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View Full Version : Recharge Magic Variant Revisited



BardicDuelist
2007-11-22, 09:52 AM
I recently played a game where I decided to try the Recharge Magic Variant rule (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/unearthedRecharge.html) from Unearthed Arcana. It was a simple kobold dungeon crawl (similar to, but not the extreme of, Tucker's Kobolds). I did not want narcoleptic and overly patient players (as we do not allow spells to recharge every time you sleep, but every 24 hours, as long as you sleep) because one of the players was newer and I didn't want him becoming frustruated with that type of casting (considering that it frustruated me as well).

I did not find it to be overly powerful. Yes, the group was typically at full HP and had nearly all of their resources available to them, but this just meant that I could throw encounters that were just as hard as the first one at them without worrying about the PCs dying because they used up their last CLW last encounter. Infact, some of the more powerful spells (like the save or lose enchantments) have longer recharge times, which made some particularly useful combinations I had seen/used before less accessable.

While the game was lower level, it seemed to me that, apart from making the warlock class useless, it added more to the game in terms of balance as long as the recharge times were enforced. It also meant that the casters were less hesitant to use their spells to help the party because they didn't fear that they would need their last healing or buff spell.

Has anyone else tried this, and what were the results with your game? I guess it should be noted that my group does not powergame really.

The only thing I would change: I would use a static number for recharge times, instead of a die roll. I would probably use the maximum, although the average might be fairer.

UserClone
2007-11-22, 11:24 AM
I think perhaps you should check out the E6 rules on ENworld. They seem to mesh well with Recharge Magic, at least in my opinion. The tough thing about being a mage is low-level survivability, from about levels 1-5. E6 uses level 6 as the highest level, so it seems to fit. Give it a read.