Sorceror, Bard, Warlock: Of What Value is Change?

[Koewn]

With 3.5, what was most likely a common houserule was codified in that Sorcerors and Bards can change their spells known every few levels (4 and 5 respectively?). I believe Warlocks from CompArcane are the same; although I don't know how often that is allowed for their invocations.

The two schools of thought I'm aware of on the rule were:

1) New players, especially, don't get penalized for bad choices.

2) Good players, especially, can juggle their spell choices knowing they can swap a spell that's only good for, say, 1st-5th level for something more useful in the end-game.

Ignoring the Bard for the moment, as it doesn't compete with the Wizard on spell power, and also setting aside the Warlock (if someone could pipe in on how often the Warlock is able to change, that'd be great), let's posit the question:

At what period of time does the Sorceror's ability to swap out a single spell become too favorable in light of the Wizard's ability to swap out *every* spell every 24 hours?

Now, the Sorceror's swap is not time-dependant - it's campaign dependant. In one game 4 levels may be a month, and it may be a year till level 8. In others, you may see level 12 in 7 weeks. (crazy but true!), so there's a bit of disconnect between the Wizard's memorization and the Sorc's swap.

Would it be too much to be once per month?

Once per week?

What value is that single swapped spell at it's Rules As Written value, aside from an 'oops-fixer' or a power-gamer's long term character strategy?

Thanks!

Koewn

PS - as an aside, when I originally thought of this, the two 'in-game' scenarios below was what I thought of. It's odd how much more neat of an idea anything seems when you couch it in a short role-played sentence.

If I stated once a month as: When the last crimson sliver of the red moon Caryx drops below the horizon, then may the blood of the ancients change it's flow; revealing a new island of power and submerging old knowledge.

If once a week was: The warlock Ufalla sat patiently; waiting for the emissary of his daemon sponsor to come fill his draught of blood for the week, and considering what dark secrets to ask the imp to grant.

 

[Thanee]

*blink*

You cannot really compare the Sorcerer's spell swapping every other level with the Wizard's preparation ability in that way... those are two completely different concepts.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Fieari]

Are you asking if 4 level ups per month is too much? 4 per week? Or are you asking "If you established the house rule that instead of every 4 levels, it was every X SESSIONS that you could swap spells, what value of X would be too low?" Or are you asking something completely different? I don't quite understand you.

I mean, it's not as if a sorcerer can go sit in a tower for a year in game time and swap his spells or something like that. He has to DO things, gain REAL EXPERIENCE. Doing things that likely requires the use of spells, for that matter...

 

[ThirdWizard]

Some spells are good at low levels and useless at higher levels. Sleep is great until you get to the point where everyone is immune to it becuase of their Hit Dice. Thus, a sorcerer had to choose between going without spells because they would become useless or hurting themselves at low levels. Thus, they made a rule so that the sorcerer could get rid of these spells and replace them when they were no longer useful.

 

[the Lorax]

Spells - Sorceror, Bard, Warlock: Of What Value is Change?
With 3.5, what was most likely a common houserule was codified in that Sorcerors and Bards can change their spells known every few levels (4 and 5 respectively?). I believe Warlocks from CompArcane are the same; although I don't know how often that is allowed for their invocations.

The two schools of thought I'm aware of on the rule were:

1) New players, especially, don't get penalized for bad choices.

2) Good players, especially, can juggle their spell choices knowing they can swap a spell that's only good for, say, 1st-5th level for something more useful in the end-game.

Yes, and I think that is also the importance of order as well. I would also theorize a third reason:

3) So that a Sorcerer can keep a theme going in his spell list without boging his list down with too many spells of one type.

ie - at low levels he takes Burning Hands to begin a Fire Sorcerer theme, then sometime later he "learns to contain the flow of fire to hurl it at his enemies", taking Fireball and still later he dumps the Burning Hands as a redundant spell, allowing him to maintain his fire theme and at the same time not fill his whole list with a bunch of similar spells

IMC I deal with this in a different way, but thats not important here...

Ignoring the Bard for the moment, and also setting aside the Warlock, let's posit the question:

1) At what period of time does the Sorceror's ability to swap out a single spell become too favorable in light of the Wizard's ability to swap out *every* spell every 24 hours?

Now, the Sorceror's swap is not time-dependant - it's campaign dependant. In one game 4 levels may be a month, and it may be a year till level 8. In others, you may see level 12 in 7 weeks. (crazy but true!), so there's a bit of disconnect between the Wizard's memorization and the Sorc's swap.

2) Would it be too much to be once per month?

3) Once per week?

4) What value is that single swapped spell at it's Rules As Written value, aside from an 'oops-fixer' or a power-gamer's long term character strategy?

I'm going to assume given the way you phased this that you are proposing a house rule that a sorcerer could swap spells based upon In Campaign Time Passed, as opposed to being based upon levels gained. Given that assumption, I would say:

1) Absolutely, swaping out every 24 hours of game time would be too strong. By a lot.

2) Probably, swaping out every 30 or so days of game time would still be strong, but would give the Sorcerer a much better Item Creation theme.

3) Yeah, if once a month is too strong, once a week is also.

4) That really depends upon the spell and situation. I dont allow swaping, my players are all fairly long time players, if they oops for a campaign reason at the time, then so be it.

 

[Koewn]

MODS = Move me to House Rules please. Thanks!

OK; let's go ahead and shift this to House Rules since it's heading that way, if a kind moderator could please. I apologize for the confusion in my parent post; I'm just of 3 weeks of paternity leave, and I don't think my brain's restarted yet.

Let me backtrack a bit.

A sorceror can change a spell at 4th level, and every even level after that, up to two levels lower than the Sorc's highest spell level. A sorceror can never swap 8th or 9th level spells. That's 11 swaps.

A warlock (I've just been informed) can change an invocation every time a new invocation is learned, which sort of works out to every other level. (There's some skips in the progression) The invocation must be of the same or lower level he already has. A warlock can never change a Dark invocation (apparently equal to a 6-9 level spell). It's 11 swaps too.

Now, the time period betwixt these things is quite malleable - anywhere from a few weeks or less at low level to upwards of a year of in-game time at high level.

A wizard can change every spell every 24 hours of in-game time, of any level, given it's in her spellbook.

Now, I can't speak for the warlock as I've not been able to study it and it's invocations, so I'll stick with the sorceror.

At what period of in-game time does the Sorceror's ability to swap spells become too favorable compared with the Wizard's method of memorization?

Once a year seems too long to be fathomable; campaigns start and end in the period of a year, and an uppity kid with an arcane knack can get to 10th between January and December. He'd be able to exchange Lightning Bolt for Fireball on December 31st. Not a lot.

Once a month, perhaps then? A sorceror who finds trouble could get to 5th level in a month. He'd get to change a 0 level spell for his efforts, so. But, in year, if he makes it to 20 in this harsh world, he'd been able to change out 12 spells - even then, he'd maybe get to change out a 7th level spell at best, if he made it to 18th by November. It all depends on where the level changes lie on the calendar.

Once a week? Even that 5th-in-a-month prodigy will have gotten to exchange Daze for Dancing Lights for Flare for Prestidigitation, all 0-level. The main problem with once a week is it's just about in time period for major adventure prep - the seige of a wizard's tower, or some such - while everyone preps their own way, the Sorceror locks herself in a room for the week, forcing the latent magicks inside her soul to bend and shape into the effect she wants next week, trading Mord's Sword for Mass Invisibility, let's say.

Or spend 2 grand for a scroll, and let the wizard scribe it - in this same year the wizard's probably gained hundreds of pages of spells in her spellbook, and can be ready tomorrow with the right spells for the job, not next Teusday. That's 6 less days for the evil wizard they're sacking to find out their plans and get prepared.

But, hey. Time is such a campaign-dependant factor that perhaps it's just not feasible to put a in-game time period on things like this; and plus the sorceror's not really 'built' to be a spell-changing caster; perhaps the whole rule is a lark put in because it's easier to have the option in print then for every sorceror player to rue the choice of Sleep 6 levels ago and have to take it to their DM.

Down to once per week I'd say would be just over the line of too much, perhaps. Less often than that I can't see making a huge difference in play; espc. compared to the wizard.

Anyway, that's about all I got.

