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penguinreich
2007-07-14, 09:40 PM
Well, as a DM (sort of) and player of D&D, I've always hated magic. Don't get me wrong, I love worlds with magic and wizards eta, but I really hate the system. Most of the rules for the wizard I find raucously and when these terms of 'wizard' and sorcerer' are used it's tough because everyone has different ideas of what the words means magic wise. Here are my idea on sorcerers and wizards that i would like to incorporate into my game.


Sorcerers: I think of sorcerers as people born with the ability to manipulate the four elements. They need no focus words, or devices, maybe just some arm movement.

WizardsWizards normally have (much) less of a inborn flair for magic, but it's there all the same. They use some sort of channeling devise (wand,staff,rod) to enhance their powers and allow them to manifest, with much more range of abilities than a sorcerer. They use key-words of power, useless unless someone has the gift and a proper channeling device ( a novices wand couldn't support a power word die spell, but as wands are used they gain strength along with the owner) If a novice tried to cast too powerful of a spell it would fizzle, their wand might explode ,eta. No studying spell books and material components. They would have to learn spells from something tho to learn the power words and certain channeling device movements. It would also take certain control of emotion for the spells (a lot of emotion for certain schools of magic, none for other.)


So I'm just wondering if any of you think it feasible to change the game so severely to incorporate my whims of what makes a good magic user. Is any of this even workable in the game? Any advice on how to transmit this to the game?

Joltz
2007-07-14, 09:51 PM
I thought about a system that involved wizards using staffs by default a while ago (no, not like the current staffs at all). I had the system worked out in my head but I never wrote it down and I think I forgot it. I remember the invest spell slot function of the Item Familiar feat (UA) inspired it.

It had something to do with wizards losing access to their highest level(s) of spells and having a reduced caster level when they didn't have their staff. You can see examples of something like this in a lot of fantasy novels. If I feel the urge I might type out the system and post it later--probably not though.

I never came up with anything to make sorcerers really different though, so I can't help you with that part.

Draz74
2007-07-14, 11:12 PM
I'm working on one where, if an arcane caster casts a spell, he has to make a check to avoid being Fatigued (... Exhausted, lose lots of Spell Points ...).

Staffs give a small bonus to the caster's check. I might also have specific magic staffs that allow the caster to automatically past the check after casting certain spells. (Look at the existing staffs in the game to get some ideas ... Staff of Illusion? You don't get fatigued, but still use up Spell Points, when you cast Disguise Self, Mirror Image, Major Image, Rainbow Pattern, Persistent Image, or Mislead.)

Still working out the details.

But it should be mentioned that this system won't have any casters quite like the Sorcerer. You can be a Wizard (bookish arcane caster) and have a lot of Spells Known and a lot of flexibility, but with limited Spell Points; or you can be a more intuitive and high-endurance arcane caster, but your spell list will be limited like the list of the Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Warmage. If you want to be more like the existing Sorcerer, you will have to switch from arcane magic to pact magic, and be something like a Binder.

CASTLEMIKE
2007-07-15, 09:34 AM
Sorcerers: I think of sorcerers as people born with the ability to manipulate the four elements. They need no focus words, or devices, maybe just some arm movement.

So I'm just wondering if any of you think it feasible to change the game so severely to incorporate my whims of what makes a good magic user. Is any of this even workable in the game? Any advice on how to transmit this to the game?

Yes, your sorcerer sounds a lot like a Psion and how they use their energy powers or some of their control energy powers like Control Flames, Control Air, Minor Creation and the Elements Mantle or a Oriental Adventure's Wujen or Shugenja (Without Ofudas) class descriptions with Sorcerer Spellcasting.

Wujen made it into Complete Arcane with a few minor changes. Shugenja made it into Complete Divine.

You could just plug sorcerer spell casting into their class specials or use the UA or D20 SRD Spellcaster Variant with the Eschew Materials and Silent Spell Feats as +0 Meta for known spells and let them take an Elemental Domain at 5, 10, 15 and 20 for their bonus feats. I'd also let them take a +1 Spell Secret that doesn't affect the spell level for a single spell at level 3 and every 3 levels. I'd also have them take a Taboo at level 5 and every 5 levels.

Bagera
2007-07-15, 08:02 PM
I think that all the things you described are largely flavor. You could fit it all in without adding any new mechanics just by your narratives.

Thinker
2007-07-15, 08:16 PM
I agree that the magic System is BAD. Generally the casters are weaker then there Mellee brothers. Like in my game the Barbarian CAN kill an enemyu in only 4 or 5 rounds while it takes ALOT longer with my wizard because he can't do THAT much damage. Really the vancian system is to blame. If you could just use a system so that you can pump up the DAMAGE to amounts based on level for the cost of ore slotes or somthing it would work ALTO better.

Dhavaer
2007-07-15, 08:25 PM
I agree that the magic System is BAD. Generally the casters are weaker then there Mellee brothers. Like in my game the Barbarian CAN kill an enemyu in only 4 or 5 rounds while it takes ALOT longer with my wizard because he can't do THAT much damage. Really the vancian system is to blame. If you could just use a system so that you can pump up the DAMAGE to amounts based on level for the cost of ore slotes or somthing it would work ALTO better.

There are going to be a lot of posts very soon on this topic, I suspect, so I'll just say this for now: Casters are bad at damage. They are good at save-or-suck/lose/die and battlefield control. Slow, for example, is a great deal more useful than Fireball.

Thinker
2007-07-15, 08:30 PM
But slow is BORING. It doesnt seem to help much either! It doesnt hurt the enemies much and you obviously havent seen a battlefield control FIGHTER!! They can stop people like nothing. How can a wizard compete witht hat on any levels?

psychoticbarber
2007-07-15, 08:31 PM
Generally the casters are weaker then there Mellee brothers.

I'd love to see the reasoning behind this. Last I checked, melee characters don't have the power to, as Vaarsuvius put it, "tell the laws of physics to shut up and sit down."

Edit: Okay, I think it's time for me to duck and cover and let the optimizers tell the story.

Jimp
2007-07-15, 08:31 PM
I agree that the magic System is BAD. Generally the casters are weaker then there Mellee brothers. Like in my game the Barbarian CAN kill an enemyu in only 4 or 5 rounds while it takes ALOT longer with my wizard because he can't do THAT much damage. Really the vancian system is to blame. If you could just use a system so that you can pump up the DAMAGE to amounts based on level for the cost of ore slotes or somthing it would work ALTO better.

In this case it's not the system, you're just 'doing it wrong'. Casters can wipe combat situations using disabling spells such as Sleep, Glitterdust or Forcecage. They can weaken enemies with spells like Enervation. They can reshape the entire battle with spells such as the Wall series. Even if you are playing a blaster who wants to use damaging spells there are plenty of ways to seriously boost damage output, though in terms of efficiency you will still lag behind the caster focused on disabling/battlefield control.

Golthur
2007-07-15, 08:32 PM
I agree that the magic System is BAD. Generally the casters are weaker then there Mellee brothers. Like in my game the Barbarian CAN kill an enemyu in only 4 or 5 rounds while it takes ALOT longer with my wizard because he can't do THAT much damage. Really the vancian system is to blame. If you could just use a system so that you can pump up the DAMAGE to amounts based on level for the cost of ore slotes or somthing it would work ALTO better.

<Sits back and grabs some popcorn>

I'll leave it to others who are more qualified to refute this...

CyberWyld
2007-07-15, 08:39 PM
While I've never played anything but divine casters....I've had plenty of folks that really know what they're doing with the arcane guys. In my experience..wizards ESPECIALLY end up becoming gods down the road a bit. With permacast spells and the right equipment, you can pretty must just sit back and eat some lunch while your party's wizard takes out the dragon you stumbled upon. They may start out weak...but they quickly outshine the rest of the party. It's not just a little either. I get tired of wizards like that. magic should be powerful I agree, but it shouldn't make you the best choice for every situation.



hasta

Call Me Siggy
2007-07-15, 08:43 PM
Just back off on this guy a bit, he probably plays mostly low-level games when the casters die in one hit and do a couple bvlast thing a day and are useless until they get rest.

However, I'd love to see what happens next...

Dhavaer
2007-07-15, 08:52 PM
But slow is BORING. It doesnt seem to help much either! It doesnt hurt the enemies much and you obviously havent seen a battlefield control FIGHTER!! They can stop people like nothing. How can a wizard compete witht hat on any levels?

With slow you can pretend your party is in bullet-time. How is that not cool?
A slowed creature gets a few penalties, which is always good, but most importantly, they can't full attack. Think of what that does to a troll. Two less attacks every round and they can't use their rend ability. Suddenly, the party fighter can actually go toe-to-toe with one and not die.
Battlefield control fighters are limited by their reach and their size. They're decent against humanoids, but as soon as something with multiple legs or that's larger than medium comes along, they lose a lot of their power. Spell range > weapon reach.

brian c
2007-07-15, 09:02 PM
Just back off on this guy a bit, he probably plays mostly low-level games when the casters die in one hit and do a couple bvlast thing a day and are useless until they get rest.

However, I'd love to see what happens next...

Hopefully you're right. At low levels, wizards are nothing special. They get some useful spells, but can't cast very many in one day and can't afford to get hit at all. Before level 5 or so, Wizard <<< Barbarian. Between 5 and 10, it's about even.

Dragonmuncher
2007-07-15, 10:08 PM
Haha... poor Thinker. He made a "casters are weaker than melee" post on the soulknife thread, and started off the same thing.

Anyway, penguin, there are a few things you might want to try.

The Tome of Magic Classes (binder, shadowcaster, truenamer) don't use traditional systems at all. None of them are as powerful as wizards are, though that's not necessarily a bad thing, and the binder in particular just seems incredibly cool (You merge your soul with ancient forgotten spirits, gaining cool superpowers each day! Neat!) Shadowcasters seem a little blah to me, as they essentially just a get a bunch of "shadow" spells as spell-like-abilities. Truenamer is also neat, a magic system based off of the "Truespeech" skill, but I don't know how well made the system is. The target DCs seem a little high to me.

Another option: Psionics! A point-based system, Psionics are pretty damn cool- powerful, but a little more balanced than wizards are. Don't listen to any horror stories you've heard about psionics- they mostly stem from people not understanding a few of the fundamental rules (such as being unable to spend more points in one round than your class level).


Or you could use Monte Cook's alternate classes. Arcana Evolved, I think it's called? Arcana Unearthed was the older version of his alternate system... I think. Anyway, there, there's no arcane/divine divide. The main magic class, the Magister, seems more of a combination between a wizard than a sorcerer than anything else- casts like a sorcerer, but can change his spells known, lower level slots can be traded for higher, and vice versa, some spells can be "laden," using two slots, for extra effect, and some spells are "complex" and some are "simple," making less magic focused classes still able to access magic.

The generic classes (Expert, Spellcaster, Warrior) might be something you'd like if you want to keep the Vancian system but get rid of the differences between the caster classes.


That's all the variants I can think of for now. Oh, one last thing: Am I the only one that thinks the whole "four elements" thing has become overdone?

Lord Tataraus
2007-07-15, 11:06 PM
I too dislike the current magic system and in my LoTR D20 homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50763) I have completely scratched all the classes except Rogues and barbarians, and made the Mage (heals, buffs, debuffs, and blasts) more along the lines of ToB with spells per encounter. Of course the spell list extremely small (about 8 spells per level, except for 1st which has 16). And no spells that would break the game with unlimited use. Also, all of the spells require you to channel through your staff instead of somatic components. Also, most of their spells are touch or close range and require saves (SR does not exist). Rangers get limited spell casting as well which is basically the same except they can channel spells through any weapon or their hands. Of course the Mage class is based off the Maiar (i.e. Wizards and Balrogs) who are very adept at combat, so they do get a few combat related abilities.

Gavin Sage
2007-07-15, 11:26 PM
In this case it's not the system, you're just 'doing it wrong'. Casters can wipe combat situations using disabling spells such as Sleep, Glitterdust or Forcecage. They can weaken enemies with spells like Enervation. They can reshape the entire battle with spells such as the Wall series. Even if you are playing a blaster who wants to use damaging spells there are plenty of ways to seriously boost damage output, though in terms of efficiency you will still lag behind the caster focused on disabling/battlefield control.

I've always found this style tends to make the basic assumption that you have a compliment of fighting class to beat down the monsters once you've weakened them. Which is not a bad thing, but tends to come out of people who rant about fighters sucking not appreciating that there whole optimization relies on teamwork. And so I wonder how some of these control wizards would actually kill things sometimes. Anyways I digress.

Even blasters can shine over melee, since while they can't dish out say a full attack worth of damage perhaps getting a full attack can be work. But the point of a blaster isn't to damage one thing anyways, its to damage five things or more at the same time.

Morty
2007-07-16, 04:57 AM
Casters can pull their own weight even without being boring control casters. Blasters are alright, but they need to have some buffs and debuffs prepared. I favor playing casters with buffs, debuffs as majority of spells prepared, with few blasty spells. Battlefield control is boring and un-fun, but luckily there's no need to use it.
Anyway, casters can be weaker than meleers in 1-4 level range. After that, no way.

new1965
2007-07-16, 06:36 AM
While I've never played anything but divine casters....I've had plenty of folks that really know what they're doing with the arcane guys. In my experience..wizards ESPECIALLY end up becoming gods down the road a bit. With permacast spells and the right equipment, you can pretty must just sit back and eat some lunch while your party's wizard takes out the dragon you stumbled upon. They may start out weak...but they quickly outshine the rest of the party. It's not just a little either. I get tired of wizards like that. magic should be powerful I agree, but it shouldn't make you the best choice for every situation.

hasta

My party started with six characters (Fighter/ Barbarian/2 rogues/Wizard/Cleric)
At 1st Level... The Fighter and Barbarian would kill everything with the other characters essentially providing support

Now at level 10 its totally different and everyone gets a chance to shine. The Fighter and Barbarian act as a living wall to keep things from attacking the spell casters while the rogues do their sneak attacks from the shadows. But now it's also satisfying to see your Wizard cast RIOT when we have ball lighting or some fire elementals running around, or have your cleric turn the spectre's that were hounding the group

Pronounceable
2007-07-16, 10:03 AM
Trying to pacify yet another potential melee vs magic thread, I'll throw in some magical stuff from my homebrew:

Disclaimer: DnD is ill suited to deal with anything other than vancian. The rules below work in a specific hb world of mine with nonDnD rules and flavor. Applying them to DnD mechanics can cause dizziness, sickness, nausea or hemorrhoids on catgirls.


A tiny idea that I think is cool: Magic is tied to biology and the kind of magic a critter can use depend on its race. Moving on...

There are two types of spellcasters: scholars and savants.

Scholars gain the ability to use magic after long years of study. They draw mana into their body, "craft" the mana inside their bodies and then release it as a spell. Everyone has a different mana capacity. Trying to draw more mana than that is almost always instantly fatal. As a result, scholars seek efficiency more than anything. A magical effect is usually invisible, because making it visible or audible would increase the cost.

Spellcasting is a spellcraft check. Actual spellcasting is done with spell recipes. Each scholar know a number of recipes and can combine them as necessary. All recipes have set effects, costs, casting times and DCs which stack. Adding more recipes make the spell more mana heavy and complicated.

This system is rather flexible. Simple example: Magic Missile. Scholar uses Force+Damage+Range and hits something 5 meters away for some small damage. Or he can use Force+Damage+Damage+Damage+Range+Range to hit something 10 meters away for triple damage. But the latter has a rather longer casting time, higher DC and more mana cost (which would be deadly to a weak scholar).

A scholar needs no magic words or bizarre gestures (or bat dung). He only spends some time concentrating then makes a mental check. Failing the check damages the scholar, amount depending on the difference between the check result and the DC.


Savants are those born with inherently higher mana capacity, often about 10-100 times that of a normal person (such as a scholar). They usually don't get any training. They can theoretically cast extremely powerful spells, but practically they have no idea what it is they're doing, so most of mana they use is spent on pretty lights (and various FX) or outright wasted. They can't cast anything meaningful without quite a lengthy ritual that may involve any or all of these: chanting, gesturing, singing, dancing, acrobatics, bat dung. No savant would dream of casting a spell with less than 10 minutes of (spectacularly impressive) bull****. So most usually can't.

A savant is an extremely powerful individual and is not allowed into the hands of the players.


And now for something completely different, the OP and his queries:

Inherent magic ability for sorcerers vs years of study for wizards is the accepted naming convention as far as I know.

The four elements are tired. They have ceased to be interesting. They have gone to meet the evil, goateed twin. I'd go so far as to say they are an ex-concept.

As for staffs and wands, I think they're overrated anyway. Why not have a wizard's source of power be a macguffin much like a lich phylactery? Could be anything from the ring he wears to his baby's picture up on the wall of his study. If the macguffin is destroyed, wizard is powerless and must craft a new one. When the wizard dies the macguffin becomes nonmagical. Perhaps a wizard can steal another's macguffin and drain his powers? I think this macguffin business can be DnDized without much ill effects.

SolkaTruesilver
2007-07-16, 11:27 AM
I liked WFRP's way of dealing with magic:

1- It's unpredictable. You can try to control it, but you have to succeed a casting check every time you cast

2- It's dangerous. When a wizard fudge a roll, he can attract the attention of Daemons, get mad, or turn the milk around sour.

Not to forget that wizards are socially-plagued, hunted by Witch Hunters - except if they are legally sanctionned -.

It makes it all more balanced, overall, than in AD&D's magical system, where never a caster can miss his spell. Where there is no side-effect. Magic seems to have reached a level of development where messing around with the basic laws of the universe is riskless.


Why not:

1- Make the wizard succeed on a spellcraft roll everytime they have to cast a spell? If they miss it, they lost their memorized spell. Same for Wands, Staffs, etc...

2- If a wizard roll a 1 on his "Casting check" (spellcraft abovely mentionned), something dangerous happens. How dangerous depends on the level of the spell cast.

That way, wizards won't act in careless way with their spells. They will only cast as necessary, and prefer to clean their laboratory themselves (or send an apprentice) rather than cast a spell to do it that could accidently summons a demon.

brian c
2007-07-16, 11:46 AM
1- Make the wizard succeed on a spellcraft roll everytime they have to cast a spell? If they miss it, they lost their memorized spell. Same for Wands, Staffs, etc...

I thought up a spellcraft check system which I don't think is overly nerfing wizards, but at the same times makes them less super-powerful. It's linked in my sig for anyone who's interested.

Morty
2007-07-16, 11:49 AM
1- Make the wizard succeed on a spellcraft roll everytime they have to cast a spell? If they miss it, they lost their memorized spell. Same for Wands, Staffs, etc...

I wouldn't make the memorized spell vanish, but rather get "surpressed" i.e it returns after a while. Otherwise, low-level wizards would be screwed.

SolkaTruesilver
2007-07-16, 05:00 PM
I would seriously consider also adding the "dangerous" side of casting, just so that nobody would carelessly use their magical power.

Jimp
2007-07-16, 06:28 PM
I liked WFRP's way of dealing with magic:


What is WFRP?

Matthew
2007-07-16, 06:31 PM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.