D&D 5E 11 spell levels... really

[Sadrik]

One of the remarkable things about this poll is that most people do not like the rules as written by a huge margin. Albeit we have not seen 10th level spells and I'll bet most people are voting to see 10 spell levels rather than 11. It still strikes me as shocking.

 

[Sadrik]

Warlocks in 3.5 had 4 "grades" of spells: least, lesser, greater and dark. I'd love if they did something like that in Next. I think 11 levels of spells is just too granular, and I like it better when the various "levels" of spells have names instead of numbers. That, and it helps keep the spells from scaling out of control. When you have 11 spell levels, and each needs to be siginificantly better than the last, it's pretty much inevitable that high level spellcasters will become gods.

Perhaps further eliminate spell levels than in my first post such as:
Cantrips/Orisons - level 0
Least - levels 1-2
Lesser - levels 3-4
Greater - levels 5-6
Dark - levels 7-8
Epic - levels 9-10

So 6 instead of my proposed 8. I dont think so though... because I think the low level spells (levels 1-4) are quite well defined. Level 5 spells are pretty well defined too, it gets dicey at spell level 6+ they are pretty much are arbitrarily assigned their spell level. As I stated earlier, merging 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 you will get well defined levels where certatin spell effects will be like no duh of course it is that spell level. Not head scratching and saying why is this not 2 levels lower...

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The issue is not the number of spell levels. The issue is how many styles of play can ONE game try to support without resulting in inadequately supporting all of them in order to make all styles work within those same ruels? I'd be much more sanguine with an attempt to produce three entirely separate sets of game rules for D&D (gritty, heroic, epic) than producing one set of game rules which supposedly does it all.

But then man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?

 

[Sadrik]

The issue is not the number of spell levels. The issue is how many styles of play can ONE game try to support without resulting in inadequately supporting all of them in order to make all styles work within those same ruels? I'd be much more sanguine with an attempt to produce three entirely separate sets of game rules for D&D (gritty, heroic, epic) than producing one set of game rules which supposedly does it all.

But then man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?

One thing from psychology. If you are given a few solid well defined choices you will be happy with your choice because you can easily run down the options and confirm what you like. If you are given a myriad of choices that are not that different and are all shades of grey. You will be unhappy because you are like why didn't I get that other one that would have performed better in this situation. Or worse you are stuck in analysis paralysis trying to determine the least worst option. Point being I would be behind a finite number of well defined versions of the game. Modules should come in customizable blocks, not just here are 50 modules - pick! Not sure how that would affect spell levels per say though.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

If every spell was given a point-cost based on it's level(lets keep it simple, we've got 10 levels, each spell costs the amount of points from the level it's in) I think it would go a long way to making the Vancian system much less confusing. Metamagic feats would increase point costs, moving spells up "spells levels" to power them up would increase point costs, same with moving them down. Say, 2 points per level, and one extra point per level based on your int/wis/cha mod. If we keep the DDN style of capping at 20, then by 20th level a player has at best roughly 140 points to spend. While that seems like a lot, if a 10th level spell costs 10 points, that's only 14 spells, which should be able to be completely spent in a 20th level encounter.

I dunno, the Vancian system as it has been in D&D has always bothered the heck out of me because it seems to convoluted for no apparent benefit.

Points-based casting flat-out doesn't work with D&D spells if you use a linear cost, the reason being that spell levels do not increase linearly. A gate spell is not worth nine sleep spells. Spell power is closer to exponential (i.e. a spell of level X is roughly equal to 2 spells of level X-1). If you want to do a points-based system with those costs, a 9th level spell would cost 256 spell points--possibly less if you try to flatten the curve by deciding that spell power doubles every two levels instead of every one, for instance, but certainly nowhere near 9.

The reason 3.5 psionics works relatively well with points is that the powers are designed with the assumption of points built in, so you can spend more points on each power to scale them, and psionics is generally less powerful than magic, but it still doesn't work very well because non-numerical stuff still doesn't scale well. It's easy to decide that 1 PP = 1d6 damage or 1 PP = +1/3 AC, because the basic numerical stuff is easy and the first thing people think of, but is being able to cast two spells per round for 1 round/level (schism) worth 7d6 damage? Only at the first level you get it, and only if you're only spending 1 PP per round; after that it's worth a lot more, because you can generate up to [level] points' worth of extra effects per round for up to [level] rounds, which is 7*7=49 points when you first get it. That's a lot closer to the theoretical exponential cost of 64 than 7 is.

