Unlimited spells for D&D 3.5 (inspired by Unearthed Arcana)

[Giovanni]

I was recently re-reading D&D 3.5 and, in particular, the variant rules published by WotC regarding magic (recharge magic, spell points) ... I was playing with an idea .... a magic system that:
1. weakens casters so that it can be used with the wound points/vitality points variant which weakens melee.
2. prevents you from always using the usual 6 or 7 spells.

There is no spell limit per day but each spell has a counter.
To cast a spell, you must pass a test:
1d20 + level + ability mod >= 10 + counter.
The counter increases by one with each casting of the spell and... it never resets.
There are no spells or divine aids that can contradict this: it never resets.

The balance depends on how quickly the PCs level up and how many fights they have between levels.

What about spontaneous casters? (sorcerers and similar)
Simply each level of spontaneous caster is worth double in the test which therefore becomes:
1d20 + 2*level + ability mod >= 10 + counter.

What do you think: it's too difficult to balance? Casters can become even more powerful than before with this?

I played D&D 3.5 years ago: i remember a complex system not so easy to modify...so maybe it's just a
mad nonsensical idea...i'm just curious about the community judgement.

[Quertus]

Wow. That's... terrible for buff spells, for healing spells applied to civilians...

It would (should) make spell-casting services extremely pricey.

Wizards no longer can afford to have any spells on their person on the daily, meaning that assassination of casters is trivial.

With some thought, and some good world building, it could be interesting.

EDIT: It means that Wizards >>> Sorcerers, as they can have Fireball, Coldball, Lightningball, Firecube, Lightningcube, Coldcube, etc etc etc all as 3rd level spells they've researched. And, from a world building perspective, it means that, unless the whole world is idiots, all those variant spells have already been researched.

EDIT2: Now I'm picturing a tired old Wizard (Sorcerer) who cannot cast any of the rest of his spells ever again, calling for all the evil Artifacts to be assembled, as they start spamming Mordenkainen's Disjunction until their caster ability is stripped. And, if they run out of ability to cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction before they lose their caster ability, then they start in on Mage's Disjunction.

[Giovanni]

EDIT: It means that Wizards >>> Sorcerers, as they can have Fireball, Coldball, Lightningball, Firecube, Lightningcube, Coldcube, etc etc etc all as 3rd level spells they've researched. And, from a world building perspective, it means that, unless the whole world is idiots, all those variant spells have already been researched.


Maybe to maintain balance between classes I should rule that, for this system:

Metamagic feat + spell === Vanilla spell (same counter)

so you cannot simply change the element of fireball to increase your arsenal: you must think about something completely new.

In any case: yes old wizards loose control of low level spells...unless they are very cautious using magic.

[False God]

I think most spellcasters would be unable to cast any spells at all after a couple years of adventuring.

I guess I don't fundamentally see a problem with a character casting their favorite spells over and over.

[Giovanni]

Maybe there is a very slow cooldown.

Like: if you do not use magic for decades the counters reset.

It would not change lot of campaigns but it's important for world-building and also to rebuild the old super-powerful wizard archetype.

[ciopo]

I kinda like it and I'd be interesting jn trying to play that.

Main disconnect I feel is, how do you as the GM fiat how many uses of this or that spell an enemy spellcaster has already done?

Also, I find it interesting that, assuming they still exists at all, class features that give spell-like abilities are suddenly much more viable. That poor prc that has a spelllike 1/day of (common spell a straight caster would have had since 4 levels ago)? Well, the prc can actually use it 1/day without worry!

Makes archmage SLA useful, derp

[Darg]

as they start spamming Mordenkainen's Disjunction until their caster ability is stripped. And, if they run out of ability to cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction before they lose their caster ability, then they start in on Mage's Disjunction.

Mage's and Mordenkainen's Disjunction are the same spell just with the prior having the copyrighted name stripped for the SRD. Any spell with "Mage's" in the name used to have a name just like how Bigby's spells lost the "Bigby's."

[Giovanni]

how do you as the GM fiat how many uses of this or that spell an enemy spellcaster has already done?

Very good and difficult question: you should evaluate also the personality of the wizard .... it's a person that voluntarily tries to ignite fights or tries to be involved in life threatening situations? It's a lonely madman who adventures only with his fellow warriors?

I think a starting point for NPC will be counter = 10 - spell level + or - modifiers related to personality.

[Quertus]

Oh, I just had a thought: Does one need to cast a spell (or otherwise increase the counter) in order to create a magical item? If so, that hurts muggles everyone, as magic item shops should be much harder / availability should take a dive from this limit. Or maybe it hurts casters who want to cast buff spells, as they need to save those casts for creating buff items? Anyway, there's a lot of world building to think through in conjunction with evaluating these rules.


Metamagic feat + spell === Vanilla spell (same counter)

I was taking that as a given. Just like how "Fireball" and "Lightning Bolt" are different spells, a Wizard could research "FireCube" and "FireTriangle" and "FireCone" and "FireOctagon" and "FireRhombus" and... etc, all as technically different spells. And "Coldball" and "Acidball" and "Lightningball" and..., all individually researched as technically different spells. And "AcidRhombus" and "ColdRhombus" and... etc, all researched as technically different spells. And any Wizard with a Wisdom above 3 has already done so, so all these spells are available as scrolls from the Wizard's Guild (which laughs at Sorcerers, hard, at least until they join the Arcane Order).

EDIT: Because we all know that blasting spells are the most OP things in the game, and being able to throw money at the problem and have more of them is obviously what every Wizard would do.

The poor Sorcerer, OTOH, has a limit of spells known, and can't do that.


Mage's and Mordenkainen's Disjunction are the same spell just with the prior having the copyrighted name stripped for the SRD. Any spell with "Mage's" in the name used to have a name just like how Bigby's spells lost the "Bigby's."

Shhh! Don't mention that! It defeats the value of the functional same spell having 2 different names! :smallbiggrin:

[Giovanni]

I forgotten that, in 3.5, magic item shops are very important and common: I think the rules should somehow challenge this assumption since it's in contrast withe the spirit of the change ....
So yes: creating a magic item should increase the counter by 1.

About the similar spells: I know a little number of GMs that actually use spell research rules ....
I think a lot of gamers will simply use the spells in the manuals (the basic and the Spell Compendium) assuming they are the only ones available ... but it's a good point ... why in the world we should not allow a lot of similar variants?

About the cooldown: it could be something simple and progressive like .... one year never using a spell => -1 to its counter.

[MonochromeTiger]

Genuine question, in a setting where this is the case how do magic users ever advance far enough to really matter?

Most settings have the actual really powerful spell casters be rare, spread out, and generally known quantities. Hoarding of knowledge and spells as common place, for instance "Clone" is not a widely known spell, it's a spell that a few very specific characters have that the player characters have access to only because somebody decided to give it a spell level and list it in the rules.

Even in the cases of those rare powerful spell casters they usually got where they are through decades or even centuries of practice, something that would be significantly harder if the handful of spells they figure out to begin with quickly go beyond their ability to use and with the loss of that reference point they have no means to figure out something more advanced. Exceptions are there of course, you've got cases of divine intervention or magical prodigies like Elminster but that still ends up being a case of years and years of practice and teaching to get where he is.

There was mention of "Wizard's Guilds" further up in the thread but that's also questionable in this context. if you've got limited access to a spell before it's too difficult to cast again why would you expend that ability on teaching someone else who may never use it to help you? And if taking a use of your magic that will make it harder to use again without an arbitrarily long wait is needed to make magical equipment then why make magical equipment? You're just giving a stronger edge to the people who are physically more capable than you while expending your limited use before you're helpless.

