D&D General Reinterpreting Fullcasters as Halfcasters, while preserving the Fullcaster feeling. (+)

[CreamCloud0]

Okay so, i was looking at the DM imposed restrictions thread and something about the poll tickled this idea in my brain, in my opinion halfcaster spell progression is so much more better balanced for the progression of challenge in the game and against the rest of the classes, i'd rather just be able to play with them as the only casters, but restricting fullcasters cuts out just under half of the classes from the game (5/13 if you don't count the warlock), so, obviously, not a great choice.

But what if the fullcasters were redesigned as halfcasters while still trying to preserve as much of the feeling of playing a fullcaster as possible with them? how would it be done and what changes would need to be made? could we make the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer and wizard into halfcasters and still feel like powerful magic users?

 

[DammitVictor]

Take the Warlock chassis, with Pact Magic, and replace Mystic Arcanum with half-caster progression.

Your spells only go up to 5th level, total, but you get 5th level spells as quick as a full caster.

 

[Omand]

Well, I would think you would need to increase the number of spell slots/magic points (or whatever you decide to use) for each caster class to balance out not obtaining the top 4 levels of spells in the current game. It is not just speed of access, but overall capacity that is part of the feel of a full caster class.

Cheers

 

[mamba]

If I were to create my own 5e spinoff that is absolutely how I would go about it. Base every caster on the abandoned 5.5 UA Warlock chassis.

 

[Horwath]

a variant that caps spell for players at 5th level max.
just increase amount of lower level spell slots to compensate for loss of high level slots and spell.
or just do spell points and cap at 5th level slots, or maybe ban higher level spells but keep spell slots or ability for spell points to make higher level spell effects by upcasting lower level spells.

 

[Remathilis]

But what if the fullcasters were redesigned as halfcasters while still trying to preserve as much of the feeling of playing a fullcaster as possible with them? how would it be done and what changes would need to be made? could we make the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer and wizard into halfcasters and still feel like powerful magic users?

Well that depends on what part of the half-caster are you attracted to? Half casters have three major drawbacks compared to full casters:

• They have less overall spell slots per day
• They gain access to new spell levels at a slower rate
• They are capped at 5th level magic tops.

Other Half-casters (paladin, ranger, artificer and warlock*) give other abilities to compensate (martial, invocation or magic items) so you would have to do something on that level to fix them. For example, wizards or sorcerers would need invocation like abilities or druids Moon-druid level wild shape baseline.

The other option is decide what of the three points you want and go from there. Are you interested in less spells per day but faster progression? A pact magic system. Lots of spells but only 5th level? A spell point system similar to the UA Mystic.

In general though, I kinda feel making casters into half-casters would ruin the idea of being a caster. There isn't much daylight already between a ranger and druid, cleric and paladin. You would really need to give those classes some unique mechanics to keep them from feeling like variants of one another.

 

[Mephista]

They did a warlock-to-halfcaster conversion thingy in the onednd playtest. It was pretty cool. Why not try that?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well that depends on what part of the half-caster are you attracted to? Half casters have three major drawbacks compared to full casters:

• They have less overall spell slots per day
• They gain access to new spell levels at a slower rate
• They are capped at 5th level magic tops.

Other Half-casters (paladin, ranger, artificer and warlock*) give other abilities to compensate (martial, invocation or magic items) so you would have to do something on that level to fix them. For example, wizards or sorcerers would need invocation like abilities or druids Moon-druid level wild shape baseline.

The other option is decide what of the three points you want and go from there. Are you interested in less spells per day but faster progression? A pact magic system. Lots of spells but only 5th level? A spell point system similar to the UA Mystic.

mostly out of these three the last one is the one i'd want to focus on the most: spells capping at 5th, same-ish number of spells but all squished down to be in the level 1-5 range, Horwath's table above is a good example of what i'm thinking of, although i wouldn't be opposed to a mystic arcanum-esc feature that provides limited access to some of the higher levelled spells.

In general though, I kinda feel making casters into half-casters would ruin the idea of being a caster. There isn't much daylight already between a ranger and druid, cleric and paladin. You would really need to give those classes some unique mechanics to keep them from feeling like variants of one another.

this i do have to disagree on, between the three halfcasters we have we can already see it's possible to make some feel more castery than others, and especially if we're increasing the total number of slots they do get to play with in that range i think that's more than possible.



ALSO, just to clarify to all this isn't me trying to achieve anything personal for a game or anything, this is just pure thought experiment.

 

[Remathilis]

this i do have to disagree on, between the three halfcasters we have we can already see it's possible to make some feel more castery than others, and especially if we're increasing the total number of slots they do get to play with in that range i think that's more than possible

My point was that you need to add something to make up for the loss of much of that high level power. More low level slots are a start, but is there enough to want to play a cleric over the extra attack, better HD, and smite ability of a paladin? What's the cleric getting to offset that?

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, it's a tricky balancing act. Tier 1, levels 1-5, full casters are already comparatively weak. Tier 2 is were the game is most balanced, IMO, which is good because that's where most games are played. So you probably don't want to tinker too much there. Tier 3 is where full casters start to pull ahead, arguably, and tier 4 is crazy, with level 20 basically being it's own thing. But now we are talking about a tiny share of actual games.

So I would be looking not so much at how to recreate them as a half-caster from the start, but rather that how to temper them in tiers 3-4. But, with half-casters already in the game, how do you take away the full caster edge of having access to higher level spells? Extra spell slots is okay but not really that much of a buff unless it's a campaign where there is a lot of attrition (i.e. many conbats between rests), which is the opposite of how the game has been trending for a long while.

I think one solution might be to give them ways to enhance their lower level spells - more targets, larger areas of effect, longer durations, multiple concentration spells at once, etc. Though this is already something that sorcerers can basically do.