[Dusk] The spell point system

[Michael Morris]

The change to druids seems kind of odd, druids get a lot more special abilities than the cleric, and this change potentiall makes them better healers by virtue of having more spellpoints.

Your purposed changes to wizards also seem a tad odd. It creates extra bookkeeping. It seem weird to be able to run out of spells and still have spell points left, since the spells disappear anyway seems like you may as well use the slot system. Lastly while a sorcerer with counter spell could have pretty much shut down a wizard before now it even easier since they lose the spell when it's cast.


[edit: Also combining the weakness of the slot system (i.e. losing the spell) with the weakness of the spell point system (fewer spells per day, or significantly weaker ones) it's a double whammy against wizards. As you point out under the slot system a wizard would gain the equivalent of a great deal more spell points. I think you may be looking at a significant balance problem here.]

The problem lies in some of the new spells - specifically persecute, addle, lobotomy, dissipate, et al. They lose considerable oomph if casters don't have a reason to carry multiple preparations of the same spell.

As to wizards running out of spells before spell points - the work around for the wizard is to rely more heavily on metamagic feats or use spell mastery more often.

Still, things to think about.

 

[Oni]

Question then becomes is it easier to alter the system to accomodate a few spells, or alter or drop a few spells to accomodate the system.

 

[Michael Morris]

Well, the problem with converting PHB classes to spell point systems is complex. There are many variables.

What follows is basically me thinking outloud. (well, typing it)

First off, caster level based effects on spells pretty much have to go. You can see this in Psionics, where the only manifester level based effects are duration, and amount of weight with teleport and telekinisis type spells. Spending extra spell points to increase caster level doesn't work too well: not all spells have the same level based variables. The system breaks down when you have similiar spells of different levels. Fireball and cone of cold are good examples. In your system, a 10d6 fireball costs 3+10, and a 10d6 cone of cold is 5+10, costing 2 points for basically what amounts to a 2 higher save DC, which isn't worth it. But the problem with this is that it invalidates the basis for how the spell system works. For example. If magic missle is not increased by caster level, it is a worthless spell for the most part. My suggestion? Steal from Monte Cook!

Give up on spell points, they are neigh impossible to fix. Keep most everything how it is, but instead of fire and forget preparing for the preparing types, they prepare the spells they can cast that day, and then they cast like a sorcerer with those spells. If you give the sorcerer a slightly larger spells known list, and keep the spells per day the same for all people involved, I think it would work out.

You're missing this vital point. No spell slot system is balanced with the non-spellcasting classes. 20th level wizards, sorcerers and clerics are worlds more powerful than 20th level fighters and rogues, and always will be if slot systems are used.

As to some spells becoming weaker or more powerful in light of the switch, so? Magic Missile and Fireball are only the premier spells of their level until some idiot (probably me) goes off and makes something more powerful at those levels. There will always be weak spells in each level nest. It's not unlike the card game. Not all UU casting cost spells are created equal. A strong argument can be made that there has been or ever will be a spell for UU stronger than counterspell.

Same situation here. So what if cone of cold is a bit underpowered? First off, it has a different shaped (and if I'm not mistaken much larger) area of effect than fireball. Also, unlike a slot system, where a wizard has no choice but to cast every spell as hard as he possibly can, a spell point system doesn't encourage this. In fact, it discourages it.

If spell points are your heart's desire, then the main part of balancing spell points is that you have to consider exactly how many of what level spells a caster is expected to use per day. So you take what he needs to defeat equal CR with his 3 mates, and times that by 4, since each equal CR encounter is supposed to take 1/4 of his power. (it's 1/5 according to the DMG, but 1/4 makes better math). Lets take a gander at the level 16 wizard with this in mind.

I read your figures 6 times and still couldn't figure out what the Hell you was trying to say with them

Now the problem with psions is that, since thier powers don't scale with level substantially, the lower level ones SUCK. Magic missile remains useful as a fall back spell forever. Fireball is always good as well. but Whitefire at 5d4 would be cast only to clear rabble. Afterall, burning hands does that much damage!

This is precisely why the spellpoint cost of spells is their own level+the level they are cast at. The benefits the spell gains for level is factored into the spell point cost. High level spells cost a lot - an 8th level spell is a healty 23 points when cast at 15th level - the minimum level it is available at. Considering that a 15th level wizard has 120 points to draw from (bonus spell points not included), the use of this one spell is 1/5th his spell progression.

And yes, a single 8th level spell can end encounters.

But letting spells scale with level with a power point system breaks it, because spells such as fireball and magic missle are better or as good as some of the higher level spells that have similiar effects, such as cone of cold and melfs acid arrow. So you get the problem where Fireball is cheaper than a spell that it's just as good as.

Letting spells scale without a cost breaks a power point system. This one doesn't do that.

Anyways, I'll give it some more thought. Perhaps a better construction of metamagics we can make lower level powers retain use for psions.

