[AD&D 2e] Casting time houserule

[Scowling Dragon]

I have a idea for a house rule for casting spells:

Unless the spell says otherwise, casting time takes an amount of rounds equal to the level of the spell divided by half (Can be different) rounded up. This stacks with the initiative penalty

So its like this:

1=1
2=1
3=2
4=2
5=3
6=3
7=4
8=4
9=5

I just think it could limit the insane level that casters overpower non-casters at later stages. And give more reason to cast lower level spells.

[Lord Torath]

So what you're saying is a mage will start casting a first level spell at his initiative roll in round 1, and won't complete casting the spell until his initiative roll in round two, plus the casting speed?

In other words, if I cast a Meteor Swarm, it will take me five rounds to complete the spell and release the swarm?

This will completely neuter mages and deal a severe blow to clerics. A Cure Light Wounds spell will take a round-and-a-half to take effect, and the more powerful healing spells will take much longer.

I would guess that by the time you complete the casting of the spell, the situation will have changed sufficiently that your spell with be useless. Instead of a Cure Serious Wounds spell, you will now need Raise Dead instead.

Trying to predict where your foes and friends will be 2 rounds in advance for a Fireball or a Lightning bolt will result in fried friends and missed enemies. Or would you declare range and target only at the time the spell is released?

By the time you get your Slow spell off, your front line fighters will be half dead, and the cleric will be 1-2 rounds too slow with the healing spells.

I think a better way to do this (keep casters from overpowering everyone else) would be to reduce the number of lower level spell slots at each level. You'd still get your top level spells at the same time (3rd level spell at lvl 5, 4th level spells at lvl 7, etc), but you'd have fewer spells of each level. (instead of a 12th level mage having spells per level: 4 4 4 4 4 1, he'd have 2 2 2 2 2 1 or something). This is not something I plan to implement in my campaign. I'm just suggesting it's better than your proposed house rule. I think your proposed houserule will effectively turn your campaign into a magicless one.

An even better solution is to strictly enforce the resting and memorization times for high level spells, and use random encounters and realistic behavior of monsters to prevent the PCs from dictating the pace of the game. If they can stop and rest every time the wizard runs out of 5th level spells, the wizard will definitely dominate the game.

[LibraryOgre]

Far less necessary in 2e. Any hit during the casting time ruins the spell. Even if you're using weapon speeds, those tend to decrease with level. And wizards are less capable of the "five minute workday", because regaining spells after a casting orgy takes so much longer.

[Matthew]

I have messed around with this sort of thing before, but I think on the whole I prefer the one spell to one round stuff. Do not use weapon speeds if you want to keep spell casters as vulnerable as first edition.

[Toofey]

I don't use casting or weapon times unless more than one person is trying to act within the same segment in a way that disrupts either, in which case the faster action goes (so if you want to disrupt a spell with a casting time of 4, you can do so with any action that has a listed time of 3 or less, but if you only have an action available that has a listed time of 5 you are SOL)

[FrogsAfraid]

They did something like this for the 2nd edition Masque of the Red Death (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masque_of_the_Red_Death_%28Ravenloft%29) setting of Gothic Earth for Ravenloft.

Where a spell said "Casting Time", that's how many rounds (of 1 minute) a spell took to cast. So if it has a casting time of 1, that's just 1 round, but a casting time of 3 would take 3 rounds. Also, when a spell takes an entire round or more to cast, the number of rounds is how many turns (a turn is 10 minutes) it takes to cast. And when a spell takes 1 or more turns to cast, that's how many hours it took to cast the spell. As you might guess, spells listed in hours took that many days to cast. You got to eat, drink and go to the toilet, but anything else meant spell failure. It makes mention of the fact that spells originally listed in days in the PHB could take weeks or months to cast.