Or, mechanically, how do you get to where you can "research variants" if you're a broke level one Wizard whose limited starter spell list quickly gets too tough to cast and your friends all need the gold to afford the more expensive and rare magical equipment they can get to break even. Monsters aren't any less dangerous, you're just less useful and less likely to get strong enough to deal with them making your party even more reliant on gear to hold their own.

[Crake]

What I would be more interested in, and doesnt seem to have been addressed in this thread yet: how and why does this occur in universe? What is the metaphysics behind it? The answer to that question is far more important to me than the balance issues, and would be the determining factor in whether i think its a good idea or not

[Vaern]

So yes: creating a magic item should increase the counter by 1.
Only 1? Don't forget, crafting items requires burning the required spell slot once per day, meaning that a single item could require casting the spell dozens or, in some cases, perhaps even hundreds of times.

[Quertus]

Oh, right. "we're weaker, therefore we farm weaker threats to level" doesn't work very well if you don't have the resources to farm those weaker threats. :smallannoyed:

As far as things like "research vs casting" goes, I can write programs without ever running them, and have them peer-reviewed, again, without ever running the code. So there's reasons to train apprentices (or form guilds with like-minded individuals), and potential for verisimilitude in the concept of spell research, even in this heavily restricted world. Granted, most if not all humans are idiots, and even, say, running the code (playtesting an RPG), things can slip by (3e is perfectly balanced, BTW, and the rules all make perfect sense, don't let anyone tell you otherwise).

At mid level, the world would very much favor people like me, who can "invent new" and "debug" (and write good code to begin with). But at low level? I suspect nepotism, kingdoms financing relatives as potential "next court wizard" engagements would be strong. I mean, heck, dumping 200k in gear and a small army of elite bodyguards on a 1st level Wizard would allow just about anybody to level up, no?

Oh no, I just talked myself into "this world is based on the 'escort mission' / 'protect the prince(ss)' meme(s)". :smalleek:

Doubtless, other social structures (like "protected by undead while you level" or "toad farm") could exist.

But, yeah, the normal low-level Wizard is even more dead weight and a drain on party resources than normal, and even the Box of Bandaids is arguably close to dead weight ("Sorry, guys, I can heal you more tomorrow" gets replaced with, "Sorry, guys, I can heal you again never").

Yeah, I'm struggling to see how this doesn't kill the standard adventuring party, and instead incentivize much less... wholesome and much less Gamist-approved social constructs.

Speaking of, "killing off the character to get a new one" is also strongly incentivized by this setup. And that's always a good sign.

Speaking of (not) good signs, yeah, anything where PC/NPC disparity is so obvious is also a problem. NPC spellcasters just, functionally, shouldn't exist in such a setting. I can picture Talakeal's table breaking down into table-flips and throwing things... a lot. Although a GM who can run a game with just M&M (Muggles and Monsters (of the non-casting variety)) should be fine.

Would Archivist be a strong pick in this scenario? Honestly, I'm thinking anybody with item creation skills would be valuable, and, perhaps more importantly, fun to actually play the minigame of "balance the loss of casting potential vs who gets which items". OK, actually, I think these rules make it more fun to manage a kingdom than play a character in such a setting. Anyone else, or is that just me?

Oh, and Permanency, and research into which spells can be made Permanent, would probably be big in this world, too? Or... not?

Hmmm... given the increased importance of magic items in this world, item craftsmen would be Important... and Rich. Which is so much better than all these backwater settings where casters suffer witch hunts. I think I'm starting to see the appeal.

Races (especially PC races) with built-in advantages (fast healing, regeneration, flight, invisibility) are stronger than ever. Even DR might be stronger in this setting than usual.

Dark Craft sacrifices (or whatever it's called) might be stronger in this setting than usual.

Oh, and I just realized, Magus of the Arcane Order doesn't help Sorcerers, as they still have to cast spells back in to refill their spell pool, right?

Hmmm... what if a deity's Domain Spells were unaffected by this limit? Would that make a cool, thematic spin on the world? Would that break anything?

EDIT:
Only 1? Don't forget, crafting items requires burning the required spell slot once per day, meaning that a single item could require casting the spell dozens or, in some cases, perhaps even hundreds of times.

Ouch. That's really painful. It's like the item counterpart to the world being e6.

[RandomPeasant]

I think you should stop and figure out what your design goals are. What do you find so compelling about Vitality and Wound points that, despite knowing it will make people weaker, you want to make your table use them anyway? Why are you trying to stop people from using the same spells frequently? Because what you have here seems more frustrating than effective (and, no, you can't rescue it with really good fluff). If you want people to use different spells, I think the best way to do that would be to just prevent people from preparing the same spell more than once per day. That avoids the tedious tracking of exactly how many fireballs you've cast, and it means that the diversification is immediate, rather than only occurring when people burn out their favorite spells.

[Quertus]

I think you should stop and figure out what your design goals are. What do you find so compelling about Vitality and Wound points that, despite knowing it will make people weaker, you want to make your table use them anyway? Why are you trying to stop people from using the same spells frequently? Because what you have here seems more frustrating than effective (and, no, you can't rescue it with really good fluff). If you want people to use different spells, I think the best way to do that would be to just prevent people from preparing the same spell more than once per day. That avoids the tedious tracking of exactly how many fireballs you've cast, and it means that the diversification is immediate, rather than only occurring when people burn out their favorite spells.

But my Sorcerer gets 3 "slots", and only 1 "spell known".

I guess you could swap the Sorcerer's "spells known" and spell slots? Or just give them +10 spells known at each level or something, if variety is your goal?

But, yeah, I've just been babbling about what effect the changes will have. Intelligent design starts with having defined goals, I agree.

(Still, this could intentionally be Chaos Design, of "what would this change cause?". I can get behind that in an RPG; not so much in code as a rule.)

[RandomPeasant]

But my Sorcerer gets 3 "slots", and only 1 "spell known".

I guess you could swap the Sorcerer's "spells known" and spell slots? Or just give them +10 spells known at each level or something, if variety is your goal?

I would say that if variety is your goal, you should probably just ban Sorcerer in favor of the fixed-list casters (you can find homebrew ones for the other schools fairly easily).

[Quertus]

I would say that if variety is your goal, you should probably just ban Sorcerer in favor of the fixed-list casters (you can find homebrew ones for the other schools fairly easily).

You just promoted "variety" and "single-school casters" in the same sentence. :smallamused:

Yeah, definitely want to define your objectives here, as to my mind that's about as much "variety" as my not-the-same-spell-honest-spell-research idea, above.

Again, unless it's change for change's sake, just to see what would happen. Which is the route I'll keep poking at unless I'm handed a clear objective to evaluate.

Oh, speaking of: research would likely be done into creating the same or similar items with different but similar spells. Like, if a basic +1 weapon requires Greater Magical Weapon (afb, seems legit), could one create a variant weapon-enchanting spell (say, one that fiddles with potency vs duration), and use that to create basic +X enchantments on weapons? Or do similar modifications to range/duration/efficacy to create variants on Bull's Strength, Owl's Wisdom, etc - say Sloth's Cunning, Eel's Grace, etc - and use those to create basic +X stat boosting items?

And, speaking of - if an item creator has to recast the spell every day... with all the cost / speed reducers, what's the shortest time factor one can get item creation down by?

[Crake]

Yeah, definitely want to define your objectives here, as to my mind that's about as much "variety" as my not-the-same-spell-honest-spell-research idea, above.

This is also why the metaphysics matter. You need to understand why it’s happening to explain and consistently rule how edge cases will work. If the limitation is in exactly the spell, why? Is the limitation not the spell, but the original seed of the spell? That would make spells like fire and iceball both share the same counter, but also mean that delay blast fireball also shares the counter.

