I want to do something cool Every Round!!!

[Felix]

While it might be wasting a spell to do stuff every round, the wizard could just as easily be said to be wasting his action by using time wasters like aid, most ready actions, crossbow plinking.

I might share this opinon as well, until I was in a fight for our lives and the wizard pulled out a spell he'd been saving and it saved our bacon. Which has happened in-game to me. The wizard having cast all of his good spells and the party getting toasted has also happened.

From my PoV, if your wizard can afford to screw around like that, then the fights might be too easy.

Or perhaps the threat of a harder fight is looming. If the wizard can hold back his real thunder and still help out with a smaller spell here and there in combat he's doing his job - making sure he can lay the smackdown on the really tough enemies and soften them up so they don't kill off the meleers; HP are a much easier resource to regenerate that spells, after all.

I'm not saying a spellcaster shouldn't cast his spells when they're needed, but rather I think that they're needed less often than spells are actually cast; which means that the wizard and the whole party must stop to rest before an encounter where they think the spells are truly needed.

What does greasing the ogre if he charges do that just greasing him does?

It potentially saves the Grease spell for later.

It denies the Ogre a +2 charge bonus to attack (no charging through Grease says I) while maintaining a -2 charge penalty to AC.

Allows the Ogre to apporach the fighter without managing an attack (doesn't use up Fighter's movement) because you can't charge through rough terrain (I would qualify Greased ground as something you can't run or charge through).

If the save is failed, it combines a -2 charging penalty to AC with a +4 bonus to attack that the fighter would get if he steps up (avoiding the grease, obviously) and attacks the ogre.

Also, a team of adventurers will usually rest if any one guy really needs it, then there's a strong incentive to for most players to match the fastest burn rate. Considering the payoffs, is it really any surprise that people will choose to use resources quickly?

If the wizard player always blew his spells on the first encounter and then demanded rest, I'd be less inclined to try to shoulder him out of the way to do cool things and more likely to ask him to save a spell or two. Once in a while. Sometimes. Please.

But yeah, if a character were in dire trouble the party should back him up. But that player should not prey upon his party and get himself in dire trouble when the opportunity presents itself. If the wizard is having trouble lasting because he runs out of spells every day and he forces the party to stop, the problem isn't the party, the DM, or the encounters: the problem is his spendthrift spellcasting.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

One other thing I like about per-encounter abilities instead of per-day is that my character actually does get to do things on his turn,

We had a someone-attacks-you-while-you're-camping encounter, with a bunch of giants and ogres and things, and my character stood up, drew his sword, and went back to bed, because the casters nuked the crap out of everything charging in and nothing even got near the party. :\

It's getting to the point where the casters nuke something, and either it's dead, or it kills someone and then they nuke it again, and it dies. And each encounter is going the same, because the casters are in charge of the encounter pace. I play a swordsage now (was a psychic warrior then), and I still end up sleeping at 8:15am cecause the casters are running on fumes after the 15 minute buff-rush nukathon.
If I'm lucky, I'll get into the proper position, with the proper boost and fullround maneuver ready, and I can do my flaming chunky salsa dance, and do half the damage our casters are doing every round, for 3-4 encounters, then resting by the time the first round of buff spells wears off.

 

[Voadam]

If the party being forced to rest is caused by a spellcaster player needing to do something cool, I don't think the solution is to encourage that behavior.

The solution is not for the game to accomodate those needs and design to meet them? The game shouldn't fit player needs?

Your suggesting the solution is for the player to have their needs unmet to avoid the group problem of resting instead of allowing the class to be changed to both meet the player's needs and solve the group's problem of required resting.

I think the solution is to accomodate those needs in a mechanically balanced way that leads to fun play for both the player and the group.

 

[Felix]

Your suggesting the solution is for the player to have their needs unmet

I suggest that some needs are not worthy of meeting.

"I need to hog the spotlight and do everything cool and the game centers on me."

I will wholeheartedly support the opinion that this need should not be met. No, I don't think this is typical of the average "cool every round" need, but this example does serve to show that simply because a player wants something does not mean the mechanics of the game should alter to meet it.

