D&D General + Homebrew Brainstorm to bring back prepared Vancian Casting +

Distracted DM said:

Also, I noticed a sentiment from some theorycrafters and designers, including Mike Mearls, that upcasting damage/heal spells in 5e is almost never worth it.. Especially because of cantrips.

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Upcasting lower level spells is mot worth it because mearls and the othet 5e designers did a bad job at balancing. They at some point rven proudly said they have no math guy in the team. This is not the fault of cantrips, its just bad math from designers.

13th age does have cantrips and upcasting of lower level spell works fine because they did the math.


Also more in general: if you make your own game and your main reason is you lile vancian spellcasting, then why base it so much on D&D 5e where this does not work at all?


There is no reason to have spells of differenr levels even. Spells could just scale with your spellcasting stat. (Which could increase every 2nd level).


Some spells you could still get at higher levels, and they could have higher base effect and worse scaling with spellcasting stuff.


You could even make it more like cmvancian spellcasting where each spell is there only once (like 13th age or 4e).


And to not punish "preparing specialized spells" you could have spells in different groups (like spell schools etc) and allow the caster to prepare X general useful one (group a) and y more specialized one (group b).


And non combat spells could be its complete own categorie (rituals).


Or you could go the route like PF2. Having a 2nd class of spells "focus spells" which use a focus points which you can regain after a combat, making sure you have always something to cast. (Noemally you have only 1-3 different focus spells but 1 of them generally useful).


You could even go a slightly different route of having 1 "signature spell". And else only prepared vancian spells. (Each spell once or more as you prefer (i like the each spell only once method).

You could use your signature spell X times (1 or more like with focus points or just additional slots) and you can transform the vancian spells into your signature spell (but slightly weaker). So over the day you constantly have interesting decisions of which spells you most likely wont use and give up, while ideally you would not use the transformation since casting spells without a transformation is stronger.


For me the interesting part about vancian prepared spellcasting is that you need to plan. And good planning is rewarded. It feels great to have prepared exactly the right spell for a day.


That is also why I dont really get why you want to have "roll dice to regain spell slot" since this just rewards luck not planning.



Or another way to do prepared spellcasting for an int caster to allow some more niche spells is the "genius flashback" mechanic.


1-2 spell slots you dont need to define in the morning. But instead can later at any time of the day prepre 1 spell in them which you did NOT prepare that day. With a flashback showing how brilliantly you prepared this spell ahead of time. (Your chaeacter is more intelligent than you so its naturally that they are better at planning ahead than you as player).

Its a good mechanic to make characters more clever than the players.

I quite like roll to cast, but I wouldn’t lump it in with individual spell prep Vancian. It’s more akin to 5e-style, because preparing a spell once allows you to cast it any number of times until you fail a roll. I find it to be much more appealing than classic individual prep Vancian, but I understand the appeal of classic Vancian, and I do think increasing the number of spell slots would be essential for this method.

Tigris said:

I dont think there are any real holes, but its just a high amount of randomness involved, since the number of spell slots each day can varry a lot. And with your critical rule its even worse, if anything I would do the opposite. If misscast (and losing a spell slot) then the spell is more powerfull to make randomness feel a bit less bad. "Oh it was so strong I could not control it" is also a nice flavour fit.


Also why would you want to incentize upcasting lower level spells? Not saying its bad, but I want to understand the reason. Because this can lead potentially to just using the same low level spell for the whole career, because its saver to use that than high level spells especially if it has a good upcast.

Normally you want to incentize that players use different spells, aka new spells they did not use before, therefore giving the new highest level spells an advantage.




13th age works well with prepared spells and they all are automatically max level. Having spell slots of many different levels brings potential a lot of complexity.

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Yeah I like how 13A drops lower level spell slots as you gain higher level spells.

Regarding "why incentivizing lower level spells," I guess it's because I like seeing high-level magic missiles and such thrown around due to a lot of experience with AD&D's spells just leveling up with you. Level 5 caster? 3 magic missiles. Level 9 caster? 5 missiles. But that's taking a 1st level slot to cast, so it's not quite the same with this roll-to-cast system.

So that'd go back to option 2, the incentive being spells automatically upcasting.

Also is there a specific reason why you need spell slots of different levels?

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Assuming I understand the question, no other reason than legacy I guess. Hardly a good reason, except I'm trying to recapture previous editions' casting.

Distracted DM said:

Yeah I like how 13A drops lower level spell slots as you gain higher level spells.

Regarding "why incentivizing lower level spells," I guess it's because I like seeing high-level magic missiles and such thrown around due to a lot of experience with AD&D's spells just leveling up with you. Level 5 caster? 3 magic missiles. Level 9 caster? 5 missiles. But that's taking a 1st level slot to cast, so it's not quite the same with this roll-to-cast system.

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I definitly am a fan of keeping low level spells useful, I was more thinking that the low level spells being easier to cast (with getting a spell slot back) might triumpf over high level spells.

I agree that its a bit wasteful if low level spells cant be used at higher levels you design a lot of things to throw away else. (And might just create higher level spells doing the same as lower level spells just with bigger numbers)

Distracted DM said:

So that'd go back to option 2, the incentive being spells automatically upcasting.

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I think thats a good enough reason to also use low level spells.

Distracted DM said:

Assuming I understand the question, no other reason than legacy I guess. Hardly a good reason, except I'm trying to recapture previous editions' casting.

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Wanting to recreate an old feeling is perfectly fine reason. I was more wondering because from the thread title and initial text for me it was not clear. If its just about making vancian spellcasting then the different level slots (and with it "upcasting") is not necessarily.


But of course one can also do interesting things with spell slots. As one example if spells upcast automatically you could have spell slots of odd levels be spells which are general useful for combat (fireball etc.) And have even level spells all be more conditional.