Red Wizard Circle magic

[den12]

I have an x-PC turned NPC returning in my next session.

He is a vampire and a wizard. I want to have him use circle magic. It was one of the PC's goals before he was killed (brutally murdered in a misguided attempt to stop the gate to the nine hells from opening). Now capturing him is a key to closing that gate.

Has anyone experimented with circle magic? Do you have any tips of home brew mechanics that could help me?

[Strill]

Isn't Circle Magic the thing that could give you +20 caster level? If so, you'd just need to rework the idea. Keep the idea of rituals involving circles, but make it do something completely different.

[den12]

What if it allowed you sorcerer points and assess to meta magic?

For each spell slot an ally sacrifices gives you sorcery points and it functions just as the sorcerer ability. Perhaps you must choose meta magic per circle participant (including yourself) and can exchange spell points for spell slots up to 5th.

woukd allies giving up spell slots to give you sorcery points be balanced? I'm worried my PC get ahold of it.

[Gnomes2169]

The easiest method would probably be increasing the effective slot a spell is cast out of by 1 for every 2-3 members there are in the circle (to a max of 9). It increases the circle leader's power without really needing to become super complex with the bonuses.

[Mr.Moron]

The easiest method would probably be increasing the effective slot a spell is cast out of by 1 for every 2-3 members there are in the circle (to a max of 9). It increases the circle leader's power without really needing to become super complex with the bonuses.

I like the idea of a large group of casters making a spell more powerful but this kind of direct scaling feels like it's too fast. What if it was something more like


1 Caster (Normal): Cast the spell normally.
5 Casters (2nd Level): Increases the spell to a 2nd level slot.
25 Casters (3rd Level): Increases the spell to a 3rd level slot.
50 Casters (4th Level): Increases the spell to a 4th level slot.
100 Casters (5th Level): Increases the spell to a 5th level slot.
250 Casters (6th Level): Increases the spell to a 6th level slot.
500 Casters (7th Level): Increases the spell to a 7th level slot.
1000 Casters (8th Level): Increases the spell to a 8th level slot.
2500 Casters (9th Level): Increases the spell to a 9th level slot.


Or if this is a bit much make it caster levels. Maybe that plus 1/2th to 1/3rd the above figures if you wanted them to be *really* accessible.

This way such that 10(or 5 or 3) 5th-level casters could bump any spell of 3rd level or lower up to a 4th-level slot of power and 250 (125 or 75)10th-level casters could bump any spell up to a 9th level slot. Each caster would have to contribute a spell slot of the base level of the spell. That spell slot doesn't recover for a number of days equal to the effective slot^2. So bumping a 4th-level spell up to a 9th slot costs each participant a 4th level slot for 81 days.

If you wanted a bit more flexibility you could make it spell levels contributed. So for the 4th level slot each caster would need to contribute either 4 1st-level slots for 18 days, 2nd level or 1st + 3rd, etc...

This lets you get big rituals pumping out powerful slots but without worrying about a couple of hirelings being able to juice every casting to the max.

[Beleriphon]

I'd go with the increasing the slots used to cast a spell, so each participant can bump the spell level use by a certain amount.

I'd suggest that participants needs to sacrifice spell levels equal to the minimum necessary to cast the spell level to start with, and then enough spell levels squared of the desired spell level.

So lets say we want to boost a 1st level spell to 9th level, there has to be at least one spell slot of first level sacrificed, but then to get that to 9th level 81 levels of spell slots must be sacrificed between all of the parcitipants. So eighty-one wizards could use 1s level spell slots, or nine wizards could use 9th level spell slots.

[SharkForce]

the closest equivalent to caster level in 5e, imo, is your proficiency bonus. why not just boost that?