You need to know why and how this limitation is actually occuring to properly make rulings on how it will occur in cases that aren’t explicitly defined.

This being said, I dont see why you need to change the mechanics of spells for wounds/vitality. Most of the more powerful spells dont even interact with hit points to begin with, and blast spells only have an appreciable difference on a crit anyway, but with wounds/vitality, ANYONE landing a crit is basically a one shot, spellcaster or mundane, so i dont see the point of changing spells

[MonochromeTiger]

Oh, right. "we're weaker, therefore we farm weaker threats to level" doesn't work very well if you don't have the resources to farm those weaker threats. :smallannoyed:

As far as things like "research vs casting" goes, I can write programs without ever running them, and have them peer-reviewed, again, without ever running the code. So there's reasons to train apprentices (or form guilds with like-minded individuals), and potential for verisimilitude in the concept of spell research, even in this heavily restricted world. Granted, most if not all humans are idiots, and even, say, running the code (playtesting an RPG), things can slip by (3e is perfectly balanced, BTW, and the rules all make perfect sense, don't let anyone tell you otherwise).

Well glad someone agrees with me on the issue of cost of entry.

Alright look at researching/creating new spells a different way. How does society even get to the point where it sounds like a good idea? Unless some God or Goddess of the setting comes down from on high to tell everyone "yeah this is how it works" or they've got some innate understanding of the game rules like someone skipping straight from the stone age to knowing the laws of physics there's going to be a bunch of steps between having magic with this system and knowing it's worth investing anything into.

For early magic users, without some big flashing sign pointing out "you get these back if you wait x years" it just looks like they cast a spell a few times and then it just stops. The magic they just figured out just went from "oh cool I can do this" to "why is this so much harder to do now" to "I can't make this work at all anymore" and since they don't know that there's an arbitrary 1 year timer on it being slightly more likely to cast successfully again all they really get out of that is "every spell runs out after a few casts." Without the mechanics explained to them there's no reason to try again when the timer comes down and no matter what they do to find something else every spell is looked at as a limited resource and trying to find some different version is just delaying the inevitable. Meanwhile all the effort and resources going into making one person able to contribute briefly could be going into teaching them to wield a spear correctly which is a much more consistent and reliable answer than something that fizzles out after a few tries whether it works on the target or not.

Then on top of that you've got to consider what actually counts as magical experiments to learn a new spell, it's magic. What you're going for is a practical result and you aren't going to know if you're actually taking steps in the right direction without testing that result. If we want to make the coding comparison, yes you can throw a bunch of code together and send it to someone else to see if it looks right but you both still need an understanding of what you're trying to accomplish and to give it some trial runs to figure out where the bugs are and if it even launches right.

Magic being developed enough to justify sending out the frail looking guy who will keel over dead if a particularly nasty papercut gets him just doesn't make sense here when they likely haven't got the skill or importance needed for their "arcane might" to do more than a normal person with half decent armor and whatever weapon they picked up can. Less so when making them work consistently would need extensive effort to constantly come up with and test replacement spells for him to burn through in the hope you outpace the costs, meanwhile the same method for everyone else would be "alright lets institute some mandatory training in some form of fighting or first aid and get more people conscripted to deal with this threat, here's a few more spears and bows to share around" and letting numbers make up for individual weakness.

[Giovanni]

about the metaphysics:
each spell is a damage to the reality fabric around the spell-caster.
reality is adaptive: the more you damage it the more it becomes resistant to your specific way of damaging it.
Like the human body and an alchemist concocted poison: the more you poison a body the more it becomes resistant to the specific poison you used.
EDIT: the poison is made not by the spell alone but by the pair (spell, spellcaster) ... like a mixture that need the spellcaster DNA or the spellcaster soul in order to work.

about the design goal:
I tried W/V points before and i found it great ... I remember I was disappointed by how it unbalance in favor of the casters.
I was also disappointed by the same-spell-spammers ... so I created this.
It's just an unfinished idea, note even a well rounded idea or something I have tried.

[Crake]

about the metaphysics:
each spell is a damage to the reality fabric around the spell-caster.
reality is adaptive: the more you damage it the more it becomes resistant to your specific way of damaging it.
Like the human body and an alchemist concocted poison: the more you poison a body the more it becomes resistant to the specific poison you used.
EDIT: the poison is made not by the spell alone but by the pair (spell, spellcaster) ... like a mixture that need the spellcaster DNA or the spellcaster soul in order to work.

about the design goal:
I tried W/V points before and i found it great ... I remember I was disappointed by how it unbalance in favor of the casters.
I was also disappointed by the same-spell-spammers ... so I created this.
It's just an unfinished idea, note even a well rounded idea or something I have tried.

Youd need to elaborate a bit more on that. How do the spells damage reality, and why do different spells damage it differently? Which components of the spells define “different spell” for this purpose, and why? If reality is able to adapt to resist the damage, why does that make the spell harder to manifest? Why is the individual caster relevant to this damaging of reality?

[Giovanni]

Which components of the spells define “different spell” for this purpose ...?
I will think about your other questions but this one I can respond now.
The effect of the spell ignoring parameters.

As a rule fo thumb: if you can think about a chain of metamagic feats that connects spell A and spell B then A and B should share the counter.
Mind that metamagic feats can do a lot .... including changing the shape of the Area of Effect and the element used by the spell.

[Crake]

I will think about your other questions but this one I can respond now.
The effect of the spell ignoring parameters.

As a rule fo thumb: if you can think about a chain of metamagic feats that connects spell A and spell B then A and B should share the counter.
Mind that metamagic feats can do a lot .... including changing the shape of the Area of Effect and the element used by the spell.

In that case, do lightning bolt, cone of cold, and fireball all count as the same, since you can mimic them with sculpt spell and energy substitution? What about the lesser orb of X spells? What about spells with lesser/greater variants that do the exact same thing but stronger (aka, empower spell)?

[tyckspoon]

I will think about your other questions but this one I can respond now.
The effect of the spell ignoring parameters.

As a rule fo thumb: if you can think about a chain of metamagic feats that connects spell A and spell B then A and B should share the counter.
Mind that metamagic feats can do a lot .... including changing the shape of the Area of Effect and the element used by the spell.

There are metamagics to change damage dice, elemental type, range, area, shape, targets.. this is very close to declaring that all spells that deal damage are the same spell, at which point you may as well just be done with the pretense and declare that you want to ban all blasting spells.

[NichG]

I don't think there's as big of a setting issue as people are making there out to be. This definitely means that wizards will be more like mathematicians than soldiers, and perhaps 'pure magic user' wouldn't really be an adventuring 'class' so much as, well, this academic got drawn into an adventure and their academic knowledge happens to be a bit more practically usable - at least for awhile - than a real-world academic's would be. If in the real world we bothered to study things like mathematics, or measuring the charge of the electron long before electronics were a thing, or other such useless bits of trivia that turned out to be extremely useful, I can easily envision nobles having a hobby of putting together elaborate spell theory for its own sake, to use three of four times to impress colleagues - if that - and then never again.

As far as game design though, this has the problem of balancing something powerful by making it annoying and unpleasant to play, which is generally not a great idea. So I personally wouldn't approach the design objectives along this angle.

If the point is to encourage a diversity of spells, you could just give each spell a 1 week 'safe cooldown' for prepared casters, where preparing the spell again less than one week after casting it lowers your casting stat by 1 until a week after you either cast the spell or free the slot (treat as a debuff, not as damage or drain). Metaphysically, each unique spell corresponds to a different part of a caster's infinite soul, casting the spell causes that area of the caster's soul to come under stress, and repeatedly doing that without letting the stress heal (or distributing the stress more evenly) has consequences.

If the point is that being a caster is much lower risk in a wounds/vitality system than characters who are exposed to crits in melee, make casting any spell involve a casting check and a failed check causes the caster to either lose the spell and suffer Vitality damage equal to the spell level, or manage to get the spell off but suffer Wound damage equal to the spell level.

If the point is more about the power of spells, you could make it so that spells have easily exploited loopholes and flaws such that someone can attempt to identify a spell (either being cast, or a standing spell like a buff) as an Immediate action and if they succeed they get to apply SR equal to 10+HD in order to bypass the spell even for SR: No spells. Against a buff, this means they can act as if the target doesn't have the buff (but the buff does not end). Against an AoE this just excludes them from the effects, but it doesn't cancel the spell for others in the AoE; etc. If they've seen this particular spell before, lower the DC of the Spellcraft check by 5. If they have seen this particular character cast this particular spell before, lower the DC of the Spellcraft check to ID the spell by 10 (lowering DC rather than giving them a bonus so that even untrained people might figure it out). If its a custom spell that the caster has been cagey about and hasn't been overusing in the public eye, increase the DC by 10. You could also have Still/Silent/Invisible spell modify this DC. That way, casters against intelligent enemies have to act a bit more like rogues - surprise people with the casting, hide their casting, cast from out of view, mix things up and be deceptive so people can't figure out what is being cast. They'll still be fully effective dropping Fireball after Fireball on wolves or whatever, but against a demon or dragon or experienced humanoids (who would of course take the minimum 1 rank in Spellcraft even cross-class because it's worth it) mixing it up becomes important.

Now, for spontaneous casters, you have to do a more fundamental change to the classes to have diversity of spells since they really don't have the option to use a diverse set of spells even if they wanted to.

...

If you wanted to go really wildly different than base D&D, you could instead have it be that the metaphysics of magic is universally that a given environment makes opportunities for magic available rather than casters bringing their specific magic into a given environment. Someone studied in a given school of magic can pull off those spells in a given environment without needing to prepare them, up to the limit of their skill, and up to a limit of once per such spell per day per location. You'd want to totally rework the casting classes but okay, lets say you do that.

Anyhow, what you do is to make something like a spreadsheet that can take a random number seed as input and then for each spell in the game there's, say, a 5% chance that that spell is available in a given environment (1% chance?). The spreadsheet lists only such spells filtered by spell level and class list, given the particular random seed. You distribute the spreadsheet to your players and when the characters go to a particular place, you tell them a random number which corresponds to the spells that place provides. There might be certain extra 'guaranteed' spells that are based on the feng shui of the place, magical locations and attunements, whatever - you can put those on the table as cards. For example, churches or shrines would be designed in such a way as to make healing spells always available; things like that. Anyhow, if the spell is on your list and of a level you can cast, you can tap that power and cast it - but that drains the environment of that spell for that day.

This has the setting consequence of spellcasters being largely nomadic and hermit-like, as finding 'the place I can cast Wish' for example is pretty good loot, as long as you aren't competing with a hundred other casters tapping the same leylines.

[Giovanni]

The rule of metamagic it's maybe a bit too strong ... in any case it should apply only to the spell created by the user: it's ruled only to avoid the creation of 100 variants of the same spell.
Spell very similar but different in the PHB or SC should be considered different.

about the NichG variants...
one inspired by you very simple is this: use the spell points variant ad described in UA but instead of loosing spell points spellcasters loose vitality points or wound points. (if they are really desperate)

In any case the variant I posted fascinated me: do not know really why....
Maybe because there are no strict, real limits different from the limits you impose on yourself.
(I could also rule that a natural 20 always grants success in spellcasting)

It's like "Do whatever you want. Unless you explicitly forbid something to yourself."
A really "magical" way of think ...

[Crake]

(I could also rule that a natural 20 always grants success in spellcasting)

This just makes out of combat spellcasting free at the cost of taking 20 times as long, so now one druid can create 5 goodberries on average per 2 minutes, and an 8 hour work day of casting it produces enough goodberries for 400 people’s daily sustenance.

[Giovanni]

Sure: forget about this, just an error. Unless natural 1 always produce a life threatening disaster.... this will add variety and balance the 20 rule.

[Vahnavoi]

Nix pointless constants or die rolls alltogether. That is:

The roll to cast is made just against the counter. This ensures each spell has one guaranteed use and that many spells only become unusable after extended abuse.

OR

Each spell has 20 uses plus character level, full stop.

Additionally, all your spell research troubles are solved by one simple rule: an old spell's counter is used to power the new one. So, in the first paradigm, the newly researched spell's counter starts at a counter equal to one of that caster's old spells and the old spell is rendered unusable. In the second paradigm, uses as simply transferred between spells. Yes, this means all casters have a functional cap to spells known. That's a good thing.

[Giovanni]

Each spell has 20 uses plus character level, full stop.


Very good. Each spell could have X + spellcaster level uses. With X decreasing with spell level.

First level X = 20.
Second level X = 18.

And so on.

Or maybe X could vary from spell to spell in order to let the GM to fully personalize his campaign.
No need to roll.

[Vahnavoi]

Seriously, use character level if you go with that rule. Character level is a relatively simple, stable and unambiguous variable in d20. Spellcaster or caster level, by contrast, is complex and subject to multiple effects and exploits that can increase or decrease it in various manners, which would require extra rules for how the counter interacts with them.

Additionally, using character level instead of caster level means partial casters and multi-class characters aren't screwed over more than they already are.

[Giovanni]

I tought about this...
The number of uses is just X. (X varies from spell to spell)

Moreover each time you gain a level, for each spell you know, X is increased...
By 1 for classes like wizard, cleric.
By 2 for classes like sorcer.
By 1.5 for classes like bard.
By 0.5 for classes like paladin.

Of course arcane/divine/psionic classes increase arcane/divine/psionic spells/powers only.

OR

Just by one each level no matter the class as you suggest.

EDIT: I will go the simple way. Just +1 each level. Moreover X will be a property of the pair (spell, class).

For example (fireball, wizard) = 10 ; (fireball, sorcerer) = 15.

[loky1109]

Seriously, use character level if you go with that rule. Character level is a relatively simple, stable and unambiguous variable in d20. Spellcaster or caster level, by contrast, is complex and subject to multiple effects and exploits that can increase or decrease it in various manners, which would require extra rules for how the counter interacts with them.

Additionally, using character level instead of caster level means partial casters and multi-class characters aren't screwed over more than they already are.
Caster level looks more fitting. And it anyway isn't so complex as you supposed.

[Beni-Kujaku]

The question remains: do you want variety, or do you want people to become weaker with time. If you want variety, then your counter should decrease if you use other spells (maybe one per 10 spells outside the spell's school), or use a system closer to Smash Ultimate, where using a spell incurs a hefty penalty (5 to 10 points maybe), but then each other spell in combat situation reduces it by one. It leaves the spellcasting out of combat alone and prevents spellcasters from casting cantrips between each fight to reset the counter (though I'm not even sure it's necessary). It's imo a better system than "you can spam it, but only so long". It also means you only have to remember the 10 or so last spells, rather than having a counter for each one. Low-level sorcerers are still screwed, but one way is simply to have the penalty be equal to your CL.

Alternatively, go the shadowcaster route: each spell is useable only once a day. Then, when you can cast spells 3 levels higher you can cast it twice, and three times when you can cast spells 6 levels higher. A level 7 wizard can cast their 1st-level spells twice per day, but each 2nd level spell is only useable once. A level 17 wizard can cast 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells 3/day (within spell slot limitations), 4th, 5th and 6th level spells 2/day and 7th, 8th, and 9th spells 1/day. Much more in line with other systems of the game.

