D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] Question on Caster Recharge Time - Unearthed Arcana Variant

[Heaven's Thunder Ham]

Hey Guys,

I was leafing through my 3.5 UA book, and read about caster recharge time (i.e. highest level spell has a 1d6+3 recharge time, 2nd highest 1d6+2 or something like that and so on) and have decided that I really like it in principle, as I'm a former Ars Magica player and I like the idea of spellcasters being able to cast spells all day. However, I have vague ideas of how it works in play and am curious, has anyone actually tried it, and if so, what were your experiences?

To all other arm chair theoreticians who have not tried it, would having a fixed number of rounds between casting spells of a certain level work better in combat?

The other thing I like about it, is that higher level game breaking spells and buffs have huge recharge times, so yes, the Wizard can scry, buff and then teleport... But may not be able to use their 3rd, 4th and 7th (or whatever level) for the entire combat.

Why am I thinking about using it? I'm running a new D&D game for my wife and her friend, neither of whom are familiar with all the book keeping of playing a wizard... And they came up with a neat concept for both of them to be wizards, which made me happy and cringe horribly at the same time. I'm basically looking at something for "ease of play" rather than balance, but am still naturally curious how this interacts with bigger parties of multiple different classes. (previous games have seen them play sorcerors, rogues, barbarians and fighters.)

Any other thoughts are welcome.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Never tried it, but I'll give a shot a potential hypothesis as to a down side of adopting it. That is, going nova, or firing off all your big offense early in the fight in the hopes it will blow the other guy away before he can hurt you, will become even more of a zero-sum game than it is under RAW. I could easily see such rules leading casters to blow through very high level spells as fast as they can, hoping to annihilate the enemy threat. If they don't they'll be in for several rounds of suck afterwards, and I assume would use defensive buffs / minor plane-shifting abilities (like Blink, to be on the Ethereal plane 50% of the time) to avoid combat as much as possible during the ensuing cool-down/warm-up, only to begin the barrage anew. Because if you can keep using your high level spells all day without limit, except for some recharge time, why not toss them out at every possible opportunity?

 

[Voadam]

I've tried it. I didn't like the rolling for recharge time as it adds another step into every combat round and I prefer to keep things more focused on quick mechanical resolution.

We switched to fixed time recharges specifically to eliminate that step and I feel it was an improvement. I know others find enjoyment in rolling dice and the unknown thrill of random determinations.

We also found it helped to have a list of spell levels and put dice next to them when you cast a spell with the number set to recharge time remaining. Each round you change the number on the dice down one until you remove the die when recharge is done.

This made for an easy to track and manage at the table visual counter and you can see what spells are available to choose from and how long until you can get those spells you want to cast again.

I prefer the choices of which spells to cast for a given level each round rather than the vancian resource management choice of whether to cast a per day spell or not.

Consequences:
1) can run out of spells in a combat with long recharge times leaving casters going back to crossbows. Can be remedied by the pathfinder option of at will no recharge cantrips.

2) healing can be fully done with cure minor, though only out of combat. Healing full can happen with enough of a breather. Either embrace it or figure out an adjustment (I like it).

3) Less spectacular novaing as top spell levels can only be cast once before long recharge. Vancian can't go forever but can nova for more rounds at the start of a fight.

4) Mini novaing every fight. Every fight they generally bring their one top spell in the beginning instead of only at the last boss fight.

 

[Heaven's Thunder Ham]

Cool, thanks for letting me know. I was thinking fixed recharge times would be the way to go. What fixed values did you guys use?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

On a semi-related note, and not terribly helpful since I've yet to make hard rules for it...I've long considered a system where you had to wait a few rounds into an encounter to use your highest levels spells. Either relative to your level (at level 6, 3rd levels spells are your highest level and have a usage delay) or static (mages aren't overpowered at lower levels, so spell levels say...0-3 have no delay time, 4-x have a certain delay time, x+1-y levels have an even longer time, etc...regardless of your level), not sure which would be more balanced and fair. Of course, that has its own issues. I could flavor it as needing time to "charge up" your most powerful magic (and of course, casting some weaker iterations of it helps the cause, though not mechanically, that'd be too complicated). But how to apply it would be tricky. Sometimes it might be difficult to know when to start or stop the "count." Players might try to do as I was hypothesizing aove with the recharge magic rules and lay low and wait it out till they can nuke. And ultimately, such a system would basically just delay the casters' nova bombardments, not really solve the issue. The idea was more of a "You don't use your finishing move at the start of the fight."

