Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Rhenny Jul 09, 2014 10:07:45	There has been a lot of debate about how spellcasters (especially wizards) may or may not have too much utility and/or power.  To me, the way the campaign world works is the vehicle for changing how magic works and how much utility or power a spellcaster has.    Think about all of the fantasy novels or movies you’ve read or seen.  Depending on the fantasy word, spellcasters function differently.   In some worlds, it is rare to even encounter a magic user.   In other worlds, magic users are common, or feared, or become sickly as they practice their arts.   Here are some suggestions for changing the way magic and spellcasters function in a game world.   1) Don’t let anyone play a spellcaster.   2) Don’t make all spells available.  Pick out the ones that ruffle your feathers.   3) Fort Save DC 10+ spell level or take 1d4xspell level damage.   4) Fort Save DC 10+ spell level or take one level of exhaustion.   5) Have a charge-up rule (the caster needs to capture the mana from the weave) – Roll DC 10+spell level INT check or spell cannot be cast until next round.  PC can take another action instead.   6) Add ethereal monsters that are attracted to magical discharges.  For example, Mana Worms  -  Roll a d20 after casting any spell.   If the number is equal or lower to the spell level, a mana worm attacks the spellcaster.   The worm materializes on the spellcaster’s body and begins to drain more mana.  Each round the mana worm steals 1 spell slot (from lowest to highest each round). Invent stats to suit your campaign (ac, hit points, ways to kill it, etc.) – Older versions of D&D did this with The Thought Eater, The Intellect Devourer, The Brain Mole, etc.   7) Demons or Devils seeking ways to return to their plane are attracted to magic discharge.  When a spellcaster uses magic, there is a small chance that one of these creatures will show up (adjust the chance to taste).  The demon or devil that shows up will most likely be of equivalent level to the spellcaster.   It may try to bargain with the caster, but if it cannot gain from the bargain, it may get angry.   8) Make all magic require a blood offering.   Caster must prick himself or herself and inflict damage to cast the spell.   (Mechanics to taste – 1x or 2x level of spell HP sacrifice, 1d4xlevel sacrifice).   9) Have each spellcaster aligned with a mighty power that demands tribute after x levels of spells have been cast.  If tribute is not made, the spellcaster finds it more difficult or impossible to cast, or he or she may encounter other obstacles.   Tribute could be wealth or favor.   Create levels and amounts/favors that work in your campaign.   Comment and add more ideas to this list, but try not to argue too much (Oberoni, etc.).   Just be constructive.
#2 mellored Jul 09, 2014 10:18:45	10) Make everyone play a spellcaster.  When everyone is special, no one is special.
#3 Gnarl Jul 09, 2014 10:35:59	11) Increase the level of the spells you find problematic to make them less available. If Invisibility is problematic as a 2nd level spell, maybe it won't be as problematic as a 5th level spell. 12) Increase the time required to replenish your spell slots. It's easier to fit 20 rounds of fighting in a week than in a day. You could even make this to be variable and tailored to your adventure. Something like toxic fumes, heavy rain, high temperatures and humidity all make resting longer. Resting near a power node makes replenishing your spell slots faster. 13) Don't allow spellcasters to swap their spells except at the end of a chapter or the adventure. Change the fluff from prepared spell to practiced spells. You need to practice your spells a lot to remember how to cast them. Tada, you don't need 8 hours to swap your spells, you need 8 days.
#4 Gnarl Jul 09, 2014 10:37:19	And I forgot another important one.   14) If you took damage since the end of your last turn, you need to make a DC 15 + spell level Intelligence check to cast a spell.
#5 Gazra Jul 09, 2014 10:47:50	15) Magic is outlawed in the land, and powerful sages are constantly scrying the land to detect unlawful magic use. Every time a wizard casts a spell there is an X% chance he is detected, where X is the level of the spell.
#6 Tony_Vargas Jul 09, 2014 11:25:33	1) and 10) work.  They're extreme, but sometimes the way to fix a ruleset is with a machete.  Balance problem?  Just eliminate all the overpowered or all the underpowered elements, completely.   13) reduces caster flexibility a bit, not enough to make much difference.  Greatly reducing spells known would do more.   The rest all use the same approach:  make magic less accessible or more dangerous - which only /increases/ the importance of casters in the campaign.     (As an aside, I don't see how it's really 'especially wizards.'  Clerics have the exact same spell progression, and know their whole list automatically.  Clerics are just saddled with the burden of using spells on healing - and are a less popular archetype.)
#7 alienux Jul 09, 2014 11:41:28	Rhenny wrote:
#8 Foxface Jul 09, 2014 13:40:35	Tony is right.  Most of these "balance" magic by making magic more dangerous, painting a target on magic users, and striking that target with some other more powerful magic.   Magic magic magic magical mage magic.   It's ironic that most "solutions" to magic involve making magic even more central to the conceits of the setting.  Sigh...
