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Seerow
2012-07-10, 01:55 PM
So it's been a while since I've posted anything in homebrew. For the most part I've been sticking with stuff I already have and tinkering with it, so avoiding anything like new classes or systems that are worth posting as their separate topic. But as a part of the tinkering, I do have some new things, so here's a topic with a few different variants in one. Please feel free to comment/critique.


Vancian Casting without exponential growth


Vancian Magic typically has the problem of providing exponentially more spells as you increase in levels, because you are gaining more high level slots while retaining your low level slots. The idea behind this spell progression is to get rid of that exponential growth, keeping spells per day limited at higher levels by having low level slots become higher level slots. In this system, a character never has access to more than 3 different levels of slots at a given time, and after the first few levels only gains an extra spell per day when he gains a new spell level, meaning he caps at 11 spells per day total by level 20.

The sample table uses 7 spell levels because that is what D&D Next is reportedly going to be using, but the same concept may be easily applied to any number of spell levels.

{table=head]Level | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th
1 | 3
2 | 4
3 | 5
4 | 5 | 1
5 | 4 | 2
6 | 3 | 3
7 | 3 | 3 | 1
8 | 2 | 3 | 2
9 | 1 | 3 | 3
10 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 1
11 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2
12 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3
13 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 1
14 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2
15 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 3
16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 1
17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 2
18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 3
19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 1
20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 2[/table]



Unrelated to the actual mechanic of making lower level spell slots become higher level spell slots is the idea that you can make lower level spells encounter/at will by putting them in a higher level slot. Though the exact slot cost/usage might depend on power level of spells and how many spell levels are used. For this something like 2/4 or 1/3 (for encounter/at will respectively) may be acceptable.



Necromancer Theme
So I normally don't like necromancy, but over on the WotC forums, there was discussion about whether or not Necromancy was something that could be represented as a theme in 5e that was equally useful to both a non-caster and a caster (this was before Mearls stated officially that Necromancer was going to be a caster only theme). So I decided to take a crack at it, because I felt it was possible to make a set of abilities that fits the theme and is equally useful to both groups.

The assumption made here is that there would be a spell similar to 3.5's animate dead, where you control Level * X hit dice worth of skeletons/zombies, and this would be all that a layman gains access to. More potent undead are available only through the theme, which also increases the limit of how many you can have, and makes your undead stronger.

The theme is pretty rough and the numbers probably aren't balanced simply because of the dearth of info available for DDN. It's more of a proof of concept than a fully functioning thing, but I feel is worth posting.

Necromancer Theme:
1) You may choose at will to convert half the damage of any attack you deal to necrotic damage, as a full round action you can convert 100% of the damage dealt by your next attack to necrotic.

3) Once per day per four levels, you may attempt to take control over a single undead creature. A mindless undead gains no saving throw against this effect, an intelligent undead makes a charisma save DC12 to resist. This control over the undead lasts for 1 hour, and does not count against your normal limit for how many dead you may control.

5) If you kill a creature using an attack that deals necrotic damage or level drain, you can choose to raise that creature as an undead servant under your command, as though you used the Animate Dead spell, without needing to spend the normal spell components to do so. Your caster level for this effect for purposes of hit dice limitations is considered to be your character level. Raising a creature in this way takes a standard action, which must be taken within 5 minutes of the target being killed.

7) You project an aura of fear within 30ft of yourself. Any creature within this aura must make a charisma save DC13 or be shaken as long as they are within the aura (this saving throw may only be attempted once per day. If they succeed the save, they are immune to its effects, if they fail, they suffer the penalties anytime they come within the aura for the rest of the day).

Any undead within the aura gain turning resistance.

9) You gain the ability to raise more powerful types of undead. When you raise a creature you killed as undead, you may choose to make it something other than a Zombie or Skeleton. You may however have only a single undead of this type, others are still restricted to Zombies/Skeletons.

11) Your necrotic attacks become more potent. When you deal necrotic damage to a target, you impose a 1d6 penalty to a physical ability score of your choice. Con Save DC13 negates. You may choose instead to increase the necrotic damage dealt by your attacks by 1d6 per 5 levels.

13) Undead you create are stronger than normal. They gain an additional 1 hit point per hit die, and deal +1 additional damage per 3 levels. Additionally, undead within your aura of fear regain 3 hit points every round.

