D&D 4E The 4E Magic System

[HP Dreadnought]

With my astounding powers of prognostication, I predict that the magic system in 4E will:

1. Not have scaling spells. A fireball might be an 5th level spell and it will always do exactly 5d6 damage (or whatever). If you want to do more damage you will need to cast a higher level spell.

2. Be more fixed in spell selection. Each time you gain a level in a spellcasting class you will be able to pick a new spell from a list. The lists will be much shorter than the full Wizard/Sorcerer spell lists we have today, and may be influenced by character choices you make. Magical traditions, or specialists, or something.

3. Exclude some of the big problem spells like anti-magic field, or severely curtail their effects. (Yes, anti-magic field is a big problem spell - but only at really high levels of play, so it doesn't really factor into things much. Its a problem spell in the way that teleport is a problem spell in that it makes adventure crafting more challenging for the DM.)

4. Still have high-level spellcasters that are more powerful than the martial classes.

Anybody else have any predictions or thoughts on these?

 

[GreatLemur]

1. Not have scaling spells. A fireball might be an 5th level spell and it will always do exactly 5d6 damage (or whatever). If you want to do more damage you will need to cast a higher level spell.

I'm thinking we might see something kind of between scaling spells (like fireball), spell series (like cure X wounds), and metamagic (or, arguably, psionics). That is, a 6th-level wizard can cast fireball as a 5th level spell, and it'll use up a 5th level slot (or however the quasi-Vancian resources work), doing 5d6 damage, . . . or instead he could cast it as a level spell, using a 6th level slot, and doing 6d6.

If Wizards are going to be casting spells of every character level of their career, and all these spells are going to be printed in one damn book, it makes sense to expect that a lot of 'em will be "This spell functions like X, except..." spells (although hopefully they won't even waste space printing that much).

 

[Irda Ranger]

All of these answers are, of course, IMO.

1. Not have scaling spells. A fireball might be an 5th level spell and it will always do exactly 5d6 damage (or whatever). If you want to do more damage you will need to cast a higher level spell.

Incorrect. Your actual example (Fireball) will not scale at a rate of 1d6 per level (this has been confirmed), but that doesn't mean spells won't have some scaling. The designers have promised that taking your first level of wizard when you're already a Ftr 25 won't be a boneheaded maneuver. For that to be true, some aspect of the spell must scale with level. Otherwise your spells will be useless versus the opponents you'll be facing at that level.

2. Be more fixed in spell selection. Each time you gain a level in a spellcasting class you will be able to pick a new spell from a list. The lists will be much shorter than the full Wizard/Sorcerer spell lists we have today, and may be influenced by character choices you make.

I believe the underlined part to be correct, but the first part to be wrong. The list will be shorter because many of the signature spells will be converted to at-will or per-encounter powers. There's no point in having a Magic Missile spell if a caster can throw Eldritch Blast at will, IYKWIM.

However, the more controversial of my guesses is that high-level spells will actually replace low-level spells in your repetoire. The 4E designers have indicated that they want you to have the same number of choices to make at 28th level as at 8th level, which means that the spell selection list cannot grow indefinitely. Eventually, the list has to be pruned.

Either that or your spell selection is very limited, but the spell grows with the caster, so that Farstride becomes Dimension Door becomes Teleport, etc.

3. Exclude some of the big problem spells like anti-magic field, or severely curtail their effects.

First you'll have to convince people there are "problem spells", and not just "problem DM's" who don't know how to properly handle them. But I think you are correct. Much was learned from the Polymorph debacle.

4. Still have high-level spellcasters that are more powerful than the martial classes.

I hope not. Four editions (Old, 1e-3e) of that is more than enough.

 

[psionotic]

I'm guessing that fireball, for instance, will do something like 4d6+(caster level) damage, maximum +10(?). So there will still be scaling, but it will be on a smaller... scale.

 

[Scribble]

Look at the powers in TOB. That's my guess for a system similar to what we'll see.

A lot of the scaling in that is based on the level of the "spell" itself, or you get a bonus to damage = level or sometimes 1/2 level.

Some of the other powers (like defensive ones and counters) are based on the level you have in certain skills. There's one for fire resistance for instance that's tied into tumble. The more ranks you have, the higher your resistance until you're eventually immune.

 

[Wepwawet]

What's TOB?