Carry on...

 

[Voadam]

Cool, thanks for letting me know. I was thinking fixed recharge times would be the way to go. What fixed values did you guys use?

We also noted that I would get into a lot of math figuring out how many active buff spells I could get going on the party at a time based on spell duration, my caster level, and how long I'd spent cycling in spells. For instance cast bull's strength, wait the recharge time, cast it again on party member 2, wait again then cast on PC then go ahead to the exploration. We simplified that by creating an ad hoc chart for how many people to maintain on at a time and not really worrying about specific duration tracking.

Here were our house rules on it.

-Spells with non general recharge times (5 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours,
etc.) count against the general spell level slot recharge times as well.

For instance if a 10th level wizard had just cast teleport to arrive at a
battle, he would have to wait 1d6+1 rounds to use that 5th level slot again just
as if he'd cast a cone of cold.

-Adjustment for Sorcerer (or any other spontaneous casters) recharge times for
non general spells

Prepared Spontaneous
5 minutes 3 minutes
1 hour 40 minutes
4 hours 3 hours
6 hours 4 hours
12 hours 8 hours
24 hours 16 hours

Table: Specific Recharge Spell Volume

Spell Level Spontaneous Prepared
Highest possible 1 1
Second highest possible 1 1
Third highest possible 2 1
Fourth highest possible 2 2
Fifth highest possible 3 2
Sixth highest possible 3 2
Seventh highest possible 4 3
Eighth highest possible 4 3
Ninth highest possible 5 3
Tenth highest possible 5 4

This means a 6th level sorcerer could cast on instance of a single casting of
high alert, travel or all day spells for 2nd and 3rd level spells and two
castings of 1st and 0th level spells.


Fixed General Recharge times:
Spell Level Spontaneous Prepared
1st Highest possible 4 rounds 5 rounds
2nd highest possible 3 rounds 4 rounds
3rd highest possible 3 rounds 4 rounds
4th highest possible 2 rounds 3 rounds
5th highest possible 2 rounds 3 rounds
6th highest possible 2 rounds 2 rounds
7th highest possible 1 round 2 rounds
8th highest possible 1 round 2 rounds
9th highest possible 0 rounds 1 round
10th highest possible 0 rounds 1 round



- Wizard/Druid/Cleric spells prepared These classes (or any class that prepares
spells) do not prepare more spells for higher casting attributes.

 

[Heaven's Thunder Ham]

Voadam,

Thanks for the chart. In fact, I may just treat all spells as general to simplify things, it just depends on the group and how quick they are to abuse spell casting.

Just one last question, for the wizards/clerics/druids table, it says first highest 4 rounds 5 rounds.... Which is it, 4 or 5??

 

[Voadam]

Voadam,

Thanks for the chart. In fact, I may just treat all spells as general to simplify things, it just depends on the group and how quick they are to abuse spell casting.

Just one last question, for the wizards/clerics/druids table, it says first highest 4 rounds 5 rounds.... Which is it, 4 or 5??

You mean this one:

Fixed General Recharge times:
Spell Level Spontaneous Prepared
1st Highest possible 4 rounds 5 rounds
2nd highest possible 3 rounds 4 rounds
3rd highest possible 3 rounds 4 rounds
4th highest possible 2 rounds 3 rounds
5th highest possible 2 rounds 3 rounds
6th highest possible 2 rounds 2 rounds
7th highest possible 1 round 2 rounds
8th highest possible 1 round 2 rounds
9th highest possible 0 rounds 1 round
10th highest possible 0 rounds 1 round

For the highest level spell it is 4 rounds for a spontaneous caster (sorcerer, favored soul, etc.) and 5 rounds for prepared caster (wizard, cleric, druid) The spontaneous should be quicker recharge than the prepared caster.

Looking over the chart I think if I were doing it from scratch I'd make the entire progression steady (as it is from highest to 5th highest level spell) instead of that little discontinuity at 6th highest. The practical effect would be having scorching rays go every round at 18th level instead of MM for a sorcerer which is no big deal IMO.

 

[Voadam]

Voadam,

Thanks for the chart. In fact, I may just treat all spells as general to simplify things, it just depends on the group and how quick they are to abuse spell casting.

A couple consequences of that.

Buffs become for the whole party. Everybody quickly gets bull's strength if it is prepared, etc.

Having teleport be on a significant delay meant we could not scry, buff, teleport, fight then pop out. Once we teleported into enemy territory we were in for hours and had to deal with being there. This changed the play dynamic for the better IMO.