15) You can have more undead under your control at any given time. You may now have 8 hit dice of undead under your control per level, rather than 4 hit dice per level.

17) When you kill a creature with necrotic damage, you may choose to bind its soul. Doing so prevents the creature from being raised from the dead (either as an undead or brought back to life) by anybody other than yourself. You may have only one soul captured in this way at a time.

19) Your study of necromancy has allowed you to perfect the art of undeath. You gain a non-mindless Undead Template of your choice and apply it to yourself.


Weapon Damage Scaling with Size/Strength
This is something I posted before (link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216528)), but after playing with it I really wasn't too happy with it. It works well for medium creatures, and is balanced when used with stronger creatures... but frankly it felt really weird having some places where staying a smaller size was more beneficial because you got your bumps more frequently.

For those who didn't see the other system, the basic gist of it was you could take a +x from damage and turn it into an extra +[w] damage. The X required to change it out scaled with size category, because at higher sizes weapons did more damage. So a medium creature could trade +3 damage for +1[w], but a colossal creature requires a +14 to trade out for +1[w].


Below is a table of what the average damage looked like for someone with a 2d6 weapon:

{table=head]Bonus | Medium | Large | Huge | Gargantuan | Collosal
+1 | 2d6+1 (8) | 3d6+1 (11.5) | 4d6+1 (15) | 6d6+1 (22) | 8d6+1 (29)
+2 | 2d6+2 (9)| 3d6+2 (12.5) | 4d6+2 (16) | 6d6+2 (23)| 8d6+2 (30)
+3 | 4d6 (14) | 3d6+3 (13.5) | 4d6+3 (17) | 6d6+3 (24) | 8d6+3 (31)
+4 | 4d6+1 (15)| 3d6+4 (14.5) | 4d6+4 (18) | 6d6+4 (25) | 8d6+4 (32)
+5 | 4d6+2 (16)| 6d6 (21) | 4d6+5 (19) | 6d6+5 (26) | 8d6+5 (33)
+6 | 6d6 (21) | 6d6+1 (22) | 4d6+6 (20) | 6d6+6 (27) | 8d6+6 (34)
+7 | 6d6+1 (22) | 6d6+2 (23) | 8d6 (28) | 6d6+7 (28) | 8d6+7 (35)
+8 | 6d6+2 (23) | 6d6+3 (24) | 8d6+1 (29) | 6d6+8 (29) | 8d6+8 (36)
+9 | 8d6 (28) | 6d6+4 (25) | 8d6+2 (30) | 12d6 (42) | 8d6+9 (37)
+10 | 8d6+1 (29) | 9d6 (31.5) | 8d6+3 (31) | 12d6+1 (43) | 8d6+10 (38)
+11 | 8d6+2 (30) | 9d6+1 (32.5) | 8d6+4 (32) | 12d6+2 (44) | 8d6+11 (39)
+12 | 10d6 (35) | 9d6+2 (33.5) | 8d6+5 (33) | 12d6+3 (45) | 8d6+12 (40)[/table]


Looking at the average damage there you can see a lot of points where having a smaller size wound up being more beneficial, and this felt wrong. So I played with it a little more and had an epiphany that makes the whole process make more sense.

Basically, the solution was to stop weapon damage die scaling by size. This scaling was the cause of all the problems I was having with the system. So the solution is simple: Toss it out. A 2d6 weapon is 2d6 whether you're medium or collossal. This makes things more consistent, gets rid of a table/formula to reference, and in general makes things easier to deal with.

From there the solution is easy: Give a size bonus to weapon damage that can be traded out alongside attribute for bonus weapon damage dice. Here's a quick table I made using a +2 per size category:

{table=head]Bonus | Medium | Large | Huge | Garg. | Collosal
+1 | 2d6+1 | 4d6+0 | 4d6+2 | 6d6+1 | 8d6+0
+2 | 2d6+2 | 4d6+1 | 6d6+0 | 6d6+2 | 8d6+1
+3 | 4d6+0 | 4d6+2 | 6d6+1 | 8d6+0 | 8d6+2
+4 | 4d6+1 | 6d6+0 | 6d6+2 | 8d6+1 | 10d6+0
+5 | 4d6+2 | 6d6+1 | 8d6+0 | 8d6+2 | 10d6+1
+6 | 6d6+0 | 6d6+2 | 8d6+1 | 10d6+0 | 10d6+2
+7 | 6d6+1 | 8d6+0 | 8d6+2 | 10d6+1 | 12d6+0
+8 | 6d6+2 | 8d6+1 | 10d6+0 | 10d6+2 | 12d6+1
+9 | 8d6+0 | 8d6+2 | 10d6+1 | 12d6+0 | 12d6+2
+10 | 8d6+1 | 10d6+0 | 10d6+2 | 12d6+1 | 14d6+0
+11 | 8d6+2 | 10d6+1 | 12d6+0 | 12d6+2 | 14d6+1
+12 | 10d6+0 | 10d6+2 | 12d6+1 | 14d6+0 | 14d6+2[/table]

With this change, it is always strictly beneficial in terms of damage to go up a size category, but makes the difference not quite as big between size categories as in core. (difference between medium and colossal here is 16 damage. Difference in core is 21 damage).

This rule is also pretty easily tweaked. If you want really big sizes to matter more, you could go with +2/4/8/16 as your size bonus to damage. If you want all size categories to matter more it could be +4/8/12/16, and so on.

This does make things harder on small characters using small weapons, because they are taking a flat penalty rather than reducing a damage die. Before, the difference between a medium and fine creature was like 4 damage, now it's 8, because of how weapon damage dice scaling works. On the other hand, if they do get enough bonus damage to overcome that, they can take advantage of bigger weapon dice attacks like everyone else. While a fine character probably won't overcome that, a small character with only a -2 probably will, and can probably come out ahead relative to core.

bobthe6th
2012-07-10, 02:15 PM
data for psionics, may help with the idea of no exponential casting
@=level
#=power points/day
^=power points gained that level
&=power points/level, or number of top level powers/day
+=number of TLP gained that level

@ # ^ & * +
1 2 2 2 2 2
2 6 4 2 3 1
3 11 5 1 3 0
4 17 6 1 4 1
5 25 8 2 5 1
6 35 10 2 5 0
7 46 11 1 6 1
8 58 12 1 7 1
9 72 14 2 8 1
10 88 16 2 8 0
11 106 18 2 9 1
12 126 20 2 10 1
13 147 21 1 11 1
14 170 23 2 12 1
15 195 25 2 13 1
16 221 26 1 13 0
17 250 29 3 14 1
18 280 30 1 15 1
19 311 31 1 16 1
20 343 32 1 17 1


It's quadratic:
PP = 0.8422 * level^2 + 0.2221 * level + 2.2675
is within 1 power point for almost all levels.

The second term never gets higher than 4.5 so the dominate term is easily the first term while the rest is a minor adjustment. With that in mind I found it's also pretty close to:

PP = 0.86 * level^2 + 2

So the number of PP you gain each level increases by about 1.72. When you round that off it might look a little funky but it's a fairly close pattern. At least within 1 or 2 PP. "Add 1-5/8 to the amount you get each level (starting at 0)" also fit closely and any slight variation off of that does not fit so I bet 1-5/8 is somewhere in WotC's real numbers. I dunno if or why they vary it by a point or two but the curve is a really tight fit so there was some kind of method involved.

Seerow
2012-07-10, 02:34 PM
@=level
#=power points/day
^=power points gained that level
&=power points/level, or number of top level powers/day
+=number of TLP gained that level

@ # ^ & * +
1 2 2 2 2 2
2 6 4 2 3 1
3 11 5 1 3 0
4 17 6 1 4 1
5 25 8 2 5 1
6 35 10 2 5 0
7 46 11 1 6 1
8 58 12 1 7 1
9 72 14 2 8 1
10 88 16 2 8 0
11 106 18 2 9 1
12 126 20 2 10 1
13 147 21 1 11 1
14 170 23 2 12 1
15 195 25 2 13 1
16 221 26 1 13 0
17 250 29 3 14 1
18 280 30 1 15 1
19 311 31 1 16 1
20 343 32 1 17 1


Turned into a table for ease of reference:

@=level
#=power points/day
^=power points gained that level
&=power points/level, or number of top level powers/day
+=number of TLP gained that level

