Removing Arcane Spell Failure Chance: Good Idea? Bad Idea?

[Fayd]

Hello Playground!

For an upcoming game, I'm considering axing or at least toning down arcane spell failure chance. It doesn't make much sense (it makes SOME sense, but not a whole lot) in setting, and to be perfectly frank I've found the mechanic sort of kludgy and ill conceived anyway.

My options, as I see them:

Axe it entirely
Axe it except for Medium and Heavy Armor
Axe it except for Heavy Armor
Make it a level appropriate Concentration check instead.


What do you guys think?

[Hazrond]

Hello Playground!

For an upcoming game, I'm considering axing or at least toning down arcane spell failure chance. It doesn't make much sense (it makes SOME sense, but not a whole lot) in setting, and to be perfectly frank I've found the mechanic sort of kludgy and ill conceived anyway.

My options, as I see them:

Axe it entirely
Axe it except for Medium and Heavy Armor
Axe it except for Heavy Armor
Make it a level appropriate Concentration check instead.


What do you guys think?
From what I've read ASF is the Achilles heel for arcane casters, you really wanna axe it? :smalltongue:

[Cowardly Griffo]

Leave it in. It makes too many feats, class features, entire classes and so on redundant if you take it out (not to mention spells like Mage Armor). And seriously, casters don't need the help.

If you really feel the need to do it, concentration makes the most sense out of what you've suggested. You could probably straight-up apply the ACP to the concentration check and it would work as nicely as anything else.

[jaydubs]

I would ask - what arcane class do you think needs a buff?

[Snowbluff]

What you can do is give casters the option to lower it. In 3.5 there was things like the Twilight Armor Enhancement, for example. Templates like githcraft, etc...

The rule only really screws bad arcane casters. The good ones have way around it, but the humble regular player gets cut up for nothing. Poor guy should have played a cleric.

[Darrin]

Axe it. It's a useless anachronism. You won't even notice it's gone.

[Fayd]

I suppose it would help to explain: this is really not for an ongoing rule, but for a thing for the particular game I'm running, which happens to have a lot of part spellcasters. There are also only 3 PCs, so they kinda need a bit more help. They've got better things to spend feats on that I don't want to force them to pay for special feats.