Now that it's established that there are some needs that should not be catered to, the question is then where to draw the line. Do you allow casters to have physics-bending spells and no magic dart? Do you power-down the spells and allow a more powerful magic dart? Do you create a class with a heavily modified magic dart and next to no powerful spell effect ability?

It seems to me that the only one of these three options we lack is the last one. Wizards and Sorcerers don't have an expendable magic dart but their spells are arguably the most powerful offensive weapons in the game. Warlocks have their eldrich blast but still maintain the ability to create high-level spell effects. We don't have something that only blasts away every round; I think that's a good thing, a class that only blasted d6's would bore the heck out of me. I'm sure a balanced class could be created for that niche, I just don't think it would be very interesting.

The problem comes when the player wants the magic dart/eldrich blasting every round effect but doesn't want to sacrifice the power of a full spellcasting progression. If they want to be able to do stuff other than cast all the time, then be a bard, multiclass, play a warlock; the system as it is already supports options that make sacrifices of power to gain in flexibility. I think it likely the reason some would be unwilling to choose those options is becasue they want the flexibility as well as the power, and if game balance is something you're striving for, this makes it difficult.

I think the solution is to accomodate those needs in a mechanically balanced way that leads to fun play for both the player and the group.

Mechanically balanced options already exist; they just arn't as powerful as the current full spellcaster. I don't think that making the full spellcasters more powerful by adding a d6 at will attack (or something similar) will necessiarly improve the enjoyment of the game all-around.

 

[Hussar]

I'm likely to get shouted down for this, but here goes:

What about Truenamer mechanics? Ok, maybe not tie it to CR (although that's an option) but the idea that you can keep casting your spells all day long, it's just that every time you cast, it gets a little bit more difficult. While I know that the Truenamer gets a bad rap, I do think that the basic idea is very sound.

Casters get a "caster skill" and have to make a skill check vs a DC in order to cast spell X. Every casting beyond the first adds 2 to the DC. The DC is reset every 24 hours.

I've just added a truenamer NPC to my World's Largest Dungeon game and I've found that they can work rather well actually. He's 10th level with a +19 Truespeak skill. The party is around 10th level, so, basically, he's going to be able to cast each of his spells about 5 times per day before things get truly difficult.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like this done for most casters.

 

[Ry]

My campaign uses Conviction (half-way between Action points and Iron Heroes tokens, and they regenerate when characters rest) as a resource. It's cool, but its purpose isn't to enhance strategy; it's to make sure that the spotlight has a chance to move from player.

 

[Edheldur]

Casters get a "caster skill" and have to make a skill check vs a DC in order to cast spell X. Every casting beyond the first adds 2 to the DC. The DC is reset every 24 hours.

Well, the Advanced Player's Guide by Sword and Sorcery has a spell-casting system that basically works like what you suggested. It was reprinted in The Year's Best D20 Volume 1, by Malhavoc Presss. Interestingly, no one I know has even tried that system, so I really don't know how it actually plays out.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Well, the Advanced Player's Guide by Sword and Sorcery has a spell-casting system that basically works like what you suggested. It was reprinted in The Year's Best D20 Volume 1, by Malhavoc Presss. Interestingly, no one I know has even tried that system, so I really don't know how it actually plays out.

I've seen this too. It does look interesting. Higher-level spells have a higher DC, and there are some rules for limiting the total number of spells per level a PC can cast each day--including an optional rule for limiting the attempts at casting very high level spells by inflicting non-lethal damage.

If someone has used this system, please speak up.

---

In other news, this is a great thread. Good stuff everyone.

 

[Driddle]

re "do something cool every round": Get a girlfriend or boyfriend and stay away from the gaming table.

 

[Sunderstone]

Im with Berandor and Felix on this issue.

To add, Ive never had a Wizard type character feel useless without his/her spells. Most Wizards I play do ALOT of melee fighting even when I have a full compliment of spells still in memory. I take the "buff" type spells too for this reason.

Someone else mentioned the "Gauntlet" video game motif in play. Having a Wizard gain an Arcane Blast/Beam/Missile/Ray/whatever every round will do exactly that. Even Archers eventually run out of arrows as well they should. Walking around with hundreds of arrows also seems a tad excessive.