Spell Resistance and Casting Tiem

[RUMBLETiGER]

"Boran, I've been hit and me aorta's been severed! Can you friggin' patch me up afore I die, you great clot?"

To quote someone:

I'm not sure how this would help. Could you explain in greater detail?

 

[Jack Simth]

Part of the reason my Iron Dwarves developed the technology and magic that they have is as compensation for a disability. They can try to override their spell resistance to cast a spell in the normal amount of time, or they can slow down to work around the resistance. Is the SR I gave them enough compensation for not being able to easily cast spells in combat?

Ah, you do realize that per the description of Spell Resistance: "A creature’s spell resistance never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities."

So you're basically specifically nerfing casters of this race. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind, as casters are at the top of the pyramid already, but you've potentially got some problems:
1) SR of 10 + 1/2 level is barely even a speedbump to anything CR appropriate. At, say, 10th, that's SR 15, and your opponents (who are at least as high a level as you, individually) are casting at +10 to their check, at a minimum. Which means they need a 5, for an 80% chance of success. Most the time, opposing casters will have a higher caster level than you have levels, and they may invest in spell penetration, so you're very often going to be looking at opponents ignoring the spell resistance entirely.
2) If you're not forcing everyone to be of this race, the majority of spellcasters will simply pick a different race, so the house rule has little net effect, except to make casters of that race relatively rare.
3) Spell Resistance is actually usually a bad thing for players anyway, as lowering it voluntarily takes a standard action, which is not something you can do when you're unconscious from damage and need a healing spell.

There's probably more.

 

[Samloyal23]

Ah, you do realize that per the description of Spell Resistance: "A creature’s spell resistance never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities."

So you're basically specifically nerfing casters of this race. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind, as casters are at the top of the pyramid already, but you've potentially got some problems:
1) SR of 10 + 1/2 level is barely even a speedbump to anything CR appropriate. At, say, 10th, that's SR 15, and your opponents (who are at least as high a level as you, individually) are casting at +10 to their check, at a minimum. Which means they need a 5, for an 80% chance of success. Most the time, opposing casters will have a higher caster level than you have levels, and they may invest in spell penetration, so you're very often going to be looking at opponents ignoring the spell resistance entirely.
2) If you're not forcing everyone to be of this race, the majority of spellcasters will simply pick a different race, so the house rule has little net effect, except to make casters of that race relatively rare.
3) Spell Resistance is actually usually a bad thing for players anyway, as lowering it voluntarily takes a standard action, which is not something you can do when you're unconscious from damage and need a healing spell.

There's probably more.

Yes, the point of this is to make casters rare, but also to make non-casters harder targets for casters of other races...

 

[Dandu]

You need to up the SR and figure out how to avoid them being taken advantage of by Conjurations.

 

[Samloyal23]

You need to up the SR and figure out how to avoid them being taken advantage of by Conjurations.

So how high do I make the SR? 15+1/2 level? 10+level? Where is the tipping point where it becomes acceptable for a player?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Drow Have 11+Class Levels SR.

 

[Belzbet]

So how high do I make the SR? 15+1/2 level? 10+level? Where is the tipping point where it becomes acceptable for a player?

SR 10+HD is usually pretty good. If your HD10 (or level 10) then you have 20 SR. So, a level 10 caster must get a 10 or above to penetrate your SR. Thats 55% chance that the enemy will break through SR (you have a 45% chance to fend off the spell). A Drow has SR11+HD (or class levels) as RUMBLETiGER says. This gives the Drow a 50% chance to overcome the spells of an enemy spellcaster of the same HD (or class level; not including spell penetration feat or other abilities that heighten a characters CL check against SR). So, that is VERY good SR (its somewhat similar to 50% concealment against spells that allow SR).

SR 15+1/2HD would be mediocre SR at high levels but VERY good SR at low levels. If you are level 2 then you have 16 SR (so a caster of level 2 would need to get a 14 or higher to beat your SR, that is without spell penetration and what level one char. gets spell penetration? If you are level 10 then you would have 20SR (which at this level is the same as 10+HD SR). But if you were at level 20 then you would have 25 SR (but you wuld have 30 SR if you have 10+HD in SR). So, a level 20 caster would have to get a CL check of 5 or higher. So, the enemy has a 20% chance to NOT get through your SR (again not including spell penetration feat; which spell penetraion a enemy has only a 10% chance of faliure).

So, I would say that 11+HD or 10+HD is good SR, it balances better through out the levels (also once you factor greater spell penetration into the mix its not too overpowered; I relax the friendly SR clause).

If you want better SR then at max I would say go with 12+HD (13+HD is pretty good). I wouldnt use the 1/2 HD in the calculation since you would have to make the constant too high for it to be balanced throughout the levels.

 

[Samloyal23]

Looking at all the numbers, I am thinking that 12+Character Level SR gives a good incentive for these dwarves to avoid spellcasting while protecting them from the casters of other races. A few of them will take levels in Cleric or Wizard to gain access to certain spells and feats, but most will be alchemists and artificers...

 

[Samloyal23]

The updated Iron Dwarves for your review.