If you flat out want people to become weaker with time, then D&D may not be the system for you, as it's based on gaining levels and becoming stronger. In that case, maybe Call of Cthulhu would be better with the Sanity system being progressively reduced as characters encounter horrors beyond humanity's grasp.

[gijoemike]

Years ago, I played a system at a convention that had an interesting spell mechanic somewhat along the lines your describe. With each casting of the spell the caster would roll a die. on a 1 they forgot the spell. Not in the I will memorize it again tomorrow, but in the sense it took a day per spell level back at the sanctum/school of 8 hours+ a day of study to learn it again.

It would take the wizards entire downtime between adventures sometimes. But it got worse. each time the spell was cast beyond the first casting of the spell in the same day, the die would take a step down the chart until you got to a modified lvl 11 where it was a 100% goodbye.

level 1-2: d20
level 3-4 : d12
level 5-6 : d10
level 7: d8
level 8: d6
level 9: d4
level 10: d2
level 11: d1


This system still hurt buff spells as the caster would only handout 1 or 2 buffs per day. There was no sorc in the system. But it put the wizard in their place pretty hard as there was no repeat casting of damage spells per day. The system in question had WAY fewer spells than D&D too.

[Giovanni]

A popular D&D hack (beyond the wall) has something similar....

[False God]

Okay, what if rather than spell specific, it was just caster specific?

Rather than the spell damaging reality, it's the caster pulling the "magic" out of the "air" to create the spell. How much they pull out (spell level, after adjusting for metamagic) determines the how hard the Weave(or whatever) pushes back. Caster Level could indicate skill or raw power in drawing out these energies.

Now, obviously you can't add +7, +8, +9 to the DC every time some caster uses a high-level spell, it'd be impossible to cast spells after about 6 of them.

So maybe the difficulty only increases by 1 ever, but only when a caster fails this check. Sort of like how if a virus is clever enough, it can beat a host's defenses(hmmm, wizards are a plague, pretty sure thats Dark Sun's deal).

So a 20th level caster is unlikely to have much trouble with a 1st level spell, they're statistically unlikely to fail. But a low-level caster runs real risk of getting locked out, or at least making their DC too high very quickly if they're not careful.



------
Why does this sound like world-building based off Mahurabo? >.>

[Quertus]

about the design goal:
I tried W/V points before and i found it great ... I remember I was disappointed by how it unbalance in favor of the casters.

Um... explain this further. A muggle can now 1-shot any living monster, even with minimal optimization. How does this favor casters? :smallconfused:

I'll agree it favors offense, and for defense, it favors hiding (Hide in Plain Sight, Invisibility) over tanking (AC, HP), but that's not the same as favoring casters.


I was also disappointed by the same-spell-spammers ... so I created this.
It's just an unfinished idea, note even a well rounded idea or something I have tried.

Eh, some players just like to mash the "A" button, especially after a long day of work. Don't be a hater for those who don't want to put in the brainpower to be creative. I mean, how many Fighters routinely choose a different weapon for each attack, creatively describing how they first jam their pool cue into orifice A, then shove the 8-ball down orifice B, then shove the leg of the pool table into orifice C, then wrap the felt from the table around sensory organ D? Unless the Fighter players at your table are at least that creative with their attacks (mine sure aren't), instead of just attacking with the same bit of sharpened metal every round, why hate on the caster players for having equal levels of creativity?

That said, a system which focuses on facilitating creativity (rather than one that punishes people for letting their minds take a break) could help produce the type of game you desire. (see below)

Pity that your preferences are antithetical to the "deities' domain spells are exempt from this restriction" - I thought that would be cool flavor for the world, but it probably feels samey to you.


about the metaphysics:
each spell is a damage to the reality fabric around the spell-caster.
reality is adaptive: the more you damage it the more it becomes resistant to your specific way of damaging it.
Like the human body and an alchemist concocted poison: the more you poison a body the more it becomes resistant to the specific poison you used.
EDIT: the poison is made not by the spell alone but by the pair (spell, spellcaster) ... like a mixture that need the spellcaster DNA or the spellcaster soul in order to work.


Youd need to elaborate a bit more on that. How do the spells damage reality, and why do different spells damage it differently? Which components of the spells define “different spell” for this purpose, and why? If reality is able to adapt to resist the damage, why does that make the spell harder to manifest? Why is the individual caster relevant to this damaging of reality?

Eh, I think that's enough of an explanation for me to guess at what's going on. So, fine, Quertus shows up, casts Fireball, builds up "Fireball Resonance 1". Supposing he notices, he might then cast Ray of Frost 3 times to test the phenomenon, building up "Ray of Frost Resonance 3" in the process. To further test how this resonance works, he might cast Polymorph, Magic Jar, and cheat his way into (ie, use an item to evoke)... um... that psionic power that lets you create a copy of yourself, only 8 levels lower. The Resonance would travel with him as he changes forms and inhabits new bodies, so he would keep his earlier Resonance throughout, whereas the new guy, having never cast a spell, has no resonance.

Now, why do casters build up resonance for casting spells, but monsters don't for using SLAs and SUs? Why do casters build up Resonance for spells, but muggles don't for wielding magic items? Why is there a world where Quertus can get rich (or at least out of debt) quick simply by selling access to a Fast Time Plane to let people (preferably immortal ones) reduce their Resonance naturally? Don't know. But is anyone besides Quertus likely to actually interact with such details? Are there any rules interactions (besides metamagics and spell creation) that actually care about any additional details?


There are metamagics to change damage dice, elemental type, range, area, shape, targets.. this is very close to declaring that all spells that deal damage are the same spell, at which point you may as well just be done with the pretense and declare that you want to ban all blasting spells.

Yeah, "damage" is generally considered the weakest spells, the worst waste of a spell slot in 3e. Part of the joke of me listing "Acid Ball, Cold Bolt, etc" was that they were simultaneously the spells that were easy to think of variants on, and the spells that, while skilled players would avoid like the plague in a normal game, players might actually get drawn to in this proposed variant, just because it requires less thought and is much easier to get GM approval under a reasonable GM for these obviously balanced variant spells.

So, the proposed rules could be useful to change table culture away from constantly using more effective spells, to rarely using those spells, but constantly using the much more varied array of blasting spells. This campaign wouldn't look like last campaign, but both would be painted largely in single colors, just different colors between the 2 campaigns.

Or the player could just have their character research 100 different SoD spells, from Sleep to Heart Stop to Drown on Dry Land to Drown in Sand to Death by Thorns to Extract Brain to Disintegrate to Draw and Quarter to Hold Person to Summon Rogue to Anvils Fall Everyone Dies to Touch of Death to Total Enervation (take negative levels equal to your HD) to Hold Monster to Grant Wish with Quertus' Player as a GM to Reality Forgets You Exist to Behead to Bullet to the Brainpan Squish to Ennui to Heartclutch to Is That Your Spleen to Reincarnate Living to Forced Isekai to Animate Living to Death of Personality. Or research 100 different BFC spells, from Solid Fog to Wall of Salt to Entangle to Kelp Strand to Evard's Black Tentacles to Evard's Bleak Tickles to... you get the idea. I guess the question is, is that better?


Well glad someone agrees with me on the issue of cost of entry.

Somewhat, yeah. We disagree on a few of the world building details, but I agree that low-level Wizards are generally terrible for parties and for society in the proposed system.


Alright look at researching/creating new spells a different way. How does society even get to the point where it sounds like a good idea?

Clerics.

No, seriously, imagine if someone IRL "could only bring back the dead a limited number of times". Um... does that sound weak to you? It sounds pretty ****ing amazing to me.

