The glimmer of an idea - temp hp, and damaging yourself to cast spells

[RangerWickett]

I'm just thinking of a way to work in 'drawing mana' as a spellcasting mechanic. Like, you have at-will powers, but if you want to do anything stronger, you have to draw mana.

My thought was, instead of having a separate pool of mana, you just represent mana as temporary hit points. And casting spells does damage to you. Daily-level spells deal more damage than you can get as temp HP through drawing mana.

So a careful caster draws mana each turn, then casts encounter-level spells. A reckless caster just flings out daily-power-level spells.

Like I said, it's just an inkling of an idea. Any thoughts on fleshing it out?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, it seems at least somewhat in line with WotC's design for the psion. Admittedly they don't use HS (I'm still a bit vague on all the details but I've got a player putting together a psion to run, so we'll see how it actually works out in practice).

Anyway, no, I don't see a lot of problem with the concept. Presumably the character can cast at-wills for no charge, which is definitely a good design overall. HS may or may not turn out to be a good resource to use for spells. One potential sticky point is that as WotC releases new classes/powers/etc they tend to shift the amount of non-HS healing and bonus healing, which changes the value of HS in general (and inevitably downward as nothing is ever removed from the game). This could lead to the situation where a new character gets dropped into the game later on and all of a sudden the wizard's ability to cast daily powers shoots up because said new character has some nifty non-HS healing ability or is just super optimized for bonus healing.

 

[Turtlejay]

I'd say as long as this worked for every character, and not just arcane, I'd say it's fine. To be fair, you might want to have their enemies use it, too.

If I read it right, you want to do something like . . .after a rest the player gains a certain amount of THP (like levelx2 or something?) and casting a spell or using a power uses a certain amount (for encounter powers it uses the power level, for dailies 2x the power level?)

I think tweaking the numbers so they have the effect you want will be important. What is the effect you want? I do like the feel of this, but it could be used (as abdulalhazred suggests) with a class based entirely around this concept. Some kind of Arcane Blood Mage that has at-wills that he powers up, like the Psion.

Jay

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

RW, I like the idea, at least in its glimmering stage, and can see some solid potential for it. However, as Turtlejay states... this will change the gamist dynamic at the table.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I read your idea:

Caster classes can use any of thier powers an unlimited amount of time.. however each casting {and sustain} damages them. They can ablate that damage by preparing in advance by 'drawing mana' that grants temp hit points for the purposes of ablating spells only. They can't draw more mana while sustaining effects.

At-wills would be free
Encounters would be a medium damage
Dailies would be a high damage
Touch would have a reduced damage ?


I presume the higher level your caster is, the more temp hit points they can draw.. thus the more powerful they are.

One nice side effect, assuming you can't go into combat carrying a pool of mana with you, is that the first round daily nuke storms are less likely to happen from casters....


I would still like to see Elements of Magic turned into a 4e class.. but I am not sure how it could be done

 

[Starfox]

Having daily power require some in-combat "build up" is a grand idea and could make for exiting fights, as long as you can get the rounds to move quickly. But allowing mages to spend hp to cast spells is dangerous. A tactically savvy caster would blow the top of this system by only casting daily spells, ever. Unless the damage is so crippling as to actually kill you, it is almost guaranteed that using bigger spells will end the fight more quickly, and there is no damage prevention like ending the fight. Of course, the mage eventually runns out of healing surges (or whatever expendable healing resource your game uses), and thus gets an excuse to call it a day. This brings back the 15 minute adventuring day.

 

[Matt James]

I think this idea has merit. It reminds me of the existing paladin daily that requires you to take damage or the one that requires a HS be spent.