Spells don't scale linearly, and that's partly what slots are for: you can't trade in all your low-level spells for an extra high-level spell. Slots also mitigate nova-ing, dumping all of your spells as fast as you can; a 20th-level psion can manifest about 28 9th-level powers before he's out for the day, while a 20th-level wizard can cast at minimum 40 spells of 1st and higher, likely closer to 60. Slots enforce creativity to some extent, because once you're out of your big guns you have to determine how to overcome obstacles using lower-level spells. There are plenty of other benefits to slots (less math, easier by-round calculations, etc.) but those are the big ones.

That said, there needs to be a range outside this optimum - low levels for the character and story buildup, and high for the rest of the world to use.

The best and easiest way to extend the sweet spot in play is to make each level take much, much, MUCH longer to get through than has become the modern norm.

Some of us like playing at the high levels, actually, so I'd obviously prefer that they make the high levels work for the players too, thank you very much.

One of the reasons I like D&D is precisely the fact that you can get to those high levels and start shaping the world, unlike say Shadowrun, Riddle of Steel, or even d20 variants like Iron Heroes. Most of my campaigns have made it to at least 18th level in both 2e and 3e, and my group enjoys the Logistics & Dragons aspects of high-level play.

WotC assuming that no one plays high levels is precisely why 3e starts to fall apart around 15th; they playtested the low- and mid-levels but ignored the higher levels. Could high levels have worked if they hadn't ignored them, and might the Epic Level Handbook not have been a joke if they actually understood how high levels differed from low levels? We'll never know, of course, but the fact that 3e works all the way up to 15th-16th while AD&D started to lag around 12th shows that high levels can be made to work without turning them into "low levels with bigger numbers" if you actually try.

But then you have to put it into the perspective of game design. And here you have plenty of interconnected issues to keep in mind, for example (a) how "granular" you want the character advancement to be, (b) how well you can separate spell effects in a vertical hierarchy, (c) how much difference you want to allow in characters of the same class e.g. in term of spells known, (d) how much space in the book can you allocate for a number of spells, and certainly more.
[...]
Overall it becomes a serious design restriction. I'd rather change the name "spell level" to something else than restrict design this way.

Precisely this. Gygax had a section in the 1e DMG describing why he used "level" for so many different things (basically, because trying to come up with separate terms sounded a bit hokey), but the independence of spell level from character level can be important for spell design.

First of all, having fewer, broader spell levels allows you to have spells that blur the boundaries. If you have one spell level per character level, you have to determine what a 6th level spell is and what a 7th level spell is, and you run the risk of having spells that are a bit too good for 6th but not quite good enough for 7th; if you use the 9-level scheme, you can make that a 4th level spell and allow yourself a bit of leeway, and that only becomes more important the more character levels and the fewer spell levels you have.

Second, fewer spell levels allows a better distinction between them. As was noted earlier, each spell level has a different "theme" of sorts: 3th level is the "AoE effects" level, with lightning bolt, explosive runes, sleet storm, daylight, major image, etc., 5th level is the "long-distance effects" level with teleport, lesser planar binding, sending, etc. If you split those further, the spell levels lose some of their identity.

Third, leveling spells allows re-use. One of the big complaints about 4e was that so many powers were redundant between classes when they could have just written one "roll your key stat vs. AC, deal 2[W] + secondary stat" (or whatever) power and allowed multiple classes access to it. Same with spells: the various casters in AD&D/3e are defined as much by the spells they share as by the spells they don't. It allows more character options if you can make roughly the same summoner with both cleric and wizard (they share most summoning spells with minor differences, so class doesn't matter for that schtick and you can customize in other ways), if you can make variations on a necromancer theme with different classes (the cleric does minions better while the wizard does SoDs/debuffs better, but both can do a bit of either), and so forth.

You can also re-use spells at different levels. If you can make a single spell different levels for different classes (such as plane shift being 5th for clerics and 7th for wizards) you can give access to the same effects but give the classes different strengths (e.g. clerics can access the Outer Planes before wizards can, but can't teleport within the same plane like wizards can without the right domains).

The issue is not the number of spell levels. The issue is how many styles of play can ONE game try to support without resulting in inadequately supporting all of them in order to make all styles work within those same ruels? I'd be much more sanguine with an attempt to produce three entirely separate sets of game rules for D&D (gritty, heroic, epic) than producing one set of game rules which supposedly does it all.

D&D has never really done "gritty" at all at low levels. Lethal, sure, and detail-oriented, but not gritty; that's the domain of hit locations, persistent wounds, and so forth. D&D actually does a fairly good job of retaining the same gameplay at different level ranges while changing scope and feel compared to other games: you're leading hirelings through kobold warrens and hoarding expeditious retreat spells for quick escape at 1st and leading armies through the Abyss and hoarding plane shift spells for quick escape at 12th, but you're still dealing with party-based tactics, minion control, resource allocation, attrition combat, and such at every level.