Eldorian Antar

Who cares about psionics?? I don't. Psionics is not a part of my world or my games - at least not in the form seen in the Psi Handbook. Maybe I'll convert Pyschic Journey to 3e one of these days - but its take on psionics is quite different from WotC's slot-system-pretending-to-be-a-point-system.

 

[Eldorian]

Sorry Morris, but I simply don't agree that fighting types are weaker. And why care about psions? Because they have a point system that works ok, little weaker than wizards and sorcerers, so it's a good base to construct a point system for wizards and sorcerers. If you build a psion correctly, sticking to 2 maybe 3 disciplines, and picking powers that are equal or more powerful than the wizard equivalents, then psions play about as good as wizards and sorcerers. Telepathy is good for this, because it is superior to Enchanment.

As for my figures, well, they made sense to me. Basiaclly I took the wizard with no bonus spells, divided his spell list by 4 level by level, and said that's how many spells he needs to finish a combat, of equal CR to his party of 4 (assuming that it takes 25% of player power to defeat equal CR, which I upped from the assumed 20% in the DMG).

Since the poll stated that battles are around 5 rounds long, and my personal experiance confirms, then I did a 5 round analysis. The analysis takes into acount that he casts a fraction of spells (only 2 8th per day, so 1/2 per battle).

Each round, I took 1 full spell and totaled it's damage. Since he got 1/2 an 8th level spell, he had to add 1/2 his 7th level spell, and since he got 3/4 of a 7th level spell, only 1/4 was left over for the next round.

I appologize if I cannot explain it further; I'm months away from my bachelors in math and the only people I discuss math with are mathematicians, so I tend to assume my readers are good problem solvers, not saying you arn't; I may just have not explained enough of what I was saying. If it's still not clear, I'll refrase.

I'm still trying to find a magic system I like. I think the psionics have a good core idea to them, and just need a nudge in the right direction. That, or wait for Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, and ninja his spell system, which looks flexible, yet balanced.

Eldorian Antar

 

[gpetruc]

I'd keep the fact that spell preparations are not lost. This would give more versatility (you could balance it out by giving less power)

To avoid the problem that a fireball costs about the same as a meteor swarm cast at the same level, you could use something like the psion scale to determine the spell point cost:
- multiply the spell level by some fixed number (2 or 3. could also be fractionary if you make a table of the costs). A greater number means less use of high level spells, a low one means greater use (and possibly abuse) of them.
- add +1 per caster level.

or, that is nearly equivalent (minimum caster level is nearly equal to half spell level):
- multiply the spell level by some fixed number (2 ? 3? 4?)
- add +1 (or +2) to raise the caster level above the minimum necessary level to cast that spell.

To figure the spell point total maybe you should consider a quadratic scale (like the psion) instead of a linear one: for example each time add the spell point cost of adding one or two spells of the highest level the caster can use. The PHB scale in slots is more than quadratic as you also gain new low level spells.


An idea might be:
Spell cost = level x 3, raise the caster level by +1 / level above the minimum caster level for that spell.
Cantrips cost 1 spell point
Bonus spells as Stat Bonus x Level

Spell points: make a basic table like:
Lvl 1: 5
Lvl 2: 10
Lvl 3: 15
Lvl 4: 20
Lvl 5: 30
Lvl 6: 40
Lvl 7: 50
Lvl 8: 60
Lvl 9: 80
Lvl 10: 100
Lvl 11: 120
Lvl 12: 150
Lvl 13: 180
Lvl 14: 210
Lvl 15: 240
Lvl 16: 280
Lvl 17: 320
Lvl 18: 360
Lvl 19: 400
Lvl 20: 450

Then, scale it uniformly for classes to assure balance.
(more to sorcerers, less to clerics, lesser for bards, least for ranger/paladins)

To balance out that the wizards now cast freely as sorcerers but with a wider choice of spells known you can give them something of the following:
- give the "on the fly metamagic" to spontaneous casters
- give bonus known spells (on Cha ?)
- let them ignore material components (convert costly ones in XP cost at some rate between 1XP/100gp to 1 XP/10gp rate) (they might still need some focuses such as a mirror for scry)
- give them bonus spells known from one domain (either some homebrew arcane domains or some clerical domains maybe except healing &co)
- give them access to spells from one color (as if all those spells where known) (this could be a big deal for the sorcerer) (this it's not ok for the bard. But you could simply give them more skills points/music)

Or you could completely change the sorcerer spell list making it color-based (choose up to two colors + general spells and bicolor spells of those two. Know twice the number of spells of a normal sorcerer, but only chosen among those)
This might be a bit drastical, but also interesting (and will make color magic more common)

 

[Kannik]

I cast... meteor swarm! and again! and again!

One possible solution to the 'I have so many spell points that I can cast 9th level spells all day long' is to have spells that are cast cause subdual damage to the caster. Even at high levels, with only 1d4 hp+con, it isn't going to take too much to cause a caster to pause before casting a lot of 9th level spells during a combat. and with subdual damage returning at a fairly decent rate, even if you are continuing to travel lightly, or explore a dungeon, by the next encounter they may be back to half-decent levels.