#9 mellored Jul 09, 2014 13:44:56	16) Magical components are rare.   Really, who keeps bat guano in stock?
#10 Rhenny Jul 09, 2014 13:54:56	Foxface wrote:
#11 FFSAA Jul 09, 2014 14:06:50	Play a system where fighters can't non-magically heal more than magical classes can heal.  Otherwise, why restrict magic if it's just a gimped form of not magic?
#12 Lawolf Jul 09, 2014 14:09:35	Real solutions to magic.   Raise the level of certain overpowered spells instead of being restrained by tradition. Reduce the damage of AoE spells. Give non-magic PCs a variety of interesting options that contribute both on and off the battlefield.
#13 DemoMonkey Jul 09, 2014 15:00:44	Have casting a spell permanently cost the caster .1 HP from their permanent HP total per spell level.   Sorcery has a price...
#14 Tony_Vargas Jul 09, 2014 15:17:59	Lawolf wrote:
#15 ankiyavon Jul 09, 2014 15:23:35	Tony_Vargas wrote:
#16 LFK Jul 09, 2014 15:39:25	1) Take the archetypal D&D Wizard 2) Chop it into a bunch of different pieces   3) Turn those pieces into individual classes focused on a defined core identity instead of "does all the magic."   That Wizard's (and Clerics') base class feature is infinitely extensible without altering the core functions of the class is the problem. They release a book with 300 more Wizard spells and suddenly the Wizard has gained 300 options that are concurrent with their existing ones and can be taken without adjusting any permanent options.   It's really not hard to make casters fun, impactful, and meaningfully constrained. You don't even need to give up the idea that magic can do anything, you just have to sacrifice the notion that wizards can do anything.
#17 Tony_Vargas Jul 09, 2014 15:56:55	ankiyavon wrote:
#18 Rhenny Jul 09, 2014 15:58:08	LFK wrote:
#19 ankiyavon Jul 09, 2014 16:03:02	Tony_Vargas wrote:
#20 Tony_Vargas Jul 09, 2014 16:16:39	ankiyavon wrote:
#21 Uchawi Jul 09, 2014 17:25:21	I would not change the utility of casters, but I would level the playing field. To do that a system could be implemented that counters caster versatility by making magic item use an assumption for martial characters. Then you would need to implement a rule that casters are limited on the magic items they use, but martial classes have less restrictions. So the caster get the benefit of internal magic and the martial class gains the benefit of external magic. That way everyone has a chance to use game changing effects, or adapt by aquiring new spells or items. Maybe the attunement rules would play a heavy focus. The other option is to expand ritual access over items, or a blend of both. The hardest thing to adjust is a no-magic campaign, but I guess we would not be playing a fantasy game if we wanted that.
#22 Rhenny Jul 09, 2014 17:54:02	Here's another option....(17 or 18 I think)   Make short rests 5-10 minutes long. Change Channel Divinity to a long rest mechanic. Take away Arcane Recovery   This would boost short rest mechanics for melee characters and limit caster recovery of some powerful magic.
#23 pauln6 Jul 10, 2014 1:17:14	Only allow magic to be obtainable via feats. Only allow multiclass spellcasters (with martial classes i.e. not two spell-casting classes)
#24 Foxface Jul 10, 2014 1:17:53	Fundamentally change the spell list/system.   At character creation, get a couple of spells, evocative of your character.  The spells are open-ended, and freely customizable within reason (perhaps some hard-coded rules pertaining to range, damage, casting time, etc).  As you level up, instead of gaining new spells, you can "evolve" or "elaborate" on your already known spells.  Perhaps after significant time, you gain a fundamentally new spell.   I'm thinking knowing maybe 2 spells at 1st level, and maybe 5 total by 20th level.  Combine these spells with a robust metamagic system, where the spell is customized and/or empowered with a secondary resource.   Basically, a d20 variant on Mage's Sphere Magick system.  In Mage, you gain mastery over one og the 9 Spheres, and as you gain mastery, you can create bigger, grander effects under that sphere's purview.  Learn other Spheres and you can combine effects between them for more complicated magickal effects.   Just spitballing here, but a 1st level wizard might have, as their starting spells, "Fire" and "Fate".  As minor cantrip effects, he can create sparks of flame and light, or significantly increase his odds of winning games of chance.  That sort of thing.  Larger effects include small bursts of flame, or granting Advantage to all rolls for a number of turns to a given target.  As he levels up, he learns how to sculpt the flames into something greater, like walls or ribbons of flames.  He can superheat metal at a touch.  He can not only grant advantage, but also grant disadvantage, and prevent to opposite from cancelling out the other (no amount of disadvantage will counteract the advantage he can grant).  He can grant re-rolls.  He can make predictions about the future.   By high level, the wizard can summon flames and form them into an semi-intelligent servant.  He can cause people to die of natural causes.  At the highest of levels, he can become one with flame, becoming incorporeal and traveling instantaneously along the flames of his destruction.  He can pull the strings of destiny to make it so the impossible becomes inevitable, and inevitable to become immediate.  The growing peasant rebellion happens now, the Child Who Will Rule will be born by the next full moon.   Great fantastic powers, but he's not polymorphing creatures, summoning demons, healing, flying or teleporting (without flames shooting everywhere!).   Want to fly?  Sure, shoot flames out of your hands like rocket boosters.  Requires a level X investment.  Want to make sure those flames don't burn everything around them?  Control flames requires a level Y investment, every round the rocket flames remain active.  And so on.   Tight thematic control, open-ended possibilities, and active investment.
