Spell levels and staying in character

[laeZ1]

I'm a DM (D&D3.5), and one of my players was interacting with an NPC in my world, the NPC in question is five levels of fighter, one level of wizard (she's got magic envy). She has an int score of 10. Even though she's got a first level spell, she can't cast it, but she can still cast her zero level spells, as per normal rules in the PHB.

My player and I got into a bit of a snag when he figured out what was wrong, and went about trying to solve this minor plot. He was about to explain something about spells to her when he went out of character and asked me "Are spell levels an in character term?" We had a short discussion, and I deemed that for now, in my game, we'll consider spells catagorized in levels from zero to nine, in character. If I change my mind later, we'll just redline the scene, and change it so that he communicated the same thing with different words.

Anyhow, it got me thinking.
What's the general consensus behind this problem? How many of you consider the level of a spell to be in character, versus a piece of out of character information?

[tyckspoon]

IMO, spell levels should be a known concept in-character (especially if your setting features wizard academies/churches of knowledge and/or magic where magic would be studied and taught.) They have such obvious and discrete effects on how magic works that it'd be quite easy to figure out how they work with basic experimentation, and I would expect the basic functioning of them to be known to most characters with either formal training (Know: Arcana?) or practical experience (Spellcraft).

[CN the Logos]

I think you could play it either way. The idea of a mystical tradition ranking its followers by perceived level of ability has occurred before in real life, and in D&D, where spells have obvious, tangible, measurable effects, the idea of ranking them with some sort of level system seems pretty obvious.

Weirdly enough, I'd think people in-game would be more likely to know about spell levels than the differences between the various casting classes. "Some spells are stronger than others" is fairly intuitive, but wizards and sorcerers cast the same spells but for different reasons (study versus innate ability), then you have a large number of other casting class which also use different methods of learning and casting spells, and the different ways a wizard can specialize... And we're not even getting into divine casters yet.

[Diarmuid]

My group usually refers to the "levels' as "tiers" of magic when talking IC.

Something like this could be said by a Wizard who just turned level 7: "I've just recently mastered the 4th tier of spells, but so far I've only perfected a couple of them."

As has been said upthread, the idea that the most scholarly people on the planet wouldnt have come up with some way to categorize such learnings for discussion purposes seems silly.

[Douglas]

Spell levels have such an obvious discrete effect that it is completely implausible for people who study magic to not know about them in character. They might not use the same terms as we do out of character, but they would certainly understand the concept and have some set of terms for it.

[Zarndelius]

I forget where I snabbed the idea from, but for the campaigns I run, Casters are divided in houses, and so are Wizards.

If you are able to cast 1st level spells you are "A wizard of the first house"
and If you can cast from 2nd level spell list you are "A wizard of the second house" and so on so forth.

Evidently, the spells are categorized in game as "Spells of the Sixth House" and such.

Anyways, if your PC wishes to train this guy to learn a 1st level spell despite his lack of intelligence, you could have the NPC, after training, pick up *that one feat* that allows the caster to treat his intelligence as X higher, or simply make a house rule feat if that doesn't exist.

[Slipperychicken]

They're definitely an in-universe concept. A guy whose Glitterdust lasts 6 seconds (1 round) can only cast 1st level spells, one whose Glitterdust lasts 18 seconds (3 rounds) can cast 2nd level spells, and so on. A caster's power increases in very distinct, measurable, and easily-observed intervals, with abundantly-clear effects.

Find some rounds/level light spell, and they can measure caster level by how long it lasts, or how many targets can be affected by some other spell.

[Deophaun]

I like Ultima's "circle" terminology, personally.

[Downysole]

You know, I bet that if we had an established nomenclature for this kind of thing, it would be easier to remain in character around our gaming table too.

I think we might give this "house" thing a whirl.

[laeZ1]

I forget where I snabbed the idea from, but for the campaigns I run, Casters are divided in houses, and so are Wizards.

If you are able to cast 1st level spells you are "A wizard of the first house"
and If you can cast from 2nd level spell list you are "A wizard of the second house" and so on so forth.

Evidently, the spells are categorized in game as "Spells of the Sixth House" and such.

I really like this.

Thanks for your thoughts, everybody!

[Slipperychicken]

You know, I bet that if we had an established nomenclature for this kind of thing, it would be easier to remain in character around our gaming table too.

I think we might give this "house" thing a whirl.

You could also go with "Degree" or "Rank" followed by a number. Whether those words indicate spell levels or caster levels is a matter of taste. Or make an acronym like Arcane Caster Level (ACL) or Magician Power (MP), then treat it like a magical IQ. For extra fun, multiply the number by 100, so you can say, "Yes, I scored 1400 on my ACL test".

