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View Full Version : Just had an idea, thought I'd throw it out there (3.5)



Harperfan7
2010-04-06, 01:22 AM
People on here frequently say that spellcasters are too powerful, moreso with each level. If you agree that spellcasters are more powerful, what would you say to limiting the number of spells a caster can prepare/spontaneously cast per day, regardless of how many are actually available?

Say a wizard has 40 prepared spells of various levels. What if he could only cast any 10 in any one day? He could choose from which ever ones he has prepared (of the 40), but after casting his 10th that day, is done.
(the actual number would need a formula, this is just an example)

It makes spellcasters have to hoard spells, and makes items like scrolls/wands/staves more powerful/useful and really limits their power without limiting what they can actually do.

Thoughts?

Kylarra
2010-04-06, 01:27 AM
Basically you'd be reduced to toploading and reserve feats.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-04-06, 01:31 AM
I'd either give reserve feats as class features or give some sort of warlock-ish SLA progression, because 10 spells per day means even a level 20 wizard is plinking away with his crossbow a lot of the time. Quicken goes from essential to niche.

Of course some will argue that the wizard only needs 10 spells a day to pwn, which is true in some campaigns, in which case this houserule doesn't do much. Either the constraint is slack, or it's binding and needs some support.

Harperfan7
2010-04-06, 01:36 AM
I'd either give reserve feats as class features or give some sort of warlock-ish SLA progression, because 10 spells per day means even a level 20 wizard is plinking away with his crossbow a lot of the time. Quicken goes from essential to niche.

Of course some will argue that the wizard only needs 10 spells a day to pwn, which is true in some campaigns, in which case this houserule doesn't do much. Either the constraint is slack, or it's binding and needs some support.

I like the idea of wizards having to be picky with spells and using crossbows all the time. Again, scrolls/wands/staves.

Also, I don't know what toploading is or anything at all about elemental reserve feats.

Friend Computer
2010-04-06, 02:08 AM
Reserve feats, I think are only found in Complete Mage, are feats that give you an action based on spells you have prepared. For example:

CHARMING VOICE:
You can magically sway other's opinions.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast 4th-level spels.
Benefit: As long as you have a charm spell of 4th level or higher available to cast, you can attempt to charm a humanoid by speaking to them. This requires a standard action and functions identically to a charm person spell. The duration is 1 minute per level of the highest-level charm spell you have available to cast. The will save DC to resist this affect is equal to 10+1 per level of the highest-level charm spell you have available to cast.
As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting charm spells.

The type of spell needed can be anything from a given school, to a subschool, to a descriptor (giving a villain a reserve feat powered by [evil] or [vile] would be pretty cool).

Basically, you know the nifty minor powers that Wizards get in pathfinder that depend on their school? Well pretty much those.

TheMadLinguist
2010-04-06, 02:10 AM
The main issue is that one of those spells will be rope trick, and now we're back where we started.

Emmerask
2010-04-06, 02:15 AM
In a game where a dm limits the number of casts ( or anything else in order to nerf casters) such things will not be allowed so we are not back where we started :smalltongue:

Anyway it could work but I would be more in favor of a system where the caster regains his spells not as easily.

For example the caster could just regain spellslots based on (true) caster levels
so a 5th level wizard may recover each day one 3rd 2 1st level slots or one 3rd one 2nd etc
Reserve feats are mostly blasty stuff (afaik) so that would not be bad for gamebalance. Of course any form of circumventing this system would not be allowed (and punished by the transdimensional flying cow of doom) no rope trick, no porting to a plane where time is faster etc

MachineWraith
2010-04-06, 03:16 AM
Toploading basically means they'd be casting as many high-level spells as possible.

I definitely would not play a wizard in a campaign with that kind of limitation.

Friend Computer
2010-04-06, 04:12 AM
I definitely would not play a wizard in a campaign with that kind of limitation.
Yes, and then we get into the stupid thing where no matter what is done to try and keep some flexibility for casters, and yet reduce power in line with other classes, we get your type whinging about how bad off wizards are.

No matter what is done, your type won't like it, and only want to play wizards as they are currently, so we have a playstyle that is obviously extremely divorced from what is trying to be achieved and adds nothing to the discussion.

Volthawk
2010-04-06, 04:15 AM
How about sorcerers?

Curmudgeon
2010-04-06, 04:37 AM
This would encourage the 15 minute adventuring day. Go out, have one combat, and then go home or use a magic item to provide shelter for a full day to recharge spells. Your efforts to encourage spellcasters to do something other than spellcasting aren't going to get the results you want; you'll just make the players seek workarounds.

Kol Korran
2010-04-06, 05:09 AM
i think the idea is a bit too limiting Harperfan, but it might work if you change up the number of spells that can be cast. however, that is specific to the gaming group and adventuring style. just note that you're basically making a sort of sorcerer/ arcane spirit shaman.

i found that the most effective tool to make the wizard carefull about using his/ her spell is time constraints. you can't load up your spells and go to sleep, because then the bad guys will have succeeded/ gone away/ called for super reinforcements and so on. other than casual adventures, Alwayas task your party to their limit spells wise and resource wise.

make sure the players know about this. one or two failed missions because of lack of planning ("what do you mean the pirates took all the treasure, the kidnapped, and sailed away while we were in a Rope Trick?" leave ways of catching up, though the catching up is hard) will hammer things in. plus, you'll have a certain sense of urgency to the game, and players will try to think smartly, on how to bypass encounters if possible, instead of just fighting everyone.

trust me- true and tried method. :smallamused:

PersonMan
2010-04-06, 05:14 AM
Rather than have a number of spells cast per day, why not have either a limit on spells per spell level, or a total number of spell levels?

So if a wizard can cast 4/4/4 usually now he only gets 2/2/2 or whatever.

Zeta Kai
2010-04-06, 05:22 AM
The main issue is that one of those spells will be rope trick, and now we're back where we started.


This would encourage the 15 minute adventuring day. Go out, have one combat, and then go home or use a magic item to provide shelter for a full day to recharge spells. Your efforts to encourage spellcasters to do something other than spellcasting aren't going to get the results you want; you'll just make the players seek workarounds.

These two points illustrate the underlying problem: many of the spells are just too damn good. They grant the caster way too much power compared to other level-appropriate powers in the game (feats, class features, items, etc.), & their cost is minimal in comparison. Limiting the number of game-bending spells per day is just closing the door on the apartment fire; the problem is still there, eating away at the foundation of the building.

The only viable solution is to reword the spells so that they just don't have the same impact on the game as a whole. Every. Single. Spell. It would be a huge undertaking, but that's what is necessary to fix the Wizard Issue (& the Sorcerer Issue, & much of the Cleric Issue, & part of the Druid Issue...).

Start with the most broken spells (celerity, gate, disjunction, time stop, etc.), & work your way down. Good luck with that.

Shpadoinkle
2010-04-06, 07:21 AM
I think it would be easier and feel a lot more fair to casters if you were to instead boost melee to be not useless, instead of placing a bunch of limitations on casters.

Emmerask
2010-04-06, 08:16 AM
boosting every pc to the point of overpowerdness is not a good idea because somehow the dm still has to challenge the party ^^

And melee is far from useless it just has a very very narrow use (dealing damage) in which it is really efficient, while magic has an extremely broad spectrum of stuff it can do by its very nature ^^

ericgrau
2010-04-06, 08:26 AM
Going nova is already one of the major issues. You'd only force them to topload even more, as said. If you limited their spell slots on all levels equally then it might be a limitation. Even then it'd only be an indirect way to lower the spell level of what they cast. That is, they'd be forced to cast lower level spells after their high level ones quickly run out.

Optimystik
2010-04-06, 08:30 AM
No matter what is done, your type won't like it, and only want to play wizards as they are currently, so we have a playstyle that is obviously extremely divorced from what is trying to be achieved and adds nothing to the discussion.

Here's a crazy idea - instead of nerfing casters down, why not give melee nice things too?


boosting every pc to the point of overpowerdness is not a good idea because somehow the dm still has to challenge the party ^^

What makes casters overpowered are specific, unbalanced spells, not the spellcasting mechanic in general. If you leave a wizard with his normal spells per day and make them all fireball, far from being overpowered he'll actually be quite weak.

The solution therefore is to cut out the spells that are broken and leave the casters themselves alone.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-04-06, 09:19 AM
Here's a crazy idea - instead of nerfing casters down, why not give melee nice things too?



What makes casters overpowered are specific, unbalanced spells, not the spellcasting mechanic in general. If you leave a wizard with his normal spells per day and make them all fireball, far from being overpowered he'll actually be quite weak.

The solution therefore is to cut out the spells that are broken and leave the casters themselves alone.

+1 to this and the 15 minute adventuring day support of this idea.

The problem is not (normally, see: Druid) the casting classes but the spells that they use. A caster who does not use good spells will be much less powerful, while one who chooses the most powerful spells can solo things meant for a party levels higher consistently (depending on level, low levels are okay for this but not so much the "consistently" part, mid levels are the least true for this bar specific encounters and high levels are where this is most true).

Besides which, boosting melee classes (and possibly removing/limiting really obviously powerful spells: e.g. Gate, Polymorph line, Planar Binding, etc.) will probably be recieved more favourably. At lower levels casters tend to be weaker and at higher levels everyone is superhuman regardless of class, so complaints about losing realism due to the boosts are a non-issue.

