through personal discoveyr the other through divine worship - and I think that they should be kept separate. Of course, I also think that many spells could fit in both categories, I just think that concept wise the power given by the gods should be kept separate from the power of the universe. |
| Tomkin06-13-07, 09:04 PM | Well, if you don't define the arcane/divine divide mechanically, then that frees you up to say you get your spells however you want. Sure, they could be grantedby gods, or books, but what about powers stemming from nature? Or whatever else you want. I think I'll post a thread of my own where we can continue the discussion. |
| ShinoAburame06-13-07, 10:00 PM | lol, well your's is good too, it's really not something I'd debate over as long as it makes use of the mental stats equaly. :) I just dubbed illussion in with charisma because illussions are like magical bluffs. Real-life magicians mostly peform illussions (albeit not nearly as impressive as even level 0 spells) and what makes them good at it isn't so much thier intillect or awareness, but thier way with people. |
| Hugin06-13-07, 10:45 PM | Hugin, This I don't really have a problem with. I mean I don't like it in the sense that I think it is great and needs to be implemented immediately, but I don't hate it either. And do note, that this is not your system that I don't really like its the entire concept that a spellcaster can have something go wrong just because the roll of a fricken dice. I have seen a lot of critical chart and I gotta say yours is one of the more interesting. It has something that effects negatively both the caster and the spell, as well as having something that is a boon for the caster if he rolls really well. I completely understand. I've seen fumble charts that are tougher than an ancient dragon. :D Plus, the concept isn't everyone's cup of tea either. The fact that you don't like fumble charts and think mine's alright is good for me. Not sure what MAD stands for. Despite being here for a long time I have still not gotten all of the site's lingo. MAD stands for (I think) Multiple Attribute Dependency. It's used for classes that need more than one good ability score to be viable (in some people's opinion anyway). Re: School - Attribute Association I agree with you guys that this is really arbitrary in many ways but as long as it balances out between them it's good. |
| ragoftag06-16-07, 01:16 AM | Actually, I'm just entering this to get up dates, but best of luck with this, maybe ya'll can find the McGuffin that eludes over 30 years of frustration. |
| Holy_Beholder06-18-07, 07:47 PM | What about this: Casters get a caster level, that they roll to see if they can cast a spell. They also have to learn a spell first. For instance: A 9th level wizard can normally cast a 5th level spell. The caster level check for a 5th level spell would then be 19, assuming that the caster has an average score. However, since they need a score of 15 to cast the spell anyways, giving a +2 bonus, the spell level would be 21. If they succeed they cast the spell. If they fail, they don't cast the spell. If they fail by 5-10, they take 5 nonlethal damage. If they fail by 11-15, they also take 5 lethal damage. Every additional 5 points failed by adds 5 lethal and non lethal damage. The five comes from the spell level. That way, a caster can't just cast endlessly, or they will kill themselves or knock themselves out. An apprentice sorcerer, Lv 2, 13 int could try to cast a meteor swarm spell from his masters spell book. A meteor swarm is a 9th level spell that takes an 17th level wizard to cast, so it has a DC of 27. It also needs an intelligence of 19, or +4, boosting the DC to 31. The apprentice sorcerer rolls a 10, and gets a 13. He failed the check by 18 points. He then just took 9 nonlethal damage, and 9 lethal damage. He didn't cast the spell. A 2nd level sorcerer with an average constitution has a maximum hp of 8, realistically 6 or 7. He is now dying, because he tried to use too much magic. Even if he rolls a 20, he only gets a 23, and fails by 8 points, knocking himself unconscious. A cantrip should also be easier, so it counts as a -1 level spell. In addition to that, if a bard fails he takes 150% normal damage, and if a paladin or ranger fails, they take 200% normal damage The caster level+mod DCs. Divine/Arcane. 0-9(10+0-1) 0 damage 1-11(10+0+1) 1 damage 2-14(10+1+3) 2 damage 3-16(10+1+5) 3 damage 4-19(10+2+7) 4 damage 5-21(10+2+9) 5 damage 6-24(10+3+11) 6 damage 7-26(10+3+13) 7 damage 8-29(10+4+15) 8 damage 9-31(10+4+17) 9 damage Bard 0-11(10+1+0) 0 damage 1-12(10+2+0) 1 damage 2-15(10+4+1) 3 damage 3-18(10+7+1) 4 damage 4-22(10+10+2) 6 damage 5-25(10+13+2) 7 damage 6-29(10+16+3) 9 damage Ranger/Paladin 1-14(10+4+0) 2 damage 2-19(10+8+1) 4 damage 3-22(10+11+1) 6 damage 4-26(10+14+2) 8 damage. This gets rid of spell slots, while you still have to take a caster class, and you can't indefinitely cast spells. You are also fully capable of killing yourself of knocking yourself out if you try to cast something too far out of your league. Your check still takes into account a higher score, which will let you cast more spells, although botches still happen. This check treates a 1 as a 1 and a 20 as a 20, instead of auto fail or auto pass. |
| not Yoda06-18-07, 08:50 PM | Hugin is right about MAD. I've been away for a while, but I'm back now and I see some interesting ideas.:D |
| Xaer06-18-07, 11:17 PM | Alright, an attempt at direction, as I see lots of people shouting out ideas and no one coming to a consensus(aka, a rant thread). For now, just list out the things you dont like about the current spell system, and discuss what you think about the dislikes brought up by the other posters. As for me... 1. Spell level system lacks modularity(I can cast three more meteor storms, but not another magic missle!) 2. Wizard becomes ridiculous powerful at high levels(metamagic abuse). |
| General Felire06-19-07, 12:11 AM | Xaer, 1) I agree 2) I disagree, :), I think spellcasters should be powerful at high levels Mine 1) Vancian system of magic, fire and forget 2) Preparation needed. For example needing to prepare two magic missles if I want to use it twice in a day. 3) spell slots per day 4) needing to rest to regain spells 5) Wizard/Sorceror classes having pretty mich nothing in its chart. Other problems might come to me as I read the posts of others. |
| maharai2306-19-07, 02:44 AM | Temporary HP (whether from say Tenser's Transformation, magical Con increases (including items), Barbarian Rage or similar. Perhaps treat it as an inverse of healing with nonlethal damage... Any overburn damage deals damage to both the actual HP and temporary HP. So, if someone with 10 temp HP takes 8 points of overburn, he has 2 temp hp remaining, and has also taken 8 points of damage to non-temp HP. Furthermore Overburn damage cannot be healed magically, only natural healing is allowed. (Maybe that's a bit harsh, but you know). I can see this, though perhaps a feat that enhances the rate of recovery is in order (much like ability burn in the Psionics Handbook). Something that allowed you to recover Overburn damage at a rate of your HD per hour, rather than per day, or perhaps allowed you to recover all of your overburn damage at the cost of, say becoming exhausted (which may not be restored magically). As for the penalty with 6's, I disagree on that point. Perhaps if the same number is rolled on two or more dice, then those dice are doubled... So the caster that rolls 1 extra die is ok, the caster that rolls 2 can take a maximum of 24 damage (a pair of 6's), etc. This applies some risk to Overburn without making the penalty debilitating. |
| Tomkin06-19-07, 10:43 PM | Too many spells, not enough versatility. I'm hoping for something akin to the Epic make-your-own-spell system for normal spells sometime. (Of course I realize that the potential for ridiculous cheese is there, but still... also, if Wizards did that they would lose the potential "ooh! New spells!" value of supplements, which would be bad for sales - just goes to show what happens when you try to introduce a financial model to something like this. You sacrifice quality for marketing.) Minutiae. Eventually you'll have to worry about preparing 28 spells, 14+ of which will almost never have an impact. Then you have to track all your spell slots and lasting buffs... it's just overcomplex. Empty class charts. I'm still working on this one in my magic system. (Shameless plug: Anyone who agrees with me or General Felire should check out my thread in my sig, which tries to address those concerns.) :twocents: - Tomkin |
| Xaer06-19-07, 11:43 PM | Felire: My problem isn't that casters are powerful at high levels, characters should be powerful at high levels(that's kinda the point). My problem is that they become exponentially powerful after 20th level. Here's one of many ways to do it: Every level you can, take the multispell feat. Grab the automatic quicken spell feats if you wish. Given the rate of feats and bonus feats, by level 40, you can cast 16 spells in one turn. Thats. A. Lot. 1) Fire and forget: elaborate? What don't you like about that? 2) Agree, and this is easily fixed by removing prepared casting. 3) Agree, MP system seems to fix best, though how to implement is still debatable. 4) Ambilavent on it. If recharge is implemented, the max MP pool would have to be reduced a lot to compensate, to keep game balance. 5) ???, Wizard/Sorcer spell list is the largest in the game. ---------------- Tomkin: 1) I agree with the versatile argument, and I've found two possibilities so far: --The psionics augmentation idea, where spending extra MP makes 1st level spells powerful even at epic levels. --The construction by DC idea, where spells are made ala Epic Spells. My worry about that is ease of use. Many players could get confused by such a system. 2) By removing prepared casting, would that be fixed somewhat? 3) Explain? Not sure what you mean by empty class charts. |