{table=head]Level | PP/day| PP gain| PP Gain vs Prev Lvl Gain | Numer of TLP/day | Number of TLP gained
1 | 2 | 2 |2 | 2 | 2
2 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1
3 | 11 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0
4 | 17 |6| 1| 4| 1
5 |25| 8| 2| 5 | 1
6 |35| 10 |2| 5 |0
7 |46| 11 |1 |6| 1
8 |58| 12| 1 |7| 1
9 |72| 14| 2| 8| 1
10| 88| 16| 2| 8| 0
11 |106| 18| 2 |9| 1
12| 126| 20 |2 |10| 1
13 |147| 21| 1| 11 |1
14| 170| 23| 2| 12| 1
15 |195| 25 |2| 13| 1
16 |221| 26| 1| 13| 0
17 |250| 29| 3| 14| 1
18 |280| 30| 1| 15| 1
19 |311| 31| 1| 16| 1
20 |343| 32| 1 |17| 1
[/table]

I think your key was wrong, * seemed to be number of top level powers per day, an & didn't seem to be defined as a result. I'll edit it if you can clarify.



As an aside, converting my spells per day chart to power points, at level 20 you have 26+55+36 = 117 points, with a cost of 13 for top level, or 9 max level spells per day.


The interesting question is if that number is acceptable, or if psionics was better. It looks to me like the psionic progression is gaining an extra max level power every day. Its points growth is clearly exponential, or at least multiplicative (which is close enough imo), while the intent here is for something much flatter.

I dunno, any thoughts on this? You did all the work on breaking down psionics, surely you must have some thoughts on where the balance lies with it.

bobthe6th
2012-07-10, 03:22 PM
&=pp gained over the last level's gain... a bit overly complex, but still interesting data. really leads into the quote mentioning that the progression is quadratic...

* is as you interpreted it. thanks for the table though, I had the table I posted in a sticky without any labels...

I did it as part of an attempt to make a pp per encounter progression, to give blaster v3 all day power without to much of an urge to nova. seemed relevant...

also, with 7 levels of spells... you might make the progression more like one spell every three levels...

I can't really say if the current psionic progresion is all that good. the one game I played with a full psionic caster was a gestalt game as a psion/ardent, so he never ran out of juice...

what I can say is while it is a bit multiplicive, it is not exponential. As most classes I feel should be a little multiplikive, to increase stamina with level.

Seerow
2012-07-10, 03:43 PM
&=pp gained over the last level's gain... a bit overly complex, but still interesting data. really leads into the quote mentioning that the progression is quadratic...

* is as you interpreted it. thanks for the table though, I had the table I posted in a sticky without any labels...

Okay. Fixed.


I did it as part of an attempt to make a pp per encounter progression, to give blaster v3 all day power without to much of an urge to nova. seemed relevant...

also, with 7 levels of spells... you might make the progression more like one spell every three levels...

Good point, I didn't take that into account for PP conversion costs (though my table does have the new levels coming every 3 levels). So it would actually be:
7 = 19
6 = 16
5 = 13
4 = 10
3 = 7
2 = 4
1 = 1

So level 20 PP would be 170.


I can't really say if the current psionic progresion is all that good. the one game I played with a full psionic caster was a gestalt game as a psion/ardent, so he never ran out of juice...

what I can say is while it is a bit multiplicive, it is not exponential. As most classes I feel should be a little multiplikive, to increase stamina with level.

I agree that they should increase as they level, but at what rate is the real question. I have no problem with being able to do low level powers all day long (hence the idea of making a low level power at will in a higher level slot). That said, I'm not sure that a caster need to gain stamina at a rate of 1 max level spell per level. Currently I have it set at 1 per 3 levels past level 3. 6-10 spells allows for characters to unleash 1-2 big spells every fight, which works well when your spells are all daily in nature and thus should be limited in how many you use per fight.

bobthe6th
2012-07-10, 03:54 PM
but consider utilaty uses. a lot of spells can be used out of combat(though out side of combat is harder to balence.)

the out of combat spells like shatter or knock will burn slots like nobudies buisness...

as for using higher level slots for lower level spells, how about doing it like an additional use per day for each level the slot is above the spell, with over four uses per day being at will?