Dramatically Increasing Spell Prep Time

[Segev]

No, I don't expect this to be a "fix." This is more a thought experiment to see how it would change the game and the choices made, as well as how high-op spellcasters would work around it.

What if it took an hour per spell level to prepare a given spell (whether arcane preparation or divine prayer)?

Obviously, absent any other changes, this makes spontaneous casters significantly stronger in comparison to prepared casters, at least on the surface: they have their full alotment every day while prepped casters need more downtime to recover all their spells.

But would this really slow down the prepared casters, or do they have enough ways of ensuring that they have all the actions and time they need to work around this and still be the tip-top of the game?


(This is more inspired by a post or two on resource management, and whether it was intended that casters "never" run out of spells in a typical adventuring day.)

[Rubik]

Have you ever read the Discworld books? You'll end up with wizards like those at Unseen University who never, ever use magic.

[Segev]

Have you ever read the Discworld books? You'll end up with wizards like those at Unseen University who never, ever use magic.

Maybe. Certainly seems likely at lower optimization levels.

Same with clerics, I presume.

[Rubik]

Maybe. Certainly seems likely at lower optimization levels.

Same with clerics, I presume.Any adventuring wizard or cleric will have ways of casting spontaneously. All others will pretty much only sell their spellcasting services.

Basically, this is a soft-ban for everyone under a certain optimization level, and those optimization levels will involve spontaneous casting, always.

Basically, you're getting the opposite of what you likely intend with this.

[Segev]

Intent is stated in the OP: see what manipulating the resource-availability to casters does to the game and how it's played.

A maxim I have internalized when it comes to game design is that players will always seek the most efficient ways to use what they have. They will always adapt to and around obstacles in the rules in order to maximize benefit and minimize downsides.

This can lead to interesting distortions of the game compared to intended outcomes. (See: caster-supremacy vs. the intended sword-and-sorcery feel of 3.5, and the Tippyverse.)

I am curious what things would look like with this change.


I would go a lot more in depth than a single proposed rule-change to only prepared casters if I wanted to really attempt to "solve the problem" of casters never running out of spells in an adventuring day.

[Uncle Pine]

I guess in such a campaign you'd not see many Wizards, or rather you'd only see Wizards and other prepared spellcasters who milk crafting rules, miniomancy, etc. way more than usual. Scry and Die would be the preferred tactics and 15 minutes adventuring months would become more frequent.

And then at 15th level Planar Bubble (Far Realm) would wreck things.

In general, I can see this working as a way to set a certain tone to the campaign. I, for example, would be amused to play in such a setting as a Wizard, if only to find new ways to screw with mundanes.

[Rubik]

Intent is stated in the OP: see what manipulating the resource-availability to casters does to the game and how it's played.Okay, most people who institute this rule would find that they've gotten the opposite of what they intend, since most are trying to limit the power of T1s.

Any op-savvy player can quickly make them realize the folly of that kind of thinking.

[Segev]

I guess in such a campaign you'd not see many Wizards, or rather you'd only see Wizards and other prepared spellcasters who milk crafting rules, miniomancy, etc. way more than usual. Scry and Die would be the preferred tactics and 15 minutes adventuring months would become more frequent.On the plus side, more crafting time...on the downside, it's STILL the wizards and clerics who want that.


In general, I can see this working as a way to set a certain tone to the campaign. I, for example, would be amused to play in such a setting as a Wizard, if only to find new ways to screw with mundanes.Fair enough.


Okay, most people who institute this rule would find that they've gotten the opposite of what they intend, since most are trying to limit the power of T1s.

Any op-savvy player can quickly make them realize the folly of that kind of thinking.

Oh, indeed. Part of my curiosity is seeing what high-op work-arounds people have. (Far Realms planar bubble is an interesting one. I imagine fast-time planes to be popular, as well.)


Personally, I prefer to try to elevate "mundane" classes to higher tier rather than stamp down on T1s. It's more interesting as a design experiment, to me.

[Uncle Pine]

Personally, I prefer to try to elevate "mundane" classes to higher tier rather than stamp down on T1s. It's more interesting as a design experiment, to me.

Applying a handicap to T1s isn't going to elevate mundanes anytime. It's just a neckbottle for T1s. Bob the Fighter doesn't fight better just Wizards have a harsher life.

[Segev]

Applying a handicap to T1s isn't going to elevate mundanes anytime. It's just a neckbottle for T1s. Bob the Fighter doesn't fight better just Wizards have a harsher life.

Which is why I don't really try handicapping T1s when I actually want to "fix" things. I go for elevating other classes.

This thread isn't about balance.

[Flickerdart]

Well, one thing's for sure - wands of mnemonic enhancer are going to become a lot more popular. Archmage (to convert your useless spell slots into automatically refreshing SLAs) becomes very valuable. In general, a high level caster probably has enough spells that they don't care. Low level prepared casters will mostly suck and die since a party can hardly squat in a dungeon for five hours so the wizard can prepare the handful of spells he needs to blow through a couple of encounters.

[Fitz10019]

What if it took an hour per spell level to prepare a given spell (whether arcane preparation or divine prayer)?

People would avoid those classes.


What if it took ten minutes per spell level to prepare a given spell (whether arcane preparation or divine prayer)?

Now you've got a ballgame.

Casters would wonder 'it'll take me ten minutes to replace this spell -- is casting it worthwhile for this situation?'
They would conserve spells to reduce morning prep time.

[Rubik]

I'd rather play a psionic class with access to arcane (and divine-turned-arcane) spells, myself. An hour (or ten minutes) per spell level prepped, or one round spent in meditation for an entire day's spell payload? Not even a contest.

Of course, I'd rather play psionic classes anyway. I hate spell slots.

[jiriku]

At low op, it would become impossible to play high-level prepared casters as they're traditionally played. Buff-stacking would be impractical. At high levels, preparing enough offensive spells for a single encounter would take days. Your morning buff routine might take weeks to prepare. Nine hours to ready a single 9th level spell! Many players would probably switch to sorcerers and psions. Those who stay will lean towards spells that provide you with the means to take special actions over and over again -- choices like ice axe or flame whips start to look much more attractive because one spell enables you to do something useful during every round for the whole encounter.

At mid-op, (as flickerdart mentioned) wand of rary's mnemonic enhancer becomes a big deal. So does rod of absorption and pearl of power. I suspect pearl of power becomes the #1 item choice for prepared casters. In fact, charged spell completion items in general (wands, eternal wands, staves, scepters, schemas) become highly useful -- they represent a means by which wizards can bank their prepaid time, and they are also more time-efficient -- you can craft a wand with 50 castings of a spell in much less time than it would take to prepare the spell 50 times. Dedicated wright homunculi become essential resources for every wizard. Essentially, a high-op prepared caster starts to look a lot more like an artificer, relying on magical gizmos and advanced planning, rather than being able to conveniently rattle off dozens of spells per day with little trouble. Huh. You know, that's a lot closer to traditional fantasy wizard archetypes than the actual wizard class. However, being effective with this limitation is hard, and only players who have significant system mastery, lots of time, and the desire for an intellectual challenge will likely be interested in doing this.

At high op, wizards will use alternatives to preparing spells. You'll see every wizard rushing to implement some means by which he can cast repeat sanctum mordenkainen's lucubration to auto-reprep his spells of 5th level and lower (and sanctum versions of his 6th level spells). Every 17th level wizard will set up an energy transformation field of absorption in his base so he can cast higher-level spells without expending the spell slots. Prestige classes that can use circle magic will be popular, since they can leech spell levels from their followers, effectively distributing some of the cost of rep-prepping spells across several NPCs. Likewise, it pays to have simulacrums and bound ice assassins of yourself, along with a large staff of bound outsiders, since they can cast your spells for you and then go sit at your base studying spell books while you adventure. The trouble with these methods is that most of them come online from levels 10-17, so a spellcaster will limp along with wands for 9 levels, and then suddenly experience explosive power growth as they gain access to the tools for escaping spell prep times. And again, these methods require enormous system mastery. Few could attempt them, and fewer still would want to.

[Rubik]

Thought bottles would be even better than they already are. Store prepped spells in a thought bottle so you can reload as a standard action. Have ice assassins and whatnot load them for you. Use XP-componentless Wishes through Supernatural Spell and whatnot every day to Wish for a thought bottle storing the spells you want prepped for the day. Nine hours for a full loadout is still better than hundreds of hours, after all.

And summoning/calling spells will be even more potent, since they can call in additional spellcasters with spells already prepped.

[Segev]

This is the kind of discussion I was looking for. Thanks. ^_^

I didn't think thought bottles could store anything but XP, though.

[ryu]

This is the kind of discussion I was looking for. Thanks. ^_^

I didn't think thought bottles could store anything but XP, though.

Spontaneous divination into versatile spellcaster is also a thing. Cross class ranks in UMD to allow your familiar to use wands is also nice. It's more than action economy. It's a way of making wands more handy than they already were.

[jiriku]

Spell engine becomes a valuable spell too. It cuts prep time in half and lets you swap prepared spells for free. As written, the gp and xp costs are excessive for the utility that's provided, but under this houserule it might seem like a great deal. The spell is missing its duration, however, so you'd want to deal with that.

Rary's arcane conversion would also be useful, along with the amulet of arcane conversion. Changing out a prepared spell for a different one is just as time-consuming as prepping a spell into an empty slot, so there would be demand for effects that let you swap. Really, a high-level, high-op wizard could almost be assumed to have sanctum rary's arcane conversion and sanctum repeat mordenkainen's lucubration prepared, just for the flexibility of being able to freely prepare the lower half of his spell slots without having to spend days at the task.

[Rubik]

This is the kind of discussion I was looking for. Thanks. ^_^

I didn't think thought bottles could store anything but XP, though.The XP storage function is what's the most breakable, and so it's the one most talked about, but thought bottles can store XP, your daily spell payload, and actual memories. And all for 20,000 gp.

[jiriku]

Spontaneous divination into versatile spellcaster is also a thing. Cross class ranks in UMD to allow your familiar to use wands is also nice. It's more than action economy. It's a way of making wands more handy than they already were.

Improved familiars with SLAs look more attractive too. That 1/week commune on the imp or quasit looks extra nice when it's saving the party cleric half a day of preparation time. In fact, I'd probably be scouring the monster manuals and indexing SLAs, and using the planar binding series for as many of my spell needs as I could.

[atemu1234]

Improved familiars with SLAs look more attractive too. That 1/week commune on the imp or quasit looks extra nice when it's saving the party cleric half a day of preparation time. In fact, I'd probably be scouring the monster manuals and indexing SLAs, and using the planar binding series for as many of my spell needs as I could.

This would be my route.

[ryu]

Improved familiars with SLAs look more attractive too. That 1/week commune on the imp or quasit looks extra nice when it's saving the party cleric half a day of preparation time. In fact, I'd probably be scouring the monster manuals and indexing SLAs, and using the planar binding series for as many of my spell needs as I could.

Also my standard ice assassin craft contingent spell combo actually gets better with this system. Prepare as many spells you know as you want to be activated on conditions you set from innumerable fine sized minions with their own useful spell like abilities, native flight, and free elemental damage attacks.

[MyrPsychologist]

I feel like at mid to high level this would just necessitate a demiplane with adjusted time instead of actually changing the game. And at low level the penalty is slight at best.

[Urpriest]

This feels like it would be a lot like Ars Magica, really. A big focus on planning and preparation, building resources rather than expending them.

[Telok]

I actually did this in a real game, not just as theory craft. It's been a couple of years but the whole campaign is somewhere in the homebrew section.

In practical terms this is a soft ban on prepared caster PCs. Most people in an actual game don't go through the various contortions (or they aren't actually viable in a real game) to get to the TO seen here. Were I to do it again there are some changes I'd make, but 15 minutes per spell level causes people to avoid prepared casters.

[Zanos]

Mage of the Arcane Order and Uncanny Forethought become popular picks. (And both are already quite good.)

[Zaq]

One noteworthy strength of the as-written Wizard is the ability to leave a few spell slots unprepared, spending something like 15 minutes later in the day to fill them with exactly the spell you need for the current challenge. Under this rule, that presumably becomes impossible, which means that you really have to know what you're going to want to cast well in advance.

Of course, this means that players who were already good at that (through adept divination use, skillful guessing of what the GM likes to throw at you, or whatever) have even more of an advantage, while players who relied on those wildcard slots are going to be worse off. (It's a matter of opinion whether the ability to fill wildcard slots on the fly was too powerful an ability in the first place, but the fact remains, this houserule hoses it.)

Beyond that, I agree with the general consensus: this is just a soft ban on prepared casters for anyone who doesn't have a way of getting around it. You have to remember that casters are defined by their spells—they don't have other options to fall back on if for some reason they don't want to use their spells. So either they use their spells, in which case the party has to wait for several days between adventuring days, or they don't use their spells, and they're sharply limited in how much usefulness they can bring to the table. That doesn't seem like it makes the game more fun, no matter which way it works out.

I might be a little warmer on the idea if all prepared casters got a nice selection of reserve feats as class features. That would give them something to do when they don't want to bust out a spell and slow the party way down with their prep time. The existing reserve feats don't really go far enough, I think, so you'd want to homebrew a few new ones that actually give worthwhile abilities, but that would at least make the prepared caster's round-by-round choices look like "small at-will effect vs. big effect that slows us down" instead of "big effect that slows us down vs. standing around uselessly plinking with a crossbow."

Also, from a metagame standpoint, spellcasting enemies become even scarier than they already are. They aren't expected to last for an entire adventuring day, and it doesn't matter to them if they have to spend forever preparing spells off-camera, so they can go nova with their spells much more effectively than a PC can. Sure, that's always sort of a consideration when you've got enemies who have abilities that are expected to last a PC all day but only have to last an NPC one encounter, but you'd have to be really careful about that with this houserule, since it doesn't make spell use any harder in combat (where both PCs and NPCs follow the same rules), just out of combat (where PCs and NPCs have very different expectations).

[Vizzerdrix]

Hmm... Alchemy would see more use from 1-5. Buffing party members would have to take a back seat unless they want to pay for their own wands/scepters/schemas. SODs and save boosting would be more of a thing sooner.

[jiriku]

I actually did this in a real game, not just as theory craft. It's been a couple of years but the whole campaign is somewhere in the homebrew section.

In practical terms this is a soft ban on prepared caster PCs. Most people in an actual game don't go through the various contortions (or they aren't actually viable in a real game) to get to the TO seen here. Were I to do it again there are some changes I'd make, but 15 minutes per spell level causes people to avoid prepared casters.

Telok's experience brings to mind an important point: if this change occurs in a vacuum, prepared casters drop several tiers in power, and tier 2 and tier 3 are filled with spontaneous casters who will happily step up to fill that power vacuum. if I like to play wizards, I can bust out my TO tricks and circumvent the restriction, but really it's way much easier to just roll a sorcerer or beguiler or psion for a similar kind of character without all the headaches.

[Jack_Simth]

Telok's experience brings to mind an important point: if this change occurs in a vacuum, prepared casters drop several tiers in power, and tier 2 and tier 3 are filled with spontaneous casters who will happily step up to fill that power vacuum. if I like to play wizards, I can bust out my TO tricks and circumvent the restriction, but really it's way much easier to just roll a sorcerer or beguiler or psion for a similar kind of character without all the headaches.
Not a vacuum. Thinner ranks at Tier-1 perhaps (but not really, as all the standard tricks are available, they're just harder to use), however, the Artificer is unaffected. Maybe one or two other classes would barely notice - Spirit Shaman, perhaps?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Overall, I agree with jiriku and Zaq. You've actually returned to a more familiar "wizard" archetype, where spells really are something you have to hoard. That being said, the bare-bones change as written is a soft ban on prepared casters, a sign saying "you must be this op-savy to play." If balance is concerned, those are... well, they're either the players you least want playing powerful classes (because they know how to break them) or the ones you most want behind the wheel of a wizard (because they know how not to break them accidentally). But let's not theorycraft; what would you need to do to actually use this in a game?

Obviously, the first thing you'd need is a gentleman's agreement not to revert to a fifteen minute workweek-- that defeats the whole purpose of encouraging frugality.
Probably the simplest way to make something like this work would be to replace all casters with slightly tweaked Artificers. (One for sorcerer/wizard spells, one for cleric, and maybe one for druid, although that would be more complicated). You might do something to limit infusions/day, but add a "gold reserve" to compensate?
Spontaneous casters would need a similar nerf, or else you're just switching players to slightly different classes. Perhaps change "spells/day" to "spells/week"-- that would give a matching impetus to conserve magic. A few spells recharging per day might be a more organic bet, but you need something.
To keep casters viable for less-skilled players, you'd probably want to give them something they can do regularly. Reserve feats aren't a bad idea, although you might want to power them up somewhat. That was the route I took with my Ritualist (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325646-The-Ritualist-A-tier-3-crafter-spellbook-user-maybe-%283-5-PEACH%29), which was designed to capture a similar aesthetic.
This might sound weird, but you might want to power up spells, or at least those with significant chances of failure. Anything with "____ negates" in particular-- nothing would suck like using one of your precious horded spells only to have it fizzle.


Probably the biggest danger you'd face is the increased drive for the most powerful, encounter-ending spells. Fun-but-less-effective stuff (snakebite! My arms are now snakes. Fear me!) will most likely fall by the wayside, in favor of tried-and-true monsters like summons and mass save-or-loses.


Maybe one or two other classes would barely notice - Spirit Shaman, perhaps?
Depends on if you rule that retrieving spells is sufficiently similar to preparing them to eat the nerf.

[Rubik]

How about tacking on, say, the warlock onto a modified T1 casting chassis, such that warlocks now have some (extremely limited but very powerful) spells, but they only use those for emergencies?

[Telok]

Ok, what I actually did was modify some things about magic to both fit the constraints of the setting/story and bring some of the main casters down a notch or two.

First there was a maximum safe distance on all teleportation effects. A high level caster using a high level teleport could get about a mile safely, two miles with serious (up to and including death) but not irrevocable danger, three miles would require a True Ressurection. Any magic that did any flying became unstable and initiated a random timer for it's duration, there was an in setting explanation. Essentially non-mundane flight was limited to about half an hour, max. Several elements of setting and plot required these, although a strategic flight artifact did come online at around 13th level.

The caster changes were as follows. Prepared casters took 10 minutes per spell level to prepare spells. Psychics took five minutes for each power point recovered. Spontaneous casters with 9th level spell lists had a [i]source[\i] that they were beholden to. All divine casters had to have a god, each god had different ethos, commandments, and a PrC. Wizards and sorcerers were required to specalize, wizards got the -ancy schools and the sorcerers got the -ation (some fiddling around was required and I may have those backwards). The banned school was locked in too, so there were no easy choices. The sources for the spontaneous casters differed by class. The divines were easy, their god was the source (at least one good god prohibited the use of all necromancy) and dictated a time of day for an hour of prayer to recover spells (clerics could pray any time but had the prep time thing), resting didn't matter you could only get spells during that one holy hour and it took the whole hour.

Spontaneous arcane casters with 9th level spells got the Improved Familiar feat and a (Su) ritual. The familiar was (supposed to be) an intelligent outsider. The caster got the spells through the familiar, which was the living link to the patron. The rirual was a fifteen minute thingy that either summoned the familiar (normal familiar death penalties were ignored in this setting) or, if the familiar participated in the ritual it refreshed the caster's spell slots. Plus if the familiar died the caster lost all his spell slots, the link was broken.

I wasn't realy sure what to do about artificers, or if I was even going to have them in the setting. But there were magic item crafting changes that doubled the time and cost of permanent magic items, plus something closer to an approximation of a real economy. So I ended up not changing them.

The campaign ran about a year in real life. Three psychic warriors, a druid/shapeshift melee PrC, a beguiler, a warmage/wild mage who worshipped chaos and abused a crafted rod of wonder, an npc favored soul, and one guy who played a sorcerer three times. It was the same sorcerer each time with a different name, race, and a couple of different spells. He was just really good at getting himself and his familiar killed. One time it was totally not my fault, he dicked around during some important stuff and one of the other PCs shanked him and tossed the body down a half mile tall cliff.

The beguiler and psywars did great, powerful characters, good roleplay, no problems. The wild warmage blew stuff away and had a great time (a herd of buffalo, a wall of cheese, the meteor strikes).

The sorcerers were all kind of lame and I think that guy might have played a dead necro too. But two people ended the campaign woth the characters they started with, others had two or three characters, and this guy went through something like twelve characters.

Oh, the artificer did fine. He retired with a huge haul of loot half way through because it was in character for him to do so. He relied on blast rods and infusions mostly but when he did (very rarely) whip out a wand it usually ended the encounter. That was a good player though.

Over the last few years playing normal unmodified 3.5 this same group of players actually hasn't been much different in character selection. That guy still plays lots of sorcerers and dies two or thee times as much as the rest of us. There have been two druids and a wizard but that campaign was short and annoying for all casters because of constant night attacks. A warlock, some psywars, a duskblade, another druid, a psion, and about six or seven clerics. That guy cribbed an uttercold assault build off the internet but it died trying to melee drow crusaders in the second fight.

So all in all it seems that the changes for that campaign cut out druids and clerics as casters. Most of the other class choices haven't really changed. It turned out that the change to long duration flying magic had a larger effect for most of the campaign.