| Sdhaight06-19-07, 11:45 PM | This is my take on this magic system that has been presented here. Magic system rule veriant by: SDHaight -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Magic can be broken down into four schools. Arcanum, Devine, Bardic,and Nature. Ranks with in each school determine what level of spell a character is able to cast as shown in table 1. Ranks work the same as any other skill with a cape of character level plus 3. Table 1 <tt> http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e113/Sudar/Table1.jpg Each level a caster will receive a base number of 2 (1 for sorcerer) Spellskill point plus his classes primary ability score bounes +1,+2,+3, +4 ect. As long as a caster does not multi class he will receive these SpellSkill points, however if he does multi- class he now must speed regular skill points to advance his ranks in a school. Each school with the exception of Arcanum has a ability score tied to it as shown in table 2. Each schools driving ability score bounce is applied to his total number of rank's. Further more each school has a class tied to it as a primary class also shown in table 2 <tt> Table 2 http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e113/Sudar/Table2.jpg *Note a Paladin/Rangers do not have access to schools nor do they get Spellskill points till level 4. As well as having a maximum Caster level of 4 in there primary school and 2 in other school's. A caster of any type has access to all schools to a cap of 23 ranks (14ranks for Bardic school), however taking a non-primary school will be treated as cross class to a cap of 10 ranks (A ABILITY MODIFIER CAN NOT BRING A CROSS CLASS SCHOOL PAST 10!!!). Magic points (MP) Upon creation a caster will revice 50Mp every level after 1 a caster will receive a set number of points based on class as outlined in table 3 <tt> Table 3 http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e113/Sudar/Table3.jpg Also at level 20 all caster get a additional 50 Mp to add to the pool To figure out how much Mp a spell cost a simple equation is used (S*2)+10 where "S" represents the spells level 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. shown in table 4 <tt> http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e113/Sudar/Table4.jpg Also using a MetaMagic feat to inhance a spell adds additional MP at a rate of 7 MP with the exception of eschew materials costing nothing. MP will replenish as a rate of 5MP per round as usual a 24 hour period will restore MP to full. Variant 1 For any spell cast there is a chance of failure to cast a spell a character must use a SpellCraft check DC 10+S+2 with a success resulting in a cast of the spell and a faiular resulting in the spell not being cast. If for some reason a failed check is 10 below the DC a CRITICAL FAILURE happens meaning the spell went wrong in some way to the discretion of the DM note if the DM wishes nothing at all will happen. Variant to Variant 1 using the guide lines above there is also a chance of a CRITICAL SUCCESS resulting in X2 where X is the primary effect of the spell. A CRITICAL SUCCESS is to the DM discretion but as a general rule of thumb for a critical success to happen the SpellCraft check must result in DC*2. Feat Overdrive This feat will allow a caster to reach deep down within them self to cast spells after there MP is exhausted. In order to use this skill a caster must make a Spellcraft check at a dc of 15+S where "S" is the spells level. Upon a success the caster takes 5+S hit points to cast the spell. If the SpellCraft check fails then the caster takes (S*2)+5 damage. Minimum requirement for this feat is Primary School Level 4. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This next part is my own personal thing and can still be dis-regarded keeping the variant intact Upon a character receiving the ability to cast magic he is allowed to write 10 level 1 spells into his book. Just as a general rule all level 0 spells are already open to any class and come standard with any book. After a character choice his first 10 spells all other spells must be aquired in some fashion during Role Play be it from a tomb, scroll, book, teacher, purchased ect. There is one other way of aquiring a spell. While in combat or in some other RP scene if you happen to wittiness a spell being cast you can use you Spellcraft Skill check DC 10+S where is the spells level to gain a basic understanding of the spell. Upon a successful Spellcraft check you my opt to gain basic knowledge of a spell if your School Rank is high enough to "know" about it. If you opt to gain basic knowledge you make a roll 1d100 with a 20% chance to gain knowledge. If you choice to do this it will take your compleat turn. Example Lilith is in combat and witnesses another mage cast a spell she has never learned. Lilith then declares she is making a Spellcraft check to see if she knows the spell. Lilith passes her check and relies it is a magic missile spell. Now Lilith declares she wants to gain basic knowledge of the spell and rolls a 1d100. Lilith rolls a 13% and there for gains basic knowledge of how magic missile works Gaining basic knowledge is only half the battle. Once you have gained a basic knowledge and should you choice you want to learn the spell you know have to spend time contemplating that basic knowledge of the spell before you can obtain it. This is accomplished by finding a quite place and using a concentration skill check DC 10+S where S is the spells level. if you pass a concentration skill check you may then roll another 1d100 with a 50% chance to master the spell and write/learn it in your spell book after 24 hours of contemplation. Edit the table 1 got a bit messed up when i posted but it you look close enough im sure you can figure them out. |
| not Yoda06-20-07, 12:31 PM | If Magic were skill point driven instead of mp or spells per day driven multiclassing would become far more viable. In fact spell casting could be done by any class. Some classes would do it better than others if we chose to add in some caveats that would enhance the actual casters in the area of spellcasting. Roughly speaking, a fighter could do magic about as well as a mage can do melee. Ie at low level he'll probably stink but as you approach 20 the lines become less distinct. |
| General Felire06-20-07, 09:30 PM | Xaer, Isn't Epic a little different. I mean isn't everything supposed to be balanced from levels 1-20. 1) Fire and Forget. This is the concpet in that you need to prepare a spell and then if you use it you lost it until you sleep and prepare a spell again. I don't like feature. 5) Right, I understand that, but to me spells are a sort of outside feature. What I wnat is that every level (or every near level) get something, whether it is a feat or a new ability, or something. Kinda like the monk class just not as powerful of indivdual features. :) + I also agree that I would rather have a small number of spells that can do a lot of things rather than a lot fo spells that are very narrow in focus. It makes it much harder to keep track. His empty charts is the same thing that I call then having nothing on the chart. The Specials part of the class table is pretty much empty. I dislike that immensley. Sdhaight, Oh, I see the problem in the table, you forget 9th-level spells. Thats cool, no problem. Interesting rule variant, I'll analyze it a little bit later. :) not Yoda's, I like the idea of spellcasting being done by any class. The Star Wars D20 Saga system might provide ideas for this. I find no problem with this. Well, not entirely, I do wish their was some sort of mechanic equivalent to the Force Sensivitiy feat, maybe Magic Potential or Magic Access, or something. |
| Tomkin06-20-07, 09:38 PM | SDHaight, no offense but that system is really out of whack, and needs a LOT of refining. It looks like you just wrote it down without really thinking it over. Allow me to demonstrate your system's total lack of balance. I am a 5th-level wizard. I have 8 ranks in my magic skill and 18 Intelligence. I have also bought a Headband of Intellect +2 (for 20 Int total) and a Ring of Magic (Arcanum) +5. My total Magic (Arcanum) skill modifier is 8 +5 (Int) +5 (ring) = 18. That's enough to cast eighth level spells. EIGHTH FREAKING LEVEL SPELLS AT FIFTH FREAKING LEVEL! :noway: :nonono: :headexplo :banghead: :rant: :looloo: ...Ahem. To continue. I have 90 spell points, although I don't get any bonus spell points for a high Intelligence score. I have also taken the feats: Maximize Spell, Empower spell, Quicken Spell, and Overburn. As one of my 8th-level (!) spells, I choose Greater Shout. I can cast an Empowered, Maximized Greater Shout for 26 + 7 (Empowered) + 7 (Maximized) = 40 MP. Now, with my 90 MP, I can cast this spell (mind you, the equivalent of a 13th-level spell) twice in the first two rounds of any combat. If there are still any foes who somehow survived the 180 (10d6 maximized x 1.5, x2 shouts before he runs out of MP) points of damage (or, if they made both DC 23 Fortitude saves, a mere 90 points of damage), then I can overburn some more (depending on my HP, I might have to give up some metamagic, but it should still be pretty lethal), and then, if any of them has STILL miraculously managed to survive, my fighter ally, if he's not too busy feeling completely invalidated, can easily take out my stunned and deafened foes, or simply hold them off while I recharge. Oh, and did I mention that this hypothetical spellcaster, since he recovers 5 MP EVERY ROUND, can pull this trick off EVERY ENCOUNTER? His resources are nearly limitless, and he can take down virtually anything except a higher-level wizard (and even then, it's just a toss-up of who can win initiative). Oh, and some other problems I have: Why don't spellcasters get bonus MP for high ability scores? Why do casters regain MP so fast? At that point you might just switch to a per-encounter system and ignore MP altogether. To summarize, your system is coming across as poorly thought out, clunky, tiresome and completely unbalanced. It allows a fifth-level character to deal 90 points of damage in a single round. Not only that, but it adds an extra layer of complexity and requires more number-crunching in an already math-heavy game. Not only that, but it requires cross-referencing over multiple tables. Clearly, something here is wrong. In fact, I'm a bit surprised that you didn't notice how broken it was before you posted it. Have you actually playtested it? Or is there something I'm missing? Also, you spelled divine wrong. Automatic black marks in my book. :D :twocents: - Tomkin EDIT: And yes, I do say "no offense" because it's easier than editing this entire rant so it doesn't offend anyone. Don't take it too personally, I'm just miffed that something so obviously broken passed through peoples' broken-filters. |
| Xaer06-20-07, 10:09 PM | Felire: 1) Ah, okay. I was thinking of the oldschool shooter gaming "fire and forget". Means a completely different thing. 5) Would you rather have the special chart say "+1 Caster Level" every time to make you feel better? Wizards continue to grow in power, even if it doesn't put it in special to avoid innundating the chart. Tomkin/SDHaight: The problem I see with that system is that it allows casters to cast avobe their normal levels, as Tomkin pointed out. There is also the fact that the spell system needs to be simple, at least at levels below epic, so as not to confuse players. Basic MP replacement: MP cost is equal to spell level +1. Base MP is as follows: 01-5 02-8 03-11 04-16 05-20 06-27 07-38 08-47 09-56 10-67 11-78 12-91 13-104 14-119 15-134 16-151 17-168 18-187 19-205 20-224 Where'd the wierd numbers come from? I just applied the MP formula to the wizard spells per day, and that is the total number of spell levels per day the wizard gets. Obviously not refined, and not something many of us would want to use, but it has one plus: it's based on something remotely balanced.(PS, int bonuses to MP would workt he same way, but it is far too late to do the math for those as well). |
| not Yoda06-21-07, 08:06 AM | I like the idea of spellcasting being done by any class. The Star Wars D20 Saga system might provide ideas for this. I find no problem with this. Well, not entirely, I do wish their was some sort of mechanic equivalent to the Force Sensivitiy feat, maybe Magic Potential or Magic Access, or something. Yes I think a feat would do nicely. Free to caster classes of course. Perhaps one for Divine and one for Arcane? Or maybe using them is 2 seperate skills. |
| General Felire06-21-07, 07:34 PM | Felire: 5) Would you rather have the special chart say "+1 Caster Level" every time to make you feel better? Wizards continue to grow in power, even if it doesn't put it in special to avoid innundating the chart. 5) I'm sorry, but spellcasting is not the same as getting new things on the class sheet. They do not in anyway equal each other. Even more, the divine casters get stuff so why not the arcane casters. I really think that this needs to be fixed. Yes I think a feat would do nicely. Free to caster classes of course. Perhaps one for Divine and one for Arcane? Or maybe using them is 2 seperate skills. Having them as two different feats could work, but so could leaving them as one feat. I figure this would have to be decided by the GM in question. |
| Xaer06-21-07, 08:32 PM | Because the spellsets are not the same! A cleric will never have the power of a wizard in combat, having an average of 1 to 2 damage spells per level, which except for an occasional exception(fire storm), deals FAR less damage than a wizard. Wizards have more spells, far more versatility, and don't fail in combat. Clerics are relegated to status/buffs/summoning... aka indirect combat, and as such, they gain indirect bonuses. Sure, they get more HP, but that is because most of their good spells have a range of touch, which requires them to be in combat. If you wish to argue about the special list, let me direct you to the lists of the cleric: Cleric: Turn/Rebuke undead at 1st level. Total: 1 special ability. By comparison, wizards have 6 special abilities. As for the druid, he suffers an even bigger handicap to offset his special abilities. His casting does everything the clerics does, only worse. He can heal, but his max is a mass4d8 spell, compared to the cleric's heal spell. He can deal damage, but the cleric has him beat there too(fire storm, harm). What he can do, thanks to the mixture of the special abilities and the spellcasting, is that he can do anything. He will never be able to do his stuff as well as anyone else(with the close tie of summoning between him and cleric), but he can take hits, he can use wildshape for utility forms, and buff/inflict status with his magic. That said, the wizard takes the idea of the druid, and pushes it in a different way. The wizard cannot last in combat(without a tensers transformation), but he can deal the most damage out of any class. One hitting an enemy? No problem: Maximized Chain lightning coming your way for 120 damage, secondary 60 damage. That's instant massive damage, something the cleric only knows through a harm spell, and something the druid will never know. And he can get such things as a Maximized Chain Lightning with a backup Quickened Chain Lightning without having to worry abo0ut disrupting his normal flow of feats, because he gets bonus feats! In conclusion, the amount of special abilities makes much more sense when compared to the actual spells that casters can use. |
| General Felire06-21-07, 09:13 PM | Xaer, while I hear you I completely disagree on this. One of the few areas that I disagree in terms of character rules, :). I beleive that all players deserve character options, whether they are feats or something else. This is a firm belief that I have. Actually, when I run my games I use the Favored Soul character class in a book I forget to actually represent Sorcerors. They get interesting stuff beyond spellcasting. Again, while I understand what you are saying I disagree. That is why I think that any class made needs other options. Now my interest in adding features to the classes is beyond the need to change the magic system. So we could choose to ignore that for now and just work on the spellcasting system. |
| Xaer06-21-07, 09:32 PM | Then play a gestalt game? Besides, if we're getting rid of the sorceror, that problem would be gone, as the wizard has a good amount of special abilities. But for now, spells. A question to ask the visitors of the thread: Would you agree with a psionics style spell system(aka, many spells, such as damage spells, can be taken at 1st level, and made into higher level spells by putting more MP into it)? I've personally found that it works much better than the generic system, as a damage spell will always be there, and follows simple rules to allow that simple spell to be useful even at epic levels. |
| General Felire06-21-07, 10:33 PM | Xaer, While I think the issue about specials has nothing to do with gestalt games, I don't feel that this is the point of the thread. :) Okay, about psionics. I think this makes a lot of sense. By having the base spell come early and then go upward it makes it so that a lot less spells are needed. Example, we don't need to have 9 fire spells, we just have 1 spell that can be boosted or downgraded as needed. This saves space and the need to go through dozens of books for one rule. I don't think that spellcasting system like the epic one (with seeds and all that) truly fit in the basic spellcasting system we want. Its took complex for everyday spells. |
| not Yoda06-22-07, 11:53 AM | I must ask,with these modified systems, is the intent to keep current spell lists or introduce new ones? Are there paticular spell effects that should not be allowed? Can magic do everything/anything or should that be only for deific type magics, with mortal magic being governed by a set of laws like physics? |
| Xaer06-22-07, 12:37 PM | My intent was to modify the spell lists slightly, but keep the general premise intact. There are still things nonepic spells cannot do, though it should be possible to keep all the current possibilites open. |
| LCD2YOU06-22-07, 01:15 PM | Back in AD&D V2, we played around with the idea of spell points for spells and a more limited way on way spall casters get their spell points back. Essentially the spell cost was almost Spell Level * (Spell Level/2) with a few changes. This was done to keep a Wizard from casting 81 magic missiles instead of one 9th level spell. Spell Lvl/Cost 0 / 0.5 1 / 2 2 / 3 3 / 5 4 / 8 5 / 12 6 / 17 7 / 23 8 / 30 9 / 38 To get points was based on a formula = 2 + [Caster Level * ([Int-10]/3)] rounded up. So a 20 level Mage with a 27 Intelligence would have 2+(20*((27-10)/3)) = 2+(20*5.6666)) = 115 points. Sounds like a lot and it is but there was another limit to casters, namely they might not get all of their points back. To regenerate their spell points, they got the greater of (Level+Int)/3 round down or their current amount, up to the maximum allowed. This meant that a caster could go Nova, but it would take time to regain their spell points as they would be basically "metaphysically hurt". So a 1st level, 18 Int caster would be able to cast up to 8 points per day. If they used them all up, they'd get 6 points back meaning they could cast all points and not care too much. The 20th level, 27 Int caster though they can have up to a maximum of 115 points per day, if they were to use up all of them, they'd only get back 15 points/day. However, if they didn't go Nova and only used 57.5, they'd get back 57.5 so they'd be up to full. Essentially, it would take this caster 4 days to be back at full points should they decide to go Nova and only if they didn't cast anything during that time. 1st day 15 points 2nd day 30 points 3rd day 60 points 4th day 115 points Yeah it was tough but it really did give non casters a real chance and made wands and such even more useful. Non spell casters only needed to wear down their opponent and somehow survive, then the spell casters were easy pickings. So far I haven't had the chance to adapt it for 3/3.5 Edition and include Warlocks or Sorcerers. Yeah a lot of math but I play by the "Rule of the Expert". If you as a player can't handle a little math, you really ought not to play a spell caster. I enforce that rule in my game. If you're a spell caster, when it is your turn to move/etc., you have 5 seconds to act. If you want to "look things up", you do so AFTER you cast or before it is your turn, never during your move to just "think about doing something". You know your character or you don't. |
| Xaer06-22-07, 02:13 PM | Few comments on it: For starters, hooray for another math junkie! A formula that's thought out, who'da thought? The Int-10/3 seems odd. Why not divided by 2, so it would be directly based on the Int modifier? Not entirely sure I like the partial regen per day, but if running a low magic campaign, I would find the idea very appealing. What formula did you use for the MP costs? It seems to match Lvl squared divided by 2, but not exactly. Anyway, my main argument about this system is that it weakens the casters, allowing a lot less spells per day. |