So in a society that "grew up with" deities and clerics from their earliest moments, who knows what this limitation looks like in practice, people wouldn't look at arcane magic and say, "she can only create light a limited number of times in her life", but "kinda weak that she has to research each and every new spell instead of being granted knowledge of all of them all at once by her benevolent deity" and "just imagine what she can do once she hones her craft".


For early magic users, without some big flashing sign pointing out "you get these back if you wait x years" it just looks like they cast a spell a few times and then it just stops.

Yeah, I've been ignoring the recovery mechanic. I think the world is better off without it. (But I could be wrong.)


The magic they just figured out just went from "oh cool I can do this" to "why is this so much harder to do now" to "I can't make this work at all anymore" and since they don't know that there's an arbitrary 1 year timer on it being slightly more likely to cast successfully again all they really get out of that is "every spell runs out after a few casts." Without the mechanics explained to them there's no reason to try again when the timer comes down and no matter what they do to find something else every spell is looked at as a limited resource and trying to find some different version is just delaying the inevitable. Meanwhile all the effort and resources going into making one person able to contribute briefly could be going into teaching them to wield a spear correctly which is a much more consistent and reliable answer than something that fizzles out after a few tries whether it works on the target or not.

Again, Clerics. Or would you not try to heal the one you loved, even if you knew it was impossible?

I'd say they've figured this out millions of years ago, even without the gods cluing them in.


Then on top of that you've got to consider what actually counts as magical experiments to learn a new spell, it's magic. What you're going for is a practical result and you aren't going to know if you're actually taking steps in the right direction without testing that result. If we want to make the coding comparison, yes you can throw a bunch of code together and send it to someone else to see if it looks right but you both still need an understanding of what you're trying to accomplish and to give it some trial runs to figure out where the bugs are and if it even launches right.

Or you just be me, and don't have bugs in your code. :smallwink:

On the one hand, that's not fair, I don't have bugs by the time I submit my code, but I usually run the code to debug it. OTOH, the most complex bit of code I ever wrote, that I knew would be a pain to debug (since it had to interface with another set of complex code I didn't write), I was more careful than my usual style, and the code ran bug-free on its first iteration.

So, yeah, crafting spells, spending weeks per page worth of code? "Flawless code" sounds quite doable for someone who knows what they're doing, to me.

Still, I imagine plenty of idiots got blown up suffer the same failure consequences (ie, none) that Wizards usually suffer when they do spell research. The research time is just indicative of how many failed spells they cast over and over until they ran out of castings of them, trying to get them to compile. The successful spell just has a single casting used, to prove it works.


Magic being developed enough to justify sending out the frail looking guy who will keel over dead if a particularly nasty papercut gets him just doesn't make sense here when they likely haven't got the skill or importance needed for their "arcane might" to do more than a normal person with half decent armor and whatever weapon they picked up can. Less so when making them work consistently would need extensive effort to constantly come up with and test replacement spells for him to burn through in the hope you outpace the costs, meanwhile the same method for everyone else would be "alright lets institute some mandatory training in some form of fighting or first aid and get more people conscripted to deal with this threat, here's a few more spears and bows to share around" and letting numbers make up for individual weakness.

Again, Clerics.

Because you already know, from the dawn of civilization, what high-level Clerics can accomplish, smart leaders would be willing to invest in individuals who show an aptitude for not!Cleric casting. Or they'd get conquered by the tribes that did. Or (more likely) both would get conquered by the tribes that went all-in on Clerics instead of supporting wuss Wizards. Or (most likely) they'd all get conquered by the crit-fisher tribe, because **** Wounds and Vitality favors the muggles.

One can only really afford "Wizards" once one's power base is much more stable than early tribesmen warring with one another. Happily, most settings involve nations and kingdoms and such, with the stability and funds to make (to have made) "Wizards" a reality.


As far as game design though, this has the problem of balancing something powerful by making it annoying and unpleasant to play, which is generally not a great idea. So I personally wouldn't approach the design objectives along this angle.

Grod's Law strikes again.

Yeah, all the extra rolling and tracking and such is a pain. That said, if you remove the roll, don't bother memorizing spells, and just track how many times you've cast it, then it's no more painful than memorizing spells IMO.


If the point is to encourage a diversity of spells, you could just give each spell a 1 week 'safe cooldown' for prepared casters, where preparing the spell again less than one week after casting it lowers your casting stat by 1 until a week after you either cast the spell or free the slot (treat as a debuff, not as damage or drain). Metaphysically, each unique spell corresponds to a different part of a caster's infinite soul, casting the spell causes that area of the caster's soul to come under stress, and repeatedly doing that without letting the stress heal (or distributing the stress more evenly) has consequences.

Simple, but doesn't prevent a caster from having a SoP that looks much like 4e sameyness (just with the "at will" being a crossbow or something mundane (and, yes, that's intentionally a synonym for "boring" here)).


If the point is that being a caster is much lower risk in a wounds/vitality system than characters who are exposed to crits in melee, make casting any spell involve a casting check and a failed check causes the caster to either lose the spell and suffer Vitality damage equal to the spell level, or manage to get the spell off but suffer Wound damage equal to the spell level.

Give Wizards d10 HP, or make Fighters lose HP with every attack, too. :smallwink:

No, seriously, this mechanic is generally considered unfun, too, punishing characters for doing their job.


If the point is more about the power of spells, you could make it so that spells have easily exploited loopholes and flaws such that someone can attempt to identify a spell (either being cast, or a standing spell like a buff) as an Immediate action and if they succeed they get to apply SR equal to 10+HD in order to bypass the spell even for SR: No spells. Against a buff, this means they can act as if the target doesn't have the buff (but the buff does not end). Against an AoE this just excludes them from the effects, but it doesn't cancel the spell for others in the AoE; etc. If they've seen this particular spell before, lower the DC of the Spellcraft check by 5. If they have seen this particular character cast this particular spell before, lower the DC of the Spellcraft check to ID the spell by 10 (lowering DC rather than giving them a bonus so that even untrained people might figure it out). If its a custom spell that the caster has been cagey about and hasn't been overusing in the public eye, increase the DC by 10. You could also have Still/Silent/Invisible spell modify this DC. That way, casters against intelligent enemies have to act a bit more like rogues - surprise people with the casting, hide their casting, cast from out of view, mix things up and be deceptive so people can't figure out what is being cast. They'll still be fully effective dropping Fireball after Fireball on wolves or whatever, but against a demon or dragon or experienced humanoids (who would of course take the minimum 1 rank in Spellcraft even cross-class because it's worth it) mixing it up becomes important.

Nicely done. Kudos!

So, this is an example of a fun rule, one that lets the Wizards have fun tools to play with, and then adds another layer, additional minigames of fun to play, while... hmmm... so, it depends. Is it just spells, or can Fighters make a check to ignore a Dragon's breath attack? If so, and that's also a Spellcraft check, then it empowers caster characters more than muggles. If so, and it's a different type of check, then Knowledge checks are the most reasonable, which still favors Wizards. If there's no such check for SUs, then it doesn't really buff muggles so much as nerf Wizards, because most monsters don't cast spells.

Regardless, my instincts say that this mechanic has the most promise for versatility in gameplay of those I've seen in this thread.


Now, for spontaneous casters, you have to do a more fundamental change to the classes to have diversity of spells since they really don't have the option to use a diverse set of spells even if they wanted to.

Yeah, that is a problem. Although... this system might push such casters towards Necrotic Cyst, Rainbow something Snake, and other builds that increase their number of spells known, which might help?


This has the setting consequence of spellcasters being largely nomadic and hermit-like, as finding 'the place I can cast Wish' for example is pretty good loot, as long as you aren't competing with a hundred other casters tapping the same leylines.

Eh, "the place you can cast Wish" just becomes the hub of the Inherent Bonus; "the place you can cast True Resurrection" just becomes the hub of the not!mourners, etc. That is, it gives your world inherent "hot spots", and lets you do world building around that. And depending on how many such places a given continent has, well, politics definitely happens, wars might be fought over them, etc. Actually... you mentioned "church" as a "place" - if the zones are small enough, then every town city might have several places where Wish can be cast that high-level Wizards might want to claim, several places where healing spells can be cast that churches might want to claim, etc. And how many of those places a city has determines in large part how many powerful defenders it has. That could lead to some good politics. And also some interesting world building, where a City was built, not on the river, but several miles inland, simply because there was a conflux of good "zones" (micro-zones?) there.


Nix pointless constants or die rolls alltogether. That is:

Each spell has 20 uses plus character level, full stop.


I tought about this...
The number of uses is just X. (X varies from spell to spell)

Moreover each time you gain a level, for each spell you know, X is increased...
By 1 for classes like wizard, cleric.
By 2 for classes like sorcer.
By 1.5 for classes like bard.
By 0.5 for classes like paladin.

I like the simplicity of... dagnabbit... "20 + [Class Feature]", where "[Class Feature]" is "1/level for Wizard, Cleric", "2/level for Sorcerer", etc. ("Class feature", so you can't cheese it in any way (besides Mystic Theurge and such, which we all know is a powerhouse that needs a nerf.)

The added cruft of X being variable from spell to spell? Nah, that's terrible workload - there's hundreds of Cleric spells of each level, after all, and what GM wants to go through all that effort? What player (that you'd want to play with) wants to make their GM go through all that effort? Just "base number of casts is 20", period. Simple.

(Personally, I'd... hmmm... make it "5+", and then triple the numbers that classes give you. So "5+3/level" for Wizards and Clerics, "5+6/level" for Sorcerers, "5+1.5/level for Paladin". That helps ensure they don't feel starve for spells, but at least a Box of Bandaids can cast Cure Light Wounds 3 times per level.)

Still... for fairness, let's talk about an equivalent rule, one that helps increase variety. So, in this parallel example, people build up Resonance when they swing a shaft of wood or sharpened bit of metal; after 20+BAB swings, said weapon no longer is capable of getting a crit on Wounds, and always defaults to Vitality damage. After another 20+BAB swings, it only deals Subdual damage. After another 20+BAB swings, it deals no damage whatsoever. Or, if that's too samey, we could just go straight to "after 20+BAB swings, it deals no damage". (Or "after 5+3*BAB swings", for my preferred numbers)

Does that sound like a fun rule, that will help promote variety from the boring, samey muggles who keep stabbing monsters with the same weapon day in and day out? Or does it just sound like an obnoxious tax to play the game?

Now, let's discuss another possible rule. In this one, we give Fighters class features create an alternate Fighter class, with class features like "Quick Draw" at level 1, "Item Box" at level 2 (Portable Hole level of storage space, with Heward's Handy Haversack levels of convenience), "Element Stones" at level 4 (effectively a whole series of 1/day abilities that as a free action give weapons properties like Flaming, Frost, Keen, Reach, Grinding, Curse Spewing, Binding, Sleep Pollen, Venomous, Ghost Touch, Blinding, Disarming (literally, removing limbs), Beheading, etc; there's probably some table of these abilities for the not!Fighter to pick from as they level, and they probably have tags like "Least", "Lesser", and "Greater"), "Invert Legacy" at level 6 (take legacy weapon penalties as bonuses instead while legacy weapon is wielded), "Shared Fame" at level 8 (can wield an unlimited number of legacy weapons, so long as each is used X per Y), "Sheltered Vitality" at level 10 (a blow that would go to Wounds can instead be taken by a Legacy Weapon or Sentient Item; that item is Disabled until Repaired). Heck, let's add "Stunting" at level 1 (1/day, + 1/day/5 class levels, when the not!Fighter changes weapons, they can treat the opponent as flat-footed, or gain the effects of Improved Trip), "Adaptive Attacks" at level 2 (cumulative +2 to hit for each weapon the not!Fighter has attacked a given foe with this combat) and "Dream Legacy" at level 6 (at level 6, and once every 2 levels thereafter, if the not!Fighter has fewer than [Class Level] legacy weapons, their player can describe a new legacy weapon (perhaps pointing their GM to the movie/anime inspiration, if any), and a Rupture to Dream opens, granting a permanent copy that legacy weapon to the not!Fighter).

There's the rough draft of the 1st 10 levels of a full BAB variety-encouraging not!Fighter class. Does this rule sound like it might encourage you to play a Muggle who uses more than one weapon? Why / why not?

[Gnaeus]

How does this apply to things like spell likes and SUs? If the same, it cripples classes like druid or dread necro as well as many monsters. If differently, it makes classes like druid much stronger.

What about otherwise workhorse abilities like detect or read magic. Are those things casters shouldn't be able to do?

[Crake]

Get rid of spellcasting classes, make the counter be school specific and spell level specific to get around the issue of trying to determine which spells should count as “the same”, and also to make the lore easier to explain. Make each school of magic a new skill, and make the level of spell you're able to cast based on the ranks you have in the skill (half ranks - 1 = max spell level) and make casting spells from that school incur a penalty for subsequent casts from school/level combo. DC to cast a spell = ranks required to cast that spell level, meaning you get a number of free casts equal to your ability score modifier+1 before beginning to need to roll.

This gets rid of casters as a primary profession, so its no longer a “this character is on a time limit before theyre forced to retire” kind of thing, and you can make each school have its own ability score tied to it.

I would also probably limit the amount of ranks you can put into the skill at each levelup to 2 (or up to 4 if they have less), so a character cant just go from having no spellcasting in a school to being able to cast 5th level spells out of nowhere.

Also, make it so that spellcasting skills cannot benefit from external skill boosters, so no items, but feats like skill focus are fine, essentially giving 3 extra casts per spell level in a school

[Vahnavoi]

Still... for fairness, let's talk about an equivalent rule, one that helps increase variety. So, in this parallel example, people build up Resonance when they swing a shaft of wood or sharpened bit of metal; after 20+BAB swings, said weapon no longer is capable of getting a crit on Wounds, and always defaults to Vitality damage. After another 20+BAB swings, it only deals Subdual damage. After another 20+BAB swings, it deals no damage whatsoever. Or, if that's too samey, we could just go straight to "after 20+BAB swings, it deals no damage". (Or "after 5+3*BAB swings", for my preferred numbers)

Does that sound like a fun rule, that will help promote variety from the boring, samey muggles who keep stabbing monsters with the same weapon day in and day out? Or does it just sound like an obnoxious tax to play the game?

The only obnoxious part of it is book keeping, which is why you want to make it easy and concrete by using playing cards or other tokens to count. Otherwise, yes, you can have rules for weapons like that. Typically, this goes by the name "weapon durability" and comparable rules are default though often neglected part of 3.x D&D.

Yes, it is possible to make it fun and in a way that genuinely encourages using the entire varied arsenal a game throws at the player. For real recent example on the video game side, see Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Same goes for limited spell access. Unlike the lot of you, I've actually played under such rules. For decades. They can be made to work just fine. Most of the questions thrown around in this thread are either unimportant or trivial to answer on the game design side.

