JohnSnow said:
Ryan, the fact that you're working on something like this makes me very curious.
I mentioned it earlier in the thread, actually.
RangerWickett said:
What I'm planning to do for the final revision of Elements of Magic is to give spellcasters mana. You get an amount of mana as you take levels in the 'Mage' class at the same rate that you get a Will save bonus (+2, then 1 more every even level, maxing out at 12).
Whenever you cast a spell, it costs 1 mana, but that mana replenishes if you rest for five minutes. Some spells, however, have effects that require more enduring energy, so they cause mana drain. Mana drain only replenishes once per day when you rest.
Spells that cause mana drain are those that have long durations, or that replicate effects that normally take a long time to complete. For instance, teleportation covers a lot of distance quickly, so teleportation above a certain distance causes 1 mana drain instead of just costing 1 mana which you could replenish after 5 minutes. Magical healing, seeing the future, and almost any effect that lasts longer than a minute causes mana drain.
If you're out of mana, you can still cast a few spells in a pinch, but doing so fatigues, then exhausts, then knocks you out. So normally a mage will cast a few spells per encounter, but have only a few 'broken' spells per day. The spells you cast will have all the variety of core D&D spells (moreso, actually, since you have the option to make spells up on the fly), and you'll have to balance the desire to create long-duration effects with the need to save mana for efforts later in the day.
I think it's actually a lot like what Monte is looking for. Now I just need to finish writing it.
I'm not requiring skill checks for this system, for several reasons that came up during the long-term playtest
after I published the book. For one thing, it sucks to both make skill checks and give your targets saves to resist you. If I
could, I'd rewrite the core rules for 4e so that things like Fort, Ref, and Will were static numbers that you'd have to beat when you make a spellcasting check, but that's beyond the scope of a small book.
Also, it was too easy for fighters to jump into spellcasting without really giving anything up. You pick one spell type you want to be good at, and oh no, you aren't that good at climbing. You can just fly. It was overpowered because all you needed to cast were skill ranks and one feat. In the new system, you have a measurable resource for spellcasting -- mana -- which isn't easy to get if you don't focus on magic.
However, with the revisions I'm making, you still spend skill points to represent how good you are at a given magic type. The way it's like Monte's idea is that you can cast 'average' spells several times per encounter, then once you get a chance to rest your ability to use those replenishes. However, you can only cast spells that have long-lasting effects a few times per day before you wear yourself out.
Also, mages have the option of permanently giving up mana to gain enduring abilities. It's a new type of resource management. Do you want cool abilities that always work but can't be changed, or do you want versatility?
I'm going to balance it so that spellcasters won't normally be able to beat fighters at the damage-dealing realm, encouraging mages to use wits to win instead of lots of d6s.
If you want, send me an email at
RangerWickett@hotmail.com, and I can send you the rough draft.