Homebrew 5E Artificer Spellcasting Houserule Idea

[Xeviat]

Hi everybody! As always, I'm tweaking things in D&D. Recently, I was finding myself missing some of the distinctions between different spellcasting types. In 5E, everyone casts spells "spontaneously". Some are "known" and some are "prepared" (though 5.5 confusingly calls it "prepared" for everyone). In 3E, the preparation based casters had to prepare each spell slot in advance. This has been a huge power up for them.

Ao, here's the idea: What if Artificers prepared their spells in advance, at the end of a long rest? For those not familiar with 3E, rather than having 2 1st level spell slots that can cast any spell you have prepared, you instead choose which spell you have available for each spell slot? They would then be contained in an item that you've made (and each item type would have its own rules, like alchemists can prepare their spells as potions).

If you had to pre choose your spells in advance, what would you have to be given to make the restriction worth it? Would +1 spell slot per spell level be enough? Or would you need more?

I'm not rushing to add this to my game, just musing on it. What do you think?

 

[mellored]

I think something like warlock slots would work well.

I.e.
Long rest: prepared the ball of disco (Hypotic Pattern).
Recharge it on a short rest.

Also, it kind of feels like it wouldn't take concentration. Which could be managed by keeping the number of prepared spells limited.

 

[Merlecory]

I have had thoughts very similar to this, but have never had the chance to test them out. If you do, please share the results!

As for "compensation", I had thought of a few different paths

1. Heavy Homebrew: Artificers stop being half casters. Maybe they become the first two-thirds caster, or they gain some spell slots equivalent to a Pact slot, to compliment their half caster slots. A big show piece spell, rounded out by smaller inventions.
2. Light(er) Homebrew: Artificers can apply metamagic to each of their spells. This at least gets to re-use existing game features, and helps separate them from the other half casters who get extra attack on "normal" casting.

I think any change in this direction should reinforce their more magical status than the Paladin and Ranger. No d10 Hit Die, no martial weapon proficiencies, no fighting styles and no extra attacks leaves lots of room for the base Artificer to be a stronger magician, while still allowing the subclasses to be transformative.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

What about just removing the artificer spell list altogether? The original artificer had a spell list (well, infusion list), but technically could learn any spell so long as they had a schema or item that provided for that infusion. If you decide to have artificers prepare spells like 3e wizards, why not let them choose spells from any class spell list? The whole point was that artificers embodied Keith Baker's idea of wide magic. So giving them a spell list to begin with seems strange to me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you had to pre choose your spells in advance, what would you have to be given to make the restriction worth it? Would +1 spell slot per spell level be enough? Or would you need more?

Nothing. I would not play any character who was stuck having to guess what they were going to need for the day when they made their spell load-out in the morning. Getting rid of "each slot has to have a set spell" is one of the best changes in my opinion that WotC made to the game. I've played enough Baldur's Gate I and II using 2E's system to know that 99% of all spells will never get used because the only way to be assured of being able to use most (if not all) of your spell slots during the day is to fill them with the most likely-to-be-used options. Something like Purify Food And Drink could be a (literal) lifesaver in that one specific instance that its use comes up during an entire campaign... but no one is ever going to actually stick it into one of their 1st-level slots in the morning every single day just on the hope that this is the day it comes up. It's okay if you have it in your arsenal of prepared spells available for you to choose from if/when it is needed... but no one will ever have it available if they have to stick it into the 2, 3, or 4 specific 1st-level slots they are going to have each day. It's not worth the wasted slot if its usage never comes up.

While I can understand the desire to make each caster class have a different "style" of casting... forcing any class to choose which spells go into which slot at the beginning of the day (having no idea if that use of Disguise Self you put into one of your 1st-level slots will ever actually get used for instance)... is in my opinion not the way to do it. There are other, better, more useful ways of making each caster class play different that still allows a player to have an obscure spell at hand if/when that one rare instance shows up, but not being forced to kill a slot every single day to do so.

 

[Silam]

I’ve been thinking of an alternative scheme, though I’m not sure that it could be viable as a lightweight tweak. Rather, it may require changing all the classes, which is probably too much work, but anyway …

The general idea would be to do some kind of intermediary system between 3.5e and 5e. More flexible than 3.5e where each individual slot needed to be predestined to a single spell, but less flexible than 5e where each slot can be used for anything.