[Novawurmson]

I forget where I snabbed the idea from, but for the campaigns I run, Casters are divided in houses, and so are Wizards.

If you are able to cast 1st level spells you are "A wizard of the first house"
and If you can cast from 2nd level spell list you are "A wizard of the second house" and so on so forth.

Evidently, the spells are categorized in game as "Spells of the Sixth House" and such.

I like this, especially for a very structured and somewhat urbane world like Eberron

[Ranting Fool]

I like Ultima's "circle" terminology, personally.

I've always called them by circle.... Ah Ultima not played those games in an age :smallbiggrin:

NPC's Wizards have been known to refer to magic as 1st-9th circles though I do make sure that NPC's who don't have spellcraft don't know what spell counts as what circle and many other things.

[Telonius]

Here's how I'd treat it, on an individual level. A person with Int 10 looks at a Level-1 spell, and it's like giving a calculus book to an average 8th-grader. They can study it for a while, and maybe kind of get what's going on, but just can't quite figure out how it works. Or as if someone were reading an old poem, but doesn't know the cultural context, so the meaning is lost on them.

Spell level would be an in-game concept, as much as "Algebra" and "Calculus 101" are real-world concepts. Not everybody understands what they do, but most people are aware that they exist.

[Coidzor]

I believe it's come up a whole heck of a lot as X circle spells for ages and ages, so, yeah, an in-universe concept should be OK.

[Medic!]

Here's how I'd treat it, on an individual level. A person with Int 10 looks at a Level-1 spell, and it's like giving a calculus book to an average 8th-grader. They can study it for a while, and maybe kind of get what's going on, but just can't quite figure out how it works. Or as if someone were reading an old poem, but doesn't know the cultural context, so the meaning is lost on them.

Spell level would be an in-game concept, as much as "Algebra" and "Calculus 101" are real-world concepts. Not everybody understands what they do, but most people are aware that they exist.

That's the way I prefer to run casters too. We tend more toward sorcerers at our table than wizards so it makes more sense that way for us. Instead of "Wow...that old man just casted a 7th lvl spell" it would just translate to "Whoa....that old man's got some bite behind his bark."

EDIT: IMO when dealing with mostly sorcerer/innate ability types, nothing wrong with just going by a comparison-feel, kinda like Jedi and the Force (It's strong with that one!)

With wizards it makes a lot more sense for them to have classified and catagorized magic into schools (obv) and eschelons.

[Doxkid]

I've also been using Circles to describe spell levels, although I have never played Ultima.

Spell levels and caster levels SHOULD be known in game; what is variable is the terminology used.

[Arbane]

One exceptionally good D&D campaign (http://leagueofimaginaryheroes.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/sepulchraves-tales-of-wyre/) I've been following refers to spell-levels as "Valences" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_band): discrete energy states a spell can have. It may increase or decrease, but you'll never see a two-and-a-half valence spell. I like it for the technical-sounding terminology.

Epic-level magic is referred to as 'transvalent', in this scheme.

[Gamer Girl]

Nope, never, never, ever do I allow players to metagame and use rule terms like spells levels in the game.


This is one of the big differences between role playing and roll playing(or being a traditional role player or a video game gamer) IMO.

Once you head down the numbers path there is no going back. Then your just playing a numbers game, not a role playing game.


Spellcasters in my game just talk about vague levels of power. That burning hands is a easy, weak spell and that fireball is more powerful. In general 1-3 is weak, 4-6 is medium and 7-9 is powerful.

[LordBlades]

Nope, never, never, ever do I allow players to metagame and use rule terms like spells levels in the game.


This is one of the big differences between role playing and roll playing(or being a traditional role player or a video game gamer) IMO.

Once you head down the numbers path there is no going back. Then your just playing a numbers game, not a role playing game.


Spellcasters in my game just talk about vague levels of power. That burning hands is a easy, weak spell and that fireball is more powerful. In general 1-3 is weak, 4-6 is medium and 7-9 is powerful.

Spellcasters not knowing the concept of spell levels in game just seems weird to me tbh. Even if character level is an abstraction not known in the game world, any spellcaster that's advancing should realize magical knowledge comes in tiers.

Once he's adventured enough, or studied enough or whatever he will see that he can now understand and cast this bunch of spells (next level of spells) he couldn't before, but not yet that bunch of spells (higher levels). He needs to study or adventure some more for that.

If magic is widespread enough so wizards make contact with each other regularly, somebody will sooner or later realize that these tiers are the same for everyone, and always happen in the same order.

[Baka Nikujaga]

I like Ultima's "circle" terminology, personally.

Despite having never played Ultima, I also use "circles" as the primary description of spell levels (for most schooled Arcane casters) when I GM as well.

[supermonkeyjoe]

The most obvious metric for wizards is how many pages a spell takes up in a spellbook, a one page spell is most definitely different to a three page spell, even if the wizard can't quantify the mumber of spell slots, or his caster level, not dividing the spells down into levels is almost impossible.

[Baka Nikujaga]

http://i40.tinypic.com/jgqgrb.jpg
How about instead of going beyond the quantification of pages occupied, we have wizards (and archivists) refer to spell levels as such?

Wizard: "I have recently mastered spells taking three pages, but I have yet to begin studying four page spells."

[only1doug]

The addition of metamagic makes it obvious:

"Last year I could prepare 2 burning hands spells, this year I can still prepare 2 burning hands spells and I can also prepare another burning hands, which I can cast without haveing to move my hands. Or alternatively I can prepare 2 burning hands (with hand movements) and one acid arrow (with hand movements). Its as if Acid arrow were harder to prepare than magic missile..."

[Werekat]

In my games, spell levels are always in-character knowledge. But in my games wizards are practically scientists within a world with a different set of physics.

I fluff it as the spells being an etheric and mental structure, which are set up during spell preparation and then released when the spell is cast. The extent to which the mind is trained is the extent to the amount of spells that can be cast during a single day. A spell level is thus a level of complexity, a level of abstraction that must be mastered before using the spell in question.

[Andorax]

Tier, circle, rank, degree, house, what have you....


I suspect this is really the appropriate response at this time. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html)

[Krazzman]

I forget where I snabbed the idea from, but for the campaigns I run, Casters are divided in houses, and so are Wizards.

If you are able to cast 1st level spells you are "A wizard of the first house"
and If you can cast from 2nd level spell list you are "A wizard of the second house" and so on so forth.

Evidently, the spells are categorized in game as "Spells of the Sixth House" and such.

Anyways, if your PC wishes to train this guy to learn a 1st level spell despite his lack of intelligence, you could have the NPC, after training, pick up *that one feat* that allows the caster to treat his intelligence as X higher, or simply make a house rule feat if that doesn't exist.

I think this could be form the Chronics of Siala. There was something about house of fear, house of pain, house of blah to rank certain powers. That meaning the (I believe house of pain) last one was making you longlevited or so...

EDIT: In my games I would translate it to Zaubergrad (degree of magic) as it is called in the PHB. It is the German translation of Spell level. For example a phrase "I can cast spells of the third degree" would a viable description for every person with at least one point in Spellcraft/Kn:Arcana.


Nope, never, never, ever do I allow players to metagame and use rule terms like spells levels in the game.

This is one of the big differences between role playing and roll playing(or being a traditional role player or a video game gamer) IMO.

Once you head down the numbers path there is no going back. Then your just playing a numbers game, not a role playing game.

Spellcasters in my game just talk about vague levels of power. That burning hands is a easy, weak spell and that fireball is more powerful. In general 1-3 is weak, 4-6 is medium and 7-9 is powerful.

Jeah totally we should also tell this to the football sports league here in germany as they are playing a game of rolls and not a game of football anymore. And that only because ranking the different leagues in first league, second league, third league and some other leagues. This seems totally sane!

Sorry. I don't know what happened to you but I never thought that your view are THAT flawed. Your system ranks Burning Hands and Fireball as weak. Nothing to distinguish those two obviously... Invisibility and greater invisibility are also in the same tier you presented as weak.

Only because someone ranks Spells after a 10 points scale this is in no way "ROLL"-Playing. Please don't go the way of Stormwind...

[Randomguy]

In the Tales of Wyre, a d&d campaign log, spell levels are referred to as "valences". Casters were analogous to atoms, and spells were analogous to electrons. More powerful casters were like bigger atoms, with more electrons, or spells, and higher valences, or spell levels. Epic spells were Transvalent spells.

[Zale]

I like Circles, personally.

Fear me mortal. I have mastered seven circles of magic. Within my mind are spells and incantations that allow me to transverse the planes and bend reality to my will.

[jaybird]

There's zero reason for a Wizard with more intelligence then anyone ever born in our world to not seek to quantify magic in a system as defined as D&D casting.

"Well, my apprentice can cast Light, but not Magic Missile. Oh nice, now he can cast Magic Missile, but he still can't cast Scorching Ray. Hmm...that must mean Light is easier then Magic Missile, which in turn is easier then Scorching Ray! Genius!"

EDIT: that being said, I do like terminology other then "levels". "Circles", "Spheres", "Valences", and "Tiers" all sound god. Ancient alphabets are also a good bet.

[limejuicepowder]

Spell levels should absolutely be known in game: think of the different colored belts in martial arts, or the ranking of black belts. Martial artists track each other's abilities, and so should spell casters. Coincidentally, most martial art styles track their black belts with rankings of 1-9 (dan, in Japanese).