Mystify
2012-01-14, 10:28 AM
I am working on a variant set of rules for spellcasting. I realize this will not completely fix the core inbalances of the system, but I hope it will fix some of the undesired properties of the system while still maintaining a sense of balance.
Issues I am attempting to address
1. general incapatability between spellcasting and multiclassing
due to the "quadratic wizards vs. linear fighters" phenomenon, a martial class can general multiclass fairly easily. However, since multiclassing out of a spellcasting class leads to a quadratic dropoff in power, it is a very poor move to do so. You lose spell levels, which are key
2. Fighters don't get nice things
Fighters, and martial builds in general, do not offer a proper scaling of abilities in high levels. They are left with few recourses to counter spells at high levels.
3. Theurges need specialty prestige classes, and even then don't work quite right
This is related to point number 1. A theurge is a mixture of two spellcasting classes. Simply making a 10 wizard/10 cleric yeilds an extremly poor character. You need a class, like mystic theurge, that advanced both in parrallel. At low levels, you are a mixed caster, and it doesn't work well. at mide levels, you have the theurge pretige class to elevate you, so you climb in power faster, and eventually reach a state that is arguably functional, trading raw spell power for more flexibility and spells per day. Then, unless you can find another prestige class, you can only advance the casting of one, and the other falls behind. Its a mess.
4. Gish builds rely on special prestige classes to mix their martial and spellcasting abilities.
This is similar to the theurge issue. Instead of being able to effectively multiclass a fighter and a wizard to make a gish, you need to find special prestige classes to advance spellcasting while maintaining martial skill.
rule set
1. BCB
the Base Caster Bonus, or BCB, is analogous to the BAB for martial characters. Even a spellcaster gains BaB as they level. Correspondingly, even martial classes gain BCB when they level.
Spellcasters gain a full BCB progression, gaining a BCB every level
half casters(like paladins and rangers) gain a BCB on 3/4 of the levels
non-casters have a 1/2 BCB progression
BCB is used in place of caster level for all purposes. Hence, a level 20 wizard has a BCB, and hence a caster level of 20, as you would normally expect. However, a level 10 fighter/level 10 wizard has a BCB of 15 (10 from wizard, 5 from fighter), and hence casts spells with an effective caster level of 15.
2. Spells per day
A character gets the spells per day of a caster of their level, multiplied by the percentage of their levels that are of that casting class. The minimum spells per day of a given level is 0 for the highest level spells, and 1 for any spell level that you would have had for 2 levels (so a 20th level fighter will have 1 spell per day of each level). This minimum amount of spells per day is satisfied if any class would grant that many spells. A 19th level wizard/1st level cleric would not receive 1 cleric spell of each level because they already have a wizard spell of each level.
So, a 20th level wizard has 4 spells per day of each level, as normal. A 10th level wizard/10th level fighter would have 2 spells per day of each level.
If you have a partial spell for a given level, you may combine it with a partial spell of a lower level to create a new spell per day of that lower level. So if the class would normally grant 5 spells per day of level 3 and 2, and you have half the caster levels, you end up with 2.5 spells at level 3 and 2. You can turn this into 3 2nd level spells and 2 3rd level spells.
Additional spells/day, such as from a cleric's domain or a wizard's specialization, also combine like this, but they must combine with like spellslots. So a 10th level wizard/10th level cleric could get a bonus domain spell slot for levels 2, 4, 6, 8, and a bonus specialty school spell slot for 2, 4, 6, 8
alternatively, if you have partial spells of a given level in 2 different classes, you can combine them to form a single spell slot of one class. So, the 10/10 wizard cleric can combine his half domain spells with his half specialty spells to get a bonus domain or specialty spell at each level.
A non-caster must choose a spellcasting class to emulate. They use this class to determine the baseline for their spell per day, spell list, casting stat, and method of preperation. If you later take a level in a different casting class, your emulated class is irrelevant.
Mixing casting classes:
Mixing two casting classes is additive. You will have the BCB progression of both, and spells per day based on the proportion of each. For instance, a 10th level wizard/10th level cleric will have a BCB of 20, and 2 wizard spells per day of each level, 2 cleric spells per day of each level. As mentioned above, they will also get a bonus spell slot at each level that can be spent on a domain spell or a specialty school spell, and an extra 4th and 2nd level cleric spell.
Bonus spells:
you get bonus spells/day from your primary casting stat as normal, even if you are a noncaster. If you have more than one casting class, you only get bonus spells from one stat, but you may assign those bonus spells for either class. You decide on the assignment whenever you get a new bonus spell, and it cannot be changed. However, you cannot assign more bonus spells to another class that you would normally get for its primary casting stat.
For instance, if you have a 1 int and are a wizard/cleric, you have 2 bonus spells of levels 1 and 2, and 1 bonus spell of levels 3,4,5,6. You could assign a bonus cleric spell of level 1,2, 4, and 6, and a bonus wizard spell of level 1, 2, 3, and 5. If this character only had a wisdom of 12, then thy could only assign 1 1st level bonus spell to cleric, and the rest must be wizard spells.
spells known:
for any given class, the spells known, if applicable, are treated as if you were a caste of your character level. Hence, a sorcerer 10/fighter 10 has the same spells known as a sorcerer 20, as would a sorcerer-aligned fighter 20.
half casters:
paladin's, ranger's, and other half casters get a caster level boost from this system. They also get an emulated caster class, druid for rangers and cleric for paladin. In addition to their class-based casting, they get the same casting progression in their emulated class that a non-caster would.
prestige classes:
Any class with a caster level requirement should be replaces with a BCB requirement. If a class specifies (ability to cast X level spells), then it should come with a BCB requirement based on what caster level would be needed to cast that level spell normally.
any single-class prestige class should work just fine with this system, gaining a BCB according to the above rules. Classes without casting get 1/2 BCB, classes with their own spell list get 3/4 BCB. If it is a short list, then they can retain their emulated class in addition to it, if it is a full spell list they get its progression instead. These classes may need to be allowed on a case-by case basis.
If a class advances spellcasting, then its levels stack with the base class for determining the percentage of levels to determine spells per day, and would have a full BCB. If it only advanced spellcasting on certain levels, then only those levels stack to determine the percentage.
Theurge and gish classes need modification. Since some offer ways to blend the abilities of the seperate classes, I don't want to throw them out completely. Instead, they should half their stacking ability. More instance, a mystic theurge would stack half its levels with cleric and half its levels with wizard to determine the allocation of spells per day. This makes mystic theurge rather pointless, but that is the intent. Something like Eldritch theurge that offers abilities to mix class abilities is more in line with what is intended. Instead of taking some other prestige class, you are taking a prestige class to heighten the mixture of your classes. Or, for gish-based builds, you are learning new ways to combine the two classes, gaining the ability to ignore spell failure chance for armor, for instance. The innate ability for the two classes to stack removes the need to advance both fully, and should be reduced to the equivalent multiclass combination for the advancement, trading the base classes features for the feature of the prestige class.
Metamagic:
This isn't really part of this variant, but I figured that while I'm altering things, I may as well include this revision. I find it to be a very helpful balancing factor.
When using any metamagic cost reduction, other than a rod, you cannot cast an effective spell level higher than you could normally cast.
So, even if you are using divine metamagic to make the +6 cost for persistant spell free, you can't cast persistant divine power unless you could normally cast a 10th level spell. You could use it to cast a persistent shield of faith out of a 1st level spell slot instead of a 7th level spell slot, assuming you could cast 7th level spells to start with.
This makes metamagic reduction useful, but cuts short most of the broken combos that let people cast level 25 spells.
Examples and analysis
Since every class has some ability to cast spells, they can utilize them to make themselves more potent at higher levels. Their spell selection will probably be complimentary to their own class abilities. This helps bridge the gap between spellcasters and martial characters. The full spellcasters are, of course, much better at it.
Not taking casting classes now has a linear tradeoff, instead of the quadratic one it used to. This allows you to mix caster with other characters in various combinations, or even to mix different casting classes. a wizard/cleric hybrid is a viable character build by itself, and functions at all levels. they have full caster level and spell level, but their spells per day are divided. This progression is maintainable at all levels, they don't suffer from the roller coaster power curve of a theurge. While they do gain considerable flexibility in spell access, this is offset by the smaller pool of spells per day, limiting their ability to leverage them. It also introduces some degree of MAD, which also helps limit them.
A canny reader may notice that this allows fighters to qualify for many caster classes, since they gain the ability to cast spells. This is intended. A wizard is capable of qualifying for martial classes by taking more levels to gain the extra BaB, and so a fighter can qualify for spellcasting prestige classes by taking more levels.
Since everyone gets spellcasting, it makes more sense for a magic-rich setting.
