Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 4822800" data-attributes="member: 44797">Well, I would note that in order to get a curse down to level -5, a person typically is getting murdered or has seen his own children slaughtered by his wife/brother/cousin.  So level -5 spells may be "free" but they are nearly impossible to spam.Well, here is my thinking.  First, a goal such as, "curses enable commoners to level the playing field" is in conflict with a flat XP cost because commoners may have no XP, whereas a level 15 wizard has XP galore.  For that matter, so does a level 15 fighter.  Giving a flat XP cost means someone at a high level can expend that XP cost a whole bunch while the "commoners" that curses are supposed to protect end up with diddly-squat.Essentially, a curse system with a flat XP cost makes any high level non-caster into a caster, for a reasonable price.  A level 18 barbarian could cast low-level curses (using the XP buy) maybe almost 20 times and still be a level 18 barbarian.  Sure, they're low level.  But they've still taken a class with absolutely no casting ability and given him a whole lotta casting.  That same barbarian could opt to XP buy a few extremely powerful curses, and suddenly he's a wizard to contend with, and he still has an insane BAB.  Of course, he's a "wizard" with limited supply of spells/curses, but he's a wizard nonetheless.So this is why I like the level buy instead of the XP buy.  Whether you're a level 2 commoner or a level 18 sorcerer, giving up a level is ouch.  You'd only do it if you absolutely had to.  Probably only if you were about to die anyway, or if your level of desperation was through the roof.Having said that, there are ways to avoid XP cost & level cost entirely.  A spellcaster can put a curse on his/her spell list as if it were a normal spell.  Of course, curses are a bit weaker than spells so I don't know why someone would do that normally, but it is one way to cast a curse without any XP loss or level loss at all.Are you kidding?  I have no idea what I'm doing, so giving me feedback is awesome.  I just needed a system, found one that made sense but was overpowered, and added some rules to reign it in.  I may have reigned it in too far, I don't know.  If players say, "That's lame, I don't want to use it," that's fine because it's not meant to be a power up for players.  However, if the players say, "I wouldn't even consider cursing my own murderer, as the cost is way too high," then maybe that means I've over-restricted it.Anyway, in the other thread they're talking about Ravenloft's curse system, and apparently the Ravenloft Player's Handbook is still available on RPGNow (because it wasn't actually a WotC property that they could remove).  So maybe I'll have a look.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification