Arcane Spell Failure - Is It Silly?

[Spatzimaus]

Yes, it's a silly, outdated mechanic. It's not necessarily a bad idea overall; it, in theory, keeps the really powerful magic from being cast by walking tanks. It just brings up a few obvious questions (and ignores the increased power of 3E Clerics):

1> If armor impedes spellcasting by preventing you from performing gestures, then why don't Divine casters (who also have verbal and somatic components) suffer from the same sort of spell failure? Why does a Wizard casting spell X suffer from a 10% failure rate for wearing leather while a Cleric casting the same spell (domain spell?) in full plate has no penalty? And why does a 3.5E Bard have no problem with light armor but still has the full penalty in anything heavier?

2> If it represents a lack of training, then why doesn't it reduce as you increase in level? Many of the house rules for this have involved replacing it with Concentration check modifiers, to get around this. And why, as others have pointed out, does it not go away when you multiclass or take an Armor Proficiency feat?

3> Why are there no ASF-reducing Feats or armor enhancements in the WotC-produced books? All I've ever seen are Armored Caster (Netbook of Feats) and Monte's armor enhancements from BoEM.

But, since this is the House Rules forum, here's what we did once upon a time for a campaign of ours.
> Call ASF "Spell Failure Rate". It applies to most casters, whether Arcane (Sorcerer, Bard), Divine (Cleric, Paladin), or Nature (Druid, Ranger). The only ones who don't suffer from it are the psionic types.
> Just because a spell lacks somatic components doesn't mean it has no chance of failure. The failure rate is due to the energy flow being impeded or disrupted by the heavy materials. A fireball can't flow through a wall, after all; magic is stopped by most materials.
> Divine casters get a bonus when in inorganic armors and a penalty in organics. This improves every 5 levels, so at high levels a Cleric can cast in plate without a problem.
> Nature casters are the reverse: they get a bonus in organic armors and a penalty in inorganics. In addition, Druids get a penalty when wielding anything inorganic at all, so if the inorganic armor penalty is 20% then using a metal sword gives the same 20% (this replaces their weapon/armor restriction).
> Multiclassing doesn't affect any of this. These bonuses/penalties only apply to spells from the appropriate types of classes, although mixing within a type (Druid/Ranger or Cleric/Paladin) lets you add the levels when determining the bonus.
> Add the "Armored Caster" feat (-10% spell failure), and two armor enhancements, "Divine Focus" and "Nature Focus".

Anyway, we gave Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers a bit of other stuff to compensate. It seemed to work pretty nicely; it was supposed to represent a world where magic was a bit more problematic than standard.

 

[Norfleet]

And there's already the obvious drawback that wizards don't come with the ability to use armor anyway, and would have to burn up to 3 feats just to do so.

The obvious failing, of course, is the fact that, for some reason, 3E penalizes a character more for WEARING the armor than for CARRYING IT AROUND IN HIS BACKPACK. This makes absolutely no sense, since any sane person would quickly conclude that it's far less bothersome to simply wear the armor than it is to carry it around on your back.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm in agreement that ASF is preety silly. I'd have no problem with the Armor spell failure idea if you are proficient with the armor.

Now of course, the counterargument is that every wizard and sorc would take a level of fighter to get all those proficiencies and become tanks. But as anyone who has read any multiclass spellcaster arugments can tell you, you are giving up A LOT by losing that one level of wizard.

So its a good tradeoff in my opinion, you gain better protection, weaker spells. And it makes fighter/mage multiclass a viable option.

 

[KingOfChaos]

It's game balance, pure and simple. Without ASF, you would have the tank mages from Ultima Online busting into your D20 campaign.

 

[bret]

It's game balance, pure and simple. Without ASF, you would have the tank mages from Ultima Online busting into your D20 campaign.

Not familiar with Ultima Online, but GURPS allows mages to wear armor yet not everyone does.