So, while a caster may have plenty of spell points for later encounters, during the current encounter they've caused themselves enough subdual damage that to continue would be a bit foolhearty.

It may not be a bad idea to allow casters either a Fort save to not fall unconcious if they've used all their subdual points (subdual = HP) for casting spells, and/or allow them to tap into their regular HP to keep casting spells afterwords, to 'push themselves.

I think having it cost more spellpoints to cast spells at a 'higher' level (ie, 5d6 costs X, 10d6 costs Y) helps in this regard as well, depending on how one does the progression. If fireball always cost X , and damage was based on level, then it'd be worst. and, in fact, it would likely better to cast fireball all day then meteor swarm, for overall uber damage (if not speed of damage).


Kannik

 

[gpetruc]

A few math

I've thought a bit about the "level shifting problem" (the fact that with spell points a caster might use them to cast only higher level spells, but many of them)

Starting from Eldorian's idea of a 5 round combat, and that he casts 4 spells (he's also got magic items such as scrolls/wands).
Let's suppose the spellcaster has two options:
1) cast always his highest level spells (for example all 7th level spells)
2) cast spells between max and max -3
(for example one 7th, one 6th, one 5th and one 4th)

We'd like that in option 1 the caster should not be able to cast 4x 7th level spells, but less (let's say between 2 and 3).
Balancing this "scaling" factor is the point.

If we want to have higher level spells to be more expensive (and so have the price go up very quickly, for example geometrically). In this case we have that low level spells will be nearly free for high level casters (that will result in wizards always flying, invisible & buffed up).
Instead, if we want a cost that increases more slowly (for example linearly in the spell level) it will result that at higher levels there is very few difference between different spell levels (a 9th level spell will cost about as an 8th or 7th level one)

Now, after tinkering a bit with numbers, i came with this cost progression:
Lvl 0: 1
Lvl 1: 3
Lvl 2: 6
Lvl 3: 10
Lvl 4: 15
Lvl 5: 20
Lvl 6: 25
Lvl 7: 30
Lvl 8: 40
Lvl 9: 50

In this way the "scaling" factor is always a litle less than 3. (I'd prefered 2.5, but the costs were going up too quickly)

Then, to determine the spell points a wizard should have (including those coming from the bonus), we'll consider to use all them up in 4 encounters, casting 4 spells each (of levels scaling down)
This is something less than what a sorcerer could cast (without spells from bonus cha)
We can consider a number of bonus points equal to about 25% of the total.
Then let's reduce a little the spell points at the higher level because at high levels spellcasters are already very powerfull

Finally, these are the sorcerer base spell points:
lvl 1: 10
lvl 2: 20 (go up by +10)
lvl 3: 30
lvl 4: 40 (go up by +20)
lvl 5: 60
lvl 6: 80
lvl 7: 100 (go up by +25)
lvl 8: 125
lvl 9: 150
lvl 10: 180 (go up by +30)
lvl 11: 210
lvl 12: 240
lvl 13: 270
lvl 14: 300
lvl 15: 330
lvl 16: 360
lvl 17: 390
lvl 18: 420
lvl 19: 450
lvl 20: 480

And the bonus spell points are equal to Cha bonus x level.

For the wizard I'd reduce them by one third (because he's got more spells known. Now wizard memorizes the same number of spells but does not loose memorizations)

For the problem of spells scaling in power with level, this is another issue, but I won't try to fix it tonight (maybe tomorrow)

Note that another idea to reduce the abuse of higher level spells is to add some kind of fatigue in spellcasting (with a check that scales with level drastically). But now I was trying to keep it simple.

 

[Quip]

While I'm not familiar with Dusk, I have tried developling spell point systems in the past. On the issue of casting highest level spells repeatedly, I came up with a little trick: Have there be a minimum reserve of points that must be left for the spell to be cast. A multiple of the base cost or some function of the power level works best. For example, if a caster has 90 points and is casting his strongest spells at 15 points a piece, and there is a required reserve of 4x base cost, then the spell can be cast only three times before passing his limit for that spell. Note that if you reach the limit (60 in this case) you can cast one last time.

For the D&D wizard, if you counted spell levels as spell points he would have 182 points at level 20. That equals *20* 9th level spells, not a good thing! But with a requirement mutiplier of... *whips out calculator* x17 for 9th level spells (153 minimum), then he's stopped at just 4.

I haven't balenced this out with spells of lower level or other classes, or with anything really, but I think an approach like this might work. Anyone see potential in this?

 

[Oni]

Quip, I think the only problem with this is that in dnd the advantage already goes to the person that throws down the biggest spell the fastest, I think you risk promoting this even more, since you have to cast your big spells early on or not at all.

 

[Quip]

...Aww nuts! I barely finished fixing the numbers on that post and I get shot down.

Didn't think of that... oh well back to the drawing board...