Per-encounter Simple-Complex-Exotic Magic System for d20?

[Wulf Ratbane]

The cost of spending an action to throw a second magic missle seems steep. Even if a simple Spellcraft check makes it just a move action, that is a high oppurtunity cost compared to now. I understand that the price has to be paid somewhere to offset the gains, but this seems a bit high and doesn't quite seem to fit "D&D".

Well, the spontaneous caster just expends a different spell and refreshes the one he just cast. (Functionally this system lets sorcerers remain the most unchanged, in terms of losses. It's pretty much all gain.)

I don't think it's a huge loss for the wizard to only be able to cast each spell once, without opportunity cost; this is very often the default situation in a lot of campaigns: with the notable exception of magic missile. But generally speaking, given the diversity of spells wizards have available, most of them like to be prepared for all sorts of things, so they don't memorize a lot of duplicates.

This compromise does force that decision on the wizard, I admit; however, with an appropriate opportunity cost, even the wizard may have some ability to cast the same spell multiple times, just possibly not in round-to-round rapid succession.

By the same token, limiting a 1st level cleric to one cure light wounds per day for the entire party seems really harsh (even 1/encounter is harsh, I think).

Hey, man, I said I was going to come back to that. Extrapolate what I've already said about spontaneous casters to the cleric's spontaneous healing. He never has to ready cure spells-- he expends any ready spell and it becomes a cure spell.

Perhaps (shooting from the hip here) spontaneous healing could be re-imagined here. You can cast and refresh bless as much as you want. Or you can burn that (simple) bless as a (complex or exotic) cure light wounds and "burn out" the energy. I don't know.

Yeah, see, you do know.

CLW every ten minutes would be too much (clearly)

Hey! I'm not sure it's clear at all!

The context is rebalancing the game to a per encounter format, to keep the game moving and avoid the pitfalls Monte pointed out in that article linked above.

In Henry's world, if cure spells are complex, he'll keep the players moving by finding things to keep them on their toes every 10 minutes. That's certainly no more monumental a task than finding ways to keep the player from just heading back to the inn because the casters are spent. Right?

How do Spontaneous caster's know what spells they may choose their ready spells from?

They don't. Their list of spells known is so short that every morning, all their spells are ready. That's how sorcerers work now, of course.

 

[FireLance]

I'd like to limit buff spells too, as they are one of the most abused spells in D&D. Self buffing is no problem (as long as there's a limit to the number of buffs that can be active at one time), but the ability to buff everyone in the group can quickly be abused. Unless there's some opportunity cost.

A thought regarding buff spells: one way I've thought of to limit them is for an active buff spell to continue occupying its slot until its duration runs out or the spellcaster decides to stop maintaining it. Hence, a spellcaster cannot just cast a buff spell on one party member, refresh his spell slots and cast the same buff spell on another party member. In this way, a spellcaster's number of spell slots also sets a natural limit on the number of buff spells he can maintain at any one time.

 

[BryonD]

Well, the spontaneous caster just expends a different spell and refreshes the one he just cast. (Functionally this system lets sorcerers remain the most unchanged, in terms of losses. It's pretty much all gain.)

I missed that above. I assume this is a swift action?
So if I have four levels 1, I can throw 4 magic missles then after that start spending a refresh action to refresh and cast again. And then start over next encounter (assuming 4 simple spells or a 10 min rest and no exotics)

That does address my concern, but now maybe it is too much something for nothing. (I understand, work in progress... just saying what I think )

I don't think it's a huge loss for the wizard to only be able to cast each spell once, without opportunity cost; this is very often the default situation in a lot of campaigns: with the notable exception of magic missile. But generally speaking, given the diversity of spells wizards have available, most of them like to be prepared for all sorts of things, so they don't memorize a lot of duplicates.

You don't know my players.

This compromise does force that decision on the wizard, I admit; however, with an appropriate opportunity cost, even the wizard may have some ability to cast the same spell multiple times, just possibly not in round-to-round rapid succession.

OK
Maybe allowing the wizard to more easily change readied spells (say 30 min of study time per spell) would play into the adapability angle.