-------------
So, thoughts, comments? Anything strike you are particularly exploitable or unreasonable? Is anything unclear?
Issues I am attempting to address
1. general incapatability between spellcasting and multiclassing
due to the "quadratic wizards vs. linear fighters" phenomenon, a martial class can general multiclass fairly easily. However, since multiclassing out of a spellcasting class leads to a quadratic dropoff in power, it is a very poor move to do so. You lose spell levels, which are key
2. Fighters don't get nice things
Fighters, and martial builds in general, do not offer a proper scaling of abilities in high levels. They are left with few recourses to counter spells at high levels.
3. Theurges need specialty prestige classes, and even then don't work quite right
This is related to point number 1. A theurge is a mixture of two spellcasting classes. Simply making a 10 wizard/10 cleric yeilds an extremly poor character. You need a class, like mystic theurge, that advanced both in parrallel. At low levels, you are a mixed caster, and it doesn't work well. at mide levels, you have the theurge pretige class to elevate you, so you climb in power faster, and eventually reach a state that is arguably functional, trading raw spell power for more flexibility and spells per day. Then, unless you can find another prestige class, you can only advance the casting of one, and the other falls behind. Its a mess.
4. Gish builds rely on special prestige classes to mix their martial and spellcasting abilities.
This is similar to the theurge issue. Instead of being able to effectively multiclass a fighter and a wizard to make a gish, you need to find special prestige classes to advance spellcasting while maintaining martial skill.
rule set
1. BCB
the Base Caster Bonus, or BCB, is analogous to the BAB for martial characters. Even a spellcaster gains BaB as they level. Correspondingly, even martial classes gain BCB when they level.
Spellcasters gain a full BCB progression, gaining a BCB every level
half casters(like paladins and rangers) gain a BCB on 3/4 of the levels
non-casters have a 1/2 BCB progression
BCB is used in place of caster level for all purposes. Hence, a level 20 wizard has a BCB, and hence a caster level of 20, as you would normally expect. However, a level 10 fighter/level 10 wizard has a BCB of 15 (10 from wizard, 5 from fighter), and hence casts spells with an effective caster level of 15.
2. Spells per day
A character gets the spells per day of a caster of their level, multiplied by the percentage of their levels that are of that casting class. The minimum spells per day of a given level is 0 for the highest level spells, and 1 for any spell level that you would have had for 2 levels (so a 20th level fighter will have 1 spell per day of each level). This minimum amount of spells per day is satisfied if any class would grant that many spells. A 19th level wizard/1st level cleric would not receive 1 cleric spell of each level because they already have a wizard spell of each level.
So, a 20th level wizard has 4 spells per day of each level, as normal. A 10th level wizard/10th level fighter would have 2 spells per day of each level.
If you have a partial spell for a given level, you may combine it with a partial spell of a lower level to create a new spell per day of that lower level. So if the class would normally grant 5 spells per day of level 3 and 2, and you have half the caster levels, you end up with 2.5 spells at level 3 and 2. You can turn this into 3 2nd level spells and 2 3rd level spells.
Additional spells/day, such as from a cleric's domain or a wizard's specialization, also combine like this, but they must combine with like spellslots. So a 10th level wizard/10th level cleric could get a bonus domain spell slot for levels 2, 4, 6, 8, and a bonus specialty school spell slot for 2, 4, 6, 8
alternatively, if you have partial spells of a given level in 2 different classes, you can combine them to form a single spell slot of one class. So, the 10/10 wizard cleric can combine his half domain spells with his half specialty spells to get a bonus domain or specialty spell at each level.
A non-caster must choose a spellcasting class to emulate. They use this class to determine the baseline for their spell per day, spell list, casting stat, and method of preperation. If you later take a level in a different casting class, your emulated class is irrelevant.
Mixing casting classes:
Mixing two casting classes is additive. You will have the BCB progression of both, and spells per day based on the proportion of each. For instance, a 10th level wizard/10th level cleric will have a BCB of 20, and 2 wizard spells per day of each level, 2 cleric spells per day of each level. As mentioned above, they will also get a bonus spell slot at each level that can be spent on a domain spell or a specialty school spell, and an extra 4th and 2nd level cleric spell.
Bonus spells:
you get bonus spells/day from your primary casting stat as normal, even if you are a noncaster. If you have more than one casting class, you only get bonus spells from one stat, but you may assign those bonus spells for either class. You decide on the assignment whenever you get a new bonus spell, and it cannot be changed. However, you cannot assign more bonus spells to another class that you would normally get for its primary casting stat.
