Concentration Cecks, Armor, and You

[I'm A Banana]

Just idly wondering today, and I was curious...

Anybody fathom a reason for why armor has an Arcane Spell Failure chance instead of requiring a Concentraction check (like, 15 + Armor Check Penalty + spell level or something...perhaps something with less of a chacne of success...) to cast spells in armor?

Not that I'm against an ASFC, just that it seems a bit tacked on there....not fully integrated....etc.....

 

[LostSoul]

Game balance. Handwave it away. Maybe the spirits that grant arcane spells don't like armour.

 

[Archangel]

Game balance. Handwave it away. Maybe the spirits that grant arcane spells don't like armour.

Spirits grant arcane spells, drat I thought it was long flowing beards all this time

 

[LostSoul]

Hey, I don't know, maybe it's robes. Maybe that's why clerics wear them, too.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Erhm...I understand why arcane spells can fail in armor (or at least enough to hand wave it)....I'm more asking why they went with a flat percentage mechanic rather than some sort of twenty-sided-dice mechanic.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

My guess is because d20 + whatever rolls, particularly skill checks, can be gotten around fairly easily.

Passing Concentration checks, after all, becomes almost a matter of course at mid to high levels. To make a Concentration check hard to achieve for this purpose, you'd have to jack the number up to truly silly levels. Even then, I guarantee you you'd have scads of players working all the loopholes to eeke out every bonus possible. Just imagine all the Dwarf w/toad and Gnome w/toad familiars you'd see. Not to mention all the item X of Con +4 and persistant Endurance spells every wizard would have.

By contrast, IMO, a flat % says "Sorry pal. No skill checks going to help you here."

Patrick Y.

 

[Henrix]

Like Arcane Runes said. Concentration checks would get worked around too easily.

My only gripe with it is that suddenly you have to grab a d% in the middle of something, when you already have a d20 at hand!
But the solution to that is simply to roll that d20 anyhow, each 5% spell failure is one step on the d20. 15% spell failure -> you fail on 1-3 on d20.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There we go. That makes sense.

Thanks.

 

[Zhure]

sheesh. Just learn the "Still Spell" Feat.

 

[Uller]

Plus, Concentration doesn't really have much to do with ASF. ASF only applies to spells with Somatic components. Somatic components are described as measured and precise movements...that has Dex written all over it...

For game balance reasons, you don't want it to be Concentration because so many spell slingers are already very good at that. You also don't really want to make it a skill based check because that gives Wizards (who tend to have very high Ints and therefore more skill points) a big advantage over Sorcerers. So I figured the best way to go is a flat dexterity check would work...and it can, except then some spell casters can pick up decent armor with no costs. So I went with a feat...

Armored Casting [General]
Prerequisite: Dex 13+

Description: A character with this feat has trained at overcoming the problems associated with casting Arcane spells while wearing armor.

Benefit: A character with this feat who casts an Arcane spell with somatic components makes a dexterity check versus DC 3 to see if the spell fails rather and the normal Arcane Spell Failure check. The result is modified by the characters current Armor Check Penalty associated with the armor he is wearing or the amount of encumberance he is under. This feat may be taken multiple times. Each additional application of this feat gives an additional +2 to the spell failure check. A character may "Take 10" for this check in non-combat and non-rushed situations where there are no distractions.

Example: Tralfaze the Gnome Bard is wearing Chainshirt Armor(-2 penalty) and using a +1 Small Wooden Shield(-0 penalty). He has the Armored Casting feat and a 15 Dexterity(+2). His armor gives him a total Armor Check Penalty of -2 so the total modifier to his dexterity check when casting spells with somatic components is +0. In order to beat a DC 3, he must roll at least a 3. This means his chances of failure is 10% instead of 25%.

If you want something simplier, a popular option is to simply allow the feat to give the character a +10% or +5% bonus to his ASF rolls. If you take the feat multiple times, you get an additional bonus...Same concept really, except I believe that better dex and master work armor should translate into better chances of success.