Koewn

 

[Kurotowa]

A warlock (I've just been informed) can change an invocation every time a new invocation is learned, which sort of works out to every other level. (There's some skips in the progression) The invocation must be of the same or lower level he already has. A warlock can never change a Dark invocation (apparently equal to a 6-9 level spell). It's 11 swaps too.

Not so. The "new invocation" clause means access to a new level of invocations, which only happens three times. It's mostly so that when you get an upgraded mobility or offensive ability you can trade in the old one, not as any serious means of changing their capabilities.

 

[Koewn]

Not so. The "new invocation" clause means access to a new level of invocations, which only happens three times. It's mostly so that when you get an upgraded mobility or offensive ability you can trade in the old one, not as any serious means of changing their capabilities.

Huh. My text here states: "At any level when a Warlock learns a new invocation, he can also replace an invocation he already knows with an invocation of the same or lower grade."

Now, granted, the example text calls out levels 6, 11, and 16, which lends itself to your statement (and the text under Special for those levels actually says "New Invocation (X,X,X)" where X is least, greater, and dark), but the next column, Invocations Known, goes from 1 to 2 at 2nd level, which indicates he learns a new invocation at 2nd level. Since that's a level where he learns a new invocation, he can replace his 1st level invocation with one of the same or lower grade, which is fixed at least right now.

Koewn

 

[radferth]

If you want to allow sorcerers more spell flexibility, I would suggest one or more of the both of the following:

1) Make them pay an XP penalty (e. g. spell level x 50)

2) Make them take time off to learn the new spell (e. g. one week per spell level)

3) Make them drop a know spell for a while before they can learn a new one

Balance-wise, the occasional switch for sorcerers and warlocks is definitely conceived as a "trade-up", not as versitility. I can certainly see the need for more switching in a low XP game like I usually run, but I would be very wary of letting them do it for free.

 

[ARandomGod]

I mean, it's not as if a sorcerer can go sit in a tower for a year in game time and swap his spells or something like that. He has to DO things, gain REAL EXPERIENCE. Doing things that likely requires the use of spells, for that matter...

RAW, of course they can't. But game power? Why not? They ARE doing something in that time. They're experimenting with their spellpower and attempting to alter what they can do. If you think that they should also gain XP for that, that's your call, of course, I don't see a real reason why it can't be ruled occasionally that a character gets XP in his downtime, if that's game appropriate.

3) Make them drop a know spell for a while before they can learn a new one

I have a system for game time changing of spells, and I use the above 'cost'.

If I stated once a month as: When the last crimson sliver of the red moon Caryx drops below the horizon, then may the blood of the ancients change it's flow; revealing a new island of power and submerging old knowledge.

If once a week was: The warlock Ufalla sat patiently; waiting for the emissary of his daemon sponsor to come fill his draught of blood for the week, and considering what dark secrets to ask the imp to grant.

First of all, I give the sorc an additional 'boon' similiar to the wizard's scribe scroll ability. A sorc can IMC cast a spell he has 'known' without having the slot in his spells per day to power it. When this is done, as with a wizards memorized spells, the spell known is gone (I tie this into how spells known work and how wizard's memorization works, making the two classes both more similiar and more different). You could drop this additional ability to cast the spell without a spell per day slot available and just say that the sorc has to erase it from his memory.
Then, with a spell known slot open, the sorc can work on replacing that spell known. He does this in a similiar way that wizards do (including needing a spellbook to work from). Every morning he goes through a ritual to set the spell, and after the designated time that spell becomes a 'spell known', and he can cast it like normal (And, IMC, discharge it in an emergency). I personally use the time as spell level squared in days, minimum time two days (for a cantrip or first level spell). That time can, of course, be adjusted as needed to suit your campaign. You can also adjust whether only one can be done at a time, or if several can be worked on simultaniously. I've found that it makes lower level sorcs slightly more powerful (they rarely use the ability), and it makes a cornered sorc a LOT more dangerous. Now, since it's NPC sorcs who most often get cornered, this works out to an overall power decrease for the party. It doesn't really matter if a mid to high level NPC is going to be out of commission for the next few game years. But a PC is very unlikely to risk it, at higher levels my players so far have rather risked very likely death to 'burning' higher level spell slots. (Death can be fixed for only a level worth of XP and some gold. Several months of gametime needed to replace those spells is much more tedious).