Spellseed System

[aycarus]

Anyway, arcane spells are split into 8 schools; 8 skills. Divine spells will definately be cut to 4; Eight skills is too much for a caster to manage. Does anyone have any ideas on how to group these skills?

It's actually somewhat bothersome how the spells were categorized into 8 schools. From my perspective a lot of spells are inappropriately categorized because there was no better place to put them. The classification proposed in the spellseed document is quite a bit to handle, but I think it's a far better classification than the idea of 8 schools.

 

[ender_wiggin]

I admit your classification of spells is much more thorough and well-thought out, but:

Because each "seed" corresponds with 1 skill, and there is something like twenty or more seeds, it becomes almost impossible for a caster to learn the spells he would learn with core rules, because he has nowhere near enough skill points.

Now, the way you solved this problem was to give everyone more skill points. However, players can easily abuse this system. Because everyone now has so many skill points, they can simply spend most of them on non-spell skills, and max out one or two seeds. These seeds will probably contain spells like Magic Missile and Fireball. Now you get imbalance.

The solution that I forsee to this problem is cutting down on the number of seeds. Radically, so that the usefulness of a single spell seed is equivalent to the usefulness of a single mundane skill. I made 8 arcane skills, and 5 divine skills, while giving wizards and druids 5 base skill points/level and sorcerors and clerics 3/level, as well as implementing the requisite ability system.

 

[aycarus]

I admit your classification of spells is much more thorough and well-thought out, but:

Because each "seed" corresponds with 1 skill, and there is something like twenty or more seeds, it becomes almost impossible for a caster to learn the spells he would learn with core rules, because he has nowhere near enough skill points.

Now, the way you solved this problem was to give everyone more skill points. However, players can easily abuse this system. Because everyone now has so many skill points, they can simply spend most of them on non-spell skills, and max out one or two seeds. These seeds will probably contain spells like Magic Missile and Fireball. Now you get imbalance.

The solution that I forsee to this problem is cutting down on the number of seeds. Radically, so that the usefulness of a single spell seed is equivalent to the usefulness of a single mundane skill. I made 8 arcane skills, and 5 divine skills, while giving wizards and druids 5 base skill points/level and sorcerors and clerics 3/level, as well as implementing the requisite ability system.

I claim that investing the extra skill points into non-spellseed skills is reasonable. Mastering two spellseeds makes you extremely specialized and you use most of the benefit of being a caster. This likely requires testing, but the system as in seems reasonably balanced to me... If in doubt, you can always restrict the extra skill points to be exclusively for spellseeds, but
I'd argue that this is unnecessary. Too few skills for magic means that each skill point is much more valuable; in the case of 8 schools, there would be little reason not to leave all schools maxed out. Further, a wizard will need to be rewarded with more skill points anyway, since a meager 2+INT is hardly enough to satisfy even a stringent budget of magic available considering things... A rogue would further have an unhealthy advantage in such a situation.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Wizards should have all of them maxed out, or at least most of them. The ones he doesn't max out are his weak schools / prohibited schools. That's the point of the wizard - he is proficient at casting an enormous variety of spells. The wizards limiting factor is the low amount of spells he can cast every day.

Rogue's of course, should have the magic skills as cross-class? By using his additional skills to wield magic, he's missing out of crucial rogue skills like move silently, hide, forgery, etc.

 

[GreatLemur]

I like the ideas behind this system quite a lot. Replacing both fire-and-forget and spontaneous casting with a magic point system is always something I support, and I dig the way the spellseed progressions almost force all casters to focus their spell lists around domains of related spells. It just seems logical that, if you know how to cast an immensely powerful fire-based offensive spell, you probably learned how to cast a few lesser fire-based offensive spells along the way.

I think the concern about Wizards using their large skill point pool on regular skills instead of spellseeds is a valid one. What if skill points and spellseed points were completely separate resources? At the risk of overcomplication, let's say Rogues continue to get 8+INT skill points per level, while Wizards get their old 2+INT skill points plus 6+INT spellseed points. Spellseeds could also be bought with skill points (cross-class for all classes), but spellseed points could never be spent on regular skills (allowing Rogues to remain the unrivaled skill kings they are now).

Making casting work something like skill checks doesn't seem like a bad idea, though. I've been thinking for a while about a system where spellcasting ability uses different skills for different domains or schools, and each spell in a given group is just a DC that needs to be met in a check with the appropriate skill. DCs would be modified by various metamagic-type effects. "Failure" on a check wouldn't mean that the spell as ruined, but that casting it is going to take more than one round (and more than one check). Each successive round of casting might even get a cumulative +1 to the check. Some kind of penalty for additional rounds of casting might be appropriate, like a magic point or mana debt mechanic, or even progressive nonlethal damage to the caster.

But a system like this--which would make lower-DC spells potentially free to cast--probably requires the spells themseolves to be rebalanced away from heavy damage-dealing stuff. Maybe things like per-caster-level damage would actually require higher DCs to cast, meaning a 5th-level wizard will have to expend more time and power to cast a 5d6 fireball than a 1d6 one?

Sorry, I'm thinking as I type, here.

 

[aycarus]

Wizards should have all of them maxed out, or at least most of them. The ones he doesn't max out are his weak schools / prohibited schools. That's the point of the wizard - he is proficient at casting an enormous variety of spells. The wizards limiting factor is the low amount of spells he can cast every day.

I disagree. One of the main reasons I designed this system was to limit versatility. Versatility is good to some degree, but when your character has a spell for every situation, I think it ruins a character's creativity when coming up with solutions. Besides being the enemy of unity, some level of specificity provides for a more interesting campaign in my experience. I think that casters should be able to max out roughly 50% of the available spells and have weak access to maybe another 25%. If they are lacking the spells of another domain, they'll have to enlist the help of somebody with more capacity in that particular area.

After all, granting casters spontaneous casting should come with some strings attached; otherwise their power is simply increased from before.

Rogue's of course, should have the magic skills as cross-class? By using his additional skills to wield magic, he's missing out of crucial rogue skills like move silently, hide, forgery, etc.

But even if a rogue has his skills as cross-class and you count wizards as having 2+INT skill points, wizards won't be able to maximize 8 school-skills. Rogues investing in these schools cross class would have a lower upper limit on the maximum power they could have at any time but would have more skill points available to invest (twice as many, actually - with rogue skills counting for half).