Spells/Powers Becoming Obsolete With Level

[Crazy Jerome]

If they're going to do that, why not just have spell points instead of spell slots?

Same reason why Arcana Unearthed/Evolved did not--spell points have their own problems, and contribute even more to "wizard with massive flexibility always having the right thing at his finger tips and thus overshadowing those will skills" or "wizard pumps all of his points into massive damage and has nothing left, party rests."

AU/AE isn't perfect, but only being able to trade up or down by one spell level is a powerful constraint over the usual spell point system. Or to use economic terms, spell points are entirely fungible, while even flexible slots are not.

That is, say you still have slots available to cast 1st through 5th level spells. You break one of your 4th level slots to get extra 3rd level slots. You can't turn those 3rd level slots into even more 2nd level slots, but you can turn one of your existing 3rd level slots into 2nd level slots. So for you at that moment, everything is totally fungible, and just like trading in a 4th level spell for a bunch of spell points which you use to buy a boatload of 2nd level slots. However, the caster has to be careful. Once you are out of 3rd level slots, you can't do this anymore.

The net effect is that of a spell point system where each spell level has a limited number of points allowed, well shy of what your spell point total would be. How many 4th level spells can you cast, total? The number of your 4th level slots, and then any weaving you can do from 3rd and 5th level slots. It is a more serious restriction in play than might be apparent from a casual glance.

Also, the ratios for trading up versus trading down are different. This is transparent and easy to manage in AU/AE, but would be somewhat annoying in a pure spell point system.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Would have made an intersting poll:

Should spell power be based upon:
1. The level of the caster?
2. The level of the spell?
3. The level of the slot used to cast the spell?
4. Some (confusing?) combination of the above?

Then it opens up to what is a 'spell level or slot' (very different from 3e to 4e).

Then there is the issue of how to aument them, or power them up further:
1. Use a higher slot (similar to metamagic feats)
2. Use more slots of same level.
3. Have advanced versions of spells
4. Extra rule set: augmentations, spell points, metamagic feats
etc.

I am liking the idea of a spell's power being based on the level/slot it was cast from, but does this mean every spell needs to list what happens when prepared this way?

It would also be hard to have a huge array spells that each can be prepared at different levels, etc.

I too do not favour powers/spells being replaced with unrelated powers/spells and losing the old.

Some sort of Talent Tree/Thematic Grouping of 'like' spells would be good. Didn't old style MERP do something like this. I really liked the thematic approach and my head works better with categories (I would like to see everything grouped by theme to be honest). But I guess there would have to be some way to satisfy the 'all-round wizard' who likes to have a huge array of spells and uses? Interesting.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

4e did this by offering powers that were better versions of lower level powers. For example, a fire wizard might learn to throw a ball of fire at someone as a level 1 at will power. Later he might learn to throw a better ball of fire at someone as an encounter power, and an even better one as a daily power. Eventually these encounter and daily balls of fire would become weak in comparison to new enemies, but there was no shortage of new, better, higher level balls of fire to throw at people. So that wizard might lose his level 7 encounter ball of fire in exchange for a much better level 17 ball of fire. At all levels the character still "throws balls of fire at people," even though he doesn't strictly use the same spell.

I'd hate to see this useful idea discredited because 4E happened to use a particularly ham-handed way of implementing it--separately named powers that were often redundant.

 

[FireLance]

If they're going to do that, why not just have spell points instead of spell slots?

It might end up similar to a spell point system, but with preparation instead of spontaneous casting. So, instead of having (say) 18 spell points and deciding at the time of casting whether you want to use a 1-point fire bolt, a 3-point fireball or a 9-point meteor swarm, you have to allocate those points at the start of the day. So, you could prepare 18 fire bolts, or 6 fireballs, or 2 meteor swarms, or some other combination (such as 1 meteor swarm, 2 fireballs and 3 fire bolts).

 

[Falling Icicle]

Same reason why Arcana Unearthed/Evolved did not--spell points have their own problems, and contribute even more to "wizard with massive flexibility always having the right thing at his finger tips and thus overshadowing those will skills" or "wizard pumps all of his points into massive damage and has nothing left, party rests."

Yes, but when you can just combine lower level spell slots or split up higher level spell slots, it ends up really not being much different from spell points, except for being much less intuitive and simple. You could still have the wizard who dumps all his power into a few high level spells, or who uses dozens of low level spells.

