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"Overcasting" in your campaign.
- Thread starter Kahuna Burger
- Start date
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
Yes. I wasn't able to find it earlier on his site. The older version was split into several pages, and I managed to find that one.
Squire James
Explorer
I think "overcasting" has its roles in literature and some very limited game-play circumstances, but attempting to wrap rules around it attracts the wrong kind of powergaming. I think it is best implemented on a case-by-case basis, and with no expectation that the rules will be consistent.
If I were designing such a system, though, I'd hit the mages where it hurts - lose permanent maximum HP (plus an equal number of current HP to keep the totals synchronized)! If max HP go to 0, permanent death and possible soul destruction. Perhaps the mage gets permanently sickened a la Raistlin if he goes below a certain threshold. How many max HP for various "overcasts"? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (a term used in textbooks for "I'm too lazy to work out the details").
This system wouldn't hurt clerics as bad, but I suppose the system could still work for them too... at least this would be better than Divine Metamagic!
If I were designing such a system, though, I'd hit the mages where it hurts - lose permanent maximum HP (plus an equal number of current HP to keep the totals synchronized)! If max HP go to 0, permanent death and possible soul destruction. Perhaps the mage gets permanently sickened a la Raistlin if he goes below a certain threshold. How many max HP for various "overcasts"? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (a term used in textbooks for "I'm too lazy to work out the details").
This system wouldn't hurt clerics as bad, but I suppose the system could still work for them too... at least this would be better than Divine Metamagic!
Not too sure about this. Personally I don't feel that over casting and DnD work well together just because of the magic system. That being said I do think it can be done using the psionics systems. In one HB I made a few years ago I rewrote the entire spell list to use spell points and put in a system for over casting. But spell casters had much narrower focuses than normal dnd so thats the only reason it worked.
prosfilaes
Adventurer
Unlimited Mana for GURPS has an interesting set of rules for this for GURPS. Most interesting for non-GURPS players is the table for when limits have been exceeded and everything goes wrong. Interestingly, it tends to mess with the character and everything around him instead of directly killing him. Even most of the "add a disadvantage" can be more interesting then just lose a level.
