Spellcasting Fatigue

[ewoods]

I'm about to start a campaign with my normal group and I'm considering implementing a variation of the Curse of the Magi from the Dragonlance campaign setting. Essentially, whenever someone casts a spell, arcane or divine, they roll a constitution check, DC 10+spell level. The spell always goes off, but if the roll fails, the caster becomes fatigued. If they fail another roll while fatigued, they become exhausted. If they fail another roll while exhausted, they fall unconscious.

Now, the purpose of this is to hamper some of our veteran players who have become quite adept at min/maxing casters. Plus I think it's kind of a fun rule anyway. :) So with that in mind, alongside this rule, I have two feats that I need a little help constructing. The idea is to divert attention away from other feat combinations that they may take, so they need to be "worth it" to give up already limited caster feats. If this sounds needlessly complicated, just bear with me. I know how my group works... So here are the two I have in mind:

Effortless Spellcasting - This one will let them cast a limited number of spells without having to roll a fatigue check. My initial thought was to let them select a school of magic and any spell from that school can be cast without a check. In that case, I think they should only be able to take this feat once. My other thought was to let them select a number of spells, like three or five specific spells of a spell level that they have access to at the time of taking this feat and they can cast those without the check. In that case, they can take this feat multiple times.

Spell Fortitude - This one will add a certain number as a bonus to their fatigue check. For example, taking this feat will give you a +2 on every fatigue check. Since the check is a straight Con check, even a caster with a 20 in Con will fail the check about 50% of the time when casting 5th level spells. The idea is that at higher levels they'll either have to take this feat, or focus on boosting their Con stat at the expense of their actual casting stat. I just can't decide what a good number is for the bonus or whether or not it should be allowed multiple times.

Any and all suggestions, comments, and criticisms are greatly appreciated!

[Ninjadeadbeard]

It seems a tad bit harsh. Why not simply add a cumulative -1 (or -1/Spell Level) penalty to Spellcasting for every successful spell? When it gets unbearable, the caster can either spend a good amount of time meditating, or immediately "Burn" themselves with the accumulated points (or a number of dice to be determined) as a Full Round Action.

It forces spellcasters to take breaks (measured in hours) or suffer an amount of damage to cast a lot of spells one after another.

You could still call these Fatigue Points, and have the limit equal to their Con score (after which they take double the penalty or something else that sucks).

[Deepbluediver]

I don't know if this is OVERLY harsh, given how broken casters can get...but I'm just not really sure it will have the best effect that you are hoping it will.

First of all, it's kind of random. The more spells you cast the more likely you are to fail, yes, but it's also possible to roll poorly in your very first daily encounter and then you're up the creek, sans paddle.
Something that started out easy and got tougher with each spell might be more palatable.

The feat tax for higher level casting won't constrain casters much, the loss of a single feat (or even two) can usually be worked around without much effort. All it will do is probably annoy them, since it's one less metamagic option.

And if they are as min-max savvy as you seem to think, requiring them to stack Con to cast spells will probably just cause them to gravitate towards spells that don't have saves, of which there are plenty.

TBH, I've never seen a "quick and easy" fix that I've liked for balancing casting, because it's not a simple problem. Without extensive homebrewing, your best bet would be to just encourage them to try other (non tier 1) options.

I think you are on the right path with requiring a roll for spells, but I'm not convinced this is the way to do it.
There's a link to a much more comprehensive magic fix in my extended sig, but for the stripped down version maybe try something like this: Every time you want to cast a spell, you need to make a spell-check. The DC for this check is 10+twice the spell's level, against the caster's primary stat.
Failure means the spell simply doesn't work, a natural 20 means the spell is automatically successful (overcoming SR and disallowing saves) and a natural 1 is a fumble, which causes the caster to lose the spell slot, at least. Feel free to make up other issues, such as the spell blowing up in their face or not working in the way it was intended.

[Calinar]

This thread just gave me a great idea for how to improve the magic system I've been working on. I was just trying to think of a way to improve the fatigue rules for the system and you've given me an answer that I should though up myself, thanks. :smallsmile:

[ewoods]

Yeah, I actually really like it being something that gets more difficult as more spells are cast, instead of a random roll each time. Hmm... Lots to think about.

[SirElderberry]

The mechanic I used, which seemed to work well, was making a blanket "fatigue" for all characters. It, at 10 CON, is limited at 100 and once you hit that point your character is unconscious until you are under that number. Extra CON, of course, adds to the limit. I made all actions cost a certain amount, usually a fairly negligible amount - a melee attack, for example, was something like 4 fatigue. Enough that a really long battle might require use of better tactics or potions/spells to relieve the fatigue but not enough that anyone would be concerned in a normal encounter, especially with the bonus from CON. And then I made it so that armour gives some fatigue based on its weight, which certain classes can ignore (paladins ignore all, barbs ignore all from medium, rangers ignore all in light and most in medium, and so on) and which is reduced by proficiency, but is doubled when trying to cast spells in armour. At around 1/2 the cap they became fatigued, at 3/4 exhausted, and they take worse penalties for going far over the cap than going over the cap slightly - that way a wizard won't cast up to 99 then cast a spell that normally gives 50.

Spells, usually, just cost a simple 5 per spell level in fatigue but that varied based on the spell. The really broken spells cost more so that players would avoid relying too much on them. And I homebrewed some extra spells, potions, feats, class features, and such to help players manage fatigue. I think we usually had a short rest remove half of total fatigue and long rest remove all fatigue, that way your spellcasting classes don't become completely useless after one fight, but that's something that might also be up to DM's discretion.

[Grand Arbiter]

Nonsi's 3.5e Overhaul (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18777377&postcount=4) contains an entry that may be of interest: "Spellcasting based on Strain & Tolerance." While it does not penalize casters with fatigue, it does limit how much magic a caster can unload at once. If adapted, it may suit your needs.