#25 Ramzour Jul 10, 2014 1:56:11	Rhenny wrote:
#26 IgnatiusJ.Reilly Jul 10, 2014 2:29:53	18. Pass out tokens to non-spellcasters and casters that cast healing magic. Whenever a PC wizard has a clever idea or otherwise makes the non-spellcaster PCs feel usless, or hurts their feelings in any manner, the non-spellcaster can play the token. When the token is played, a house falls on the wizard. If you are feeling generous allow the wizard a saving throw that they'll never, ever, succeed at.
#27 Emerikol. Jul 10, 2014 6:06:00	I think you have some neat ideas Rhenny that are great options for reflavoring the campaign.  I don't personally feel at this point that wizards are dominant at all.  In fact probably just the opposite.  I still think your ideas would change the flavor of a campaign and such ideas are always interesting.     Here is another idea... Each time a spell is cast, the wizard loses level hit points off his maximum.   Each nights rest, the wizard recovers his level in hit points.  This would definitely create the effect of eating away at the caster.   I know that the "gang" will just say that the wizard will call for multi-day rests because to them resting is always a free action and never has any issues.  For those people, I might suggest as an additive rule in general that every rest costs the group xp.  Short rests cost less than long rests.   So any group that "rests" too much might complete the adventure easily but they would get no experience.   I have no need for such artificial means of rest control but if you do it's an idea.
#28 Rhenny Jul 10, 2014 6:55:19	Foxface wrote:
#29 Rhenny Jul 10, 2014 6:56:48	IgnatiusJ.Reilly wrote:
#30 Alex_ Jul 10, 2014 7:21:39	Rhenny wrote:
#31 Emerikol. Jul 10, 2014 7:35:08	Alex_ wrote:
#32 kill_the_wiz_first Jul 10, 2014 7:39:34	I prefer to have the spells, on an individual basis, be dangerous rather then blanket the whole spell-casting system with general rules of limitation and treacherous use. Keeps the spell casting system more in line with its purpose and creates a sense of risk and awe dependent on the casters power.
#33 Alex_ Jul 10, 2014 7:55:12	Emerikol. wrote:
#34 Vikingkingq Jul 10, 2014 8:02:08	Personally, I like the way that WFRP(2e) handled it - you had evocative schools of magic, a nice power curve, an element of both proficiency and randomness in casting, and things could go badly wrong if you started rolling ones or doubles and the magic turned against you.
#35 Lawolf Jul 10, 2014 8:07:43	Alex_ wrote:
#36 The_Jester Jul 10, 2014 9:09:15	For a Pathfinder Ravenloft campaign I ran I had magic take longer to cast to reflect the ritualistic nature of spellcasting. You didn't just cast instantly video game style but had to stay put and slowly wave your hand and make arcane gestures while holding the open spellbook.  I increased casting time by one step, so all spells that were a standard action took one full round to cast. But the duration of spells increased one step as well (rounds -> min, min -> 10 min). The idea was to encourage out of combat spell use rather than shiny blasty magic that didn't fit the world's tone of subtle magic.    There are a couple of ways to do this in 5e. Shifting your place in the initiative based on the spell level might be one way. So casting leaves you vulnerable for a few turns. 2x spell slot used would work. Or increasing the casting time when using a spell in a higher slot than its level.      However, this is really the opposite of what some people want, as it encourages utility spells and discourages combat spells, when there's the audience that wants wizards to only use blasty spells and ignore the existance of utility spells. Making utility spells cost money seemed to really make them unused in 4e. That's be the obvious solution. A flat ritual cost for any non-offensive spell and make a set casting time of 1 short rest.
