D&D General Making Spellcasters feel Caster-y without actually Casting?

[EzekielRaiden]

So, there's once again discussion in a thread about how casters get too many slots to properly balance them for the adventuring day and while i don't want to focus on that specifically it sparked something to think about, if we wanted to move caster design away from being reliant on having a big ol' pile of spell slots to enable the casters to do their magical things and feel magical what abilities would we give them instead?

personally i think the paladin and the artificer are a good place to draw inspiration from because they have to try to 'feel magical' while only relying on halfcaster progression, as well as the warlock who already embodies this kind of slot-minimalism caster design, paladins have their lay-on-hands: healing which isn't dependent on slots, and their auras, always-on proximity buffs, artificers have their magical tinkering and their infusions, proxying their magic into objects instead.

so what kind of design would you choose to use if casters needed to be designed with their slots being less of their primary avenue of magic?

Answering this question requires that we identify what elements produce "feel[ing] caster-y".

So--what does that feeling feel like? What visuals do you see when you're having that feeling? What actions can reliably pull it off? Are there spells that don't feel "caster-y" even when you are, in fact, casting them?

As a preliminary step, to make this something more than just reflecting a question back at you, something I do in my Dungeon World game, all people who can practice some form of magic have "magical senses". People without such training genuinely can't observe anything but the direct physical effects of spells and supernatural phenomena. Those who do get such training necessarily develop magical senses, because...I mean you need them in order to know that what you're doing is working. Each spellcasting tradition approaches these senses differently, and because it's a genuinely distinct sense, it has to be explained somewhat metaphorically.

I think this does a decent job of making the world feel like it has great magic hidden beneath the skin, that those who are trained can find and those who are not are blind to. That secrecy is very much part of not just Hermeticism, which is the soil from which the D&D Wizard grew, it's also part of things like mystery cults, vision rituals, and similar sorts of things. That gives a feeling of having the supernatural close, a breath away, being able to part the grass and feel the pulse of the Unseen World.

I'm sure there are more techniques, though, so it would help a lot to specify more about what it really means to feel "caster-y" in general. Then we can come up with concepts, mechanics, and structures that produce that feeling without needing to be driven by resource expenditure. Dreamscarred Press's Spheres of Power may also be worth checking out, as I personally find their approach fascinating and richly detailed while really cutting down on the obscene power that spellcasters can achieve. Spheres might then present a path forward for tweaking things so as to capture the "caster-y" feeling while avoiding power creep.

 

[A_Carrington]

You could actually balance spells so that they don't break the game if you can cast them every turn.

 

[Horwath]

"spellcasting cooldown" can be some kind of balancing mechanic or global spell cooldown.

Improve cantrips a little, then:

if you cast a 1st or 2nd level spell, you cannot cast spells except cantrips for 1 round.
if you cast 3rd to 5th level spell, you cannot cast spells except cantrips for 2 rounds.
if you cast 6th to 8th level spell, you cannot cast spells except cantrips for 3 rounds.
if you cast 9th level spell, you cannot cast spells except cantrips for 4 rounds.

maybe this can be only limited to "Action cast" spells, leaving Bonus action and Reaction open or only Reactions can be left open or only Bonus action can be left open.


maybe at some level 1st level spells are not locked with this and at some level 2nd level spells are not locked.

IE: at 5th level 1st level spells are not locked down
at 9th level 2nd level spells are not locked down
at 13th level 3rd level spells are not locked down
at 17th level 4th level spells are not locked down

 

[FrogReaver]

You could actually balance spells so that they don't break the game if you can cast them every turn.

Only if you want weak piddly spells.

 

[FrogReaver]

As an example. One could turn a few spells into cleric class abilities that scale with cleric level or wisdom. Especially the iconic ones. Bless/Healing Word/Prayer of Healing/Spirit Guardians/Summon Celestial/Revivify/etc.

Spells would still exist. But would be more supplementary than defining.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Answering this question requires that we identify what elements produce "feel[ing] caster-y".

So--what does that feeling feel like? What visuals do you see when you're having that feeling? What actions can reliably pull it off? Are there spells that don't feel "caster-y" even when you are, in fact, casting them?

personally i'm fine with people using their own yardsticks for that question, i'm more interested in what kinds of abilities people would then go onto think a caster class would want if spell slots (or points as that's just slots with extra steps) weren't an option on the table in their design.

like, you say you give your casters unique senses which can experience magical energies, that's the sort of thing i'm talking about, that's not just Detect Magic, but it feels right and correct as something a magic user would have.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

personally i'm fine with people using their own yardsticks for that question, i'm more interested in what kinds of abilities people would then go onto think a caster class would want if spell slots (or points as that's just slots with extra steps) weren't an option on the table in their design.

like, you say you give your casters unique senses which can experience magical energies, that's the sort of thing i'm talking about, that's not just Detect Magic, but it feels right and correct as something a magic user would have.

No individual person's experience will be universal, sure.

But "feel[ing] caster-y" should at least have a loose constellation of effects which all fit into that. If we get several distinct answers, we can try to find common threads. If we get several answers with a lot in common, then we've honed in on an important spot.

More or less, I don't disagree that we should eventually proceed to specific things. My problem is that if we all start barking up a particular tree, we may be missing something basic, or quite effective, because we failed to survey the field first. If the search gives us nothing to work with, then we can always default back to what you mention here, just going with whatever ideas percolate up. It's hard to go back to asking what kinds of experiences make up "feel[ing] caster-y" if we've already zeroed in on other things first.

 

[FrogReaver]

personally i'm fine with people using their own yardsticks for that question, i'm more interested in what kinds of abilities people would then go onto think a caster class would want if spell slots (or points as that's just slots with extra steps) weren't an option on the table in their design.

like, you say you give your casters unique senses which can experience magical energies, that's the sort of thing i'm talking about, that's not just Detect Magic, but it feels right and correct as something a magic user would have.

I'm not a big fan of alternate senses. Thematically cool but becomes a pain to dm around and ultimately as long as one player has the sense in question the whole party gets the info as you tell the group what is seen.

Even just darkvision i really dislike in play.

 

[A_Carrington]

Only if you want weak piddly spells.

Or if you want martials that don't suck and aren't lame.

 

[GM Lent]

There was an article in Dragon Magazine back in the day called "The Color of Magic" that handled this kind of idea. In a nutshell, it suggests reflavoring spells to suit a specific theme (the example it uses is an ice mage whose magic missile looks like icecicles and similar reskinnings) and also allowing a wizard to use minor magc to do anything they'd normaly be able to do without magic; the examples it gives are lighting a pipe, shuffling cards, etc. At the time, there were no cantrips or at-will magic the way we have it now, and those cantrips and such really fill in a lot of these spaces, but it's still an interesting article.

The magazine is long out of print, of course, but by sheer luck it seems someone has posted this particular article online: The Color of Magic