D&D 4E The 4E Magic System

[Scribble]

The reason that spells had limits on scaling in the past was that the spell slot system meant that lower level spells absolutely had to be weaker than higher level spells. A spell which scaled indefinitely broke the system. However, lets say there are no spell slots. If a wizard of a particular level simply picks 3 per day combat spells, there's no reason to mandate that lower level spells must be weaker than higher level spells.

This doesn't make much sense to me... The only way this would work would be if EVERY spell was a scaling spell.

Scaling was/is a way of making sure that certain effects stay relevant when you are higher powered. (Which people have stated is a problem with feats... after a while certain feats are pointless. Except that you have to buy them to get others.)

Certain spells are just more powerful then others. Like Raise Dead, or Teleport. They don't scale, but they don't really have to. Stuff like that stays useful no matter what level you're at. Something like fireball, however, if it didn't scale in some way, would quickly become somewhat useless. Scaling allows it to stay relevant to the challenges you face.

The problem with Scaling, however, is that it sort of works too well... Not only does the spell stay relevant, but it's almost like giving you a bonus higher level spell to boot, and therefore it's harder to balance out other things like encounters and power levels. Sooner or later things start getting crazy.

 

[Banshee16]

I'm thinking we might see something kind of between scaling spells (like fireball), spell series (like cure X wounds), and metamagic (or, arguably, psionics). That is, a 6th-level wizard can cast fireball as a 5th level spell, and it'll use up a 5th level slot (or however the quasi-Vancian resources work), doing 5d6 damage, . . . or instead he could cast it as a level spell, using a 6th level slot, and doing 6d6.

If Wizards are going to be casting spells of every character level of their career, and all these spells are going to be printed in one damn book, it makes sense to expect that a lot of 'em will be "This spell functions like X, except..." spells (although hopefully they won't even waste space printing that much).

Wouldn't it take up less space to say "if you cast fireball as a lvl 5 spell, it does 5d6. If you cast it as a lvl 20 spell, it does 20d6"? Then it's what level you cast it at that defines the parameters of the spell, and you only need to write the spell up once, plus the scaling details....kinda like the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Banshee

 

[Cadfan]

The problem with Scaling, however, is that it sort of works too well... Not only does the spell stay relevant, but it's almost like giving you a bonus higher level spell to boot, and therefore it's harder to balance out other things like encounters and power levels. Sooner or later things start getting crazy.

Not necessarily. Right now mid and high level spellcasters have dozens and dozens of spells. This is "balanced" because many of the spells are low level, and when used as combat spells are mostly obsolete. Exceptions exist, like Magic Missile with its auto hit no save damage, but low level spells eventually stop mattering in combat due to non scaling damage, and non scaling save DCs. This has to happen, because if a 1st level spell cast by a level 11 spellcaster had the same power as a 6th level spell, that spellcaster would have dozens and dozens of 6th level spells per day.

Now imagine a spellcaster who's combat abilities are a mix of at will and per encounter spells. The at will spells will have to scale, obviously, or else there's no reason to have them. So lets look at the per encounter spells.

Chances are he's only going to have a few of these at once. Look at Tome of Battle classes for examples. At level 12, for example, he might have somewhere between 5 and 8.

Using the Swordsage as an example, since I think that's the most relevant comparison to a wizard archetype, that's about 8 per encounter spells. And he's got 3 level 6 per encounter spells, 3 level 5 per encounter spells, and 3 level 4 per encounter spells available to him if he so chooses as he levels up.

So what is being gained by having these spells not scale? Not a lot. The character is slightly weaker than he'd be if his 4th level spells scaled to equal his 6th level spells. And in exchange, all of the 1st level spells he can access are obsolete. If those 1st level spells are the only way to create the effects they create, that means the effects they create are no longer available. Which is kind of sad, if you think about it.

Am I explaining my thoughts well? Right now, Blind is DC 12+int for a wizard. Making it automatically scale trades off with spells like Knock. That's kind of broken, and it gives a spellcaster dozens of spells which are the equivalent of his best spell. But if the spellcaster didn't have dozens of spell slots, if he only had 5 or so spells chosen from any spell level he pleased, a spell like Blind would always be trading off with his best spells. It might as well scale to be about as good. Spell level can then do just one task, the "threshold of availability" task, and can be good at it without messing up other aspects of the game.

 

[Cadfan]

Wouldn't it take up less space to say "if you cast fireball as a lvl 5 spell, it does 5d6. If you cast it as a lvl 20 spell, it does 20d6"? Then it's what level you cast it at that defines the parameters of the spell, and you only need to write the spell up once, plus the scaling details....kinda like the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Banshee

I'm guessing that we won't have the ability to cast things "as a level X spell." We'll just have the ability to cast the spell. Much like Tome of Battle.

Which means it might as well scale.

 

[Scribble]

So what is being gained by having these spells not scale? Not a lot. The character is slightly weaker than he'd be if his 4th level spells scaled to equal his 6th level spells. And in exchange, all of the 1st level spells he can access are obsolete. If those 1st level spells are the only way to create the effects they create, that means the effects they create are no longer available. Which is kind of sad, if you think about it.

There's a few important facts in my opinion.

In ToB you get to "trade up" every so often. This allows you to do away with certain spells and "scale them" when you need to, without giving you a "freebie" higher level spell.

You also don't have to pick from the higher levels if you don't want to.

By not having them scale d(whatever) per level you have an idea about the relevant power against other spells of it's same power level.

