Vaalingrade
Legend
Ironically, punishing non-buff magic encourage only the bards you hate.
It's super-fun in Dungeon Crawl Classics, too.I like the concept of magic causing corruption much better, as was introduced in the Conan RPG.
And that's my preliminary thoughts on the issue. What do you think? And by that, I don't mean, "I LOVE SPELLS! SPELLS ARE WICKED KEWL! YOU ARE A BAD BAD MAN FOR EVEN SUGGESTING THIS!"
I know I'm a bad, bad man. Just call me Leroy Brown. But I'm more interested in feedback as to whether you think that specific implementation would be successful at the goal of creating a campaign feel, in 5e, similar to that of the prior Lankhmar setting.
I'm not sure. If you want less spellcasting in your game then it would make sense to discourage people from wanting to play spellcasters. This seems to be a good way to have less spellcasting in your campaign without outright banning all spellcasting classes.To reply directly to the OP's question; no, this would not be successful. Unless the goal is to just stop people from wanting to play spellcasters, which it would. That's a round-about way of limiting magic, but you should probably just ban certain spells instead (or ban spellcasters entirely).
I'm not sure. If you want less spellcasting in your game then it would make sense to discourage people from wanting to play spellcasters. This seems to be a good way to have less spellcasting in your campaign without outright banning all spellcasting classes.
You would have to also eliminate or modify ritual casting. Which is probably one of the more egregiously broken mechanics in 5e. I'd probably make ritual casting take at least an hour (perhaps an hour per spell level) and have a gold cost in components.
I understand what you are saying but with these rules why would anyone want to play a Wizard or Sorcerer. What are they going to do during a combat encounter? Take 4 rounds to cast a spell or attack with a dagger? You are essentially making these classes unplayable unless you give them some martial abilities to offset these losses.I think you're missing the point of this exercise. I was very clear-
To be clear- changing the casting time, extending the casting time, would have a massive and deleterious effect on spellcasting within combat. It would make martial characters much more important for combat, and make spellcasting more of a utility and out-of-combat experience, with only limited uses for combat.
The point of the exercise (just like it is in Lankhmar) is to make spellcasting in combat almost ... unusable. Not completely- there will still be occasions where it is possible (the hidden wizard who has time to cast a fireball at an advancing group, for example), but spellcasting will largely be for the utility and other spells, not for combat.
If people are waiting four rounds to cast eldritch blast, then ... well, that's certainly a choice!
(EDIT- if you are unfamiliar with the AD&D rules, you might not know just how much of a nerf Lankhmar was. Let's use two examples:
The fastest spells were "Power Word," which is why they were so high level (Power Word Stun was 7th level!). They took one segment, which means they now take one round to cast. And if you are hit during this time, the spell is ruined (no concentration check). You add the one round to the initiative ... in effect, there would be two rounds of attacks against you prior to getting the spell cast.
Fireball was also a fast spell- 3 segments. Now, of course, it's three rounds. Which translates into four rounds (see what I did there? ) of attacks, any one of which, if successful, would cause the spell to be ruined.
Lankhmar's rules made it nearly impossible to cast during combat for 1e.