What do you mean by "your type", Friend Computer? People who think that classes are fine balanced to Tier 1/2? People who think that limiting normally non-broken options just to make a fix work (e.g. removing Rope Trick, MMM et al to use Spells per Day as a balancing factor) is a waste of time that could be better spent making a better fix? People who think that the classes are reasonably balanced but what they use is not? People who do not care much about balance and would just like to know that the rules of the game are being used? People who dislike the idea for no identifiable reason whatsoever? Wizard/Caster/Tier 1 fetishists? Something else entirely? Some combination of any of the above? I don't get the feeling that you grasped how varied the reasons for disagreeing with this "fix" are. These are just what I could think of while writing this, there are certainly other reasons. It complicates things further that some people will have multiple reasons for disliking the idea, and that it could be any combination. Please don't treat anyone disagreeing with something as one group, it is about as accurate as saying something is "anime". It may be true, but it doesn't give any meaningful indication of what it is. If this is not what you did, please clarify who you were referring to, and have my apologies.

Edit: Nice new avatar, Optimystik. I was wondering why I couldn't recognise the avatar of a FirbolgITP for a while, until I realised it was you with an avatar change.

Mauther
2010-04-06, 04:34 PM
Reducing the number of spells doesn't address the core problem with casters. I don't care if a caster burns off 30 2nd level spells per day. Its the the careful application of just about any 6th level or higher spell. I actually do like the spell power idea, where you have a number of spell points per day, and each spell uses up a set number of points based upon spell level, so you can cast low level spells all day, or 3 high level spells and be spent. If you just reduce the caster to a poor archer, you've probably over nerf'd.

Jarawara
2010-04-06, 05:50 PM
I tend to side with the 'type' of people that wants to nerf the wizard to the level of the fighter (instead of upping the fighter to the level of the wizard). I often end up feeling that the mid to high level characters are able to do just too damn much. Then again, I usually run low level campaigns, so I rarely run into any problems anyway.

But to each their own.

I do agree that the main problem is the application of a single casting of a high level spell, not the continous casting of low level spells. Nerf the spells individually, not the total casting rate.

Nevertheless.... Two ideas I've been tossing out there, but never got serious enough to implement:

One is simple - just make the casting rate as per week, instead of per day. You can then run a full length adventure, run the whole gambit of spells, and basically play 'standard D&D'. But you couldn't just nova at every little encounter and expect to be up and running the next day. Rope Trick becomes just a rest-stop, not a total recharge session (unless you have seven such spells prepared). The key to good wizardry would be to know what resources you can afford to use now, and what you have to save till later.

Downside: Hard to balance encounters. Wizards will tend to oversave their resources, putting more pressure on the rest of the party to win the encounter. Yet when the big fight emerges, the Wizard can still nova and blow away countless numbers of baddies with a wave of the hand.

Worse still is the wizard who does not conserve, then wants the party to return to town after every encounter so he can rest for a week.


2nd proposal is more like the OP's, but a bit of a hybrid. Wizards still get their full list of spells per day (or per week, if combined with the 1st proposal). However, wizards also have a per encounter limit (which is defined by a drain upon the wizards stamina, not the 'length of encounter'). Maybe tied to constitution, maybe tied to willpower (wisdom or charisma, I dunno). If you only had the strength to cast X spell-levels of spells in an encounter, you learn to make each spell count, not just blast off something because it's your turn.

Then, after a suitable cool-down time (not even 'rest', as the wizard could still walk, travel with the party, even fire off crossbow bolts while the party takes on a new enemy), his stamina recovers and he can go casting again. It would be a recover rate of so many spell-levels per turn, so if he only cast half his wad, he'd have only half the recovery time (and if he cast everything, and had only half the recovery time, he could go into the next fight with half his spellcasting ability again).

I'd even add the ability to 'overcast', but with the risk of severe exhaustion and even mental injury. However, you have to have players who are willing to properly assess risk/reward. Case in point is my player's wizard who put himself into a coma because he wanted to fry just one more goblin as it fled. (He defended his choice, saying he didn't want the goblin to go raise the alarm -- but there were *two* fleeing goblins, and he could only fry one of them. Magical overload was dropped from the ruleset after that encounter; it became a hard fast limit of 'when you're out, you're out'.)

I don't know the downsides of this proposal, other than to take away the full 'nova' capability of a wizard. Though as pointed out several times, it's the encounter-ending capabilities of a single well-placed spell that's the real problem, and this proposal would still allow you to do that all day long. (Still limited to your total per day or per week limit.)


So, thoughts?