I'd actually prefer if wizards got fewer spells per day, like in 4e, or something closer to that. High level wizards before just had too many spells per day (and I say that as someone whose favorite class has always been the wizard). As long as wizards get a couple at-will attack spells and at least a few at-will cantrips, I could be happy with that.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It would also be hard to have a huge array spells that each can be prepared at different levels, etc.

I'm not seeing the difficulty with spells varying the slot they go in. If anything, it removes some of the generic limits from previous versions (i.e. dice max out at 20) and replaces them with more nuanced versions. Each spell has a range at which it can be cast. (I'm using the 4E style of spell level here, but the earlier version would work just as well):

Fireball -- Levels 5 -15, does 1d6 per level, in a 20' radius.

Or if you don't want 1:1 scaling:

Fireball -- Levels 5-15, does 5d6 + 1d6 per 2 levels over 5.

Other spells can have their own level range, whatever makes sense. It might be that sleep goes 1-10, say, and while it does scale very nicely up to that point, after that you only keep it around for lots of weak enemies.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Yes, but when you can just combine lower level spell slots or split up higher level spell slots, it ends up really not being much different from spell points, except for being much less intuitive and simple. You could still have the wizard who dumps all his power into a few high level spells, or who uses dozens of low level spells.

AU/AE in practice is just a simple as spell points, without some of the problems. It is marginally harder to explain, but not anything that can't be overcome in a few minutes. The effects in AU/AE are often subtle, but they are still there and useful nonetheless.

 

[FireLance]

Would have made an intersting poll:

Should spell power be based upon:
1. The level of the caster?
2. The level of the spell?
3. The level of the slot used to cast the spell?
4. Some (confusing?) combination of the above?

Of these, I am most in favor of linking it to the level of the slot used to cast the spell. Everything else follows from that. In order to have a spell slot of a specific level, you need to be sufficiently high level, and if a lower level spell scales with the power of the spell slot, it can continue to remain relevant at high levels, and avoid the need to come up with multiple names for what is essentially the same power.

 

[Falling Icicle]

This is a radical idea, maybe even crazy, but hear me out before you throw vegetables at me. After playing a warlock in 3e, I've been asking myself, why have spells per day at all?

The warlock was far from overpowered (despite people's initial reaction), and there are other reasonably easy ways of limiting certain spells so that they aren't abused. Some of the more powerful spells cost money, experience points, or other costly resources, so a wizard wouldn't go around casting those spells excessively anyway. Other spells that are particularly potent, like time stop, could be balanced by having a "cooldown" period before it could be cast again, could cause fatigue, or have some other drawback. Maybe big gun type spells like fireball could take a full round to cast, to balance their destructive potential.

Persistent spells, like firewall or summoning spells, could have the limitation that you can only have one instance of it in effect at a time (one firewall, one summoned monster, etc). If you cast another, the previous one disappears. But alot of spells, like levitate, or magic missile, do they really break the game if the wizard can just cast them at-will?

Perhaps the wizard still has a selection of daily prepared spells, but can cast those spells at-will? I know, it sounds crazy, but really, if the game were designed with that assumption from the beginning, I have no doubt that they could balance it.

Okay, you can start throwing vegetables now.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Okay, you can start throwing vegetables now.

Well, like vegetables, a little bit of those ideas goes a long way. Having tomatoes and green beans and califlower is great. Having a whole lot of only one of them, not so much. Of course, that is at least half the objection to Vancian casting in the first place.

But yeah, I'd like a clsss or two that did true Vancian casting--4 to 6 big gun spells, forced into the mind unwillingly from massive tomes-and then the class is supplemented by having a few other adventuring tricks. And then separate classes that used something more toned down and flexible.

The "problem" with money costs, time costs, and other such things is that in a whole host of play styles, they don't really matter that much. So if you build whole sub systems around them, those become broken in some games. Of course, you can get the opposite issue, too, where the poor caster gets starved of time, money, etc. Once something has moved into that territory, for balance purposes it is effectively not a character ability any more, but a magic item (consumable, rechargable, or otherwise)--flavored as a character ability. These tend to annoy people for some reason when properly balanced, and other people when not.

I would like to see an "action economy" in the main combat game (or at least some portion of it) that was still simple, but supple enough to allow multi-action casting as a viable alternative. It opens up a ton of design space that just isn't there now, and removes the need to have all kinds of interrupts and the like just to mess with casters. I wouldnt even mind a game balanced around the idea that every major offensive combat spell and the really serious defensive ones took two actions to cast. Then provide a few exceptions for weaker spells for emergencies or mop up.