 

[Aage]

What's TOB?

Tome of Battle.

Personally, I would make the system so that instead of scaling with level, all effects scale with success. What I mean is:

Let's say a spell (fire ball maybe) does 2d6 base damage.
Now, you throw it so that it affect 3 people, with 13, 15 and 22 reflex defence respectively.
You roll 15, so the guy with 22 takes no damage, the guy with 15 takes 2d6 and the guy with 13 takes 2d6+2 ('cause 15-13 = 2).

 

[Doug McCrae]

1. False
2. True
3. True
4. False, hopefully

 

[Scribble]

What's TOB?

Sorry ToB (Tome of Battle)

The powers in that are both semi scaling and also based on the level of the effect...

Like a low level fire effect might be 3d6+ your level...But then later on you can access a higher powered version thats like 5d6 + your level... (I don't have the book in front of me to give exact examples, but those are close.)

You can switch out lower level powers every so often for higher ones, so you could switch your lower level fire effect out for a higher level one if you want (or just keep them both...)

Basically they sort of scale, but to really make them more powerful you need to select the higher version of the power.

 

[Cadfan]

1. Not have scaling spells. A fireball might be an 5th level spell and it will always do exactly 5d6 damage (or whatever). If you want to do more damage you will need to cast a higher level spell.

I see no reason why spells will stop scaling. I see good reasons why they would scale more than they do now.

The reason that spells had limits on scaling in the past was that the spell slot system meant that lower level spells absolutely had to be weaker than higher level spells. A spell which scaled indefinitely broke the system. However, lets say there are no spell slots. If a wizard of a particular level simply picks 3 per day combat spells, there's no reason to mandate that lower level spells must be weaker than higher level spells.

See what I mean? When spell slots are held in common, there's no reason to have a level 5 fireball that does 20 damage, and a level 10 fireball that does 40 damage. Just have the one fireball.

Nonscaling abilities are an artifact of a system in which players have abilities of multiple power levels (spell levels) all held at once. Without that, you don't need to have nonscaling abilities.

2. Be more fixed in spell selection. Each time you gain a level in a spellcasting class you will be able to pick a new spell from a list. The lists will be much shorter than the full Wizard/Sorcerer spell lists we have today, and may be influenced by character choices you make. Magical traditions, or specialists, or something.

I sincerely hope you are right.

4. Still have high-level spellcasters that are more powerful than the martial classes.

I'm not sure. The reason that high level spellcasters are likely to be more powerful than martial classes is because spells get to break rules. A fighter has to roll an attack roll and hit in 3e. It doesn't matter what level he is. To stab someone he must 1) get adjacent to his foe, 2) roll an attack roll and succeed, 3) do enough damage to over come DR, and 4) avoid any miss chance he may be suffering. To accomplish these things he has a set list of abilities. Spellcasters have little boxes of extra rules, one per spell, that let them bypass the normal system. I suspect this will continue to be the overall system, even if martial classes get maneuvers. So fighters will continue to be vulnerable to rule-avoiding abilities, like Wall of Force, that stop a fighter from even getting to try at succeeding in all of the rolls he has to make to stab someone.

This could be balanced, of course, by letting fighters stab people really really hard when it works.



MY PREDICTION!

Flipping saves from defender to attacker (almost certainly) makes saving throws automatically scale. This is perhaps the biggest likely change in 4e that no one seems to have noticed.

Right now, a wizard's 1st level spell has a save DC of 11+int, always. Int grows, but not very fast. Flip the save, and have the caster roll something like 1d20+caster level+int+item. This means that a level 25 spell and a level 1 spell will have the same saving throw when cast by a level 25 spellcaster. The level 1 spell may have a smaller effect, but the save will be the same. So that aspect of scaling will be even bigger in the future.

I'm reasonably certain they will do this, since I can't see a reason not to. The only reservation I have is that they didn't do it in Tome of Battle. They should have. Its the one flaw in an otherwise very good book- if a maneuver that Dazes a target when it hits is appropriate when given a DC of 14+str and used at level 7, it is still appropriate with a DC of 18+str when used at level 15.

The game could be written so that spell BAB or whatever we're going to call it doesn't automatically scale. You could make a spell's "attack roll" equal something like "spell level + caster stat + item." But that creates a lot of problems, such as messing up fighter/mage multiclassing. I don't think they will.