In many fantasy stories a key point of tension is a hero using magic that exceeds their expected capacity. It has always seemed to take some of the "magic" out of magic in d&d that the rules about spell slots and spell level related to a character's capability are so cut and dry. Once they reach they allotted count they are done. It seems to me it would add interest to the game if there were some kind of difficulty check that would allow a character to cast magic missile one more time, for example, but then a potential cost, loss of hit points for example or exhaustion. I think it potentially adds a different kind of tension when a villain if they are getting close to losing might be able to cast a spell beyond their normal capacity in some way and accidentally blow themselves up, or at least unconscious. I am just getting started with ideas of trying to introduce something like this to my current campaign and I wonder if anyone has experience with adding rules like that? Thanks in advance for your ideas and experience.
In past campaigns I allowed people to use blood magic to gain extra power, exchanging HP fo spell slots.
There was an additional cost however in that they risked their souls by using dark magic. Basically a saving throw at the end of the day or be cursed.
So yes. It was possible but it was reserved for extreme situations.
I like the idea. Add's some interesting and fun flavor.
My concerns would be:
1) Attempt to make it a fair trade for balancing purposes. That one extra fireball can make a big difference. Maybe scale the negative drawbacks to the spell slots?
2) My other concern would be for my non-magic PC's, will they be upset they don't have some cool additional feature? Maybe you can make something similar based on reaching deep within side and attempt some type of battle dice manuever or such.
Let me know what you come up with!
This is exactly what the Overchannel feature of the evoker Arcane Tradition is meant to represent.
I've never been into the idea of "do X, get more magic power" types of game systems - it works great for a story in a book, movie, or TV show, but when applied to table-top it always seems to turn into this finite math problem situation where the character doesn't at all feel (narratively) like they are risking anything or even actually hindering themselves, at least not unless the benefit gained from the thing done is not actually worth the cost.
There might be some razor-thin balance point that is possible to result in such a system feeling like it would in another medium, but I don't see the way to standing on that point - only managing to fall off either side and end up with systems that don't feel special or risky and result in more power the players readily scoop up with little or no downside, or that players avoid because the cost outweighs any perceived benefit.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
intently wrote:
I spent awhile imagining the metaphysics of my home brew setting, and did a short write up to explain the limited number of spell slots available to casters. The short version is, it scrambles your soul if you try to do more. So what happens if a PC tries it anyway?
Permanent insanity and physical deformation of an intensity proportional to the spell slot level. The option is always there for my spellcaster players, but it's extremely unattractive, and none of them have risked it.
Roleplaying as if spending spell slots takes a lot out of the caster would help. Sure, they know how much they have left, but that doesn't mean they aren't left sweating and panting when they've only got a couple Shields left in them. The player could also just not tell anyone how many slots they've spent, and if anyone asks, answer vaguely with things like "I could do this all day!
" or "I've been doing this all day!
". That would cut down on the perception that spell slots are like a gas tank that just goes kaput, while still respecting the game balance they're designed to enforce.
Personally I would go with somethign like this:
All spellcaster gain this ability:
you can convert your own HP and max HP to power up your spell. You can use this to create your highest spell level ONLY, and you need to haev expended your entire allotment for that spell level.
(in parenthesis I'll put the average HP a wizard with only 12 Constitution should have at the lowest level able to cast that spell level). You need to be able to cast that spell level in order to use your life force to power it up. (so a dwarven hill cleric with 20 constitution at level 8 (91HP using AL rules) cannot power up a spell level 9 even if he can afford the 80HP damage.
spell level 1- 5HP (7)
spell level 2- 10HP (17)
spell level 3- 20HP (27)
Spell level 4- 30HP (37)
Spell level 5- 40HP (47)
Spell level 6- 50HP (57)
Spell level 7- 60HP (67)
spell level 8- 70HP (77)
Spell level 9- 80HP (87)
A spell power up by your life force, will succeed automatically, the target automatically fail his save (even with lucky or with legendary save cannot change this), you automatically touch the target (but the target need to still be within range) and the spell ignore resistance, but is still affected by immunities.
This HP cost can bring you under 0 HP (if your max HP reach under 0 you die, if only your HP reach under 0 you are simply dying) a long rest allow you to regain 10 max HP taken from this abilities. So yes the wizard using his own life force to cast one last meteor storm (spell level 9) will probably have to stay in bed and recover for 9 days.
Why such a huge cost?, well it's suppose to be a last resort, mustering everything you got force by the necessity otherwise your entire party dies, not something you do every day, 2 or 3 time per day.
This would represent something similar to the movies, where the hero mage cast his last spell and fall unconscious, on the brinks of death, very vulnerable. Where the remaining of the party need to band together to save him but he gave them this last opportunity this last chance to succeed the mission.
For example, a wizard level 5 (highest spell level 3) cast his fireball in a fight, then he counterspell the ennemy mage trying to cast ice storm. (so use his 2 spell level 3 he have) they don't have time to take a short rest so he cannot use his arcane recovery. Then they meet a dragon mounted by a spellcaster inthe last fight. The dragon breath on the party and bring everyone under 5HP, and the mage start casting Chain lightning and will kill the entire party, the wizard mustering all his life force in this last attemp, cast counterspell and automatically succeed on his arcane check and cancel the ennemy chain lightning, but he take 20 damage and 20 max HP damage (bringing him from 27 to 7, and the 20 damage bring him from 5 to -15, so he die from massive damage, but at least he bought the cleric the chance to cast mass healing word to heal the party, gave the chance for the barbarian to attack the dragon and kill him and the archer to shoot the mage off the dragon back and with the falling damage kill him. Then the cleric can revivify the wizard, who will need 2 long rest to regain his 27 Max HP.
intently wrote:
FWIW, I've only seen one "desperation" system where the penalties were severe enough for it to be a risk, and yet manageable enough to consider - Star Wars: Saga Edition's Dark Side system.
