A rant on ASF

[fuindordm]

Well, if 1e rule you posted said

"The character may mix functions freely and still gain experience, although restrictions regarding armor, shield, and/or weapon apply with regard to operations particular to one or both classes." (Emhpasis added.)

Which would mean that if a wizard can't cast spells in armor, then he would be no more abile to with a level in fighter.

The wizard class description is ambiguous--it says that the study of magic is so demanding that the use of armor is alien to the magic-user--flavorful, but not clear. Nowhere in the 1e PH have I ever been able to find a statement that armor prevents arcane spellcasting outside of the multiclassing/dual classing rules, already quoted above--and those are inconsistent, claiming that nonhumans can cast in armor because they can multiclass, but humans can't because they dual-class. The intention of dual-classing seems to have been that a human could function as one class or the other as required, but not cherry-pick the advantages. For single-class characters, the question is moot in 1st edition because there was no mechanic for characters to gain any abilities outside of their class--so the distinction between 'proficiency' and 'class feature' blurs.

1. Why does brestplate have ASF while it leaves my arms relatively uncovered? Presumably because there are bracers, armlets, or other things that impare the somatic processies of arcane magics. Breastplate has a lesser arcane spell failure than chainmail or heavier armors, also.

2. Can't I have armor custom made to lessen the penalty?
Yes, you can have it constructed with lighter, more flexible materials, like mythral.

I suppose I should have said "negate the penalty", not lessen the penalty. My bad.

These come down to the same point--it is certainly possible to design and wear armor that leaves the arms and shoulders completely unhindered. But in the RAW, these would still impose an ASF even though the somatic component requires only 'one arm able to gesture freely.' The same goes for shields--the rules for ASF are inconsistent with the language used to justify it.

3. What about proficieny? Why doesn't training in armor's use grant me a lesser ASF?
Because the feat / class level grants you knowledge and training necessary to use the armor as it was intended, in combat. Why? Because that's what fighters use armor for. Fighters don't use it to cast spells.

4. Can't I undergo training to make myself more capable of casting spells in armor, reducing ASF?
Yeah, that would be a prestige class. Spellsword, Bladesinger, and I think Eldrich Knight reduce ASF as features of the class.

Only the spellsword, and prestige classes are under the DMs purview, not the player's. The point is that taking ranks in the Concentration skill is sufficient to overcome all sorts of difficulties related to restricted movement (grappling, getting wounded, getting shaken up by the terrain, etc...) but no such option exists for armor. If skill ranks are sufficient to cast spells correctly while getting crushed by a giant squid underwater, then something equally available to players from first level should be sufficient to cast spells in armor.

5. Why don't Clerics incur ASF? Why can bards cast in light armor?
A cleric's somatic component involves holding their holy symbol out and chanting a prayer. It's more than one can do when bound or held, but less than a wizards arcane gestures involved. As for bards, their magics are based more are on their oral performances than on their arcane gestures.

6. Why is using a rope or being in a storm demanding of concentration of clerics and bards, but armor is not?
Because outside conditions may affect your ability to focus on casting a spell as opposed to the more simplistic somatic compontents. If you don't concentrate enough, the jostling of rope or a nearby strike of lightning might interupt your spell.

This is a flavor explanation only. In terms of the rules, all three classes need 'one arm able to gesture freely' to cast spells with somatic components--so all three should suffer the same restrictions to spellcasting. And they do... for everything but armor.

If the somatic component for Bards and clerics is really different than that of Wizards and Sorcerers, this should be reflected in the rules--they should, in fact, be two different components altogether. Call them G (for trivial gesture used only to direct the spell) and C (for the horrible Contortion of the arm and hand that is so unnatural, armor--and only armor--will prevent the correct range of motion altogether.)

Honestly, any physical activity that can be learned, can be learned reliably with enough practice. And practice is all it takes. If you must have ASF in your games, then the failure chance should be something that can be reduced by a player investment at first level... if the failure chance is not 100% then it implies that the required gestures *are* possible in that suit of armor, and than by practicing your spells, you can gradually reduce that chance.

Ultimately, it should be a caster level check or a concentration check, because ASF stands nearly alone with concealment as one of the few d% checks.

Exactly--the flat d% chance is horribly inconsistent with the rationale for ASF and the rest of the rules, but the designers were afraid that they'd see armored wizards running around everywhere in violation of the genre, so they didn't implement any workaround into the rules. I hope I've shown, however, that a suit of armor is not unbalancing as long as the character must make a significant investment to use it.

I quite like RangerWickett's idea of allowing either the proficiency feats or 1/2/3 levels in proficient classes to negate light/medium/heavy ASF.

Ben

 

[fuindordm]

ASF has never really hindered any games I played in. Either the people I play with are cunning in how they get around ASF, or they suck it up and make the necessary die rolls when casting in armor. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. It's all aprt of the game, and frankly I think it adds to the game. There is nothing better than having your Fighter/Mage try to cast an important spell during combat and hoping it goes off without a hitch. And then it does!!! Likewise, when the spell fails because of ASF, it makes the group think more, play smarter, be less sloppy, rely on the next person to get them out of the game. It all adds to the excitement IMO.

