D&D General + Homebrew Brainstorm to bring back prepared Vancian Casting +

[Distracted DM]

Plus+ thread, because I'd rather not have to justify/defend why I'd want to bring back old prepared Vancian casting.

Rather than remove the current spell slot method, I'd rather create an incentivized option for the old prepared spell-Vancian casting. Incentivizing likely means enhanced power, but at the cost of the 5e method's flexibility.

A few ideas on how to go about this:

1. More spell slots per day: OK this is my least favorite way of doing it, it's how I saw some other folk homebrew it.
2. Level-based Auto-upcast spells: The idea of this one appeals the most. Spells used to upcast, so why not bring that back? The issue with this one, I think, is whether or not it'd be too overpowered for all spells to be upcast to, say, your max spell level.
3. Roll-to-Cast: Finally, what if memorizing spells this way made them roll-to-cast, in the vein of Shadowdark and DCC? Two ways that this could work, A. Roll-to-Cast including the failure potential, but now we're adding a new detriment and this system is supposed to be incentivized to be used, or B. you always successfully cast, but you're rolling to see if you keep the spell. So you could potentially get multiple casts out of one prepared spell, but preparing it multiple times would mean greater guarantee on being able to use that spell consistently.

Thoughts?

 

[Horwath]

Plus+ thread, because I'd rather not have to justify/defend why I'd want to bring back old prepared Vancian casting.

Rather than remove the current spell slot method, I'd rather create an incentivized option for the old prepared spell-Vancian casting. Incentivizing likely means enhanced power, but at the cost of the 5e method's flexibility.

A few ideas on how to go about this:

I generally hate the idea, even spell slots are kind of dumb in the end.
Spell point is the best variant to me.

but, since this is a +thread...

1. More spell slots per day: OK this is my least favorite way of doing it, it's how I saw some other folk homebrew it.

more spell slots would be required for loss of flexibility, there is a good chance that many of spell slots will not be used during any given day.

2. Level-based Auto-upcast spells: The idea of this one appeals the most. Spells used to upcast, so why not bring that back? The issue with this one, I think, is whether or not it'd be too overpowered for all spells to be upcast to, say, your max spell level.

this will bring back double scaling of casters vs martials.
we have auto scaling cantrips, that is enough.

3. Roll-to-Cast: Finally, what if memorizing spells this way made them roll-to-cast, in the vein of Shadowdark and DCC? Two ways that this could work, A. Roll-to-Cast including the failure potential, but now we're adding a new detriment and this system is supposed to be incentivized to be used, or B. you always successfully cast, but you're rolling to see if you keep the spell. So you could potentially get multiple casts out of one prepared spell, but preparing it multiple times would mean greater guarantee on being able to use that spell consistently.

Thoughts?

This would lead again to min-maxing the "spell roll" in every possible way.


maybe this idea would give more weight to subclass spells, if they could be casted instead of prepared spells.
But, again it would require greater rebalancing of those bonus spells.


in any way, it would lead to more casters looking the same as people would not like to prepare niche spells, but spell that are generally more useful in more situations.
And it would lead to even more 5MWD, because now it would not be when wizards is out of slots, but when wizards it out of preferred slots.