The benefit? Varied, usually unlocked by deliberate player choices. For instance, if the player knew a Dark Side Force power, using it would increase your Dark Side score by 1. (These powers were immensely powerful. The strongest straight-up non-dark Force power was around 4d6 damage (although really good checks with Move Object might throw something really heavy for quite a bit more, if that "something heavy" was nearby). The basic Force Lightning Dark Side power was over twice as strong, longer range, and came with a condition penalty, and it was potentially available at level 1.) Noteworthy in that the benefits were pretty much only open to people who had deliberately chosen to buy an option to spend them, so players couldn't game this system to get access to new powers - they had to voluntarily buy into it. (Note that they also were awarded for blatantly evil acts, but that's more of a Karma Meter than a "stretch capacity" rule.)
The immediate drawback? Next to nothing, especially if you already had a nonzero Dark Side score. The game never checked for how high that score was (except in one case, see the next point) - certain effects only worked if you had a 0 Dark Side score, and others behaved differently if you had a nonzero score. Having 0 was generally advantageous, but was hard to maintain. Once you had nonzero, nothing immediately changed by continuing to use your badass Dark Side powers. (This is actually a nice nod to the source material, as once you start down that seductive path it's difficult to leave. It also nods to certain expanded sources, like the Jensaarai, who occasionally use Dark Side abilities but rarely, if ever, actually fall, due to their discipline and judgement in when to employ those powers. (The Jensaarai also had a unique talent that turned a few Dark Side powers into neutral powers, to fully reflect this, but that was in a splatbook.))
The true cost, which made things risky? If your Dark Side score ever equaled your Wisdom score, you became an NPC villain, full stop. That's a significant enough cost for almost anyone, unless you're in a villain game (in which case you may as well start out fully Dark anyway and this subsystem doesn't matter). Note that fully-Dark NPCs didn't bother tracking these scores - once your Dark Side score equaled your Wisdom, it didn't climb any higher (and could basically only change through dramatic plot events, usually involving destinies and massive story arcs - think the end of Return of the Jedi for an example.)
Note that a reasonably common houserule was to have the GM keep track of players' Dark Side Scores in secret, using those scores to filter how they describe Perception checks (i.e. a character with a high Dark Side score is likely to sense threats where there aren't any, subtly prompting the player to respond with fear and violence, which in turn gave more opportunities for more Dark Side points...). This had the side effect of preventing the numbers-game that Aaron describes, and it let individual GMs play the Dark Side as insidious or as blatant as they wanted.
The reason it was manageable? You could spend Force points (which only refresh when you level up) and stay on the straight-and-narrow for an entire adventure (yes, it was measured in screen time most of the time) to slowly reduce your Dark Side score. The costs were heavy and the payments were slow, but you could recover from a Dark Side slip if you wanted. However, an adventure is rather long, and lots can happen to tempt you off the straight and narrow during that time... (Sith Lords were particularly good at this, setting up no-win situations where the only option was to accept a Dark Side increase if you wanted to challenge them directly or withstand their powers.)
I've always enjoyed systems where you could push your magic to gain benefits with drawbacks that can bite you.
Shadowrun - Magic has drain which you resist. The stronger the spell, the more you have to resist. So long as you played it safe, your drain was considered "Mental" damage or subdual damage. You could push past your normal limits and cast a deadlier version of the spell, but your drain was now Physical damage. You could easily wind up killing yourself if you pushed too hard.
Warhammer Fantasy - You could pull in extra dice for extra power, but rolling doubles caused some minor bad things to happen. You roll on a chart to see what happens. Triples and quadruples were had even worse charts including being sucked into the Warp never to be seen again, or summoning some serious demons which could easily wipe a mid-level party. Each chart has a small chance to bump you to the next chart.
Warhammer 40k - Similar to fantasy but you push your psi-rating affecting the strength of your power (spell). The light chart isn't so bad, but it can push you to the next chart same as fantasy.
- Eck
Rather than a HP penalty, I think levels of exhaustion make more sense.
Maybe Spell Level - Int Modifier (or spell casting ability in the case of non-wizards) = levels of exhaution suffered. I would even consider a temporary loss to the casting ability for repeated 'over-casting' so that the caster can't keep throwing magic missiles with no effect...
I'm not certain I would ever allow it in my games, but it certainly is an interesting optional rule idea.
hp loss is too transitory. It needs to be something that you have to consider in a dire situation where it's Everyone dies or save the world. Casting from nothing can make you simple. Drop your spell casting ability score by 1 permenantly before you cast.
My Players are really inexperienced so I havent had to deal with them exploiting any rules yet. I cvan see a lot of potential imbalance. I think the thing I am most interested in is getting away from the idea of a "gas guage" for spell slots. I also like the idea of spells potentially going wrong or creating other side effects from simple things like all the entire party's hair falls out or all the food rations turn blue to more serios things like accidental damage to friends. my players are young and more impressed sometimes with crazy events than with domination in combat. Also they are low level and things like this do tend to get more out of balance at higher levels. Now I'm leaning toward a strategy of adding some variability to spell slots so that on any given day a caster has approximately the proscribed spell slots but I keep track of some secret random modifier. When a spell caster attempts a spell they aren't sure when they will reach their limit and they declare their intentions of how many slots to use at any particular time, if their attempt exceeds their slots - roll on the side effects table. Obviously not the right approach for all parties but I would be intersted in any thoughts on that kind of approach.
jm986 wrote:
Nevvur wrote: