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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 7345418" data-attributes="member: 6932123">Well, I'm hoping my system can be considered relatively balanced, not because I'm trying to create a balanced system, but because I'm trying to reverse-engineer the system that WotC uses, and presumably they've done a lot more work towards making sure spells are balanced than I would ever be able to do.Creating unbalanced spells is easy.  Just ignore the limits.  If someone wants to go that way, there's nothing I can do to stop them.However I don't feel that these rules so heavily restrain you that you can't reach the 'iconic' PHB spells.  Fireball is overpowered, but it's really easy to see how its design fits with respect to the guidelines. And in fact you can see that it fits exactly as a 5th level spell, just as many people have described it when trying to judge its relative power.As far as "lots of mediocre spells", that seems to be almost immediately countered by the idea that casters are already pushing ahead of non-casters in power and versatility.  If the system can replicate every spell in the book, then it should already be capable of doing something on the strong and interesting end.That doesn't really solve the problem.  You still need a way to judge if the spell is properly balanced.  And if you do have a way to judge if the spell is balanced, it should be as easily usable by the player as by the DM.  Obviously the DM still has to judge the end result, but even the DM needs some guidelines to work from.  For example, I could rebuild Shocking Grasp as a 3rd level spell:Shocking Grasp @3rd levelVS - 9 pointsDmg: 8d8 (single target, no damage on miss): +6Range: Touch: -2Bonus: Advantage if target is wearing metal: +1Bonus: Target cannot take reactions: +2Duration: 1 minute (con save each round to end effect): +2And you'd have to judge whether that's balanced.  It does more damage than Fireball, but it's single target, and the target takes no damage if you miss (unlike Fireball doing half damage).  So the damage rating is appropriate for a 3rd level spell, according to the DMG.  The rest of the features are taken directly from the cantrip, but you end up with 1 spare point to spend.  Is it OK to bump the duration up to a 1 minute effect, instead of a 1 round effect? Or I could have left the duration at 1 round, but increased the range to 15 feet.  If the player tried to increase the range to 30' or 60', would the DM be able to recognize that as going past acceptable boundaries?  How much should damage be reduced if you wanted to use it at a 60' range?And all this is vs the cantrip version of the spell doing just 2d8 damage at the character's 5th level.  8d8 seems extremely excessive — except that that's the expected damage for a 3rd level spell that's single target and does no damage on a miss, given that it uses a spell slot instead of being at will.Without some way to measure the impact of any changes to a spell, you're just swinging in the dark.  Even if you punt to the DM, that doesn't make the DM any more qualified to judge whether a spell is balanced or not.Except possibly not? Aside from Fireball, the poster child for unbalanced spells, there are many spells that are considered 'good', and many that are mediocre or bad.  Would you be surprised to know that Lightning Bolt actually falls within the spell point limits?Lightning BoltLevel 3, VSM: 10 pointsRange: Self: 0Area: 100'x5' = 20x1 = 20 units = Level 2 area: -1Damage: 8d6 = Level 5: +10Bonus: Sets objects on fire: +0.5Cost: 9.5/10In general, from what I've seen, the 'bad' spells are those that either don't use the full allotment of points (Snilloc's Snowball Swarm uses 2.5 points out of an 8 point budget), or aren't willing to accept a sacrifice in a less necessary area (eg: range) in order to bump the primary purpose of the spell up to a reasonable level, or have requirements or features that fundamentally don't make sense (eg: Dust Devil requiring a target to end its turn next to the spell effect).Thanks for the link.  I'll have to check it out and compare how it does things.</blockquote>

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