Spells/Powers Becoming Obsolete With Level

[Reaper Steve]

What if spell level became the minimum level at which it could be used, but it could also be used at a higher level?

For instance, let's say that Fireball is a 5th level spell that does 5d6 damage. (I like the 4E convention of a spell's level being the character level at which it becomes available, not the old counter-intuitive 3rd level spells at 5th level.) However, I would add that a 9th level wizard choose to memorize the spell in a 6-9th level slot for a corresponding 6d6-9d6 damage. That way you get scaling... at a price.

 

[Sunseeker]

Something like this:

                                                  Devastating Fireball
                 Incinerating Fireball ->             or
                                                   Firestorm
Fireball ->               or
                                                 Delayed Chain Fireball
                   Delayed Fireball    ->             or
                                                  Fire Mines

In every game in which I've experienced this, Mass Effect 2 comes to mind, it's a great system. It really allows you to feel like you're progressing into more powerful spells, while also providing you with traditional "pump it up/roll more dice" options as well as non-traditional "new spins on old spells".

 

[kitsune9]

I think there are two ways of overcoming this, both of which have been used in later-4e material.

1) The power itself scales as you gain levels, e.g. it deals more damage or has a more powerful effect when you use it at higher levels.

2) The "replacement power" is strictly superior to the power that it replaces. This is effectively the same as (1), except the name of the power also changes.

I agree with this.

 

[TwinBahamut]

In every game in which I've experienced this, Mass Effect 2 comes to mind, it's a great system. It really allows you to feel like you're progressing into more powerful spells, while also providing you with traditional "pump it up/roll more dice" options as well as non-traditional "new spins on old spells".

Mass Effect 2 was certainly one inspiration, though the Tales of Symphonia implementation, where powers could branch out down "Power" or "Technical" lines, also influenced that thought a bit. It really does work well as an upgrade system.

 

[Cadfan]

But there will be no scaling, so there's no issue? Unless I misunderstand (which I probably do )

Well, the question was why spells had to become obsolete.

So I was pointing out that structurally, in earlier editions, it was bad for the game if a 1st level spell slot was doing the same work as a 7th level spell slot when your character was at, say, 15th level.

My general take on the issue as a whole: Its annoying as heck to have something you think as cool, and then have the game take it away. One way the game can take something away is the 4e way- to literally tell you that you forget how to do it when you learn something better. Another way is the 3e way- to let you continue to do it, but make it so that the thing sucks at high levels, and even though you CAN do it, you don't want to.

And there are a few ways to make it so that you can continue doing the same cool thing at high levels as at low levels. One way is to make the thing scale, but that creates problems. Another is to let you upgrade the thing so that you're doing the same thing in a way, but bigger and better.

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.

3e did something similar. At spell level 3 you had fireballs. At higher spell levels you had things like delayed blast fireballs. And you had metamagic, which was another means of upgrading a lower level spell so that you could continue to do the thing the spell described, but while using a higher level spell slot, so that balance could be preserved.

In general, I don't care what system 5e uses as long as the goal is preserved. I was initially just commenting on why things worked the way they did in 3e and earlier.

 

[Falling Icicle]

If it were up to me, I'd rather have fewer spells per day but have those spells mean more.

 

[Mengu]

I'm perfectly happy with power upgrades, if it means keeping the character sheet clutter-free. As a matter of fact, this would be my preferred means of progression. I don't want a million powers on my character. I just want a few that get better as I level up. I've been really appreciating the way a 4e Hunter works, in terms of progression. At 18th level, I can still do the same things I could do at 1st level, only better, more often, and with fewer consequences. I've gotten a handful of interesting tools through the levels, which feels like the right amount of complexity for having played the character for a while.

 

[FireLance]

In early D&D, I think some of the lack of scaling was deliberate for another reason besides power balance--it was to encourage casters to stock up on utility spells using those lower level slots. Having another magic missile when you have 4th or 5th level wizard spells isn't that important (depending on edition--sometimes you'd keep MM and drop sleep). But having that read magic handy in a slot was often worth it, now that you didn't need MM or sleep in combat.

Unfortunately, that contributes to another "problem": the utility wizard that eclipses the rogue because he has knock, levitate and invisibility prepared in his low-level spell slots.

I definitely think that fewer spell slots is the way to go, and Monte Cook mentioned the following in the Q&A to the DDXP Class Design seminar:

Q: With the Vancian magic system you could get to the point where wizards had a great number of spells per day. How are you balancing that and gauging encounter design with that in mind?

Monte: Addressing the idea that high level play you'll end up with lots of options and more abilities, we are definitely looking at the direction we're taking high level play. The idea we're looking at is cashing in a lot of your low level abilities or spells and kind of trade them in for one interesting higher level ability. And for managing how you those resources work throughout a day and looking at encounters, and keeping that trading-in mechanic in mind, we can look at average encounters a day, how long an average encounter will last, the resources an average character/player will go through and balance that that way.

So 5e might achieve this by allowing a spellcaster to "combine" lower-level spell slots to create a higher-level spell slot. That way, you could decide to adventure with a larger number of lower-powered abilities, or a smaller number of really potent ones. If you can do this on a day to day basis (i.e. change out whether you prefer fewer but more powerful spells from one day to the next) you don't actually "forget" your lower-level abilities - you just decide to prepare meteor swarm instead of three fireballs, for example.

 

[marleykat]

Higher level monsters already have things to gauge their power, such as better saving throws and defenses. Powerful creatures also tend to have their own immunities when appropriate.

Why should charm person remain useful forever, but not sleep? There is just no reason why one spell should become obsolete but others remain useful forever.

I agree it's arbitrary for no logical reason. I hope 5e's magic system takes a page from Arcana Evolved or even D20 Wheel of Time. Both allow for using a spell at multiple power levels and effects depending on the level spell slot used.
It solves a lot of this issue and as a bonus can allow for huge a consolidation of the game's spell list and allowing space for each major spellcasting class to have a unique list of spells without having to put out some book the size of Ploteus as a grimore.

 

[Falling Icicle]

So 5e might achieve this by allowing a spellcaster to "combine" lower-level spell slots to create a higher-level spell slot. That way, you could decide to adventure with a larger number of lower-powered abilities, or a smaller number of really potent ones.

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