Toning Down Spellcasting: An Idea

[ideasmith]

Flow

At the beginning of each round, roll 1d10, treating any 0 as a 10. This is the highest level of spell that affected casters can begin to cast. Determine this before casters choose their actions for the round.

Flow does not affect spells that are already being cast, nor does it affect spells that have already been cast.

Level increases from metamagic don't count towards flow. Thus, a flow of 3 is sufficient for a sorcerer to cast an empowered fireball.

When a spell is readied, the flow at the time the spell is readied applies.

Flow Attunement: As a standard action, a caster can improve her personal flow. This allows the caster to cast spells as if flow was one point higher. Multiple consecutive uses of flow attunement stack, but flow attunement ceases at the end of any round in which the caster does not perform flow attunement.

New Feat: School Flow

You have exceptional flow with a chosen school.
Benefit: Choose one school. You cast spells of that school as if the flow was 1 point higher.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat, it applies to a new school.

 

[Ilja]

Interesting, especially flavorwise, though I would prefer letting metamagiced spells count as the slots they are in, both for consistency and to keep the inner balance. An empowered fireball is right now about as strong as a cone of cold, and having 20% risk of not casting it compared to 40% on the CoC would make it a fair bit stronger. And the higher the level of the spell the more this is noticed.

For arguments sake, let's say that the greater range of Polar Ray makes up for only being able to target a single creature compared to CoC, and that the ranged touch attack kind of makes up for CoC allowing save for half. A polar ray at 20th level deals an average of 70 damage (20-120). A Maximized CoC deals 90 damage, allowing a save for half. A maximized CoC is in many situations better, while Polar Ray is better in other situations.

Now imagine if you had a 60% chance to be able to cast the CoC and a 30% chance to cast Polar Ray. Which would get the 8th level slot almost every time?

And it anyways may make it TOO random. There's only a small chance to be able to cast spells of level 7 and above. Rolling 2d6 might be a better option.

[sblock=some math]
With 1d10, chances of being allowed are:
1:100%
2:90%
3:80%
4:70%
5:60%
6:50%
7:40%
8:30%
9:20%

With 2d6, chances are:
1:100%
2:100%
3:97%
4:91%
5:83%
6:72%
7:58%
8:41%
9:27%
[/sblock]
As you can see, the chances of throwing around level 9 spells every turn is still small, but you can trust at least level 4 or 5 spells.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Neat idea! Even if not applied campaign-wide, this would certainly be an interesting feature of a specific locale, adding quite a wrinkle to an encounter.

 

[ideasmith]

Interesting, especially flavorwise, though I would prefer letting metamagiced spells count as the slots they are in, both for consistency and to keep the inner balance. An empowered fireball is right now about as strong as a cone of cold, and having 20% risk of not casting it compared to 40% on the CoC would make it a fair bit stronger. And the higher the level of the spell the more this is noticed.

For arguments sake, let's say that the greater range of Polar Ray makes up for only being able to target a single creature compared to CoC, and that the ranged touch attack kind of makes up for CoC allowing save for half. A polar ray at 20th level deals an average of 70 damage (20-120). A Maximized CoC deals 90 damage, allowing a save for half. A maximized CoC is in many situations better, while Polar Ray is better in other situations.

Now imagine if you had a 60% chance to be able to cast the CoC and a 30% chance to cast Polar Ray. Which would get the 8th level slot almost every time?

Good point. This is now on my 'to change' list.

And it anyways may make it TOO random. There's only a small chance to be able to cast spells of level 7 and above. Rolling 2d6 might be a better option.

[sblock=some math]
With 1d10, chances of being allowed are:
1:100%
2:90%
3:80%
4:70%
5:60%
6:50%
7:40%
8:30%
9:20%

With 2d6, chances are:
1:100%
2:100%
3:97%
4:91%
5:83%
6:72%
7:58%
8:41%
9:27%
[/sblock]
As you can see, the chances of throwing around level 9 spells every turn is still small, but you can trust at least level 4 or 5 spells.

Your calculations ignore Flow Attunement, which improves those numbers substantially. (School Flow also helps, but requires a feat.)

 

[Ilja]

Hmmm... Yes, flow attunement might help a fair bit, but since it's quite random anyway it could be hard to anticipate when and when not to use it. Say that you want to cast Horrid Wilting, but get a roll of 7. Now, you could either start attuning and hope to get a high roll next turn too, though it might as well be low, or you could cast a lower level spell. If this is part of the point of the system, it might be good, but it might increase the time it takes for players to decide what to do and/or create large caster frustration as the roll lows continue over the some turns - not only don't they get to cast their spells, but they also spend their turns flow attuning, meaning they can't cast their low-level spells either.
And quicken spell would become far better than it already is.

School attunement seems fine, but is very focused, and will benefit the feat-fat wizard while being far less useful for the sorcerer, which already is weaker than the wizard.

 

[ideasmith]

Neat idea! Even if not applied campaign-wide, this would certainly be an interesting feature of a specific locale, adding quite a wrinkle to an encounter.

Thank you.

 

[ideasmith]

Hmmm... Yes, flow attunement might help a fair bit, but since it's quite random anyway it could be hard to anticipate when and when not to use it. Say that you want to cast Horrid Wilting, but get a roll of 7. Now, you could either start attuning and hope to get a high roll next turn too, though it might as well be low, or you could cast a lower level spell. If this is part of the point of the system, it might be good, but it might increase the time it takes for players to decide what to do and/or create large caster frustration as the roll lows continue over the some turns - not only don't they get to cast their spells, but they also spend their turns flow attuning, meaning they can't cast their low-level spells either.

Good points. I am concerned, however, that having both flow attunement and a 2d6 roll, or even just the 2d6 roll, might make the high level spells more available then I want them to be. Weakening high level casting is, after all, the point of this rule.

And quicken spell would become far better than it already is.

I had missed that. Delaying the bonus until the caster's next round seems in order.

School attunement seems fine, but is very focused, and will benefit the feat-fat wizard while being far less useful for the sorcerer, which already is weaker than the wizard.

Perhaps the feat should just be dropped then?

 

[Ilja]

You could otherwise have a special thing happen on a certain roll - for 1d10, I'd suggest it's 10, and for 2d6, double of the same: Halve all caster levels that round. This hurt high-level spells far more than low-level ones (since high-levels tend have higher dice caps and more often rounds/level instead of minutes or hours), but might still allow them to be cast.

But yes, I must say it's a really neat system anyway.

And on Quicken Spell, it would be the same effect anyway: You can attune and cast a quickened spell every turn until you can cast the high-level you want. While this might not be a problem, seeing as how the players have to prepare the spells as 4 levels higher, it's an issue worth noting at least.

And the feat isn't very bad in itself, but perhaps add requirement "spell focus (that school) and give the sorcerer a School Attunement for free (despite not having prereqs) at level 2 (which is a quite boring sorcerer level)? It would give the sorc a little more relative power to the wizard, and feels kind of natural since he's got the flow in his blood.