| LCD2YOU06-22-07, 02:43 PM | Few comments on it: For starters, hooray for another math junkie! A formula that's thought out, who'da thought?Math rules all. If used to describe physics and the consequences of some action it shows which rules are really broken.The Int-10/3 seems odd. Why not divided by 2, so it would be directly based on the Int modifier?That is done for two reasons. 1: Taking the 20th level, 27 Int Wizard, they'd have 172 points, which is a tremendous amount of points. 2: Having another divisor makes Min/Maxing even more tedious and not always a great thing. At "/3" it gives a 19 a real bennie than just being 1 higher than 18 on your way to 20.Not entirely sure I like the partial regen per day, but if running a low magic campaign, I would find the idea very appealing.Again there are two reasons for this: 1: It makes the Wizard player far more precise and careful with their spells. Instead of just firing until they got no more, they actually have to think about what they are doing. 2: Everyone complains already that Spell Slingers wipe the floor with melee types and how Spell Slingers own the monks, fighters, etc., at higher levels. This does level the playing field a lot.What formula did you use for the MP costs? It seems to match Lvl squared divided by 2, but not exactly.It is a combo ~= Spell Level * (Spell Level/2) and a way to make the cost a progressive cost without going overboard. By that formula, 0 level Cantrips are 0 points (Nope so we made them 0.5), 1st level spells would be 0.5 (Nope, we didn't want a 5th level spell being traded for 24 or even just 12 1st level spells so we made them 2), 2nd level would equal 2 but 1st are already that so we made them 3. Then the cost goes up by the spell level level - 1, to go from 3rd to 4th is 5 + (4-1) = 8. To go to 4th to 5th is 8 + (5-1) = 12, etc. That is almost in line with the formula above. For a "pure" (level * (level/2))= 0 = 0 1 = 0.5 2 = 2 3 = 4.5 4 = 6 5 = 7.5 6 = 18 7 = 24.5 8 = 32 9 = 40.5Anyway, my main argument about this system is that it weakens the casters, allowing a lot less spells per day.Yes and no. It makes casting the real heavy stuff, 6th level and higher a real chore (but I agree with that) while making the lower level stuff always easy. Even with only 57.5 points not to dip into their regen, the caster can cast a lot of Fireballs and a few Cones of Cold, etc. At 115 points the guy can cast quite a bit of magic all at once for a truly horrific display of power. If they keep 12 points at least, they can always teleport themselves out. In it's defense, the players hated it if they were playing a mage. But even the mage player loved it when playing a melee type as well. When used with skill, the Mage was more than able to hold their own and do tremendous things even to the point I thought I didn't choke them down enough. One thing it did was made casting magic precious and not to be done lightly. Duration spells were the order of the day. Walls of Force, Iron, etc., were cast more often. The mages found it worked best when aiding the melee combatants and not just trying to blast things. If you don't like the points, take the (Int-10)/3 to (Int-10)/2 and that will increase the magic available to casters. Another thought is to have the casters spend time, money and exp to make a focus to help them cast the spells for less points. The better the focus, the higher level it takes to make and the more it takes off of the spell cost, down to 1 point of course. Also, it makes losing their focus a real pain..... ;) |
| not Yoda06-22-07, 04:02 PM | LCD2YOU, Why give a benefit for odd numbered abilities? I don't see that happen anywhere else in the game. One thing I've noticed when I play is that at low levels casters run out of steam very quickly sometimes in just one fight they're done. At higher levels they can annihilate the competition. And have plenty left over in all but the longest most grueling situations. It also becomes a matter of a given spell's versatility. Especially offensive spells, hold person is very narrow focus but hold monster is very broad. If spells get changed in some way should they become more focused at high levels or more readily applicable to a variety of situations? One of my favorite spells of all time Polymorph has been revised-rewritten-reduced-refused and abused any suggestions on how to handle this loaded Transmogrifier gun? |
| Xaer06-22-07, 05:02 PM | NotYoda: My favorite way to handle polymorph is to add that a character has to know about the creature he wishes to polymorph into. The character, not the player. Thus, if the character has never seen/read about a dragon, he cant poly into a dragon, and if he's only read about it, there would be a % chance that it doesn't work(because the character isn't intimately familiar with the creature). LCD2YOU: A progressively based MP system to take away the approximation? 0 - 0.5 1 - 1 2 - 2 3 - 4 4 - 7 5 - 11 6 - 16 7 - 22 8 - 29 9 - 37 With an MP formula of (2 + [Caster Level * ([Int-10]/2)]), and assuming our wizard has an INT of 16, the MP usage to drop to 0 stays relatively constant compared to the cost of the wizard's highest level spells. At level 1: 2+(1*(16-10)/2)=2+3=5, 5/1=5 spells till empty At level 10: 2+(10*(20-10)/2)=2+50=52, 52/11=4.727 assuming Int+2 item At level 20: 2+(20*(27-10)/2)=2+170=172, 172/37=4.648 assuming Int+6 item. Looks a little cleaner than the approximate formula above, and shows a slight downward trend, but this would be offset by the ability to use lower level magic to compensate. However, this assumes a nonaugmentable spell list, where spells are of a set level unless metamagicked. The exponential growth of the system makes augmentable spells a bit tricker to handle, and would end up a bit like: 01 - 1 02 - 1.5 03 - 2 04 - 3 05 - 4 06 - 5 07 - 7 08 - 9 09 - 11 10 - 13 11 - 16 12 - 19 13 - 22 14 - 25 15 - 29 16 - 33 17 - 37 18 - 41 19 - 46 20 - 51 Seems a bit too much, and referring back to tables to cast spells is not something most players would want to do, but it makes way for such things as taking a fire magic spell at first level, and spending 51 MP on it at 20th level to make it deal 20d6 damage. Thoughts? |
| LCD2YOU06-22-07, 05:26 PM | LCD2YOU, Why give a benefit for odd numbered abilities? I don't see that happen anywhere else in the game.Just to get rid of Even Number Min/Maxing. Also, it gave the points we were looking for as to keep the spell casters in check. Xaer: The problem I have with charts can be summed up in one word: "Chartmaster", er, I mean "RollMaster". Your ideas look fine. As for the progressive spell points you have, we played alot with 1st Level Spell = 1 point. The reason we went to 2 points was to make it a bit harder trade in a 5th level Spell for what would be 55 Magic Missiles. It has the added bennie of making cantrips a real thing for a lot of spell casters to use, being 1/4 the points needed to cast than a 1st level spell. I'm about to take the wife out for a "Mommy/Daddy date". i'll get back to you later. One thing, do you think that a system like this works best for spontaneous meta-magic casting? Just add to the spell's level and cost and fire away. |
| Xaer06-22-07, 06:15 PM | Confused about your tradein math: You claim that under that a 5th level spell would be worth 55 magic missles. 5th level spells would cost 11 MP, not 55. And the tradeoff wouldn't be too far off: a 5th level spell would deal 9d6 damage, a little less that the 11d6 you could get by casting burning hands 11 times. |
| General Felire06-23-07, 02:50 AM | I must ask,with these modified systems, is the intent to keep current spell lists or introduce new ones? Are there paticular spell effects that should not be allowed? Can magic do everything/anything or should that be only for deific type magics, with mortal magic being governed by a set of laws like physics? My intent was to modify the spell lists slightly, but keep the general premise intact. There are still things nonepic spells cannot do, though it should be possible to keep all the current possibilites open. I agree, modify spell lists only as much as we need to. Though I do think that it is better to have a small list of highly generic spells rather than a large list of hugely specific spells. I also think that magic should be able to do anything though I also think that their is a difference in what regular (1-20 level) and epic (21+) characters can achieve with magic. Some things are just beyond the capability of normal characters. LCD2YOU, I'm not a math junkie, in fact I hate math. Well, not really, but I hope you get the point. (basically, I suck at math) That said, I can't really analyze your post, which is okay, as others will do it for me. About your banning of a wizard casting 81 magic missles. If he wants to he should be able to do it. He will be unable to cast anything else and so will be extremely useless but it is his choice. So I can't really agree with this part. I have no problem with making each casting (after a certain number) harder, but outright ban, no, I'm not for that. Spellcasting I really think that a generic spellcasting system that is not that complex is better than one that requires doctorate-level understandings to get through. Even more, D&D is a high magic setting and I don't personally think restricting it or increasing the cost and rarity will work. This is of course just my opinion. :) |
| LCD2YOU06-23-07, 07:52 AM | Xaer, What I mean by a Wizard casting "55 Magic Missiles" is as follows: If I were to make a 1st level spell cost 1 MP and a 5th level spell costs 11 MP, then our 20th level guy (or any 10th+) would be able to cast 11 Magic Missile Spells. At 10th+ level, each spell has 5 MM per spell so that would be 55 Magic Missiles doing 55d4 + 55 or about 193 points on average. Compare that to a Cone of Cold, a 5th level Spell, which would do 10d6 for our 10th level guy and 15d6 for our 20th level (or 15th+) for 35 points of damage or 53 points respectively. General: The "casting 81 Magic Missiles" is reflecting how many 1 MP, 1st level spells a Wizard could cast (405d4 + 405 = 1418 points on average from a 10th+ level Wizard) instead of 1 9th level spell. That is because a straight exponential power cost MP needed to cast spell = Spell Level2 would require a lot of points available to high level casters so they can cast 2 or 3 9th level spells. If they don't cast these high level spells, let's say they have enough to cast 3 9th level spells as is the same by my lesser amount of points, that would be 243 points at least they have. For lower level spells at 1, 4, 9 and even 16 MP each to cast, they will be doing that all day. There would be no thinking required. Just wind up the Wizard and watch them kill things and really outshine the Martial Classes. That's why we did it. Trading down spells won't get you a ton of them and the lesser amount of points while giving a Wizard freedom to cast any spell they studied, limitted them to the number of spells they could cast. It did lead the players to being far more concerned about what spell they cast and led to better cooperation between Spell Slingers and the Melee minded companions. |
