D&D 5E Too Much Spellcasting in Your D&D? Just Add a Little Lankhmar!

[Maxperson]

Everyone Else: No one would want to play a spellcaster if you implemented this.
Me: Oooh. I'd want to play a wizard with a one level of fighter or rogue.

I think you'd have to multiclass any spellcasting, or else alter magic to be gained through the feat system so that you could focus on a martial class and add in more and more spellcasting. A pure spellcaster would be unplayable in a game with an significant amount of combat(almost all of them).

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed

I really like the Amber Solution, I was going to give a detailed response to the OP but did not realise that the thread was necroed.

Merlin's Amber method was basically vancian casting. Spend time casting(memorizing) the spell except for a small amount of time to finish the casting. The you have to spend time casting and hanging it again. The major difference was that hung spells degraded over time, so you couldn't leave them there forever. I don't think Zelazny ever stated how long it took spells to start degrading or degrade to the point of uselessness, though.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not mean to bards! I simply accurately categorize them as anathema to life and fun. A bard is the living embodiment of a co-worker saying, "Hot enuff for ya," for all of eternity.


The Amber solution (from @Wolfram stout )
So, for those wanting to limit magic in combat (but not get rid of it completely) I counter-propose The Amber Solution (2nd Amber series by Zelazny which focused on Corwin's son Merlin).

All spells are Rituals. Casters can complete a ritual except the last touches and "Hang" the spell. This reduces the casting time back to the casting time in the book, but Casters can only Hang a number of spells equal to their proficiency bonus plus if they have a familiar they can hang one spell on it.

This allows the caster to cast some spells in combat but not a lot. For me, it is a nice in-between step.

ETA- I call it the Merlin/Amber because this is from the Merlin, not Corwin, series.

I would merge the two ideas if I were to run a Lankhmar style game. Spells would be cast at 10x casting time as a general rule. I'd then allow not proficiency bonus number of spells, but proficiency bonus number of spell levels to be hung with the Amber method. That way you aren't tossing six 6th-9th level spells out in a single combat at 20th level. Even the powerful wizards of Lankhmar couldn't do that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even if you can do very little in combat, there are still things that only a magic user can do. So combat, just wouldn't be that character's time to shine and that is OK to some. This option, or a variant of it, allows for other ways to play the game. Not everyone plays a combat focused D&D game. This option might make magic users shine even more, just not as much in combat. Some people will still want to play that.

I expect there might still be plenty of combat, just that the casters role in it, thaumaturically-speaking, would be reduced. Non-Magic PCs really get a place to shine here.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Can you tell me about the Merlin/Amber approach? I searched for it on this thread, but all I found were people telling you how mean you are to magic-users. And bards. You are very mean to bards.

Rituals in 5e take 10 minutes over the regular casting time and don't use a slot, so they can be cast day-long. I think it's close to the Amber spellcasting, but not quite. Mostly because they'd allow high-level spells to be cast at will as long as one can prepare (and a whole group with Premonition would certainly make life difficult for the GM).

As was explained, regular spellcasters had to take a lot of time to cast spells (and it was taxing). If they were not using spells, sorcerers could use raw magical energy to create the less subtle effects and, unless connected to an energy source, they would tire very quickly. Logrus (and probably Pattern initiates, as I can't see Fiona being hailed as a great sorceress if she wasn't able to do the same) can prepare their spells and hang the magical energies into their external source of power. They can do complex spells, and just have to manifest the Logrus to release the energy and make the spell effects in a few seconds. Problem: the spells decays in the Logrus so they need to be maintained. We don't know the speed of decay, but in Sign of Chaos Merlin reflexively cast a cardiac arrest spell he had hanging there and barely remembered in his LSD-induced hallucination... so I guess spells stay around for quite some time).

In the lore, I don't think the Amber magic would preclude a quick fireball spell as it's just raw energy being released, but it would affect mostly complex spells with delicate results... But the Amber solution discussed here would let PCs store a few spells they can cast and impose a long time penalty on casting anything else (maybe even more than just a 10 minutes penalty). Paradoxically, Merlin's sorcery in Amber is exactly Vancian magic as it was in the former editions: you had "spell slots" where you had to specifically assign spells instead of the current "4 3rd-level slots with which I can cast spells from my memorized list". You had to memorize Sleep twice if you wanted to cast it twice, which is closer to how I see the storing of the energies working. The difference here is that proponents of the Amber solution would also severely diminish the amount of spell slots in order to accomplish Snarf's intent. Or maybe just have "You can store X levels of spells at level Y, so if you want to cast a 9th level spell, you'd need to allot 9 points, so that's 9 level spells you could have had for the day..."

