A(nother) Non-Vancian Spellcasting System: The Fatigue System

[Griffith Dragonlake]

I took a very simple approach:

• Casting a spell is automatic. (Although the Fort save sounds interesting.)

• Casting a spell incurs non-lethal damage equal to spell level + caster level.

• All non-lethal damage that exceeds remaining hit points is incurred as temporary Con damage.

Note that per the SRD, non-lethal damage is healed [regenerated] at a rate of 1 per character level per hour. Temporary ability score damage is healed at a rate of 1 per 8 hours of complete rest or 2 for each 24 hours of complete bed rest.

Note that if the spellcaster uses a metamagic feat which raises the level of the spell it incurs more leathal damage. Alternately the caster may choose to cast a spell as a lower level caster.

Also, all healing magic is empathic and vampiric. That is, the caster takes on the wounds, fatigue, etc. of the recipient. However, is there is a scapegoat nearby that can be touched at the same time, the scapegoat receives the damage.

 

[GrayIguana]

I like this idea.

Would it be so bad to have the fatigue points equal the spell's level?

"0" level spells cause a bit of a problem. We could use a minimum fatigue point of 1, but then you will have 1st level wizards casting more of the 1st level spells that they know. Hovever, this would be balanced a bit by the fact that 1st level wizards don't know that many 1st level spells.

This would eleviate a bit of the problem presented by the examples above. The 20th level mage with 50hp would be able to cast roughly the same number of spells that he would under the normal system. (A 20th level wizard who has a school of specialization should have 50 possible spells per day without considering his INT modifier.) We have more of a issue with the first level wizard with about 6hp. In this example, the wizard would be able to get off about 6 spells "IF" he remained perfectly healthy. A normal 1st level wizard gets 4 spells per day (well actually 6 if he has a school specialization, so maybe that's not so bad after all. Yes, I'm thinking as I type.)

This leads me to my next question. Would fatigue points be the same as subdual damage? If they are then a mage who is damaged by phyical damage, would also have to reduce his/her fatigue points, correct?

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Personally I like to keep my variants as simple as possible. Hence the use of non-lethal damage rather than fatigue points. However using Vitality Points in a VP/WP system accomplishes the same thing since there is no non-lethal damage in VP/WP.

I use spell level + caster level because a fireball that does 10d6 damage should be harder to cast than a 3d6 one. Also it accounts for the cost of metamagic feats. [As an aside, Sean K. Reynolds once wrote that metamagic feats should be free since the cost to use them is built in.]

Bear in mind that non-lethal damage and Vitality Points heal at a rate of 1/character level/hour. In this system a 1st level character actually gets to cast more spells per day provided he rests between combats and doesn't get knocked out in the process. Basically if a wizard wants to shoot his entire wad in one fight, this is not the system. The existing Vancian system does that well. On the other hand, judiciously resting between fights grants more firepower.

 

[Wolf72]

totally back to the rules as is ... Dragonlance as an optional rule for making a fort save everytime you cast a spell, with each failure you become more and more fatigued, eventually causing unconciousness ... easy for those with high con/ fort saves ... but mages like Raistlin with low con and a wiz fort save ... well that becomes dangerous for prolonged castings