| Xaer06-23-07, 10:51 AM | That's why my thought was to fix the "spell improvment" side of the spells. In a spell level system, it makes sense for spells to grow a little in power, as spell levels are not directly related to each other. However in an MP system, the spells would work more like this: To fire one magic missle, you pay for the magic missle spell like a 1st level spell, BUT to fire two, you'd pay for a second level spell. In that sense, it preserves the fact that spells are easier to fire off one at a time then all in a bunch. Sure, you can still get 11 magic missles by firing them separately versus 5 together, but an enemy is going to laugh at you if you just keep using 1d4+1 rather than 5d4+5, and will teach you the joys of being fireballed in the face. Thus the inefficiency is a must. Thoughts? |
| LCD2YOU06-24-07, 12:45 PM | That's why my thought was to fix the "spell improvment" side of the spells. In a spell level system, it makes sense for spells to grow a little in power, as spell levels are not directly related to each other. However in an MP system, the spells would work more like this: To fire one magic missle, you pay for the magic missle spell like a 1st level spell, BUT to fire two, you'd pay for a second level spell. In that sense, it preserves the fact that spells are easier to fire off one at a time then all in a bunch. Sure, you can still get 11 magic missles by firing them separately versus 5 together, but an enemy is going to laugh at you if you just keep using 1d4+1 rather than 5d4+5, and will teach you the joys of being fireballed in the face. Thus the inefficiency is a must. Thoughts?We kept the inefficiency to make the change more transparent. The spells still worked almost exactly the same as the book said, but the costs were different. Personally, we found it reigned in spell casters without gimping them too much while allowing them to cast what the wanted. Remember this was for 2nd edition so it needs to be changed for 3.5 Edition. I was thinking of adapting it for 3.5. |
| Xaer06-24-07, 03:57 PM | I've never played second edition, so I wouldn't know too much about what casting was like in it. |
| LCD2YOU06-25-07, 08:35 AM | Well Second Edition is not important. What is important is if someone thinks that the Vancian Magic System DnD uses is broken and can be fixed. I presented what I did for 2nd Ed. If people want to use it, I'd like to see what they suggest to make it compatable for 3.5 and such. Any thoughts on how this can be used on the "partial casters"? Will it work for Bards, Paladins and Rangers? How does this effect the Sorcerer Class? I have ideas and I'll present them here. Some ideas I'll use, some I'll nix and more but many minds can either create a great thing or it'll be a Camel, a horse designed by committee. |
| not Yoda06-25-07, 09:36 AM | That's why my thought was to fix the "spell improvment" side of the spells. In a spell level system, it makes sense for spells to grow a little in power, as spell levels are not directly related to each other. However in an MP system, the spells would work more like this: To fire one magic missle, you pay for the magic missle spell like a 1st level spell, BUT to fire two, you'd pay for a second level spell. In that sense, it preserves the fact that spells are easier to fire off one at a time then all in a bunch. Sure, you can still get 11 magic missles by firing them separately versus 5 together, but an enemy is going to laugh at you if you just keep using 1d4+1 rather than 5d4+5, and will teach you the joys of being fireballed in the face. Thus the inefficiency is a must. Thoughts? Perhaps the level of the spell does not change. Is simply raising the caster level is enough? I'm not familiar with the pont system you are speaking about but I will try to give an example that can be expanded. To raise caster level you need to spend mp. Lets say magic missile costs 1mp to cast. Raising caster level = 1/2 new caster level in mp (rounded up?) So a 10th level wizard could cast Magic Missile for one mp but it would just be one missile or he could spend 5-6 mp to throw it as a 9th level caster and send 5 missiles at foes. But seeing that, it looks coplicated.:( |
| Xaer06-25-07, 10:43 AM | It's actually not that bad. When applied to a nonlinear MP system like above, it looks ugly, but I'll give a psionics spell to explain(most of the attack spells in psionics are like that) Energy Ray(Psion/Wilder 1, MP cost 1) Creates a ray of energy(specify fire,cold,electricity,sonic) that deals 1d6 damage. Augment: For each additional MP you spend on this power, add 1d6 to the damage. |
| Cheza06-25-07, 12:39 PM | I'm sorry to interrupt the current and interesting discussion, but I wish to add something to a reply on page 2 of this thread: I like the concept of spells being like skills. It would allow characters to utilize their spell to the best of their abilities. Another aspect is that because a spell has levels than a check would be required. And since a chance of failure is always possible, it could make it more balanced. They are skills by now, but you can't see it. The same is true for fighting skills. BAB and Casterlevel are something like a skillgroup. Designers added several skills together to prevent great differences in ranks. It's easy to split basic attack bonus into skills - it could be the weapon group houserule from the UA: fighting (swords & daggers) fighting (axes) fighting (polearms) fighting (hammers and clubs) fighting (spears) fighting (...) This is just one possibility. Instead of just increasing one fighting weapon, you have to increase all of them. It's impossible that you know how to fight with axes, but know nothing about swords. All you can do is to get something similar to a skill focus - it's called weapon focus. The same could be true for spellcasting. It doesn't matter how you seperate spells, but in the end they are summed up to caster level. This isn't - but should be - the magical BAB. An example: spellcasting (abjuration) spellcasting (conjuration) spellcasting (divination) spellcasting (enchantment) spellcasting (...) So it shouldn't happen, that you specialize in one school of magic, ignoring the rest. However you can focus yourself in one school of magic - it's called spell focus. As I mentioned in an unanswered thread :weep: , you can add 1/2 your class level to spell DC and to saves. Link: Saves as Skills (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=868822) This changes everything. Spell DC isn't calculated by spell level, but by caster level. So you can let the wizard roll and treat saves to be something similar to AC (just assume you roll a 10 => spell AC = 10 + relevant save bonus) In fact of negating saves, it's similar to mundane attacks. If you can't hit him, you deal no damage. And for spells that cause a certain nondamaging effecT: If you can't beat his will AC, you "miss" to cause any effect. That's similar to the monks stunning attack. And as with normal skills, spellcasting could need different skills, since this isn't pure knowledge, craft or a profession. So you can have entchantment spells be based on charisma... And instead of an arcane spell failure, you can add armor penality on spellcasting skill checks. :) |
| Cheza06-25-07, 01:24 PM | A more expanded list, covering all the types of magic I could find. The top list is all the spell types based off of the sorceror list, and the rest are the extra types for clerics and druids. Fire Magic(Various) Ice Magic(Various) Lightning Magic(Various) Acid Magic(Various) Sonic Magic(Various) Detection Magic(Divination) Comprehension Magic(Divination) Foresight Magic(Divination) Summon Magic(Conjuration) Rune Magic(Conjuration) Fabrication Magic(Conjuration) Manipulation Magic(Enchantment) Morale Magic(Enchantment) Light/Darkness Magic(Evocation) Force Magic(Various) Masking Magic(Illusion) Image Magic(Illusion) Death Magic(Necromancy) Drain Magic(Necromancy) Undead Magic(Necromancy) Buff Magic(Transmutation) Item Enhancement Magic(Transmutation) Polymorph Magic(Transmutation) Time Magic(Transmutation) Cleric Magic(Possibly a skill for each domain the cleric has taken?) Smite Magic(Various) Holy Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Bane Magic(Various) Negative Magic(Various) Harming Magic(Conjuration) Druid Magic Animal Magic(Various) Plant Magic(Various) Elemental Magic(Various) Object Maniplulation Magic(Transmutation) Weather Magic(Various) Healing Magic(Conjuration) Still need to figure out what to do with wish spells. I wouldn't make them skills. As I don't like Mana at all. For me it's just a transfer from a sorcerer into a psionic caster. Whenever a sorcerer gains spell slots, you just increase Mana. The Psionics use the following calculation (spell level of the slot * 2 - 1). So a level 1 spell grants 1 MP, a level 2 spell grants 3 MP.... But you do not change the magic system at all. A psionic may want to be able to retain ALL mana points after a rest - like the normal wizards do now. So you just increase the options a little bit (instead of casting a magic missile with a level 2 slot like a sorcerer can do, you might cast 3 M&Ms). Doesn't change much, right? So I would prefer something like a feat system. Instead of a spell book or spells known, you might choose between different spell types (see above). You get a certain number. After that, you can manipulate spell charasteristics as you wish, but only with a feat-based number of increments. It should be like the metamagic feats. An example: I choose "Telekinese" as a favorite spell type. As a first level character I can create the following effects: Mage hand Range: 25 ft. Duration: 1 round / level Effect: lift object of <5 lb and move it 15 ft. per turn. By decreasing the duration, I can increase the effect OR the range. So I could decide to cast: Open/Close Range: 25 ft. Duration: instantaneous Effect: You can (telekinetic) open/close one object of <30 lb. Launch Bolt Range: 100 ft. Duration: instantaneous Effect: You can (telekinetic) hurl an object of 1lb. in an exact way so you deal normal damage. If your character advances in levels, you may add a greater power to your spell for free. If you reach 3rd level, you can chhose a feat and increase your spell this way. If I decide to be a master of range, I can cast spells with greater range automatically. Launch Bolt @ Level 3 Range: 400 ft. Duration: instantaneous Effect: You can (telekinetic) hurl an object of 1lb. in an exact way so you deal normal damage. Alternatively, you can increase spellpower or the area of your effect.... As you can see, you don't really need a mana based system. |