For instance, if you have a 1 int and are a wizard/cleric, you have 2 bonus spells of levels 1 and 2, and 1 bonus spell of levels 3,4,5,6. You could assign a bonus cleric spell of level 1,2, 4, and 6, and a bonus wizard spell of level 1, 2, 3, and 5. If this character only had a wisdom of 12, then thy could only assign 1 1st level bonus spell to cleric, and the rest must be wizard spells.
spells known:
for any given class, the spells known, if applicable, are treated as if you were a caste of your character level. Hence, a sorcerer 10/fighter 10 has the same spells known as a sorcerer 20, as would a sorcerer-aligned fighter 20.
half casters:
paladin's, ranger's, and other half casters get a caster level boost from this system. They also get an emulated caster class, druid for rangers and cleric for paladin. In addition to their class-based casting, they get the same casting progression in their emulated class that a non-caster would.
prestige classes:
Any class with a caster level requirement should be replaces with a BCB requirement. If a class specifies (ability to cast X level spells), then it should come with a BCB requirement based on what caster level would be needed to cast that level spell normally.
any single-class prestige class should work just fine with this system, gaining a BCB according to the above rules. Classes without casting get 1/2 BCB, classes with their own spell list get 3/4 BCB. If it is a short list, then they can retain their emulated class in addition to it, if it is a full spell list they get its progression instead. These classes may need to be allowed on a case-by case basis.
If a class advances spellcasting, then its levels stack with the base class for determining the percentage of levels to determine spells per day, and would have a full BCB. If it only advanced spellcasting on certain levels, then only those levels stack to determine the percentage.
Theurge and gish classes need modification. Since some offer ways to blend the abilities of the seperate classes, I don't want to throw them out completely. Instead, they should half their stacking ability. More instance, a mystic theurge would stack half its levels with cleric and half its levels with wizard to determine the allocation of spells per day. This makes mystic theurge rather pointless, but that is the intent. Something like Eldritch theurge that offers abilities to mix class abilities is more in line with what is intended. Instead of taking some other prestige class, you are taking a prestige class to heighten the mixture of your classes. Or, for gish-based builds, you are learning new ways to combine the two classes, gaining the ability to ignore spell failure chance for armor, for instance. The innate ability for the two classes to stack removes the need to advance both fully, and should be reduced to the equivalent multiclass combination for the advancement, trading the base classes features for the feature of the prestige class.
Metamagic:
This isn't really part of this variant, but I figured that while I'm altering things, I may as well include this revision. I find it to be a very helpful balancing factor.
When using any metamagic cost reduction, other than a rod, you cannot cast an effective spell level higher than you could normally cast.
So, even if you are using divine metamagic to make the +6 cost for persistant spell free, you can't cast persistant divine power unless you could normally cast a 10th level spell. You could use it to cast a persistent shield of faith out of a 1st level spell slot instead of a 7th level spell slot, assuming you could cast 7th level spells to start with.
This makes metamagic reduction useful, but cuts short most of the broken combos that let people cast level 25 spells.
Examples and analysis
Since every class has some ability to cast spells, they can utilize them to make themselves more potent at higher levels. Their spell selection will probably be complimentary to their own class abilities. This helps bridge the gap between spellcasters and martial characters. The full spellcasters are, of course, much better at it.
Not taking casting classes now has a linear tradeoff, instead of the quadratic one it used to. This allows you to mix caster with other characters in various combinations, or even to mix different casting classes. a wizard/cleric hybrid is a viable character build by itself, and functions at all levels. they have full caster level and spell level, but their spells per day are divided. This progression is maintainable at all levels, they don't suffer from the roller coaster power curve of a theurge. While they do gain considerable flexibility in spell access, this is offset by the smaller pool of spells per day, limiting their ability to leverage them. It also introduces some degree of MAD, which also helps limit them.
A canny reader may notice that this allows fighters to qualify for many caster classes, since they gain the ability to cast spells. This is intended. A wizard is capable of qualifying for martial classes by taking more levels to gain the extra BaB, and so a fighter can qualify for spellcasting prestige classes by taking more levels.
Since everyone gets spellcasting, it makes more sense for a magic-rich setting.
-------------
So, thoughts, comments? Anything strike you are particularly exploitable or unreasonable? Is anything unclear?