D&D 5E Free Upcasting By Tier: A House-Rule

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think you can make them much less quadratic than cantrips only.

Er...okay. Except for the fact that their spells scale up in damage and their slots scale up in damage and their cantrips scale and they can upcast old spells...

Yes, they're a hell of a lot LESS quadratic than they were in 3e. That doesn't mean they aren't still quadratic. The Battle Master has a fixed set of maneuvers which only grow linearly in power (and which they will choose the best options from right away, meaning each additional maneuver gained is of diminishing marginal utility.) Spellcasters don't just get more spells, they also get better spells.

5e doesn't really have any quadratic spellcasters. Cantrips are so weak that if they didn't scale you'd be taking away most of the caster's damage, since 5e is a resource drain edition and casters would be forced to burn through all of their spells in a few fights. That would make them nearly useless for most of the fights in the adventuring day. Since cantrips are the only spells that I can think of that scale with level, quadratic spellcasting is gone.

Sorry, just don't agree on any of that. Casters already do excellent damage if that's what they choose to focus on, especially due to the 5MWD problems in 5e. The quadratic is still there. It's just less than it was before, because before it was completely ridiculous such that even 5e's designers, as enamored as they were with 3e ways of doing things, couldn't justify it.

What @DND_Reborn is proposing doesn't create truly quadratic spellcasters in any case. The scaling wouldn't be per level like it was in 1e-3e and caused the issues. It's much more limited and while it's an increase, isn't nearly large enough to bring back "quadratic."

It totally does. They're just more slowly quadratic. They gain both more slots (scaling linearly) AND more powerful slots (scaling linearly). If you have two different linear scaling methods that amplify one another, you have quadratic scaling. That's literally what "quadratic" means--that you have two different values, both based off the character's level, that multiply their bonuses together. Having more spell slots, which also have amplified effects, is explicitly that, because you now have more slots which also automatically do more stuff.

And it absolutely would be per level. It's just "per level/5" (more or less) rather than "per level" flat. That's still a number which scales based off level. Like, let's rephrase this rule a different way. This makes a level-based (because tiers are based on levels) rule that effectively gives Wizards four pseudo-2nd-level slots, three pseudo-3rd-level slots, and two actual 3rd level slots. At 11th level, it gives them four pseudo-3rd-level slots, six pseudo-4th-level slots, two pseudo-6th-level slots, and one actual 6th-level slot. In other words, this is literally giving spellcasters three times as many effectively-6th-level spells than they could ever cast in a single day, and WAY more powerful hits for their 1st-level spells.

And all of this is before factoring in Arcane Recovery! With these rules, Arcane Recovery (or Natural Recovery for Land Druids) allows a Tier 4 Wizard to recover multiple effectively-6h-level spells a day, every day, with just a single short rest.

That is objectively an ENORMOUS power increase, one that grows substantially with level.

 

[cbwjm]

One option I thought of a while back was that 1st level slots become 2nd level slots at 5th caster level, and 2nd level slots become 3rd level slots at 11th caster level. It means you end up with eventually 10 3rd level spell slots at level 11 which allows you to make better use of your 1st and 2nd level spells but also means that you have 10 slots for fireballs.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Er...okay. Except for the fact that their spells scale up in damage and their slots scale up in damage and their cantrips scale and they can upcast old spells...

Yes, they're a hell of a lot LESS quadratic than they were in 3e. That doesn't mean they aren't still quadratic. The Battle Master has a fixed set of maneuvers which only grow linearly in power (and which they will choose the best options from right away, meaning each additional maneuver gained is of diminishing marginal utility.) Spellcasters don't just get more spells, they also get better spells.


Sorry, just don't agree on any of that. Casters already do excellent damage if that's what they choose to focus on, especially due to the 5MWD problems in 5e. The quadratic is still there. It's just less than it was before, because before it was completely ridiculous such that even 5e's designers, as enamored as they were with 3e ways of doing things, couldn't justify it.


It totally does. They're just more slowly quadratic. They gain both more slots (scaling linearly) AND more powerful slots (scaling linearly). If you have two different linear scaling methods that amplify one another, you have quadratic scaling. That's literally what "quadratic" means--that you have two different values, both based off the character's level, that multiply their bonuses together. Having more spell slots, which also have amplified effects, is explicitly that, because you now have more slots which also automatically do more stuff.

And it absolutely would be per level. It's just "per level/5" (more or less) rather than "per level" flat. That's still a number which scales based off level. Like, let's rephrase this rule a different way. This makes a level-based (because tiers are based on levels) rule that effectively gives Wizards four pseudo-2nd-level slots, three pseudo-3rd-level slots, and two actual 3rd level slots. At 11th level, it gives them four pseudo-3rd-level slots, six pseudo-4th-level slots, two pseudo-6th-level slots, and one actual 6th-level slot. In other words, this is literally giving spellcasters three times as many effectively-6th-level spells than they could ever cast in a single day, and WAY more powerful hits for their 1st-level spells.