| Xaer06-25-07, 03:17 PM | Alrighty then... Saves as Skills: Couple of things to keep in mind when trying out new formulas: Make sure they work at several places, not just at the beginning. I usually test at 1st,10th,and 20th levels. So, lets try it out! With an 18 in DEX for the saver and INT for the caster, and a good save... 1st: DC(18+1)-Save(2+4)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. 10th: DC(20+10)-Save(13+5)=12 1-12/20=40% chance to save. 20th: DC(23+20)-Save(24+6)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. Now, this test was done with no magic items, but that brings up a problem: magic items favor the caster. A +6DEX item boosts the reflex save by 3. A +6INT item boosts the DC by 6. And what about a bad save? The reason the save inrceases only go to 6 and 12 is to keep the d20 a reasonable factor. With the bad save like this, at level 20 we get... 20th: DC(23+20)-Save(12+6)=25 1-25/20<0 0% chance to save. Under that system, a character will only succeed on a poor save with a natural 20. Alright, now onto the feat idea. Not a bad idea, but poorly explained. How does one gain spell groups. How will you compensate for forcing casters to take such feats. How do damage spells grow in power? What would you do to prevent overpowering of damage spells?(note: at-will spelllikes only go up to 9d6 damage per round(warlock)) Could you give some more details on the idea? |
| not Yoda06-25-07, 04:59 PM | Alrighty then... Saves as Skills: Couple of things to keep in mind when trying out new formulas: Make sure they work at several places, not just at the beginning. I usually test at 1st,10th,and 20th levels. So, lets try it out! With an 18 in DEX for the saver and INT for the caster, and a good save... 1st: DC(18+1)-Save(2+4)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. 10th: DC(20+10)-Save(13+5)=12 1-12/20=40% chance to save. 20th: DC(23+20)-Save(24+6)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. Now, this test was done with no magic items, but that brings up a problem: magic items favor the caster. A +6DEX item boosts the reflex save by 3. A +6INT item boosts the DC by 6. And what about a bad save? The reason the save inrceases only go to 6 and 12 is to keep the d20 a reasonable factor. With the bad save like this, at level 20 we get... 20th: DC(23+20)-Save(12+6)=25 1-25/20<0 0% chance to save. Under that system, a character will only succeed on a poor save with a natural 20. Alright, now onto the feat idea. Not a bad idea, but poorly explained. How does one gain spell groups. How will you compensate for forcing casters to take such feats. How do damage spells grow in power? What would you do to prevent overpowering of damage spells?(note: at-will spelllikes only go up to 9d6 damage per round(warlock)) Could you give some more details on the idea? In reference to the power of damage spells. Touch attacks shoud go the way of the dodo. They are arguably the hardest defenses to improve. And yield hideous damage easily. For example Scorching ray at 12th level a wizard can hit most foes on a roll of 4 or better. Since Saves actually increase with level. |
| dredraven06-26-07, 12:35 AM | I have been toying around with the idea of a spell check/fatigue based system for a little while now. Love the notion of casting every combat, but it becoming more and more difficult as a limitation and the notion that smaller magical effects should become trivial as your power increases. . Here is what I am thinking about. - Spell are cast by skill roll - DC to cast a spell is 12 + Three times the spell's level - Casters would have access to spell levels at the normal class levels (I.E. 2nd level spells at 3rd level, 3rd level spells at 5th levelm, etc...) - Every Succesful cast would add a -1 fatigue penalty to any additonal casting this encounter. This would last until they could rest and refocus(same reset time as ToB abilities) - If you fail the roll by more than 5 you gain an a -1 fatigue penalty as if you had succesfully cast it. -Once your total bonus to roll this spell check equals the dc of the level of spell you are casting, the spell no longer fatigues you to cast it. Here is an example. Wizard with 16 int. At 1st level, he would have 4 ranks in skill, plus bonus to a total of +7. To cast a 0 level spell they would need to roll a 5 or better, to cast a 1st level spell they would need to roll 8 or better. Since the DC of each new spell essentially increase by 3 from the spell level and you have only went up 2 levels, each higher level of spell that you have just learned would be slightly harder to cast at your first level that you could cast it. You would need to roll a 8 to cast a 1st level spell at level 1, a 9 to cast a 2nd level spell at 3rd level, a 10 to cast a 3rd level spell at 5th level. Thus the higher level effects would become more and more unreliable. Also, you would master spell levels as you went, so assuming the above example, at 6th level, assuming max ranks, this wizard would be able to cast 0 level spells all day long. At 9th level he could cast 1st level spells without fatigue. 2nd level spells at 12th level. 3rd level spells at 15th and etc.... |
| General Felire06-26-07, 12:46 AM | dredraven , I gotta say that I like this. It simple, not a lot of math, and is very fluid. I like the fact that the higher one goes the easier the lower levels get. Spell DCs are: (I like making charts, makes it easier to see, :) ) L - DC 0 - 12 1 - 15 2 - 18 3 - 21 4 - 24 5 - 27 6 - 30 7 - 33 8 - 36 9 - 39 Is the fatigue cost for all spells or just if you cast the same spell over and over again. I like it if it would be the second option, but I'm so liking it if it was the first option. Also, does the spellcasting classes provide some bonuses to the spellcasting check. I honestly, think they should. That way it makes sense to stay in the class for it makes it easier. All in all I like this, I think it works, does not have a lot of math (which si good in my book, :)) and seems fun. |
| dredraven06-26-07, 02:29 AM | Thanks. I had intended it to be per spell cast period, but it could be per cast of an individual spell. It means a little more book keeping but it could be very interesting especially with limited spellbook. If you go with per individual cast of a spell, maybe -2 per cast. Makes you think more. |
| Cheza06-26-07, 10:20 AM | Alrighty then... With an 18 in DEX for the saver and INT for the caster, and a good save... 1st: DC(18+1)-Save(2+4)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. 10th: DC(20+10)-Save(13+5)=12 1-12/20=40% chance to save. 20th: DC(23+20)-Save(24+6)=13 1-13/20=35% chance to save. I do not understand your calculation (What means 18+1???). So I will post one by myself: How to calculate spell DC: 1d20 or a take 10 as a base add your level add your ability modifier So for a spell with level 1, 10, 20: 10 + 1 (your level) + 4 (Int 18) = 15 10 + 10 (your level) + 4 (Int 18) = 24 10 + 20 (your level) + 4 (Int 18) = 34 The calculation for your save are like skills: 1d20 or a take 10 as a base add your ranks (max. 3 + level), if it's a 'good' save If it's a 'bad' save, add half as much add your ability modifier So for a your saves @ level 1, 10, 20: 10 + 4 (max. ranks) + 4 (Dex, Con or Wis 18) = 18 10 + 13 max. ranks) + 4 (Dex, Con or Wis 18) = 27 10 + 23 (max. ranks) + 4 Dex, Con or Wis 18) = 37 So your chances are: 15 vs. 18 = 23 vs. 27 = 34 vs. 37 Now, this test was done with no magic items, but that brings up a problem: magic items favor the caster. A +6DEX item boosts the reflex save by 3. A +6INT item boosts the DC by 6. Than you didn't understand my calculation. A +6 Intelligence boost spell DC by 3 (as normal) And what about a bad save? The reason the save inrceases only go to 6 and 12 is to keep the d20 a reasonable factor. So your difference was 6 points @ lvl 20. With this system, your difference will be 12 points @ lvl 20. That's correct. But that's true for all opposite skill checks like hide vs. cross-class sense motive. So I think it's an acceptable difference. If you don't want this, you can increase the maximum for cross-class skills (doesn't change the 2 points per +1 rule). Alright, now onto the feat idea. Not a bad idea, but poorly explained. English isn't my first language. Don't know if you could explain this better than me with your second one. ;) How does one gain spell groups. How will you compensate for forcing casters to take such feats. How do damage spells grow in power? What would you do to prevent overpowering of damage spells?(note: at-will spelllikes only go up to 9d6 damage per round(warlock)) Could you give some more details on the idea? I wanted to show, that a mana system doesn't change anything... just increases casting options slightly. (Cast 3 Magic Missiles with a 2nd level slot instead of 1) I didn't wrote all my ideas because it would be quite long... How does one gain spell groups? It's similar with gaining known spells, spells written in your spellbook or domain spells. You achieve them with levels. By now, you have to take (and learn) many different spells just to get similar results. Telekinetic: Lvl 0: Mage Hand, Open/Close, Launch Bolt, Stick Lvl 1: Hold Portal, Unseen Servant, Guided Shot, Instant Locksmith, Accelerated Movement, Animate Rope, Expeditious Retreat (+swift), Feather Fall, Float, Jump, Speed swim This are the spells of the first two levels, I could explain with a telekinetic power. This power can alter an object/subject, changing speed and/or direction. So a Levitation is just a upward impulse that compensates gravity. You might disagree with some spells, but that doesn't matter yet. I want to show, that you do not have to learn 20+ spells, just because one spell has the same effect, but a greater range and one other spell decreases range to increase area... For me these spells should be "grouped" together and be leaned only once => spell group. This is already true for protection from <choose element> and open/close. But a Sorcerer who got fly, has to "waste" an additional known spell slot to be able to cast that fly like a swift fly. I don't like that. So my idea is to give spellcaster something like a domain. In this domain - like telekinese - you can alter the power in any possible way, if that doesn't exceed your power level. How