Casting with Concentration

[dammitbiscuit]

Makes the wizard have to worry a lot less about which spells to prepare. Just grab one of each awesome spell and go to town.

If that factor remained unchanged, then to start with, I'd cut the number of spells prepared by a large number - half (round down) sounds good. After playtesting that could be tweaked depending on how badly the wizard player is or isn't trying to munchkin the system.

 

[xXxTheBeastxXx]

I'm not quite clear on how spell preparation works with this system though. Do you make all these rolls as you prep the spells (that would be when I'd have them do it for non-spontaneous casters, I think). If you don't how do you know how many of each spell you can prepare?

The easiest way to describe this is with an example. Let's imagine, for the sake of imagining, that you're a 5th level wizard. Based on the chart, you can prepare 4 0-level spells, 3 1st level spells, 2 2nd level spells, and 1 3rd level spell. With this system, you just choose your spells, effectively creating a daily "spell list", like the sorcerer has.

Thus, you could choose:
0-Light, Daze, Acid Splash, Mage Hand
1-Shocking Grasp, Shield, Hold Portal
2-Scorching Ray, Resist Energy
3-Fireball

You can now freely cast amongst these spells as if you were a spontaneous caster and these were your spells known.

---

And concerning the issues with being able to cast less times in a given day, in the original idea for this system, the spellcasting DC only went up by 1 regardless of which spell tier you cast from. It was only after it was brought to my attention that people might exploit that to constantly spam high-level spells that I changed it to the tier system.

My solution would be: choose whichever system works for you. If you have a mature group that wouldn't abuse the system, reduce it back to the "+1 per spell" system. If you've got some nasty powergamers, use the "tier" system and maybe teach them a lesson.

I'll re-edit and put both systems on the post.

Thank you, everyone, for your generosity and your input. This is what EN world is meant for.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

Another thing you could try would be DC adjustments based not on the spell's absolute level, but on the spell's relative level.

I'm not necessarily recommending this, as I haven't even playtested your first system yet, but I wanna throw it out there. For a max-level caster, 7th-level spells aren't that big of a deal, y'see, and a 5th-level wizard gets a lot of mileage out of his (relatively) powerful 3rd-level spells. The change would encourage players to sometimes use their lower-level spells in order to conserve their energy, even when they're at a low enough character level that, under your base rules, all their spells are equally tiring.

It'd work like this:
When you are able to cast 2nd level spells, those spells are +1 DC (or use 1 more point from the "pool"). From this point forward, the lowest-level half of your spells (round up) are unmodified, and the remaining higher level spells known incur a +1 penalty.

When you can cast third level spells, they incur an additional +1 penalty. From this point forward, your highest level of spells suffers this additional penalty.

Example: For a 7th-level wizard, his 1st and 2nd level spells would increase the concentration DC by 1, 3rd level spells would increase the DC by 2, and 4th level spells would increase the DC by 3. For a 13th-level wizard, spells up to 4th level would incur only the normal +1 to concentration DCs, 5th and 6th would incur a +2, and 7th level spells would incur a +3. Upon becoming a 15th-level wizard, his 7th-level spells would be reduced to a +2 penalty, and 8th-level spells would become the new top tier, increasing the DC by 3.

 

[Sylrae]

I think I like Dammitbiscuit's adjustment.
It makes you still have to consider using your high level spells vsa low level, regardless of what level you actually are, whereas before, a 5th level wizard could spam 3rd level spells or first level spells at equal difficulty. Why use magic missile when fireball is better?

I'd suggest instead of it being half increase by one,
half increase the DC by two,
and the highest level increases the DC by three:

make it:
1/3 of your spell levels the top third by 3.
then Half of what's left increase the DC by 2
and the remainder increase the DC by +1.
With 9 spell levels, this gives you your 1-3, 4-6, 7-9.
if you can only cats 1st to 3rd though, you get 1, 2, 3
if you can cast 4th, you get 1-2,3,4 for the categories

As the basics of the system, I think it's great, so long as you scale up the DCs.like I suggested.

Something needs to be done to change it so you can cast closer to as many spells as you could with the spells per day method.
Possibly ways to re-decrease the DCs, with guidelines, and have it be available with different limits depending on levels in caster classes. Maybe have it be a score that increases like BAB.

I think this would combine well with Trailblazer's spellcasting rules. I'm not a fan of their system of all casters get all spells on their lists though, but other than that, I can get behind their unified spellcasting mechanics.

 

[White Wizard]

... Overall, I've play-tested the system and it works very well so far. My players love it, and accept it as a much more fun alternative to the vancian system, with less bookkeeping and more chance involved, making more tense situations...

Have any of your players taken any metamagic feats? If so how did you address this?

The easy solution seems like it would be adding a +1 to DC for every level the feat adds to the spell. A quickened magic missile would add +5 to the DC.

This would make sense if the DC increased by +1/Spell level. But under the proposed rules where you separate your spell list by 3 tiers, the cost (which in some cases was already steep. The magic missile example for instance) seems too high and would be something a player wouldn't take.

I don't have any solution to this on hand. My thoughts lead me to believe that the level of the spell should proportionately increase the DC of casting. Maybe an increase of .5 for every spell level rounded up? This suggestion is completely off the top of my head and has not really been analyzed by me. Just my 2cp.

 

[Sylrae]

What if the increases weren't for all spells cast, but say, you tallied them individually?

so you keep a separate modifier tallied for 9 spell levels, or even those 1/3rd brackets.

It wouldn't be that difficult, and may result in a number of spells castable that is closer to that allowed now.

 

[xXxTheBeastxXx]

What if the increases weren't for all spells cast, but say, you tallied them individually?

so you keep a separate modifier tallied for 9 spell levels, or even those 1/3rd brackets.

It wouldn't be that difficult, and may result in a number of spells castable that is closer to that allowed now.

I actually referenced this in the OP, and noted that it was done before in the Tome of Magic and I wanted to avoid it, as it allows for a character to cast his 9th level spells until he's blue in the face, then, when he can't cast any more, he still has a very low DC for his eighth level spells.

 

[Sylrae]

So part of your design goal is to have less spells per day than the vancian system?

Because that's the main thing I see as a problem.

I'm not saying they should be able to cast 9th level spells until they're blue in the face, but I think the wizard should be able to reliably cast 4 9th level spells per day at level 20 without a huge risk of failure.

Maybe have probability at that point (for the 9th level spells) be like this: 95%, 90%, 80%, 65% (Set your DCs to be roughly based on the probabilities you want to see.)

Unless you have seperate pools (maybe a few separate pools) you're going to run into the problem of spell points: either you can spam off mid level spells indefiniitely, or you have virtually no spells.

One alternative could be to have set DCs for spells of each level. Then it really is like an attack roll, in that you can do it as much as you want so long as you can beat the DC. You'd want the DCs to get pretty high though. and probably still want a way to pull a couple of definite successful casts per day out of it.

 

[Sylrae]

If you have a number of times per day where you get a bonus to the roll (for each spell level) maybe that could work too.

I'm not entirely sure what the best way to do this would be.

I agree with the idea. But I think the current implementation is lacking. I'll come back to it later.