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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mon" data-source="post: 4358626" data-attributes="member: 71673">... a genuine and noble concern, cheers. However other than this general overview you haven't yet provided an explanation as to WHY I shouldn't - in terms of tangible game-breaking or fun-wrecking problems.... and this assumption underlies the flaw in this line of reasoning. Since when do casters decide they'll ration themselve to 2-3 of their higher level spells for the fight? If they did that, there wouldn't be a nova problem in the first place...Yes, my point exactly... are you playing devil's advocate here?Aside, yes you can quicken - under either system. Thats a part of the "action economy" that takes a lot of resources and (usually) higher level spell slots. You get extra actions either way. This system doesn't add to that number of extra actions at all, though.Sweet. That's the idea.No, the quality of your weaker spells is higher than it would otherwise be, but it is not as high as the quality of your most powerful spells. As I asked before, how does spending some of those 5 rounds (from the example combat) casting less efficacious spells make you more powerful than spending those actions casting your best spells?Remember, lower levels spells are lower level because of a more limited effect. That's why there were spell levels in BECMI, 1e, and 2e. In those games, the chance of saving was the same across all spell levels, and yet there were low level and high level spells. Clearly, even with the same chance to save, lower level spells are designed to be weaker than higher level ones.Can't argue here, that's the point of it afterall.Dude... the -2 DC isn't the sole drawback - you've burned a feat on this.'cause DBF has the delay feature... worth a couple levels there (see upthread). I am aware of the threshhold thing, and as I said I know it wasn't exactly fair to go using edge cases, but you did it first <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />...What's the problem though? The 9th level guy's empowered fireball does more damage than CoC and has the same save DC? I never contested that fact, and hooray for him. An extra ~12 damage (6 on save) from a very valuable (at that level) 5th level slot + feat burned combo isn't close to game-breaking. It isn't even optimal in core. I'd much rather spend that 5th level slot on cloudkill, teleport, baleful polymorph, or overland flight. And have a feat to play with to boot.If that 12/6 damage (in best case scenario) truly is the problem to which you refer, then rest assured that to my group it is no problem at all.I would've thought that you'd point out a potentially more meaningful situation: Mr Wiz9's non-empowered fireball is doing the same damage as his cone of cold, with potentially the same DC under the reserve system. No feat burned, nothing.Now THERE is something to think about. Fortunately, it was one of the first things I considered when conceiving of the reserve rule: It is one of those edge cases where a low level spell overlaps a higher level one in utility for a level or two before the higher level one pulls ahead. (eg. Magic Missile and Force Missiles from the Spell Compendium - no saves involved, and MM does more damage until 12th caster level). Not an ideal situation to be sure, but it is a small price to pay for a better Play-time:Rest-time ratio. It just means you take cone of cold at some point above 10th level, or you take it for the cold energy type, or whatever.I think this might be a un-resolvable point between us... my group generally can't see that the extra few damage points is "so much advantage". As I said above, use cloudkill or teleport or whatever and save your feat for something less sub-optimal.Ah, but it is quite different although there are many similarities.Under that 10 + half level + ability mod thing, there isn't any incentive not to use your best spells straight up. Under the reserve system, there is a fairly strong incentive not to do so. As such, they'd play quite differently at the table. The key difference being actions spent on lower level spells are less powerful actions, even with the same DC.</blockquote>

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