For example "but why is spellcasting limited use but items aren't?". On the setting's side, game magic designed with playability first, every edition of D&D magic very much included, does not care of the "why" in any great detail. Like, come on. You know D&D magic involves spoken words and gestures, but has any edition deigned to tell you in a spell description what words or which gestures? If you as a player don't need to know even that to play a magician, you sure as Hell don't need to know behind-the-scenes metaphysics. On the game design side, it's dead simple: it encourages investment in specific magic items for spells that need to be cast perpetually, promoting strategizing around that point. Another example: "but why are spellcasters limited but not monsters?" In setting, these are different types of creature. The question is analogous to "but why can birds fly unassisted while humans can't?" The fact that humans can't fly unassisted is the important, actionable fact regardless of whether anyone at the table knows enough of flight answers beyond "because flight is natural to birds but not to humans". On the game design side, a game master ends up running loads more characters than other players. What is acceptable book keeping for a player playing a single character, can get excessive for a game master. Hence, it is better to streamline rules for characters run by the game master. 3.x. is already famously overboard with PC-NPC-symmetry, when changing rules to simplify them there is no reason to stick to principles that were dubious to begin with.

[Gnaeus]

Another example: "but why are spellcasters limited but not monsters?" In setting, these are different types of creature. The question is analogous to "but why can birds fly unassisted while humans can't?" The fact that humans can't fly unassisted is the important, actionable fact regardless of whether anyone at the table knows enough of flight answers beyond "because flight is natural to birds but not to humans". On the game design side, a game master ends up running loads more characters than other players. What is acceptable book keeping for a player playing a single character, can get excessive for a game master. Hence, it is better to streamline rules for characters run by the game master. 3.x. is already famously overboard with PC-NPC-symmetry, when changing rules to simplify them there is no reason to stick to principles that were dubious to begin with.

1. We are discussing this on a 3.5 forum, in the context of 3.5, so I suspect most people would regard that as less a bug than a feature. And even if they didn't the question then arises why are you trying to stick a square peg into a round hole, by changing basic design features.

2. I never asked WHY are spellcasters limited but not monsters. I asked IF these rules applied to spell likes and SUs. because this is a game where PCs can become monsters. Can tame monsters. Can play monsters. Can acquire powers used by monsters in dozens of ways. The ramifications ripple through the game. To give only one example, if this applies to spells but not class abilities, the Dread Necromancer, who has spells but also relies heavily on spell like abilities and can use endless negative energy healing, just got a LOT stronger compared with a sorcerer, for example (actually, got stronger twice, once because more spells known, again because more powers not reliant on spellcasting, maybe again because of a focus on minionmancy). This is not an unsolvable problem. But it is something that would need to be addressed. What about the healer with their pet Couatl? Would this change the use of PAO for permanent forms, and is that change desirable, or does it need to be addressed? Can a wizard simply sidestep the issue by taking options that allow them to convert spells into spell likes or SUs? Not all these answers are obvious.

[icefractal]

Even with better scaling, Sorcerers (and anyone with limited spells known) are really boned here. Wizards do better, but the ones who do the best are "know your entire list" casters like Clerics and Druids.

Now a Cleric still couldn't be a reliable healer, because there's only so many good healing spells, but they can reliably do something for a pretty long time before the topic of spell research even comes up. Spontaneous Casting and Domain Spells do become useless after a while though. I think Druid holds up the best, because they have Wild Shape to fall back on, allowing them to handle dangerous situations without using spells.

Also, IDK why the assumption that Wizards would be relying on spell research for variety - it's much easier to trade spells with other Wizards. But that relies on there being a substantial amount of Wizards in the world, which might not be the case.

More generally, this favors "big spells you wouldn't cast often". Like, say, Planar Binding. If you can get high enough level to cast them. Expensive material components become pretty trivial compared to "I'm using one of my very limited uses ever". It also encourages spells that you don't cast in combat, because then failing the check a few times before succeeding isn't a big deal.

[NichG]

Give Wizards d10 HP, or make Fighters lose HP with every attack, too. :smallwink:

No, seriously, this mechanic is generally considered unfun, too, punishing characters for doing their job.


Eh, I've played several campaigns using the Advanced d20 Magic / BESM rules in 3.5ed which uses nonlethal 'drain' to hitpoints in place of spell slots, and turns everyone into a spontaneous caster. It's a trade I'd take 100% of the time if offered. The thing is that taking nonlethal drain for casting isn't that big of a deal because generally speaking as a caster you're not standing there and tanking hits. If your enemies decide to focus fire on you, you're either going to be nigh-immune because you have the right counters in place or you're just going to melt anyhow. Having a bit of nonlethal damage hanging around is actually a bit of a perk because it means you're more likely to get knocked out and then passed over for the next target rather than killed outright when things do decide to go after you - more dangerous for the group in that one encounter, a lot more sustainable in the long run, and it lets the 'squishy wizard' trope come up without constantly transitioning into the 'dead wizard' trope.

Furthermore, there are some fun 'pushes' you can do in that system like staking your life by choosing to taking the drain as lethal damage to pull off a very big spell like True Resurrection or Wish in advance of the level at which you'd normally be able to cast it, or bypassing time or resource requirements that otherwise you can't afford. Or for that matter 'we're going to die anyhow, so I'll burn myself out stacking literally every metamagic feat I know onto this one blow-up-the-scene spell so at least we get them too' sorts of last hurrahs.

[Harrow]

Why is it that saying "I charge the monster" an acceptable solution to most encounters where "I cast Glitterdust" is not? You mention not liking spellcasters using the "usual 6 or 7 spells", but a martial with 6 different solutions is a living toolkit. You could hypothetically have a character with a decent trip, charge, full attack, bow for fliers, and acid/alchemist's fire for trolls and swarms. That's 5 different options, still short of 6, and the character would already be spread a bit thin until mid-to-high level.

[RandomPeasant]

You just promoted "variety" and "single-school casters" in the same sentence. :smallamused:

Those casters actually have quite a bit of variety. At 8th level, a Dread Necromancer has BFC (black tentacles), summons (summon undead IV), single-target debuffs (enervation), AoE SoS (fear), and single-target SoL (phantasmal killer). That's plenty of options to fill out their spell slots with different effects, and it's only about half the spells they get. Even the Warmage can muster "blast a single target", "blast several targets", and "BFC".


Get rid of spellcasting classes, make the counter be school specific and spell level specific to get around the issue of trying to determine which spells should count as “the same”, and also to make the lore easier to explain.

This just draws way more attention to how arbitrary the schools of magic are. I can sort of grok why my form-changing magic (polymorph, a Transmutation) ticks down the same counter as my general-purpose buff spells (bull's endurance, also a Transmutation). But why in the hell does it tick down the same counter as my weather magic (control weather, a Transmutation) or my ability to move objects with my mind (telekinesis, for some reason a Transmutation)?


More generally, this favors "big spells you wouldn't cast often". Like, say, Planar Binding.

Yeah. I would point to what I call the "Warmage Rule", which is the idea that if your nerf to spellcasters makes the Warmage worse, it is probably unnecessarily vindictive because the Warmage is at a completely unobjectionable power level. Looking at OP's design goals, I would say that the easiest way to do what they want is to tweak Vitality and Wound points so they're less punitive for non-casters and work out some separate mechanism for encouraging spell diversity (you could even use a carrot like "the first time you cast a spell each day it gets +2 DC" rather than a stick).

[Crake]

This just draws way more attention to how arbitrary the schools of magic are. I can sort of grok why my form-changing magic (polymorph, a Transmutation) ticks down the same counter as my general-purpose buff spells (bull's endurance, also a Transmutation). But why in the hell does it tick down the same counter as my weather magic (control weather, a Transmutation) or my ability to move objects with my mind (telekinesis, for some reason a Transmutation)?

That can all be fluffed on a metaphysical level, probably they share a baseline level of “code” or “functions” to use quertus’ analogy to programming, but its much easier to track school usage than “individual/similar” spell usage.