The difference between the various level ranges is one of degree of plot control. There's no need to write entirely new sets of rules when the difference between "mortal" and "heroic" is that in the former case you find out about a demonic assassin by hearing rumors and chase him by finding a portal to the Abyss and in the latter case you find out about him with divinations and chase him by plane shifting. Combat certainly changes from a straightforward "chuck firepower at it until it dies" contest to maneuvering around layers of defenses, but that change works because the underlying system is the same; again, it's a matter of degree (a single mage armor at 1st level vs. layers of magic items and resistances at high levels), not fundamental difference.

 

[CroBob]

I'm also a BIG proponent for the idea of separate spell lists for, well, pretty much eveyt caster class, including the specialist mages: illusionistd (own list), necromancers (own list), warlocks (own list), bards (own list), etc. etc. etc. with generalist mages not receiving ALL spells, but a their own list of spells that just happens to have overlap with some of the specialists' spells and some that are theirs alone.

--SD

That's actually one of the few things that didn't quite mesh well with me for 4th ed. Yes, all classes are different and unique, but what's the point in having a "source" for your powers if your powers are unique to your class? It's really nothing more than trivia. I think each class should have unique, individual mechanics, but if they draw power from a particular "source", then those powers should, well, come from that source. Even if the source is sub-divided into more refined sorts of that power and each class has access to only some of those sub-partitions, it seems like a "source" should matter. Powers of the same "source" should at least have something in common.

 

[Sunseeker]

Points-based casting flat-out doesn't work with D&D spells if you use a linear cost, the reason being that spell levels do not increase linearly. A gate spell is not worth nine sleep spells. Spell power is closer to exponential (i.e. a spell of level X is roughly equal to 2 spells of level X-1). If you want to do a points-based system with those costs, a 9th level spell would cost 256 spell points--possibly less if you try to flatten the curve by deciding that spell power doubles every two levels instead of every one, for instance, but certainly nowhere near 9.

Traditionally, no they don't. But thinking forward towards DDN, part of solving the balance problems is eliminating the quadratic Wizard.

IMO, as you level your spell list should narrow, and increase in power. There would be direct replacements for lower spells, as well as new spells, but the list would look something like a pyramid. High-level characters don't need an ever increasing bag of tricks, because that eliminates the use of tricks they already have. Higher-level characters should be presented with more option and variety in using the tricks they already have, instead of simply dumping more stuff into their bag.

But again, this is how spells have traditionally worked, you're right. That's not to say they should continue to be that way. For the same reason that having a class increase in power exponentially will never balance with a class who increases in power linearly.

The reason 3.5 psionics works relatively well with points is that the powers are designed with the assumption of points built in, so you can spend more points on each power to scale them, and psionics is generally less powerful than magic, but it still doesn't work very well because non-numerical stuff still doesn't scale well. It's easy to decide that 1 PP = 1d6 damage or 1 PP = +1/3 AC, because the basic numerical stuff is easy and the first thing people think of, but is being able to cast two spells per round for 1 round/level (schism) worth 7d6 damage? Only at the first level you get it, and only if you're only spending 1 PP per round; after that it's worth a lot more, because you can generate up to [level] points' worth of extra effects per round for up to [level] rounds, which is 7*7=49 points when you first get it. That's a lot closer to the theoretical exponential cost of 64 than 7 is.

Again, you're reiterating that spells have traditionally worked in this manner, and to that I agree. I'm simply saying that they don't need to continue to do so.

Spells don't scale linearly, and that's partly what slots are for: you can't trade in all your low-level spells for an extra high-level spell. Slots also mitigate nova-ing, dumping all of your spells as fast as you can; a 20th-level psion can manifest about 28 9th-level powers before he's out for the day, while a 20th-level wizard can cast at minimum 40 spells of 1st and higher, likely closer to 60. Slots enforce creativity to some extent, because once you're out of your big guns you have to determine how to overcome obstacles using lower-level spells. There are plenty of other benefits to slots (less math, easier by-round calculations, etc.) but those are the big ones.

I'm not suggesting we don't retain slots, I agree that casters should be limited in their knowledge of spells(which is what is represented by spell slots), but I simply don't see the reasoning behind being able to cast Acid Orb 6 times a day at 1d6, or getting to cast Fireball one extra time per day for 6d6 instead. The biggest difference is simply going to be the number of instances in which you get to roll dice.

Personally I think the "wizard trope" follows closer to the line of a person being able to draw on incredible power and knowledge to do great things occasionally, than one who draws on minor power all the time.

Additionally, with DDN using fixeddamage values for spells instead of ones that increase with level, I believe more argument is given to a linear spell progression, or at least a much less exponential one, than has been tradition.

It's not that simple

I mean, of course it looks simple to put it in your way, i.e. wizards of level N casts spells of level N.

But then you have to put it into the perspective of game design. And here you have plenty of interconnected issues to keep in mind, for example (a) how "granular" you want the character advancement to be, (b) how well you can separate spell effects in a vertical hierarchy, (c) how much difference you want to allow in characters of the same class e.g. in term of spells known, (d) how much space in the book can you allocate for a number of spells, and certainly more.

I could guess that Gygax in the early drafts of D&D might have considered your idea as the most natural one, but changed it later to "one new level of spells every more than one class level" as a result of assessing problems such as (a)-(c) above (maybe not (d) ).

With one-spell-level-per-class-level, you either have a too big step in power and/or complexity of wizards when they level up, or you have instead too much granularity in spells plus too few spells at each spell level, leading to wizards player having too few choices, which can be compensated by designing many more spells but then it's a design cost and leads to problem (d).

Overall it becomes a serious design restriction. I'd rather change the name "spell level" to something else than restrict design this way.

Spells shouldn't necessarily need to compete with one-another, this is a result of power creep and splat-splosion more than anything else. Sometimes spells should improve upon previous versions, say, moving from shooting a small ray of frost to calling upon a freezing blizzard. But even still while the latter is basically an extremely scaled-up version of the former both still retain their uses in certain situations. EX: You could only summon a freezing blizzard outside.

But then, I'm a granular person. I like small, smart changes rather than big overwhelming changes, which may be the case of some of my dislike for DDN, as it seems to be aiming for "huge changes" to rock people's socks but ignoring the need for a simple core framework and the fine-tuning that requires.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Perhaps further eliminate spell levels than in my first post such as:
Cantrips/Orisons - level 0
Least - levels 1-2
Lesser - levels 3-4
Greater - levels 5-6
Dark - levels 7-8
Epic - levels 9-10

So 6 instead of my proposed 8. I dont think so though... because I think the low level spells (levels 1-4) are quite well defined. Level 5 spells are pretty well defined too, it gets dicey at spell level 6+ they are pretty much are arbitrarily assigned their spell level. As I stated earlier, merging 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 you will get well defined levels where certatin spell effects will be like no duh of course it is that spell level. Not head scratching and saying why is this not 2 levels lower...

There's too little difference between 10 (or 11) spell levels and 8. You trim off a couple of levels but it's still pretty much the same thing as before. I think the old warlock invocations did an excellent job of grouping spells by their overall power.

Least: 1st-2nd
Lesser: 3rd-4th
Greater: 5th-6th
Dark: 7th-9th

This fits very well with the observations you made about the similar and often overlapping power of the different spell levels. Is Melf's Acid arrow really that much better than Magic Missile? Is Ice Storm really that much better than Fireball? There is a clear jump in power from 2nd to 3rd level spells, but the difference between 1st and 2nd level spells is much smaller. Between those clear jumps in power that happen every couple of spell levels, the divisions between most of these spells is superfluous.

You can also see this in the damage caps of spells. 3rd and 4th level spells were supposed to cap at 10d6, 5th and 6th level spells were supposed to cap at 15d6, and higher level spells were supposed to cap at around 20d6. Even if there is a slight difference in the power of these spells in past editions, they can easily be adjusted to be balanced with each other within the 4 grades. Warlocks managed to do it in 3.5 with very few alterations.

As for 0th level spells, they could remain as a separate grade or be folded in with the Least spells very easily. After all, prior to 3rd edition, they were all 1st level spells.

 

[Sadrik]

There's too little difference between 10 (or 11) spell levels and 8. You trim off a couple of levels but it's still pretty much the same thing as before. I think the old warlock invocations did an excellent job of grouping spells by their overall power.

Again I think the low level spells are very well established and are pretty good. Spell levels of 6+ are arbitrarily assigned levels... While I would not be opposed to the invocations spell levels I think they would be too different for a lot of people.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

One of the remarkable things about this poll is that most people do not like the rules as written by a huge margin. Albeit we have not seen 10th level spells and I'll bet most people are voting to see 10 spell levels rather than 11. It still strikes me as shocking.

I'm guessing that's because a lot of traditionalists want to see it cap out at 9th level spells, and others don't necessarily understand that you're counting cantrips and don't want to see 11th-level spells.