This allows you to more readily track just how powerful someone should be at whatever level he/she is, and allows you to keep all classes more in line with each other.

With a fighter you generally know he should be doing this much damage per encounter.

With a mage it's kind of all over the place depending on how many encounters, what spells he/she took, whether he/she memorized them, etc...

 

[Cadfan]

But the "trading up" feature is actually a bug. Look at how many Desert Wind maneuvers there are which grant you +SOMETHING fire damage on all attacks for one round. If you 1) let the maneuvers scale, and 2) let the same maneuver be chosen more than once, you wouldn't need to have multiple maneuvers which do exactly the same thing except with different amounts of damage. Trading up, when used to upgrade between abilities identical in all ways except damage, chews up one of your new maneuvers gained, and does nothing for you except give you permission to keep using a maneuver you already have.

In the meantime, any spell or maneuver without a cognate "trade up" power becomes useless. Consider the maneuver Dazing Strike. Its a level 5 maneuver, with a saving throw. Its also a maneuver which would still be good at level 20, IF the saving throw scaled. But it doesn't, so its not. Which is kind of lame, if you stop and think about it. It denies players a balanced, useful power due to a technicality of the design system.

The closer a mage's per encounter abilities resemble Tome of Battle maneuvers, the less reason not to have scaling DCs.

There's also another perspective. The math one. Apparently casters will roll attacks now. Presumably this will be 1d20+SOMETHING. What do you think fills in the "something?" It could be Spell Level + Casting Stat + Implement Bonus. That's one way to do it. That has some advantages going for it, such as simplicity.

But there are other ways. You could do Caster Level + Casting Stat + Implement Bonus. This gives you the equivalent of a magical BAB, and makes scaling DCs built into the system. There are probably other equations you could use.

As for tracking the power level, that can be done in either system, you just do it differently. Really, this isn't any different from giving spellcasters the spell like ability DC progression in 3e. There are characters who have that, and they balance just fine. Warlocks have their most powerful ability function in that manner, and they're usually viewed as pretty balanced.

 

[Scribble]

See I disagree. The warlock works because the spell thats scaling is the same. His blast is always his blast. You don't have to worry about his blast being his blast only if he decided to equip it.

If I don't take fireball, my power level has changed dramatically.


Another advantage I see is in how you use the spells.

Say you're a mage now, and you took fireball. Good attack spell. It just gets better and better.

But now you're facing some "mooks." It sure would be nice to blast em all with an AoE spell, but why waste it? That much power is overkill, plus you might need it for the Big Bad Evil Dude later on.

A warlock doesn't face that issue because his blast is always on. He doesn't "waste" it.

 

[Cadfan]

I'm not making my point clearly...

Think of how things will be in 4e. There will be per encounter spells. I can almost guarantee that you will get fewer of them than there are rounds in the typical fight.

So lets say a wizard of level 9 has 5 per encounter spells. Lets say he also picks a new spell every time he goes up a spell level, and he can reselect a spell at every even level. At 9th level, he will have one level 9 or lower spell, two level 8 or lower spells, and two level 7 or lower spells. Lets say he takes his highest spell level selections. He's now got 9, 8, 8, 7, 7 as his spell levels.

In that environment, there is very little downside to letting the level 7 spells scale to equal the level 9 spell.

There's very little downside to letting a level 1 spell scale to equal the level 9 spell, since its trading off with a level 7 spell if you take it. It had BETTER scale or you'll never use it.

There's an enormous benefit to letting a level 1 spell scale to match a level 9 spell, because it means that the effect that the level 1 spell creates can be used at a larger number of levels, without creating duplicate copies of the same spell at higher levels.

See?

 

[Scribble]

I'm not making my point clearly...

Think of how things will be in 4e. There will be per encounter spells. I can almost guarantee that you will get fewer of them than there are rounds in the typical fight.

So lets say a wizard of level 9 has 5 per encounter spells. Lets say he also picks a new spell every time he goes up a spell level, and he can reselect a spell at every even level. At 9th level, he will have one level 9 or lower spell, two level 8 or lower spells, and two level 7 or lower spells. Lets say he takes his highest spell level selections. He's now got 9, 8, 8, 7, 7 as his spell levels.

In that environment, there is very little downside to letting the level 7 spells scale to equal the level 9 spell.

There's very little downside to letting a level 1 spell scale to equal the level 9 spell, since its trading off with a level 7 spell if you take it. It had BETTER scale or you'll never use it.

There's an enormous benefit to letting a level 1 spell scale to match a level 9 spell, because it means that the effect that the level 1 spell creates can be used at a larger number of levels, without creating duplicate copies of the same spell at higher levels.

See?

I understand what you're saying, I just disagree!

 

[LightPhoenix]

I'm only really mentioning it because someone mentioned it earlier, but I think one of the big ways we'll see /day or /encounter abilties for Wizards (and really all spellcasting classes) is with metamgic. For example, instead of Still Spell raising spell level, you get Still Spell as a 1/day ability with no offset. Then you may be able to get Improved Still Spell, which would add uses per day (say 3/day), or possibly even grant it as 1/encounter (though the latter seems grossly overpowered).

Aside from removing some of the clunkiness of metamagic in 3E, this has the additional benefit of allowing Wizards (spellcasters) to make choices. If they want added firepower, they might take Magic Missle 1/encounter, or they might choose to bolster their spells with metamagic 1/day.

As an aside, 1/e is a weird abbreviation that will take time for me to get used to.