Skyscraper
Explorer
One question I want feedback on is : "in particular, do you find that those spells would be relatively balanced compared to other spells of their new level?" Namely, spells that are one level higher but become single save spells.
People seem incredulous at the mere fact that I'm contemplating this houserule. Hehe As I mentioned above, there are ways to remove paralysis. It requires the proper counterspell. And, you can target spellcasters, if the spell requires concentration. Then, like I mentioned, most foes won't have access to paralysing powers. So what are the real odds of a PC ending up paralysed for a whole battle? Quite low, in fact.
So why do I want it? For the fear effect. I'll even add that in my games, there is no magic that brings the dead back to life. No raise dead or ressurrection. (There might be dark rituals, but you don't want to mess with those. Or do you?) I want the players - not the PCs, the players - to be nervous in some gameplay circumstances. Players become nervous when their PC is threatened in certain ways. When you meet a bunch of ghouls... Will you really attack, knowing that your whole party can simply die to such enemies? Old school did have more of this. Sure, it was more arbitrary etc.. etc.. Like I said, some people dislike this, and I respect that.
My intent is not to convince anyone about whether it's more fun to play single-save or save-each-round. I'm fine with most people preferring the latter, and me, the former. Or rather, it's not that I prefer one over the other. It's more that, after having played with the latter for a while, I want to play with the former right now.
I'm more looking at the mechanics, and less at why people prefer save-each-round. But I don't want to restrict the topic necessarily, because in my recent threads I found that some people sharing their dislike of a rule, supported their arguments with actual constructive stuff on why they dislike it. I can thereafter disregard the opinion that I respect but do not find useful, and pick up the mechanical challenges to see how - or if - I want to deal with them.
So, back to the mechanics. I think the challenge generally more lies in the gameplay balance. If there are foes at every corner that know Hold Person or Flesh to Stone, you're stuck in a difficult situation. This won't be the situation in my games. NPC casters and paralysing monsters are rare. As for players having access to single-save spells, I can deal with that pretty easily with story-based stuff. I like that some monsters will be easy to defeat because the right spell worked at the right time.
Yet, the save-each-round transformed into single-save spells and powers will exist and I don't want them to be auto-win buttons necessarily. So does my proposed modification make sense to balance things, namely to increase the spell level by 1 for those spells?
People seem incredulous at the mere fact that I'm contemplating this houserule. Hehe As I mentioned above, there are ways to remove paralysis. It requires the proper counterspell. And, you can target spellcasters, if the spell requires concentration. Then, like I mentioned, most foes won't have access to paralysing powers. So what are the real odds of a PC ending up paralysed for a whole battle? Quite low, in fact.
So why do I want it? For the fear effect. I'll even add that in my games, there is no magic that brings the dead back to life. No raise dead or ressurrection. (There might be dark rituals, but you don't want to mess with those. Or do you?) I want the players - not the PCs, the players - to be nervous in some gameplay circumstances. Players become nervous when their PC is threatened in certain ways. When you meet a bunch of ghouls... Will you really attack, knowing that your whole party can simply die to such enemies? Old school did have more of this. Sure, it was more arbitrary etc.. etc.. Like I said, some people dislike this, and I respect that.
My intent is not to convince anyone about whether it's more fun to play single-save or save-each-round. I'm fine with most people preferring the latter, and me, the former. Or rather, it's not that I prefer one over the other. It's more that, after having played with the latter for a while, I want to play with the former right now.
I'm more looking at the mechanics, and less at why people prefer save-each-round. But I don't want to restrict the topic necessarily, because in my recent threads I found that some people sharing their dislike of a rule, supported their arguments with actual constructive stuff on why they dislike it. I can thereafter disregard the opinion that I respect but do not find useful, and pick up the mechanical challenges to see how - or if - I want to deal with them.
So, back to the mechanics. I think the challenge generally more lies in the gameplay balance. If there are foes at every corner that know Hold Person or Flesh to Stone, you're stuck in a difficult situation. This won't be the situation in my games. NPC casters and paralysing monsters are rare. As for players having access to single-save spells, I can deal with that pretty easily with story-based stuff. I like that some monsters will be easy to defeat because the right spell worked at the right time.
Yet, the save-each-round transformed into single-save spells and powers will exist and I don't want them to be auto-win buttons necessarily. So does my proposed modification make sense to balance things, namely to increase the spell level by 1 for those spells?
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