Reason is simple, in that game the weight of the armor can seriously slow you down unless you have a huge strength. Simple idea, no reason you couldn't apply it to other systems.

Right now in DnD, you have people designing finesse fighters. They only wear light armor. No reason you couldn't do the same sort of thing for wizards and sorcerers -- giving advantages to the people that aren't carrying around 50 lbs of armor to represent their better maneuverability and speed.

 

[FireLance]

And there's already the obvious drawback that wizards don't come with the ability to use armor anyway, and would have to burn up to 3 feats just to do so.

Burn 3 feats or, take a level of Cleric, Fighter or Paladin.

 

[Norfleet]

It's game balance, pure and simple. Without ASF, you would have the tank mages from Ultima Online busting into your D20 campaign.

A slow-moving, heavily-plated, and overloaded "tankmage" is hardly on the list of most-threatening things to see. Heavy armor is already very heavily penalized, to the point where, ironically, you can go *FASTER* carrying your plate armor in a sack than you can while wearing it....which makes absolutely no sense.

 

[Tywyll]

> Call ASF "Spell Failure Rate". It applies to most casters, whether Arcane (Sorcerer, Bard), Divine (Cleric, Paladin), or Nature (Druid, Ranger). The only ones who don't suffer from it are the psionic types.
> Just because a spell lacks somatic components doesn't mean it has no chance of failure. The failure rate is due to the energy flow being impeded or disrupted by the heavy materials. A fireball can't flow through a wall, after all; magic is stopped by most materials.
> Divine casters get a bonus when in inorganic armors and a penalty in organics. This improves every 5 levels, so at high levels a Cleric can cast in plate without a problem.
> Nature casters are the reverse: they get a bonus in organic armors and a penalty in inorganics. In addition, Druids get a penalty when wielding anything inorganic at all, so if the inorganic armor penalty is 20% then using a metal sword gives the same 20% (this replaces their weapon/armor restriction).
> Multiclassing doesn't affect any of this. These bonuses/penalties only apply to spells from the appropriate types of classes, although mixing within a type (Druid/Ranger or Cleric/Paladin) lets you add the levels when determining the bonus.
> Add the "Armored Caster" feat (-10% spell failure), and two armor enhancements, "Divine Focus" and "Nature Focus".

Anyway, we gave Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers a bit of other stuff to compensate. It seemed to work pretty nicely; it was supposed to represent a world where magic was a bit more problematic than standard.

Would you mind actually giving the full deal on these rules? I would be interested in hearing more about the system.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Would you mind actually giving the full deal on these rules? I would be interested in hearing more about the system.

Arrrr! (Okay, that's enough pirate-speak for today).

It's a REALLY long set of rules, since it involves a new weapon proficiency system and such. Like most sets of house rules, it just kept growing and growing...
Here's the basics for the four classes in question:

CLERIC:
> Clerics no longer get the one free domain spell per day, and can no longer swap for cure/inflict spells. Instead, each day they pick one domain spell for each level; you can trade a prepared spell for the domain spell of that level you picked for the day. (For example, a Cleric who took the Travel and Luck domains has to decide between Entropic Shield and Expeditious Retreat at the start of the day, and that's what he swaps his first-level spells for for the rest of the day.) This was done after one person complained that his cleric of a Fire god only had a small number of Fire spells each day.
> There's a new feat, "Domain Preparation" that lets you put domain spells in normal spell slots.
> There's also a couple Feats that let you add another domain; one gives the granted power, the other gives the spells. You still can't add a domain that isn't in your deity's list, though. And, a lot of gods need expanded domain lists, especially the Healing domain.
> No godless Clerics; these powers are given by a god, not some abstract philosophical concept. Clerics also can't be True Neutral, even if their god is.
> Domain spells can freely violate alignment restrictions. If you're Good, and your deity has Evil as a domain, feel free to use those spells. Your general Cleric spells still suffer from the usual restriction, though.
> Clerics suffer from Somatic Failure, just like Arcane classes, but inorganic (metal, crystal) armors help focus the energy to compensate. At first class level, a Cleric gets a 10% bonus for inorganic armor or shields and a 40% penalty for organic (wood, bone, leather) armor or shields. This is per-item, and this bonus can't reduce an item below 0% (so you can't use a negative amount from a shield to offset plate armor). At class levels 6, 11, and 16 these shift by 10% in favor of the Cleric (so a level 20 Cleric gets a 40% bonus for inorganic armors and a 10% penalty for organics).