will you compensate for forcing casters to take such feats? Nothing here to compensate, right? You decrease the number of known spells... or you may find it more acceptable to handle them like invocations (warlock) or domains (cleric). By the time they reach level 20, a sorcerer has learned about 40 known spells and wizard 40 spells for free. So if you have to take 1 feat to get 1 additional known spell, you can sum it up, how many feats they need to achieve this. So since you do not need them anymore (or decrease the number), you will have enough feats to spend on spell groups and metamagic enhancements. How do damage spells grow in power? It's simple: The same way you increase other spell characteristics like range, area, and so on.... you use feats that enhance them. What would you do to prevent overpowering of damage spells? Prerequisites. Like spell level limits your spell power & feat progression limits a fighter, you can limit enhancers the same way. If you are - like me - a fan of a warlock, you can see one more option => differentiate them into "least, lesser, greater, ..." So let's present a more detailed list: Range: -1: self +0: touch (<5ft) +1: close (25ft) +2: medium (100ft) +3: long (400ft) +4: extreme (2000ft) +5 or +6: unlimited range (10000ft) It doesn't matter how far, if you wish to cast it with >10000ft Duration: +0: instantaneous or 1 round +1: 1 round/... +2: 10 rounds/... (= 1 min/...) +3: 10 minutes/... +4: 2 hours/... +5: 1 day/... +6 or +7: permanent (2 weeks) It doesn't matter how long, if you cast it with >2 weeks. Area: +0: single target (ranged touch) +1: 5ft. square (reflex save) +2: 10ft. cube or 5ft. radius +3: 10ft. radius +4: 20ft. radius +5: 40ft. radius +6 or +7: ??? A Cone is 3x radius and a Line uses range +1. Increasing effect: +0: +1 on a well-defined roll +1: +2 (well-defined) or +1 on a 'group' +2: +4 to +5 +3: +8 to +10 or an automatic "take 10" +4: +16 to +20 or an automatic "take 20" +5: >20 (well-defined) +6 or +7: >20 (group) Damage: +0: 1d6 +1: 2d6 or 1d6+attribute modifier +2: 3d6 +3: 4d6 +4: 5d6 or 2d6+level +5: 6d6 +6 or +7: >6d6 I left the duration unknown, because I don't like the 'per level' calculation. I would appreciate 'per 2 levels' or something completely different (like 'per casting attr.-modifier'). To explain "Increasing effects": A well defined bonus would be +1 on a certain skill. A group sums up more than one check. You can use -X instead of +X. So your character could get some spell groups @ level 1 and some later. As he increases in level, he may add 1 enhancer every 2 levels. However there should be an option to add/remove special "disadvantages". It's similar with spell components. You could be able to add a certain material cost to a predefined spell group to decrease the spell level by one. Other options would be a spell failure or a limited use (f.e: only at night, works only against undead, ...) One more possibility: Decreased recast time -0: at will -1: every 1d4 rounds (every 15 seconds) -2: 1x per minute -3: every 15 minutes -4: 1x per hour -5: 3x per day or every 4 hours -6: 1x per day To make myself clear. This isn't tested! Just my thoughts... |
| Holy_Beholder06-26-07, 10:29 AM | dredraven , I gotta say that I like this. It simple, not a lot of math, and is very fluid. I like the fact that the higher one goes the easier the lower levels get. Spell DCs are: (I like making charts, makes it easier to see, :) ) L - DC 0 - 12 1 - 15 2 - 18 3 - 21 4 - 24 5 - 27 6 - 30 7 - 33 8 - 36 9 - 39 Is the fatigue cost for all spells or just if you cast the same spell over and over again. I like it if it would be the second option, but I'm so liking it if it was the first option. Also, does the spellcasting classes provide some bonuses to the spellcasting check. I honestly, think they should. That way it makes sense to stay in the class for it makes it easier. All in all I like this, I think it works, does not have a lot of math (which si good in my book, :)) and seems fun. I have used this, if you fail by 5 or more the spells do non-lethal damage equal to the spell level. If you fail by 10 or more, you take lethal damage instead. Every 5 failed further doubles(with the two doubles equals a triple D&D standard) the damage. So a 2nd level sorcerer with 16 cha, has a 5 in the skill. If he tries to cast wish(lets say he gets a 9), he fails by 25 points, and takes 36 damage. He probably has 8-9 HP, and has now killed himself. There are lots of stories where spell casters kill themselves or start dying because they tried to cast a spell way above their league. |
| not Yoda06-26-07, 10:37 AM | I have been toying around with the idea of a spell check/fatigue based system for a little while now. Love the notion of casting every combat, but it becoming more and more difficult as a limitation and the notion that smaller magical effects should become trivial as your power increases. . Here is what I am thinking about. - Spell are cast by skill roll - DC to cast a spell is 12 + Three times the spell's level - Casters would have access to spell levels at the normal class levels (I.E. 2nd level spells at 3rd level, 3rd level spells at 5th levelm, etc...) - Every Succesful cast would add a -1 fatigue penalty to any additonal casting this encounter. This would last until they could rest and refocus(same reset time as ToB abilities) - If you fail the roll by more than 5 you gain an a -1 fatigue penalty as if you had succesfully cast it. -Once your total bonus to roll this spell check equals the dc of the level of spell you are casting, the spell no longer fatigues you to cast it. Here is an example. Wizard with 16 int. At 1st level, he would have 4 ranks in skill, plus bonus to a total of +7. To cast a 0 level spell they would need to roll a 5 or better, to cast a 1st level spell they would need to roll 8 or better. Since the DC of each new spell essentially increase by 3 from the spell level and you have only went up 2 levels, each higher level of spell that you have just learned would be slightly harder to cast at your first level that you could cast it. You would need to roll a 8 to cast a 1st level spell at level 1, a 9 to cast a 2nd level spell at 3rd level, a 10 to cast a 3rd level spell at 5th level. Thus the higher level effects would become more and more unreliable. Also, you would master spell levels as you went, so assuming the above example, at 6th level, assuming max ranks, this wizard would be able to cast 0 level spells all day long. At 9th level he could cast 1st level spells without fatigue. 2nd level spells at 12th level. 3rd level spells at 15th and etc.... I like this. It's simpler than the one I came up with. Is there any affect other than the DC going up? Do the casters actually get fatigued? If that were the case this could be used with the Feat/anyone casting system that has been thrown around a bit. Fatigue is a much smaller handicap for a caster than a martial class. The idea of gish could be done far more smoothly than it has in the past. |
| Hugin06-26-07, 02:24 PM | dredraven, I like your system (it's very close to the one I use) so maybe you can help me out. Anyone else is welcome too, naturally. I currently am still using the spells per day as in the rules (wanting greatly to get rid of that) with a slightly risky over-limit ability to cast spells beyond this normal limit. How are you planning to distinguish between wizards and sorcerers? Or perhaps I should have first asked are you planning to differenciate the two? I do like the difference for flavour reasons mainly and don't really want to see one disappear. I'm thinking that the wizard could cast one of these over-limit (and therefore non-prepared) spells directly from his spellbook* as a full-round action. I don't know... [* smart wizards would use back-up copies, probably limited in content. Additionally, IMCs, these 'spellbooks' may exist in any form that can be written on, such as a staff, tablet, 'voo-doo' doll, tatoo, etc., but the number and power of spells on it are limited to writtable surface area.] |
| Cheza06-30-07, 04:53 PM | I feel a bit sad, that there wasn't any discussion about my suggestion. So maybe I should explain it better: Warlock: As a warlock, I can know up to 12 invocations. That's very limited, so I hate to use 2 of them to enhance my eldritch blast. Instead of that, I wish I could forego damage dice. "The eldritch blast is the equivalent of a spell whose level is equal to one-halfs the warlock's class level (round down)" If you would round up, the spell level of your eldritch blast would be equal to the number of damage dice. (I use this rule, because it's easier to keep in mind). Many metamagic feats have a spell level adjustment. So why not adjust the spell level of the eldritch blast? All you have to skip 1d6 damage, to add any metamagic feat with +1 level adjustment to the blast. An example: Normal eldritch blast - 5d6 @ 60ft Enervate blast - 4d6 @ 60ft but +50% to living creatures and -50% to anything else Enlarged blast - 4d6 @ 120 ft Fell weaken blast - 4d6 @ 60ft and -4 Strength for 1 min. Maximized blast - 12 damage @ 60ft However you will notice: Some metamagic feats are too strong and some are to weak. A maximized spell deals less damage than with an average hit. But that's quite ok. You don't need to spend an invocation and you should choose this at will. And you could create more flexibility because you could allow to add more than one essence (even if your spell does no damage as a result). By now, it's not possible that the eldritch blast has a touch range, needs verbal components, has a greater power in your sanctum or has a recast delay of 1d4 rounds similar to a dragon's breath. Psionic: Many psionic spells have a spell augmention, but only one or two. And nearly anything beside damage dice is calculated automatically. So if you cast a Wall of Fire or Energy Wall you don't have to spend power points for additional damage. Baleful Teleport spell level 5 close range 9d6 damage Fort 1/2 Augmention: For every additional PP you spend, this power's damage increses by 1d6. For each extra 2 dice of damage, this power's save DC increases by 1. So I can't spend additional power points to cast this spell with touch or medium range, can't hit more creatures or get this spell as effective as a disintegrate (2d6 per level). [Sure, I could allow "Twin Spell" be used with powers] It would be great, if any spell effect has a specific level minimum. Any other modifier like range, duration, area/targets could be added by increasing spell level OR spending