Hey, man, I said I was going to come back to that. Extrapolate what I've already said about spontaneous casters to the cleric's spontaneous healing. He never has to ready cure spells-- he expends any ready spell and it becomes a cure spell.

Yeah, see, you do know.

Hey! I'm not sure it's clear at all!

The context is rebalancing the game to a per encounter format, to keep the game moving and avoid the pitfalls Monte pointed out in that article linked above.

In Henry's world, if cure spells are complex, he'll keep the players moving by finding things to keep them on their toes every 10 minutes. That's certainly no more monumental a task than finding ways to keep the player from just heading back to the inn because the casters are spent. Right?

I'm not quite up to HP being a per encounter resource yet. But maybe that makes sense in this approach. I'll keep an open mind for now and see....

They don't. Their list of spells known is so short that every morning, all their spells are ready. That's how sorcerers work now, of course.

OK, I just saw that known became readied, so I didn't follow that.
It does appear to be all gain for sorcerers.

 

[BryonD]

Maybe making more spells be complex and exotic for sorcerers than for wizards would be a balancing point.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Maybe making more spells be complex and exotic for sorcerers than for wizards would be a balancing point.

What are you trying to balance? (Serious question, your prior post points out a lot of worrisome-- IYO-- imbalance...)

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

After reading many of the posts here, I started crunching some numbers and polling some of my players. Here is what we came up with:
(BG Info: Our group likes gritty games, somewhat more realist games, but also wants things to be as simple as possible.)

We didn't want the game just to become a bum-rush through the dungeon in 10 minutes realtime, so we wanted to make sure Hit Points are the only real "resource" managed.
Spellcasters should have a number of spell slots available each day. How many? IDK. They could prepare any spell they know in said spell slots. Casting a spell from the spell slots does not mean they lose the spell; it just takes time to "refresh".

Spells should be divided into 3 categories -
Simple - Spells a mage could cast every turn or every other turn. - Basic, minor spells. All the "inferior" or "sub-par" spells. Example: Detect Magic, Shocking Grasp, Polar Ray.
Complex - All the good stuff. Castable once per encounter - Potent spells. Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Invisibility, Haste, Finger of Death, Hold Person, Wall of X, lesser summoning spells (like summon monster).
Exotic - As someone put it "plot spells" Would only be usable 1/day. Also includes healing magic - Cure X Wounds spells, heal, restoration, Instant-Movement spells (teleport, planeshift, Dimension door), Timestop, Wail of the Banshee, Strong summoning spells (Planar Ally), etc. - Anything that breaks the game or changes the adventure dynamic alot.

The two group members I talked with were interested in a system like this. Monte Cook's Spell Treasury already has (all?) the core spells placed in these categories (using almost the same criteria) so all that's left is any individual spell decisions and deciding how many spell slots a class gets.
I think Sorcerer should have 30-50% more slots than wizards, clerics, and druids. I don't know about the bard, paladin, or ranger. Clerics and Specialist Wizards should get a bonus spell slot to put their domain/specialty spells in, but shouldn't be restricted to that one slot. (So if a Cleric had Fireball from a domain, he could put it in a non-domain slot, but he can ONLY put a domain spell in the domain spell slot) Clerics could "spontaneously cast" healing spells, but since they are exotic, they would "lose" the slot the spell was prepared in to do so.
Negative levels wouldn't make you forget spells, but since they penalize your caster level, if you prepared a lot of high-level spells, you may find many of them unavailable after takeing 1-2 negative levels.
I don't know if having a high spellcasting ability score will grant "bonus slot" or even how that would be determined. I don't think so. Perhaps it might translate to free levels of "insta-recover" spells per day. (So if a wizard with an int mod of +9 cast timestop, he or she could "recover" the use of that timestop for later use in another encounter)

Just some things ideas I threw together.

 

[BryonD]

What are you trying to balance? (Serious question, your prior post points out a lot of worrisome-- IYO-- imbalance...)

My initial impresssion was that wizards get pulled down a little and that sorcerer's get a fairly notable boost as things stand.

After sleeping and reading again it dawns on me that a sorcerer has lost his # spells per day and that his spells known being his spells readied now replaces that. Heck, a 2nd level D&D sorcer now can throw 4 Level 1 spells per day plus at least one CHR bonus spell, under this system it would be a flat two. But that two resets every combat and can be refreshed some inside combat. Do I have it right now?