Essentially there would be some small-to-medium size list of "energy types"… let’s call them "mana types". Force, fire, lightning, etc.

You would have a number of mana points, that you could assign across the various types. For example, I have 10 mana points, I’ll stick 2 in force mana and 8 in fire mana. This is basically the equivalent of the "memorization or preparation" phase. You need not be more specific than that.

Then, for each of your known spells, you would have a mana cost. For example, magic missile costs 1 Force Mana, Burning Hands costs 1 Fire Mana, and Fireball costs 1 Force Mana and 4 Fire Mana (imagine the force is the scaffolding that holds the fire in place and propels it towards its target).

So in the previous example, the wizard who prepared 2 Force Mana and 8 Fire Mana, could throw either:

1. 2 Fireballs
2. 2 magic missiles and 8 burning hands
3. 1 MM, 4 BH and 1 FB

The ratio of manas you keep on hand affects the "general shape" of spells you could wield.

What about the power level? Well… in 3.5e it was based on the caster level, while in 5e it’s based on augmentation via higher level slots.

In this system, I would rather suggest that each spell has a scaling mechanic tied to how much mana of a given type you have in reserve. Meaning that your first spells of the day are most powerful, and their power dwindles as you become spent. So for example, let’s say Fireball does 1d6 per fire mana in reserve (before the casting), and maybe the radius of the blast is 10 feet per force mana in reserve. So the first FB of the day could do 8d6 on a 20 feet radius, while the second FB would do just 4d6 on a 10 feet radius. Those scaling formulas probably cannot be infinite, there should be some cap somehow (maybe based on caster level or something else, but I don’t know, haven’t thought that far).

And what about cantrips? Those would be special in the sense that they would not require spending any mana points, hence their at will nature, but their effect would still scale in relation to mana in reserve. This I think is a key part of the whole concept… it means that instead of going all out with slots and then using cantrips only if you still need to fight some more after exhausting all your slots, you may do well to consider using your cantrips first, since they are most powerful while your expendable mana has NOT been expended yet.

Another interesting corollary of this system is that there is basically no need for school specialist subclasses anymore… if a wizard prepares mostly a single type of mana, then they are effectively a specialist in that, and as a reward all of their spells are boosted due to the higher mana reserve. On the other hand, a generalist wizard gets to do a greater variety of things but each of them is augmented to a lesser degree. In a sense, this can squash not only the specialist versus generalist wizards, but maybe even the wizards versus sorcerers. They are all on a sliding scale spectrum. You can be a strong but inflexible sorcerer of fire today, and tomorrow prepare a broad mix of charms, illusions, necromancy, transmutation to get you out of any jam, but without being very powerful in any single thing.

Anyway… the whole thing is admittedly pretty half-baked, so apologies in advance… but I thought I’d share

Cheers!

 

[Charlaquin]

Hi everybody! As always, I'm tweaking things in D&D. Recently, I was finding myself missing some of the distinctions between different spellcasting types. In 5E, everyone casts spells "spontaneously". Some are "known" and some are "prepared" (though 5.5 confusingly calls it "prepared" for everyone). In 3E, the preparation based casters had to prepare each spell slot in advance. This has been a huge power up for them.

Ao, here's the idea: What if Artificers prepared their spells in advance, at the end of a long rest? For those not familiar with 3E, rather than having 2 1st level spell slots that can cast any spell you have prepared, you instead choose which spell you have available for each spell slot? They would then be contained in an item that you've made (and each item type would have its own rules, like alchemists can prepare their spells as potions).

If you had to pre choose your spells in advance, what would you have to be given to make the restriction worth it? Would +1 spell slot per spell level be enough? Or would you need more?

I'm not rushing to add this to my game, just musing on it. What do you think?

Early in the D&D Next playtest, Wizards did the classic “prepare each spell individually” Vancian casting, while the new-school “prepare a spell once and you can cast it as many times as you have spell slots to cast it with” pseudo-Vancian was used by Clerics and Druids, and I think Paladins and Rangers too - the ones that prepare from their full class list instead of from a subset of known spells.

I think if you wanted to differentiate types of spellcasters more, I would revive that distinction. Classic Vancian for Wizards, Bards, and Artificers (and for Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters). Neo-Vancian for Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers. For Sorcerers (and the new 1/3 casting Monk if that makes it to print), I would either go full spell point based casting, or Shadowdark style roll-to-cast. And Warlocks already have their own unique style, so they can keep that.