more power points. Sorcerer: As I've already written, you have to spend 2 spells known to cast a fly and a fly, swift. And there are many other spells. Resonating Bolt 1d4 sonic damage / level -- 60ft line Shatterfloor 1d4 sonic damage / level. -- 15ft radius spread Normally you would have to learn both spells to be able to cast both version. I have chosen this spell, because you can apply a metamagic feat (Sculpt spell) to achieve a similar effect. I want to show that - in some cases - you can spend feats instead of learning additional spells. To cast a swift fly, a wizard could choose quicken spell as a feat, but this would increase the spell level by +4. If it would be allowed to reduce duration instead, it could reduce the level adjustment (Swift spells still use verbal components => additional reduction). A good test would be to be able to take feats with negative level adjustments and design more flexible versions. (instead of double the range, increase it by one category per +1 LA). And more metamagic feats should have a bonus @ +0 LA. I introduced these versions without negative feedback: Still spell Since you have no arcane spell failure (= ignore 100%) with +1 level adjustment. The spellcaster can ignore 20% without an level increment. Silent spell: Since you don't have any verbal component with +1 LA, you can choose to either have a non-speech (noise) verbal component. This allows you to cast this spell even while polymorphed or gagged [20% failure], but not in complete silence. Or any other character gets a -4 malus on Listen / Spellcraft checks to hear you or pinpoint your position / identify the spell (cast quietly). .... Any thoughts??? |
| Tomkin06-30-07, 08:14 PM | Well, the changes you made don't seem too drastic - the thread is about rebuilding, after all. But they don't look like they would screw up the game much. However, you said that you were letting warlocks apply metamagic to their eldritch blast because they had too few invocations - yet they have even fewer feats. It doesn't really make sense to pay with gold because silver is scarce, if you'll pardon the metaphor. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with the sorcerer example - are you saying that you should be able to weaken your spells to decrease their level? That has a lot of potential for abuse, though I probably shouldn't be talking since I'm employing something similar in my system in my sig ([/plug]). And which are these "feats with negative adjustments" that you mention? What book are they in? EDIT: Dredraven, it seems cool... my one qualm though, is that it adds one more way in which spells can fail (they can already fail through concentration, or through successful saves or a missed ray... the list goes on; why add one more). Another idea is to let the spell be cast, but double the fatigue penalty and the caster takes ability damage to his casting stat, or something. |
| Cheza07-02-07, 10:45 AM | However, you said that you were letting warlocks apply metamagic to their eldritch blast because they had too few invocations - yet they have even fewer feats. It doesn't really make sense to pay with gold because silver is scarce, if you'll pardon the metaphor. :) A good metaphor. I don't want to give the warlock metamagic feats. I want to give him feat-equivalent boni. So by now, you have to "waste" an invocation to double the range of your eldrith blast. This is a waste, if you can cast an invocation instead (for example: miasmic cloud). So instead of spending invocations and have a constant increase of damage dice, I would allow to choose what to do when your blast increases in power. One player might not take +1d6 damage at the relevant level, but add an equivalent, permanent alteration. I mentioned: Any +1d6 damage, increases the spell level of the eldritch blast by +1. So that player could choose to take something with a +1 spell adjustment instead (f.e. enlarge spell). He actually don't have to take the metamagic feat, because it's limited to one spell and not applicable to all spells/spell-like abilities. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with the sorcerer example I wrote down some problems I see. So for me it's unfair to learn two spells even if they do almost the same thing. Maybe they differ in area, casting time, duration or range. So instead of learning an additional spell, a sorcerer could take metamagic feats. But those feats are too restrictive to be a good alternative. And which are these "feats with negative adjustments" that you mention? What book are they in? You won't find them in any book, because I "created" them to explain something. You might want to cast a spell as a swift version. You can take "quicken spell" with a +4 spell level adjustment. That's unusable. If you could add a metamagic feat with a negative spell level adjustment, you could reduce the spell to a usable spell level. A normal "fly" has a 1 min/lvl duration, a "swift fly" has a fixed duration of 1 round AND has a verbal component. So my idea of a metamagic feat with negative spell level adjustment would be a negative version of "extend spell". To be more flexible, this metamagic feat has a -X adjustment. - X adjustment = -X categories of duration Available categories are: 1 round 1 round/lvl 1 min/lvl 10 min/lvl 2 hours/lvl 1 day/lvl So if you reduce the duration of "fly" by 2 steps, it would reduce the spell level by 2. Since a quicken fly is eqivalent to a level 7 spell, a quicken fly with a duration of 1 round would need a level 5 spell slot. If you add a verbal component, you should be able to reduce spell to level 4. If you alter the adjustment of "quicken spell" to +3, you can copy a swift fly (level 3) with metamagic feats. :) are you saying that you should be able to weaken your spells to decrease their level? Yes. Since you still have to reach the spell level to be able to cast a certain spell, you can't abuse it. Maybe you feel better if those negative adjustments are just limited to negate positive adjustments. But that's not nessessary. Let's say, you want to add a material component to your spell to reduce the spell-level. You can create a chart for the money equivalence. The maximum decrease of levels would be to cast it without spending a spell slot. If you want to do this, you have to add a material component that is as expensive as a scroll of that spell would be. It's more flexible because you could reduce the cost to cast a scroll (buy or create) by spending spell slots. Instead of scrolls, your players can find rare materials as a treasure, allowing the wizard to use them like a scroll. Instead of a material cost, you could add an XP cost. I can imagine a cleric without any cure spells left. He wishes to heal his dying friend so he starts praying to his deity. By sacrificing a bit of his power, his deity accepts. Or you could increase the casting time to reduce the spell level. This could be a drastic increase, but it would negate any 1/day disadvantages. It would be great, if you could create a spell adjustment chart for that so that I can see if both of us would create the same... :) This would introduce chanting magic into D&D. A druid might want to let it rain over a large area. Since normal spellcasting is a standard action by default, you could say, that this druid has to chant (verbal) and dance (somatic) for several hours, place a sacrifice in the middle (material or XP cost) and with all of that he can create the effect he wishes. However you will see that some spells are overpowered now. I wouldn't allow to reduce the range of fireball to decrease the spell level (even with a reduce the damage cap). That's ok, because I think a fireball is an old relic. Designers didn't change it to keep the "feeling". Well, the changes you made don't seem too drastic - the thread is about rebuilding, after all. But they don't look like they would screw up the game much. What I want to show: It's possible to rebuild magic by increasing the usage of metamagic enhancements. I don't care if they are feats or free power augmentions. First step: The first step to rebuild magic could be to limit all spells to the lowest spell characteristics possible. So a disintegrate would have a touch range. Any characteristic (range, duration, area) increases spell level, but metamagic should be more variable and more balanced. Second step: The second step could be to eliminate the spells per day limit. My last reply was about the difference between 1/day psionic versus 1/round eldritch blast. As you can see, both classes increase spell level to get additional damage dice (or vice versa) ;) . But a 1/round ability is limited to +1d6 per spell level instead of +2d6 (psionic). That's why I said that I don't think adding "fatigue" state could compensate to be able to cast spells every turn. It doesn't seem to be a balanced magic rebuild to be able to cast a 10d6 fireball of 15d6 cone of cold every turn. If you allow the standard wizard (to be sure you kept the balance), I wouldn't play it. Third step: Combining both effects and eliminating inbalances would be the next thing to do. However, I already mentioned that if you can add many power augmentions to any spell, spells would look the same. A sorcerer with many metamagic feats like energy admixture and sculpt spell is a good example. So I would make certain metamagic enhancements to be limited to certain spells. An alternative would be that it's a permanent choise you have to make. If you wish to alter it afterwards, you still have to take metamagic feats. Last step: As I've written in my first reply, you could sum up similar spells in a spell group. In other words, you can/have to use power augmentions of metamagic feats to change the spell effect, not just the characteristics. You don't have to learn open/close and mage hand just because they create a different effect. Both are telekinetic spells that can create minor tricks (affect less than <30lb), you could add them together and reducing your number of spells to compensate. The maximum effect you can create is mesured by the spell level equivalance (a quick example): Level 0: 5 lb Level 1: 10 lb Level 2: 30 lb ... Since you have a power cap and a you can sum up effect with characteristic adjustments to get the spell level total, you could either create different effects at the same spell level: Open/Close - Close range, instantaneous, but high effect Launch Arrow - instantaneous and <1lb, but greater range Mage Hand - <5 lb and close range, but longer duration Found some inbalances??? Thoughts??? Wishes??? |