Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 4231248" data-attributes="member: 3051">It's an interesting system; the others here have pointed out many of the more questionable aspects, but I'd add a big one.  The 1d6 or 2d6 per round recharging: at low levels that's really fast, but at high levels it's horribly slow.  Prohibitively slow, IMO.  It basically means that your "sustainable" spell rate holds constant, at basically a single 1st or 2nd level spell per round, no more.To cast a 9th-level spell (needing a 36 total) consistently, you should really be rolling at least 15 dice or more; less, and you risk wasting an entire round in a high-level combat on a fizzled spell.  Even if you're level 20, if you do that, you're basically done for the combat.  One ninth level spell, one third level spell, and then you're lucky to be throwing cantrips.  By the time you could regain enough dice to use your good stuff again, the fight is over.The recharge rate needs to scale somehow.  Either with level, or with the size of the spell you just used previously.  For instance, try this:> Each round, the caster naturally recharges a number of dice (0 dice at 1-4, 1 die at levels 5-9, 2 dice at 6-10, etc.).  This happens regardless of his actions.> Spending a standard action increases this by 1 die at levels 1-7, 2 dice at 8-12, 3 dice at 13-17, 4 dice at 18+); using a full-round action instead doubles this increase.So, a level 20 pure caster would recharge 4 dice per round naturally, 8 if he spent a standard action, 12 if he spent a full-round action.  That gives him the ability to throw 3rd-level spells at will, or a 7th-level every second round.  (Add an extra level if he's throwing spells from his specialty/domain).  This'd also let you balance the Bards and such; they might have full caster level, but much lower regen.As for some of the other comments:Nifft points out many of the "at will" casters previously implemented.  I'd like to mention that my group has used a custom Channeler class (posted <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=193936" target="_blank">here</a>, post #5) for a while, whose casting mechanism has many of the same effects you're looking at; while it's "at will" in the sense that you're never going to need 8 hours of downtime to recharge, it's still very limited during combat, in that you can't just throw all your big stuff at once, since you're basically limited by your regeneration rate.(Our Channeler is considerably more complex than your dice mechanism, though; I wouldn't recommend our mechanism unless you're either really good with numbers or have a laptop around while you game.  But it does mean I've got experience with the practical effects of this style of casting, hence why I mentioned it.)This type of system just inevitably has a very different "feel", and doesn't really mesh well with the Vancian style at all.  Yes, this means that your casters will be buffing machines, or at least far more buff-heavy than previous systems.  They won't be able to unload multiple big nukes in a short combat, so by necessity they'll need to rely on spells they can cast well before the fight, i.e. long-duration buffs.We got around the balance problems inherent to this IMC by changing many of the spells' durations and/or targets; our campaign's spell list is very different from the core list, with far fewer of the Cleric's short-duration self-buffs.  (Also, most PHB spells are treated as a level or two higher for Channelers, while the "pure" ones, the ones involving straight manipulation of elements, i.e. fireball, are kept at the normal level.)But since we WANTED casters to be buff-heavy fighters instead of pure "glass cannon" nukers, that fit our style better than the classic D&D.And one thing we found: there's really no need for the "max spell level" rule.  If someone with caster level 10 wants to try throwing all 10 dice and hoping for the 36 needed to cast a 9th-level spell, don't stop him.  That sort of 50/50 risk fits well into many heroic settings, and players will be smart enough not to depend on that sort of tactic.  Besides, his low caster level will make the spell's effects weaker anyway.  (Now, how exactly he learned a 9th-level spell is another issue, but maybe he just stacked a few metamagics on a lower spell.  An empowered, extended, maximized fireball maybe.  You can't cap metamagic of this type, anyway; how would you put any spontaneous metamagic on a 9th-level spell otherwise?)</blockquote>

Verification