Help my thought process: a mana bar

[Buufreak]

So this is an idea I have been tossing around a bit, and I do plan to expand on it more but currently on mobile and can't quite get all the appropriate things down.

How would you, be it for something like 3rd or 5th edition dnd, change the magic system to be a mana bar instead of slots per day? Do you think it would work well? Open to any and all opinions on this.

[animorte]

My immediate thought is to look at spell points. That essentially translates the concept of mana that we see in many video games.

I have worked on developing my own idea of it that tones down the accessibility of spells a little bit, but it’s ultimately the same thing.

[Elves]

One easy way to do it would be that each encounter you can cast spells whose total level doesn't exceed your class level.

Thus a 1st level wiz could cast one 1st level spell each encounter while a 20th level one could cast 20 spell levels each encounter. 0th-level counts as 1/2 level.

Then add a caveat that you can only cast one of your highest-level spells each encounter.


I don't know if it would be balanced but it would be simple and understandable.

[animorte]

If I remember correctly, here is a part of what I was working on (shares some similarities with the previous post):
- Your caster has a certain number of points equal to their level.
- You can cast any spell level that you have enough points for; a 1st-level spell uses 1 spell point, a 9th-level spell uses 9 points, etc.
- You gain 1 spell point back at the beginning of each turn as long as you aren’t incapacitated.
- Maintaining concentration on a spell costs one spell point at the end of each turn.

Sure, you can blow your high level slots, but when you must maintain concentration, you don’t really gain anything back. And if you want to continue casting other things, it’s probably going to be low level stuff, if you want to stay relevant throughout the encounter.

[MrStabby]

It makes it very, very hard to balance.

With slots, if a particular spell is a bit above ideal in power, then the excess power provided to the character is capped by the number of spell slots of that level. It makes it harder for one poor design decision to screw balance.

If you let everything use the same resource then any design power disparity can be propagated by every resource you have. It's It's much bigger deal.

Also, from a design perspective it can be a bit boring as the same abilities get used time and time again. Look at classes like 5th edition monk... lots of uses for Ki available in the class, but only a few of them are likely to see a major amount of use.

[Greywander]

It makes it very, very hard to balance.

With slots, if a particular spell is a bit above ideal in power, then the excess power provided to the character is capped by the number of spell slots of that level. It makes it harder for one poor design decision to screw balance.

If you let everything use the same resource then any design power disparity can be propagated by every resource you have. It's It's much bigger deal.

Also, from a design perspective it can be a bit boring as the same abilities get used time and time again. Look at classes like 5th edition monk... lots of uses for Ki available in the class, but only a few of them are likely to see a major amount of use.
This is why a straight spell point conversion isn't balanced with spell slots. You nominally get the same number of castings of the same levels of spells, but giving up one casting of a higher level spell gives multiple castings of lower level spells. Likewise, you can exceed the normal number of castings for a higher level spell at the cost of having fewer spell points left for lower level spells. It's a massive boost to flexibility; IIRC a 20th level full caster can cast Shield something like 80 times. So a conversion to spell points should have less spell points overall than the equivalent spell slots.

I think it would make sense for sorcerers to use spell points, likely merged with sorcery points. The fact that their magic is innate gives them finer control over it. Mechanically, spell point warlocks also work well, since they don't get many slots and thus wouldn't be overloaded on spell points, and now lower level spells can actually be used without eating a mid/high level slot.

[Damon_Tor]

So this is an idea I have been tossing around a bit, and I do plan to expand on it more but currently on mobile and can't quite get all the appropriate things down.

How would you, be it for something like 3rd or 5th edition dnd, change the magic system to be a mana bar instead of slots per day? Do you think it would work well? Open to any and all opinions on this.

There's a spell point variant for sorcerers, where they just straight-up have all their spell slots converted into a massive pool of sorcery points and cast all their spells using those points directly. It's a fun way to play, very different from other casters. An abacus is a good tool for tracking your remaining spell points.

[Anymage]

Plenty of games that aren't D&D have spell points. Even if you look at D&D, 5e has its own spell point rules and 3.5 has psionics. Psi is especially a good template for a spell point caster, between its scaling power costs (spells/powers do scale more strongly than linearly with level) and versatile powers. One thing that might or might not be worth cribbing from 5e would be a limit on high level powers above and beyond just the costs.

Also, if you look into other games, it would help to know your ultimate target. Sorcerers going full spell point casters is a popular houserule because it means that while their smaller spell list makes them less flexible in terms of the effects they can produce, running on points makes them extremely flexible in terms of the effects they can bring to bear. A prepared caster like a wizard or cleric could become too flexible on spell points, especially if you run on the initially intuitive idea of letting them pull from their whole spellbook/spell list. Point based casting works best if you limit the characters' power pool in some way or another.