HOw would this caster houserule affect things?

[Ashtagon]

Casters need 10+ in their casting stat to cast spells. This replaces the 10 + spell level.

Casters need (spell level + 1) x 2 skill ranks in a relevant skill to cast spells. For wizards and sorcerers, this is Knowledge (arcana) (or Spellcraft if you don't already merge those two). For clerics an paladins, this is Knowledge (religion). For rangers and druids, this is Knowledge (nature). For bards, this is Perform (any).

This should remove the requirement to have your casting stat pumped to insane levels. A PC might anyway for optimisation, but it wouldn't be required; you could now have a powerful cleric who wasn't particularly wise.

[Sam K]

Most pure casters are single ability dependent anyway, and pure casters would still "have" to pump their casting stat for decent save DCs and bonus spells. The big difference would be that in very low powered games, you could actually play a pure caster even if none of your stats were very high.

It might be a boon to some hybrid classes, though. Would remove wisdom dependence for rangers and paladins, for example.

[Greenish]

The biggest effect would be the lost skill points, which hurts especially sorcerer and paladin. On the upside, paladin could get away with a few points of Wis less, but really, they should cast from Cha to begin with.

Oh, and favoured souls are screwed, but what else is new?


Other than that, no real change. It's not like needing the 19 to casting stat by level 17-18 for full casters was a chore, or that they wouldn't keep pumping the relevant stat.

[Ashtagon]

The biggest effect would be the lost skill points, which hurts especially sorcerer and paladin.

I would argue that those are skills that those classes should be building up anyway. Granted, those two classes are hurt by the 2+Int skill points in 3.pf, but doesn't everyone houserule that to 4+Int these days though?

And really, is trading two skill points every other class level in a skill that is flavour-appropriate for your class really such a bad deal for a full spell level?

[ILM]

If your houserule requires our knowing all your other "really common" houserules to fully apprehend, maybe you should let us know. In the span of 4 posts we've learned that you merged know(arcana) with spellcraft, and that rangers and paladins get 4+int. We also don't know if you're using 3.5 or PF and its condensed skill list, which also affects the weight of a skill rank tax.

What's your objective with this houserule? I'd argue that:
- if you were a full caster, barring very specific no-save specialists, you always needed to pump your casting stat for the DCs
- if you weren't a full caster, the requirement isn't really that onerous (I mean, 16 in Cha at level 15+ for a Bard isn't exactly the end of the world; 14 Wis for a Paladin is just a 10 with 16k gp on top)
- if you're one of those wonky dual-stat casters, then I see your houserule affecting things, though I'm not sure if it makes them better or worse. I'd argue the problem is dual-stat casting as a concept rather than ability requirements.

Honestly, the game is already so stingy with skill points, I just think adding more tax hurts the game more than it helps. Hell, if the ability requirement bothers you so much, I really don't think you're breaking the game by simply waiving it altogether (though fluff-wise I'm not sure how your dumb wizard would exist).

[avr]

CoDzilla gets a boost from this; wizards, sorcerers, bards and caster druids won't notice the change; as suggested above it's a minor boost to rangers, and maybe to paladins. Some caster clerics will be a little annoyed.

[HammeredWharf]

I think the most noticeable effect it would have would be confusing your players.

[Twelve.Five]

Point 1; Confused players are likely to be a thing, but it seems like you've done this before, so they're probably used to it. Or not.

Regardless, having tried to slap together a paladin on a low point buy, I'll say it can be a bit of a proplem, and this could help with that.

[Chronos]

Yeah, in a lot of cases, these are skills the characters would be taking anyway, but this would mean that a paladin with 8 Int would be forced to choose between Ride and spellcasting, and a paladin with 10 Int wouldn't be able to take any other skills. I guess you're taking away their Wis dependence, but you're replacing it with an Int dependence, which makes even less sense.

If this rule doesn't change anything at all for the primary casters, and hampers the paladin and sorcerer, then why have the rule? Rules that don't do anything are in general a bad idea.