So, in exchange for the Somatic Failure (which is workable), you get a better Domain Spell ruleset.

PALADINS
Paladins have the same Somatic Failure rules as Clerics. Same percentages, and you add Cleric+Paladin levels together to get the bonuses.
Instead of their "remove disease" and "immune to disease" abilities, at level 4 Paladins pick any one domain of their Deity, and can swap for those spells like Clerics can (plus, of course, they get the domain granted power). Unlike Clerics, they can't pick any domain that includes spells which violate their alignment. We added a couple new domains, like "Purification", to mimic the old Paladin abilities better.
A Paladin can multiclass to and from their racial Favored Class, but only if their Paladin class level remains their highest class level. (Same goes for Monks). For races with "Any", the first class you multiclass to after becoming a Paladin is the only one you can freely swap to.
Their Mount rules are really different; I've posted them at
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=48419
And, to keep things interesting, we actually have four separate Paladin classes, one for each extreme alignment: Guardian (LG), Crusader (CG), Blackguard (LE), and Shadow Knight (CE). Each has an appropriate code of conduct. Most of the abilities mirror in obvious ways; the only real change is that the Smite abilities are now Smite Law or Smite Chaos for everyone.

DRUID:
> Their Somatic Failure rules are just like the Cleric's, except half as much and reversed. So, it starts as a 5% bonus for organics and 20% penalty for inorganics, shifting 5% at levels 6, 11, and 16. This replaces the armor limitation they had before.
> Druids also suffer Somatic Failure for inorganic weapons, as if they had a 0% baseline. This replaces the weapon limitation they had before.
> Druids aren't alignment-limited casters; they can freely cast spells that violate their alignment, because unlike Clerics they don't need a god's approval.
> For every positive-energy spell on their list (the Cure line), add the negative-energy counterpart at the same level.
> Druids don't need any sort of Divine Focus

RANGER:
Basically we changed it to something that's really close to what the 3.5E version ended up as. Except, they get Somatic Failure for armor just like a Druid (and Druid and Ranger levels stack). Obviously, no penalty for inorganic weapons here, that's a Druid-only thing.

The new Somatic Failure stuff we added:
Feat: ARMORED CASTER (NBoF): -10% to all Somatic Failure rates.
New armor enchantments:
DIVINE FOCUS: -10% to divine Somatic Failure rate and +5 to all Concentration checks for Divine (Cleric, Paladin) spells; +1 cost
NATURE FOCUS: -10% to nature Somatic Failure rate and +5 to all Concentration checks for Nature (Druid, Ranger) spells; +1 cost

Anyway, that's the basic idea. For the Cleric or Paladin who picks up some Celestial Chainmail or the Druid who wears leather, this Somatic Failure is not even an issue.
Eventually we just scrapped the whole D&D thing and started developing a more generic d20 homebrew, but that's an entirely different discussion.

 

[Tywyll]

Anyway, that's the basic idea. For the Cleric or Paladin who picks up some Celestial Chainmail or the Druid who wears leather, this Somatic Failure is not even an issue.
Eventually we just scrapped the whole D&D thing and started developing a more generic d20 homebrew, but that's an entirely different discussion.

Those are definately some interesting ideas.
Did you do anything for arcane magic?

I would be interested in hearing more about the homebrew. Perhaps you could drop me a line at tywyll@yahoo.com?

Thanks!