OMG Fireball, Noooooooooooo!

[Mercule]

Hah, yep, that's the sign...D&D as we know it is dead. (And this is meant semi-seriously )

Yup. To which I say:

D&D is dead. Long live D&D!

I just hope they fix the cure X wounds spells, too.

 

[glass]

With 5 levels of spells, I'm imagining you'll get 1 spell per spell level.

My current theory/hope is, once you get to four* levels of spells, you won't get any new slots; instead your existing slots will level up with you.


glass.

(* Or, three, or five, or whatever)

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'm thinking all damage dealers and flat bonuses will be more like abilities and the rest of the spells such as Speak With Dead that can't be shorthanded will remain as spells which you memorize and cast á la Vance.

Fireball is probably an ability of wizards' that they can cast/unleash at any time they happen to have magic stored in the hands. At low levels having magic stored in the hands make wizards vulnerable. At higher levels wizards can afford to keep magig stored in both hands and feet (for better movement or AC or what have you).

Wizards will have more slots to store magic in compared to a paladin. A paladin could store magic in the crown (for good saves) or in the hands (for smite) but a wizard can store one spell on each ringfinger, as a vest, as bracers and so on.

This would rhyme with the quote saying wizards who have cast all their spells are still at 80% power or something like that.

 

[Szatany]

My current theory/hope is, once you get to four* levels of spells, you won't get any new slots; instead your existing slots will level up with you.


glass.

(* Or, three, or five, or whatever)

My current theory is that you have few slots for at will spells, few for per encounter spells, and few for per day spells, and you fill them with whatever you want.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm thinking all damage dealers and flat bonuses will be more like abilities and the rest of the spells such as Speak With Dead that can't be shorthanded will remain as spells which you memorize and cast á la Vance.

I think that spells per day spells are likely to be ones which would be game-breaking if you could do them all day every day (wall of stone? Fabricate? Teleport? Various other out-of-combat utility spells), while a lot of the kind of things that you'd want to use in combat are ones that can happily be per-encounter or at will.

 

[Odhanan]

One thing I like about D&D over other RPG systems is that the gameplay fundamentally changes as you progress in levels.

At low levels its all about wearing down their HP.
At mid levels you need to worry about damage reduction and immunities,
by the time you hit high level, HP dont even matter anymore, its all about Save or Die spells and getting the the drop on your opponent.

I'm concerned that at high levels, we are just throwing more dice around, but players continue to use the same tactics over and over again.

Most CRPGs have this problem. At low level, you swing and smash monsters. At high levels, you are still swinging and smashing monsters, and you dont need to adjust your tactics one bit.

THIS is the real danger of the line of design James is talking about here. Spot on.

 

[FireLance]

With 5 levels of spells, I'm imagining you'll get 1 spell per spell level.

Just to clarify, the approach of getting generic slots which can be filled with "spells" of any level was previously seen in Bo9S. Migrating spell slots is a possibility, but it would probably be simpler to just allow any slot to be filled with a unique spell known (no repeats, again as per Bo9S). The main limitation would then be on the number of high-level spells known.

 

[meleeguy]

No fireball at all?

So far, I've only seen 'controller' offered up for spell casters (etc?). We have no evidence for a ranged spell damage, do we?

 

[Dalamar]

One of the examples of being a controller was dropping a fireball at the right place.

 

[Banshee16]

Now that is interesting. Of course, without seeing the math we don't really know where they're going with this.

I've been thinking...what if the XPH, with spell points, and more importantly, the idea of scaling powers or whatever, was a test for how magic would eventually work in 4E?

What if a wizard has a fireball spell, and if he casts it as a lvl 3 spell, it causes Xd6 damage. If he casts it as a lvl 10 spell, it causes Yd6 damage. And if he casts it as one of his rare lvl 25 spells, it causes Zd6 damage?

At this point it's no longer character level related. Instead, it's spell level related....and by the sounds of it, I'm wondering if spell levels are associated to character levels, but are a flexible scale....ie. a lvl 10 wizard can cast up to lvl 10 spells, a lvl 20 wizard can cast lvl 20 spells, etc. Spells could be independent of level until you either memorize (if that's in there) or cast them, at which point you select which level to use. So one wizard might memorize his fireball as a lvl 7 spell, and another memorizes it as lvl 4, but then memorizes a lvl 7 polymorph using that same "slot", or whatever?

This kind of model could work for scaling spells like Summon Monster, and could even solve the Polymorph problem. A level 3 Polymorph might only allow you to turn into small and medium animals, whereas a lvl 25 polymorph lets you turn into a gargantuan red dragon.

Just thinking..

Banshee