I still think Snarf's solution for a Lankhmar game is quite close to his original idea, when, as other suggested, a "buff" is applied to the spell effects. If your fireball is empowered and maximize, but it takes 4 rounds to cast, then a spellcaster in the back who is doing some chanting is a deadly threat even at high level (90 damage, save for half) that warrant stopping him, instead of just having him cast fireball (30 damage, save for half) that most characters can withstand. Lankhmar sorcerers are supposed to wield powerful forces after all... (and it would keep the same DoT for wizards).

That's interesting. Would you lose all (or a) hanging spell(s) if concentration is disrupted?

Merlin routinely did concentration-breaking things without losing spells. They are stored externally, the concentration is just necessary to recall the Logrus and release the energy.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Currently playing AD&D 2E. Our 1st level crew has a total of 7 spells between 3 casters. And the Wiz is putting in 1 whole spell into that pot.

Doing just fine on the magic might atm.

 

[Seramus]

5E "suffers" from having very flash-in-the-pan short lived magic. There are a few exceptions, but most spells only last minutes, hours, or maybe a day at most. None of the slow and more interesting forms of magic that last years, decades, or centuries. I would have no problem with slower and more ritual-oriented casting if the results were more impactful/lasting.

Give me spells that bless crops for a year and a day. Spells that cause anyone who slumbers in the valley to experience nightmares and poor rest. Spells that whisper paranoia into the minds of a small village. Spells that leave a lake sparkling blue and safe to drink.

 

[Jack Daniel]

@Snarf Zagyg, I wonder if you're familiar with how Beyond the Wall and its sister games (Through Sunken Lands and Grizzled Adventurers) handle magic.

There's only one caster class, the mage, and it has three types of magic: cantrips, spells, and rituals.

• Cantrips are weak effects that can be used repeatedly but have a chance of backfiring or reversing each time they're used.

• Spells are reliable but limited, with mages able to cast but one spell per level per day (with no Vancian memorization—if you know a spell, you can cast it). They take only a round to cast, and they're roughly on par with D&D 1st or 2nd level spells.

• And then there are rituals, which are divided into levels: 1st level mages can cast 1st level rituals, 2nd level mages can cast 2nd level rituals, etc. Each ritual takes one hour per level to cast, and as with cantrips, an Int or Wis check is rolled at the end of it, with failure indicating some kind of twist or unintended consequence accompanying the result of the ritual.

• A later addition to the game brought in a (dangerous and unreliable) way to bring the power of rituals to bear in combat. A 2nd level ritual called The Patient Word can be performed in sequence with any other ritual in order to memorize it and have it stored in the caster's mind, volatile and ready to be triggered. The ritual can be cast at will; or, if you fail a cantrip or ritual roll while you have rituals memorized, you accidentally trigger all of them. Even the wisest, smartest mages can only have at most three or four rituals memorized at a time, making this system feel even more properly Vancian than D&D. (Also, IIRC, each memorized ritual requires that the caster prepare a special wand or talisman which is then broken when the ritual effect is triggered; not necessarily expensive components, but they need to be magically significant and so may not always be as readily available as the caster might like.)

• A safer option is the 3rd level ritual Scribe Scroll, which works much like The Patient Word, but stores the magic in a scroll created via costly material components. A scroll isn't as volatile as a memorized spell, but it has two drawbacks. First, you have to make another casting roll to read the scroll, just as you did when first performing the stored ritual; failure on either check can result in a twisted, unpredictable effect. Second, it takes one round per ritual level to read a scroll—so you're trading speed for safety. For example, Fireball in this system is a 6th level ritual, normally something that a mage would only cast from atop a tower at an oncoming army with six hours of ritual casting; if you memorize it with The Patient Word (which takes eight hours total), you can drop it in a round (but you can also very easily drop it on yourself by accident); while storing it in a Scribed Scroll (nine hours' total prep time) makes the fireball castable in six rounds, tougher to pull off but much safer.