#37 Karnos Jul 10, 2014 9:43:25	Homebrew Rule I'm considering-   When you level up as a wizard, you don't get to pick a spell automatically.  For level 3, you can a 2nd level spell with DM approval, after that all spells must simply be found.  Around 5th level, it can be a great adventure hook to track down some lost ancient spellbook that is rumored to contain a Fireball spell, for example.  Not every spell needs to be super hard to get, some could be "sold" by NPC wizards willing to teach a spell for 1000 gold or so.   Any spell which turns out to be game-breaking can easily be limited through this system.
#38 Rhenny Jul 10, 2014 9:48:20	Karnos wrote:
#39 Person_Man Jul 10, 2014 13:02:15	Institute true Vancian casting, as in, spellcasting that is based on how magic actually works in the Dying Earth novels by Jack Vance.   Each spell has one fixed purpose. (No "open ended" spells like Gate).  Spells must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used only once before needing to be prepared again.  Magic users can memorize only a very small number of spells at any given time, around 1 to 6.  Spells automatically scale with the ability of the caster, but more powerful spells take longer to memorize.  You can't memorize the same spell more then once.  Spells are jealously guarded secrets, and you can't buy scrolls or any other equivilent at a magic mart. You either learned them from another magic user, took it from them, or spent years researching them.  There were a very limited number of spells in the world, perhaps only a 100 spells left known in the world (though at one point, its rumored that their were many more).  Spells were extremely powerful and awesome. If you cast the right spell at the right time and had sufficient ability in doing so, you basically solved whatever problem it was directed at. You could kill a creature with the right spell, create life, be completely protected from harm for a short period of time, transport yourself across the planet, etc.  So your choice of which spells to memorize was really important. Magic users weren't weak/squishy by default. They were adventurers, tricksters, and/or powerful sages.  Most spells don't require any material components or gestures.   Add in cantrips and take out Arcane Recovery and other resource breaking class abilities, and you get a pretty interesting class.  And you don't even have to rewrite any of the 5E rules other then the class itself.    True Vancian Caster:   At 1st level you have 4 at-will Cantrips, and gain one new Cantrip at level 5, 9, 13, and 17.  You can choose new Cantrips with a Long Rest.  Any 8 hour or longer period of time you spend memorizing spells counts as a Long Rest.   At 1st level you can memorize 1 spell.  You can memorize one additional spell at levels 2, 3, 7, 11, and 15.  (Six spells at level 15).  You start with access to 1st level spells, and gain access to higher level spells at 4th level and every even level thereafter (3.5 Sorcerer progression).  Memorizing spells takes 10 minutes per spell level, and you can memorize any spell you know in the highest spell slot you are capable of casting.  You can't memorize the same spell more then once at a time, and if you stop to memorize new spells any currently active spells immediately end.  You can also cast Ritual spells strait from your spellbook with a casting time of 10 minutes if you do so at their base spell level, or you can memorize them normally.  Concentration rules exist as normal.   Other then Arcane Renewal (which you don't get), you gain every other Wizard class ability, your chosen subclass abilities, and Ability Score Increases at the normal level for doing so.   New spells have to be found through adventuring.  You don't automatically learn new ones when you gain a level.  (Though it's possible that you could find spells you're not capable of casting before you gain the appropriate level).  You can research a spell with enough down time, but this is at DM descretion.    Thus a first level Wizard gets four Cantrips and one 1st level Spell that he can change out or replace with 10 minutes of rest, plus Rituals.  A 20th level caster gets eight Cantrips and six 9th level Spells, but it takes him 90 minutes per 9th level spell to memorize new ones, plus all his other Wizard class abilities.    And here's a link to the above class on the GitP homebrew forum, with a chart and everything.  For some reason I can't get charts to work here.
#40 LFK Jul 10, 2014 12:59:25	Emerikol. wrote:
#41 Ramzour Jul 11, 2014 6:13:12	LFK wrote:
#42 Emerikol. Jul 11, 2014 6:22:46	As I see it, traditional D&D is loved by many people.  So sure I argue to have it be preserved.  I'm not against there being a million fantasy games out there that cater to every nuance of taste a person can conceive.   Now I'm to the point of just trying to fight for D&D to provide one option for a traditional game.     I'm totally alright though with magic not being equaled in many ways by mundane abilities.  That forces magic to be weak and boring.   I feel though that the mundane ability to fight extraordinarily well is not worthless.   The classes we have now are very good power level wise.   Fighters are great and so are rogues.   We don't need though wuxia to make a martial a good contributor which is what some people seem to want or imply.  At 15th to 20th level, I don't have a problem with epic magic items helping to push martials into the realm of magic.  I'd rather have a sword that enables me to fly than just say that I can now leap hundreds of feat for no reason just because I'm higher level.
#43 Alex_ Jul 11, 2014 8:41:04	Emerikol. wrote: