UA Recharge Spell Variant

[Blackhawk748]

Stumbled on this the other night and i thought it was rather neat. Now, yes, it does give casters one hell of a leg up, but if you arent in a High OP game and you local mages are mostly whipping around blaster spells and healing i don't think itd be a bad deal.

So what does the playground think of it?

[PhantasyPen]

It only lists Core spells, so if you're using literally any books outside of that, you need to assign cooldowns to them, and I personally couldn't figure out how they assigned those myself. Spell Points always seemed more manageable to me.

[Psyren]

I like the concept, but it needs a lot more fleshing out that the cursory dusting they gave it in UA to approach being balanced. As the system itself warns you, it allows casters to nova their highest-level spells in every combat. It's also pretty easy to break via metamagic, particularly Persist or Twin spell. Even playing the variant with the intent to break as little as possible is problematic, because now you're left with casters that have to be stingy with party buffs.

Some aspects of the variant are unclear too, such as how abilities that let you use your spell slots to power other things are supposed to work, or abilities/items that let you regain spell slots.

[Blackhawk748]

I like the concept, but it needs a lot more fleshing out that the cursory dusting they gave it in UA to approach being balanced. As the system itself warns you, it allows casters to nova their highest-level spells in every combat. It's also pretty easy to break via metamagic, particularly Persist or Twin spell. Even playing the variant with the intent to break as little as possible is problematic, because now you're left with casters that have to be stingy with party buffs.

Some aspects of the variant are unclear too, such as how abilities that let you use your spell slots to power other things are supposed to work, or abilities/items that let you regain spell slots.

That doesnt surprise me. I mean, Teleportation is on a 4 hour cool down, but stuff like Scry, Stoneskin, and Teleportation Circle are on General. It seems really arbitrary. Still its a neat system that id like to try and use someday, even if that means reworking it.

[DrKerosene]

I've been playing a Wizard in a game with this rule. Almost level 4.

It's kinda like 5e, in that I'm now like a Sorcerer who gets to cast one spell per fight (per level of spells I can cast, so 2 spells per fight as a level 3 Wizard).

With the ability to scribe scrolls during downtime, it has not felt like I've run out of spells at all.

I imagine having a Sorcerer and a Wizard in the Party, this probably increase the Wizards power more than it does for the Sorc.

[Zaq]

Just brainstorming a little bit (I've never actually touched the rule)—Shugenjas mostly only have core spells, and they're firmly lacking in anything that makes them more interesting than a Sorcerer or a Favored Soul (their two closest analogues, at least on the surface). It might be interesting to see how it would look to have a Shugenja use this variant rule but to have other casters still cast normally. Would it break the Shugenja (in either direction), or would it give them a niche and a distinctive identity?

[Blackhawk748]

Looking at it, I'd generally agree. The Sorc (and Bards) boost isn't huge but it is noticable. Plus when the Sorc gets 9ths they can hurl around all the 1st level spells they want. Also, metamagic is still better on the Spont casters