Sure, I've been cunning too. I had a nice paladin/sorc character who focused on V-only spells but took Still Spell and Eschew Materials for the occasional V,S spell--his role-playing schtick was that he was descended from a celestial, and all his spellcasting was simply verbal invocations in the celestial language.

However, that's a case of backwards engineering--knowing the restrictions in the rules, I came up with a RP reason to play a character that was not terribly affected by the rules. Really I was hankering to play some kind of fighter/mage type, and *any other concept* would not have satisfied me because of the double hit to power. First, I'm already sacrificing spellcasting power because I'm multiclassing, so my spells were going to be well behind the power curve. Adding a 25% chance ASF on top of that--effectively get rid of a quarter of my spells.

The Still Spell argument is feeble--ignore ASF at the price of preparing all your spells at one level higher? Why not just play a character two levels lower than everyone else, just for fun. The price is excessive when the multiclassing rules guarantee that the combination isn't imbalanced in the first place.

Ben

 

[Li Shenron]

One level of fighter + Still Spell = Full Plate Wizard

Just prepare all your spells as Still versions and you're good to go.

Wouldn't that be equivalent as being similar to a THREE levels lower wizard?

Still Spell requires to prepare spells in a slot 1 level higher! E.g. at level 5th you have:

4 slots of lv0
3 slots of lv1 (or lv0 + Still)
2 slots of lv2 (or lv1 + Still)
1 slots of lv3 (or lv2 + Still)

you'd end up casting

7 spells of lv0 (4 of which with ASF)
2 spells of lv1
1 spell of lv2

which is like a 3rd level wizard with an extra 4 cantrips (with ASF).

Plus one figther level for the armor prof :\

 

[Li Shenron]

Anyway, fuindordm, thank you for the well-thought essay

I agree that ASF is quite a weak concept, and that divine casters don't suffer it because their spells come from god is even a weaker idea (especially for druids and rangers, whose divine nature isn't that strong).

ASF as Concentration checks would have been a better rule because the skill is since the start intended to be improved by a PC with the appropriate costs.

Otherwise, I think ASF could stay as it is now (it doesn't really matter to me what kind of check itself needs to be rolled) but options should be provided to let characters get around the ASF restriction. A feat chain is the simplest and best idea to do that, and I remember to have seen it done at least twice in published products: once as 3 feats each of which completely negated ASF for light/medium/heavy armor (required prof in that type); the other was a feat chain which gave a progressive "% discount" on ASF (and probably worked on all armors that the PC was proficient with).

Feats are valuable, and spending feats on this means you're not spending feats on Spell Focus or Metamagic for example, so overall these feat chains still maintain ASF as a big disadvantage, but at least there is a (costly) way around it.

BTW, an even worse sacred cow for my taste is School Specialization, regarding the forbidden schools. A restriction which you cannot get past at any cost yet.

 

[fuindordm]

Anyway, fuindordm, thank you for the well-thought essay

Thanks for qualifying it as an essay. I really did intend a rant!

BTW, an even worse sacred cow for my taste is School Specialization, regarding the forbidden schools. A restriction which you cannot get past at any cost yet.

I almost mistook this for a signature, and ignored it. It's an interesting point, which again has its roots in the historical evolution of D&D. I think they felt the need to keep the extra spell per slot advantage to balance against the cleric's spells/day, but assuming that most wizards would specializez just to keep up with the Cleric's power curve was a bad one. I've never been very happy with specialization in any edition, but it hasn't bothered me enough to make major changes to the system. Do you have ideas here?

The Unearthed Arcana variants aren't bad, though.

Ben

 

[Staffan]

B/ED&D and AD&D1 just didn't say *why* they couldn't wear armor. They just couldn't. At all. Period.

Though Basic elves could cast spells in armor without any problems whatsoever.

 

[Staffan]

Well, I've also never understood or liked the "arcane" and "divine" magic divide. And indeed, untill 3rd edition there was no such divide, presented in that way...even less so in 1st edition.

In 2nd ed, the spells were divided into Priest spells and Wizard spells. All classes referenced these spells, though some had some sort of further limitation (usually in the form of "only spheres X, Y and Z" for priest spells, and somewhat more rare "only schools A, B and C" for wizard spells). IIRC, the limitation that you couldn't cast wizard spells in armor was a limit on the spells, not on the classes - fighter/mages and bards might have had the class ability to use armor, but couldn't cast spells in it.

 

[Li Shenron]

I almost mistook this for a signature, and ignored it.

I posted it small-fonted because I didn't want to hijack the thread.

Do you have ideas here?

