Contractual Wizardry Houserule [PEACH]

[Eulalios]

I wish I could find the thread on this, someone else wrote a good one a few months back ...

... anyway, I'm considering the following mechanical implementation:

spell preparation requires roughly 15 minutes per level, a spellbook, and all spell components, in order to conjure an appropriate spirit and bind it to work the wizard's will on command

spell casting is a standard action to command the bound spirit

considering the normal Wizard spell progression, but treating it as "points" rather than a fixed number of spells per level, the "points" represent the total strength of spirits that the Wizard may simultaneously bind; e.g. at the 2/2/1 level, the Wizard can have prepared spells totaling 7 levels (such as 2 x 3d level and 3 x 1st level).

spell prep can be accomplished without rest, but all characters suffer a -1 penalty to INT, WIS and CHA for each day without adequate sleep; if this penalty brings INT < 9, safe spell prep requires roll d20 < modified INT; fail = wizard attacked by conjured spirit.

Thoughts?

[Anachronity]

15 minutes per level is pretty long for high-level casters. Heck, by the time you're 4th level you're already extending every rest by an hour. Maybe this is intentional, but then you should probably have rules for partially preparing spells for a day. There are probably better ways to balance casters than making spell preparation take really long.

Pooling spell levels like that will encourage "novas" and the 15-minute workday. A caster will use those spell levels only to prepare his highest level spells and then rest immediately afterwards.

[Eulalios]

Clearly, my OP shoulda been clearer / less sketchy.

15 minutes per level is pretty long for high-level casters. Heck, by the time you're 4th level you're already extending every rest by an hour. Maybe this is intentional, but then you should probably have rules for partially preparing spells for a day.

The idea was 15 min per spell level = 45 min for a 3rd level spell, 135 min for a 9th level spell.

Also, once prep'd, spells stick until they're cast. No need to keep preparing the same unused spells every day.

There are probably better ways to balance casters than making spell preparation take really long.

Ok, maybe, but this thread is about this way. Which is to implicitly make it logistically difficult to incorporate a spellcaster into a party that wants to get somewhere.

Pooling spell levels like that will encourage "novas" and the 15-minute workday. A caster will use those spell levels only to prepare his highest level spells and then rest immediately afterwards.

I guess that depends how much a pain in the that spellcaster wants to be to his/her comrades.