Caster/noncaster balance through casting time adjustment

[Wyatt8000]

Hello.
(again, I have not actually played D&D but I've really enjoyed reading the rulebooks, perhaps more than I would enjoy the game)

If I made a computer game based on D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder rules (I won't, I'm not rich or legally insane), then I would try balancing casters vs noncasters by making the casting time of all spells longer. I think it's a good solution because it doesn't make magic "feel" less powerful (a great fireball made by a great wizard will still "look" the same and do as much damage). For example, all(?) spells would take at least 2 combat rounds to cast. Of course different spells would have to be adjusted by a different margin.

Stupid idea? Is there a reason why that's not how it's done?

[Fax Celestis]

Bookkeeping, for starters. Also player boredom. "what do you do this round, Phil?" "I'm still casting my spell for another two rounds. I'm going to go get a beer. Let me know if I die."

[Phelix-Mu]

Two things:

1.) The fireball will still be impressive. But it's much less likely to actually kill anyone, because the barbarian will have laid waste to quite a few enemies by then. In mass combat, maybe still useful, but for spells like debuffs and battlefield control, best implemented very early on in combat, the spells become incredibly less useful, and the melees/mundanes suffer because of this (although they also get more glory).

2.) The fireball and the barbarian are still irrelevant, because the wizard can divine threats ahead of time and teleport in some minions (undead, demon binding, summons) to deal with the threat ahead of time. Encounter mitigation will still make full casters rule the roost in a way that mundanes can only dream of.

[INoKnowNames]

One issue that comes to mind is that playing a Caster becomes a bit more boring, effectively requiring that they sit the game out while everyone else has fun for a few turns before they do anything. In low to even mid-op games, where casters aren't that big of a problem (like, the Order of the Stick), this may seem like too much.

One big problem with this is that casters are more motivated to power up in the morning with long lasting buffs and transformations and eschew mid combat spell casting entirely, which makes them more likely to usurp the more mundane combatants and, as many other fixes encourage, more likely to rely on the more broken spells and combinations. Not good.

Again, unless you came up with a spell list all your own, I don't see just increasing the amount of time it takes to cast spells fixing the problem so much as it is applying a bad patch to it that makes more bugs appear. The easiest fix to spell casting is to ask the players playing casters to not break the game, really.

Though I would actually enjoy the first dynamic a bit along with a less abusive spell list: Magic is powerful, but it takes time to prepare the spell for use and cast it to affect something, which would explain why mages have mundane body guards to support them until they can fix reality. Reminds of what would have been the premise of Mahou Sensei Negima, where the weaker mage was defended by an upgraded body guard until they cast the spells to make the bad guys fall down. (I wonder how it would have turned out story wise if they had did that instead of pushing the Gish/DBZ Transformations...)

[Devronq]

Really absolutely nothing less than rewriting alot of spells will do you any good. Doesn't matter if it takes 1 second or 1minute to become god your still god...