And all of this is before factoring in Arcane Recovery! With these rules, Arcane Recovery (or Natural Recovery for Land Druids) allows a Tier 4 Wizard to recover multiple effectively-6h-level spells a day, every day, with just a single short rest.

That is objectively an ENORMOUS power increase, one that grows substantially with level.

I agree with what you say here, and have already said I wouldn't use this idea unless the system were built around it...but...the value of scaling spells is not the same as getting that extra jump of slot power as if it were an extra spell.

Two fireballs is a much greater output of damage than one fireball with 3 extra dice. Upcasting is objectively better, but rarely does upcasting let you make a low level spell equal in power to a native spell of the slot used.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree with what you say here, and have already said I wouldn't use this idea unless the system were built around it...but...the value of scaling spells is not the same as getting that extra jump of slot power as if it were an extra spell.

Two fireballs is a much greater output of damage than one fireball with 3 extra dice. Upcasting is objectively better, but rarely does upcasting let you make a low level spell equal in power to a native spell of the slot used.

Though I think we can at least agree that having all spell slots (beyond 1st, anyway) upcast to 5th level or higher is too powerful. Since, y'know, that feature is literally half of the entire Warlock kit. It justifies why they only get 4-5 spell slots TOTAL. And they can't even apply it to upcast to anything higher than 5th, while the above system would let Wizards et al. upcast to having multiple upcast-to-7 and upcast-to-8 (and heck, even one upcast to 9th!)

So perhaps that's a better way of phrasing it. This proposed house rule is literally making every standard spellcaster have the strongest Warlock feature in the game, for free, enhanced significantly and applying to all spell levels that can be upcast, while giving Warlocks and non-casters nothing.

Really quick before I log off for the night:

My first thought would be to keep weapon damage scaling for non-casters. So, since most already get Extra Attack at 5th level, I would add an additional weapon damage die at 11th and another at 17th.

Now, this might be too much, just throwing it out there as a thought.

I'll give it some more consideration, though.

I assure you, this proposed change to weapon damage would be a pittance compared to what you are proposing for spellcasters. Your fears of making the weak classes too powerful are not well-founded.

 

[DND_Reborn]

One option I thought of a while back was that 1st level slots become 2nd level slots at 5th caster level, and 2nd level slots become 3rd level slots at 11th caster level. It means you end up with eventually 10 3rd level spell slots at level 11 which allows you to make better use of your 1st and 2nd level spells but also means that you have 10 slots for fireballs.

This was something I thought of this morning but immediately nixed.

I don't want actual higher-level slots because then you can cast more higher leveled spells. But free upcasting keeps 1st-level slots using 1st-level spells.

I assure you, this proposed change to weapon damage would be a pittance compared to what you are proposing for spellcasters. Your fears of making the weak classes too powerful are not well-founded.

I think you are incredibly over-valuing the impact this free upcasting would have. In tier 2, which is as high as most games get, your 1st- and 2nd-level spells would be cast as 2nd- and 3rd-level spells. Not a big deal, really.

(Nice to know we disagree again... All is right with the world. )

As for the changes to martials, that was just a first thought and until I have time to look at the numbers, I cannot truly say how much or how little impact it would have. And ultimately, I might do something else--or nothing at all.

 

[TwoSix]

My only real complaint is that I think the table itself is a little complicated. If I wanted to implement the idea, I'd probably just a spell level floor. At level 5, any spell slot below 2 counts as a 2. At level 9, any spell slot below 3 counts as 3, etc., up to spell level 5 at level 17. Of course, this scaling would only be for purposes of upcasting, you still can't use the level 1 slot to cast a 5th level spell.

 

[NotAYakk]

Basic progression:

1    2
2    3
3    4  2
4    3  3
5    3  3  2
6    3  3  3
7    3  3  3  1
8    3  3  3  2
9    3  3  3  3  1
10   3  3  3  3  2
11   3  3  3  3  2  1
12   3  3  3  3  2  1
13   3  3  3  3  2  1  1
14   3  3  3  3  2  1  1
15   3  3  3  3  2  1  1  1
16   3  3  3  3  2  1  1  1
17   3  3  3  3  2  1  1  1  1
18   3  3  3  3  2  1  1  1  1
19   3  3  3  3  2  2  1  1  1
20   3  3  3  3  2  2  2  1  1

Slots-level-up mode:

1    2
2    3
3    4  2
4    4  3
5    4  3  2
6    2  4  3
7    0  5  3  1
8    0  3  4  2
9    0  1  5  3  1
10   0  0  6  3  2
11   0  0  6  3  2  1
12   0  0  4  4  3  1
13   0  0  2  5  3  1  1
14   0  0  0  6  4  1  1
15   0  0  0  4  5  1  1  1
16   0  0  0  2  6  2  1  1
17   0  0  0  2  6  2  1  1  1
18   0  0  0  0  6  3  2  1  1
19   0  0  0  0  3  4  3  2  1
20   0  0  0  0  0  5  4  3  1

To be clear, this slots-level-up mode is weaker than the OP's proposal I think.

...

So the basic combat effectiveness math of 5e is "baseline action use" (attack action, or cantrip), then you work out how much excess power you can generate based on what resources.

In T4, the baseline action use of a cantrip is a 4d10 or 4d12 spell. For warlocks it is a bit more.

Then you can take your spells and look at which of them exceed this. The fact that low level spells don't exceed this power budget is part of the ways that 5e casters reduce quadratic explosion (low order quadratic terms are ok; higher order ones explode power levels).

"one target, save negates" spell balance is roughly 10 damage per spell level. So a T4 cantrip is roughly equivalent to a 2nd level spell.

So your daily excess power budget is 3+3*2+3*3+2*4+2*5+1*6+1*7, or about 490 single-target damage.

Now "single target, could miss or do nothing" damage is a poor use of spell slots; those spells tend to suck (disintegrate anyone?) unless you do a combo to set them up. So in practice these numbers are lower than how effective a spellcaster is by a good margin.

But the point is that the lower level slots age out and become marginal for use in combat as damage. They remain useful as utility slots, or as tools to spread out the options the spellcaster has; casting fly to allow the barbarian to reach the foe turns concentration + a low level slot into a bunch of continuing damage.

Also doing this in units of 10 points above cantrip gives pretty poor DPR. If we use Rogue as our baseline, a Rogue TWF can easily deliver sneak attack damage at 95% and 75% of a short-swords weapon damage per round (between crits and hits) for about 40 auto-damage per round equivalent; this is worth about 60 "could miss" damage.

A 9th (90) + 8th (80) + 2 7th (70) + 2 6th(60) is 4 rounds; we then can do 2 5th (50) and a 3 4th (40) for 650 "could miss" damage over 11 rounds, or 59 "could miss" damage per round. In theory similar to the Rogue; in practice, better, because you use more efficient spells than "single target, could miss" ones.

With the changes in the OP, you end up with dozens of rounds you can do something similar to this. The rogue becomes pretty pointless; even the stuff they are good at gets far outclassed by a naive single target blaster mage.

 

[DND_Reborn]

To be clear, this slots-level-up mode is weaker than the OP's proposal I think.

Definitely not weaker. You are giving a lot of higher-level slots for use with more powerful spells, especially in later tiers.

So, not only do you now have the option to upcast lower-level spells with these new higher-level slots, but you can cast higher-level spells with them as well.

 

[Blue]

One option I thought of a while back was that 1st level slots become 2nd level slots at 5th caster level, and 2nd level slots become 3rd level slots at 11th caster level. It means you end up with eventually 10 3rd level spell slots at level 11 which allows you to make better use of your 1st and 2nd level spells but also means that you have 10 slots for fireballs.

13th Age does that, but they also reduce the number of spell slots gained. You add spell slots slowly, going from 5 at 1st to 12 at max level, but even your lowest level slots are getting better since every single spell upcasts and it does so on-level. So a 3rd level spell upcast to 5th is as good as a native 5th level spell.)

(13th Age is a d20 from a lead designer of 3ed and the lead designer of 4e. It's only a 10 level game so this chart seems reduced. It also calls the spell levels the same as the class level you get them, so you have 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th level spells.)

Wizard Level	1st level spell	3rd level spell	5th level spell	7th level spell	9th level spell
Level 1	5	—	—	—	—
Level 2	6	—	—	—	—
Level 3	3	4	—	—	—
Level 4	2	6	—	—	—
Level 5	1	4	4	—	—
Level 6	—	2	8	—	—
Level 7	—	1	4	5	—
Level 8	—	—	3	8	—
Level 9	—	—	1	5	6
Level 10	—	—	—	3	9

 

[Blue]

I agree with what you say here, and have already said I wouldn't use this idea unless the system were built around it...but...the value of scaling spells is not the same as getting that extra jump of slot power as if it were an extra spell.

Two fireballs is a much greater output of damage than one fireball with 3 extra dice. Upcasting is objectively better, but rarely does upcasting let you make a low level spell equal in power to a native spell of the slot used.

A hold person who get 2 targets is better than two hold persons - it has the same effect but uses less action economy to cast. A number of buffs and debuffs spells increase targets with upcasting. It's like free Twin metamagic.

But even for fireball, it's quadradic. We get more spell slots either way. Making those same spells do more for the same resource. More slots and more effect - multiplying two things that both increase is the definition of quadratic in RPGs. It doesn't matter that a fireball isn't worth two fireballs, as long as we are multiplying one thing increasing by level (slots) and another thing increasing by level (free upcasting), it's a quadratic increase in power.