This is far and away my favorite magic system in any D&D-derived game. (In fact, I was on the verge of quitting D&D before I discovered Beyond the Wall.) It's wonderfully written, the rituals are flavorful and interesting without being too edgy or convoluted (unlike some other OSR games I could mention), and it works really well in play.

 

[LoganRan]

Spoiler

@Snarf Zagyg, I wonder if you're familiar with how Beyond the Wall and its sister games (Through Sunken Lands and Grizzled Adventurers) handle magic.

There's only one caster class, the mage, and it has three types of magic: cantrips, spells, and rituals.

• Cantrips are weak effects that can be used repeatedly but have a chance of backfiring or reversing each time they're used.

• Spells are reliable but limited, with mages able to cast but one spell per level per day (with no Vancian memorization—if you know a spell, you can cast it). They take only a round to cast, and they're roughly on par with D&D 1st or 2nd level spells.

• And then there are rituals, which are divided into levels: 1st level mages can cast 1st level rituals, 2nd level mages can cast 2nd level rituals, etc. Each ritual takes one hour per level to cast, and as with cantrips, an Int or Wis check is rolled at the end of it, with failure indicating some kind of twist or unintended consequence accompanying the result of the ritual.

• A later addition to the game brought in a (dangerous and unreliable) way to bring the power of rituals to bear in combat. A 2nd level ritual called The Patient Word can be performed in sequence with any other ritual in order to memorize it and have it stored in the caster's mind, volatile and ready to be triggered. The ritual can be cast at will; or, if you fail a cantrip or ritual roll while you have rituals memorized, you accidentally trigger all of them. Even the wisest, smartest mages can only have at most three or four rituals memorized at a time, making this system feel even more properly Vancian than D&D. (Also, IIRC, each memorized ritual requires that the caster prepare a special wand or talisman which is then broken when the ritual effect is triggered; not necessarily expensive components, but they need to be magically significant and so may not always be as readily available as the caster might like.)

• A safer option is the 3rd level ritual Scribe Scroll, which works much like The Patient Word, but stores the magic in a scroll created via costly material components. A scroll isn't as volatile as a memorized spell, but it has two drawbacks. First, you have to make another casting roll to read the scroll, just as you did when first performing the stored ritual; failure on either check can result in a twisted, unpredictable effect. Second, it takes one round per ritual level to read a scroll—so you're trading speed for safety. For example, Fireball in this system is a 6th level ritual, normally something that a mage would only cast from atop a tower at an oncoming army with six hours of ritual casting; if you memorize it with The Patient Word (which takes eight hours total), you can drop it in a round (but you can also very easily drop it on yourself by accident); while storing it in a Scribed Scroll (nine hours' total prep time) makes the fireball castable in six rounds, tougher to pull off but much safer.

This is far and away my favorite magic system in any D&D-derived game. (In fact, I was on the verge of quitting D&D before I discovered Beyond the Wall.) It's wonderfully written, the rituals are flavorful and interesting without being too edgy or convoluted (unlike some other OSR games I could mention), and it works really well in play.

This is fantastic. It is exactly the kind of magic system I have been thinking about myself.

I had heard of Beyond the Wall and Through Sunken Lands but had not yet looked at the systems very closely. Your post has convinced me to pick up a copy of Through Sunken Lands (which is a more Swords & Sorcery vibe I believe) post haste!

 

[Cruentus]

This is fantastic. It is exactly the kind of magic system I have been thinking about myself.

I had heard of Beyond the Wall and Through Sunken Lands but had not yet looked at the systems very closely. Your post has convinced me to pick up a copy of Through Sunken Lands (which is a more Swords & Sorcery vibe I believe) post haste!

Beyond the Wall is great. Lots of ideas, and I love the basic system.

Beyond the Wall has the feel of YA novels, where the characters start out young-ish, rather than adults, but its easy to adapt.

Through Sunken Lands, I think, is more of a teeming metropolis with characters leaving to explore the lands outside, but has that S&S feel, and characters, I believe, start at 2nd level. I tried to port my 5e fighter/wizard into TSL, and he ended up looking very much like Moorcock's Elric, which was cool.

I'd love to figure out how to use the spell system in BTW with Old School Essentials without breaking something. I think the spell system they have is so much more evocative, in that different casters have different access: elves in BTW have spells and rituals. Mages have Cantrips and Spells, another type might have Cantrips and Rituals, or just Cantrips. Definitely makes magic feel different and less reliable.