(Any thought on how high ability scores would play into this?)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

My initial impresssion was that wizards get pulled down a little and that sorcerer's get a fairly notable boost as things stand.

After sleeping and reading again it dawns on me that a sorcerer has lost his # spells per day and that his spells known being his spells readied now replaces that. Heck, a 2nd level D&D sorcer now can throw 4 Level 1 spells per day plus at least one CHR bonus spell, under this system it would be a flat two. But that two resets every combat and can be refreshed some inside combat. Do I have it right now?

Yeah, I think that's about it. But if you compare the sorcerer Spells Known table against the wizard Spells Per Day table, it still looks like the sorcerer gets a bit of a boost compared to the wizard.

In retrospect I think I'd drop the "spend an action to refresh a spell" option for spontaneous casters. If such an "opportunity cost mid-encounter refresh" existed, it would probably need to exist for all casters.

And I'm not sure it's not over the top. Even without it, all spellcasters are getting more spells per day.

Spontaneous casters would keep the ability to expend another spell to refresh one they just cast. This is a pure analog to their existing mechanics.

(Any thought on how high ability scores would play into this?)

I thought about it last night but was too tired to edit my post for a second or third time. That's a good catch, because as the system is written above, spontaneous casters get no benefit for high ability scores. I could live with that, except that "different is bad." I wouldn't want to have to retrain people's expectations.

The simplest solution is just to give spontaneous casters one more spell known/spell readied. I might even go so far as to put a "0" entry in the sorcerer's table at the odd levels. It has always bothered me that the sorcerer has to wait longer to get the same level of spells as the wizard. (It makes planning certain kinds of adventures more difficult when the expected spell capability of the arcanist might be lagging one level behind the rest of the party.)

Just talking off the top of my head, though. It might be broken.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

A Tangential Thought on Sweet Spot Spells

This is tangential, but my preference would be to cap the game at 5th level spells, possibly with heightened or ladened effects to simulate 6th level power.

There isn't really a whole lot more that 6th level and higher spells bring to the table, other than "a whole lot more of the same types of whammy." (There are some unique spells that are exceptions, of course.)

Studying the AE Spell Treasury yesterday-- and I still haven't looked into it as carefully as I should-- I was struck by how many "staple" spells Monte dropped, reigned in, or moved to a higher level.

I haven't talked about heightened or ladened mechanics, but it occurs to me that expending two spells is a workable option. It is definitely an unwieldy and undesirable situation to keep the spell progression chart going all the way to 20th level-- such a wizard would have more than 36 spells readied.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'd like to see this magic system tied to a new class (much like the warlock, binder, incarnum, and ToB's Initiators got their systems associated with a new class).

I actually would do just the opposite.

This stems from the discussion I had with Wulf about "all the things wrong with the gameplay experience of D&D 3e."

This thread addresses what is probably the biggest weakness of D&D: the "day" mechanic (some of the other things I have issue with are treasure "accounting", magic item creation, lack of class customization, etc but those are beyond the scope of this discussion).

The per day mechanic is most obvious when you look at spellcaster mechanics but it affects all classes: barbarian rage, cleric turning, wild shape, smite evil, to name a few. I'm saying the per day mechanic needs to be abandoned completely but it definitely needs to be expanded.

So back to my original point: The first thing I would do is create a universal mechanic for all "abilities", including spells. I see no reason why a wizard casting fireball can't use the same per encounter mechanic as a paladin using smite evil.

To use the Good/Better/Best tiers (or whatever you want to call each level: Good/Better/Best, Simple/Complex/Exotic, Lesser/Minor/Major, etc), I would implement the mechanic in one of two ways:

1. Classify each ability/spell as either Good, Better, or Best.
2. Breakdown each ability into Good, Better, Best effects.

The universal mechanic for all the abilities is the frequency that each type of ability/spell can be used. Perhaps a Good (Simple, Lesser, etc) ability can be used an unlimited number of times. A Better/Complex could be used a certain number of times per encounter and a Best/Complex ability a number of times per day.