Other than non specializing, not really I thought a couple of years ago that I would have liked a different sort of penalty instead of completely forbidden schools, such as having to use higher-level slots for all spells of those schools (which wouldn't be really "forbidden" anymore), but I didn't think about that seriously. One other advantage of such a penalty is that it could occur at any time, meaning that a wizard could specialize later than 1st level, which sounds in line with being a specialist.

The Unearthed Arcana variants aren't bad, though.

The variants abilities for specialists are great but don't remove the forbidden schools.
The domain wizard is the only UA class variant that I find unfair because it's straight better than a generic wizard with not a single penalty, and therefore leaves no reason to be a "core" generalist anymore.

 

[Merlion]

I would respectfully disagree.

Well, you can disagree with me all you want, but you cant disagree with the material. A careful objective look at the spell lists will show that overall, while they are often very different in their uses the Wizard and Cleric spell lists are, within context, roughly equal in overall usefulness. People have been conditioned into believing that Clerics are vastly inferior spellcasters, partially because they used to be, and partially because their spells are less appealing in feel. But in practice and in context, its not really the case.

Especially when you factor everything else in. You might convince me that the Wizard has slightly more options (although some are totally non-combat and not even neccesarily utility like the "pure" Illusions, Silent Image etc), but when you consider that a Cleric also gets every single spell on their list for free...I dont think any minor inferiorty as a spellcaster is enough to warrant the Cleric getting heavy armor profciency and being able to cast spells in such totally unrestricted. Let alone to also get a d8 Hit Die, medium BAB and good Fort saves...but thats a whole other deal.


The Druid is less of an issue as far as the armor thing since 1) they actually are inferior spellcasters and 2) they dont really wear armor anyway

That I would agree with. There is no obvious reason that everyone dedicated to a path granting spellcasting from a divine source should have so many gimmes based on a hokey form of authenticity.

Yep. And thats my big problem with "arcane" spell failure. Its simply a holdover from previous editions, before it was decided that any class that gained powers from a "divine" source was going to be more powerful than everyone else.

FREX, it would be perfectly reasonable to give clerics only Light and Medium Armor Proficiency

Yep. And still be subject to spell failure.

Its a distinction that goes back to medieval times (at least)

No...not as portrayed in D&D its not.

divine powers are granted by gods (obviously) and are a sign of divine favor- all other magic was considered to be a subversion of reality/will of the good gods, and flowed either from pacts with evil gods (demons, etc.) or from man's "meddling" in things he didn't fully understand. In fact some societies believed that seeking to understand creation with the rational mind was taboo- it represented a disruption of the natural order.

In Medieveal times, especially in the areas D&D is most strongly tied to, there was nothing like the concept of "arcane" and "divine" magic. Especially not "divine" magic. Priest didnt cast spells, or even claim to. It was believed that a few saints were able to perform miracles, but only a ~very~ few, and only to a very limited degree, and it was not thought of as "magic" not even as "divine magic". It was God working a miracle through a person. And then as you say magic or witchcraft was condemed as evil. But so would have been a person who claimed that ~they~ were working miracles at will. It was only if God was simply using you to do it that it was acceptable.


There was nothing like the DnD concept of "arcane" and "divine" magic which are fundementally alike accept that one comes from one source and one from another. D&D more or less originated that idea, as it is presented in the rules. Especially the part where "divine" magic supposedly does the healing and "arcane" magic is offensive.Even in most fantasy, there is no real line. The Wizards of Earthsea for instance were powerful healers, and served an idea of Balance, but they had the same sort of abilities as DnD Wizards as well, and conversely in David Eddings's Elenium/Tamuli the spellcasters gain their powers directly from their god, but the powers they use are again just like a D&D Wizard.

While true, the rules always maintained seperate spell lists (with some crossover), and had different terminology (spheres vs schools).

In 2nd edition you had the "priest spells/wizard spells" with "sphere and schools" thing, but in 1st edition there wasnt even that. No broad catagories, just each classes spell lists. Which is another odd thing 3.x went back to individual class lists, but jumped up the big monolithic catagory stuff for some reason

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Well, you can disagree with me all you want, but you cant disagree with the material. A careful objective look at the spell lists will show that overall, while they are often very different in their uses the Wizard and Cleric spell lists are, within context, roughly equal in overall usefulness. People have been conditioned into believing that Clerics are vastly inferior spellcasters, partially because they used to be, and partially because their spells are less appealing in feel. But in practice and in context, its not really the case.

That is a very superficial analysis.

I recognize that the cleric now has a good mix of spells including many options in combat that it previously lacked. However, the wizard still completely dominates in spells that "rewrite the rules". Low level spells like Invisibility, Spider Climb, Disguise, Alter Self, and Fly potentially eliminate obstacles in a way that spells on the standard cleric list cannot hold a candle to. Look at higher level spells and we see Polymorph, Dimension Door, Teleport, Wall of Force, and Disintegrate.

The Cleric (and Druid) spells are competitive in fair fight. The Wizard holds the cards that make the fight unfair.