D&D 5E Too Much Spellcasting in Your D&D? Just Add a Little Lankhmar!

[Urriak Uruk]

Here are some better ways to limit spellcasting, without breaking the game:

Play in a setting in which public spellcasting is against the law. I've actually used this for a campaign. Sorcery was a crime and could only be done in secret. Convicted spellcasters received a brand on their forehead, forever marking them as criminals. Anyone with that mark could expect to be unwelcome in many places.

Give every spell a cooldown, forcing spellcasters to use varied spells, and not solve everything with the same spells.

Use Conans corruption system. Conan made spellcasting more powerful AND more dangerous. Each succesful spell, made the next spell even more powerful. But sorcerers risked corruption of their own soul with each spell. This rule makes spellcasters more conservative with magic use, and also makes them more fun to play.

Now these are some great solutions... using magic and immediately having the inquisition hunting you down, is a great story hook...

 

[Steampunkette]

I like the cooldown idea from @Imaculata. I also like the idea of going back to the old "Initiative Count" timers to determine when spells go off after they've been cast. That way people wind up missing shots because their target broke line of sight or moved out of fireball formation. Other fun options could be limiting spellcasting in combat to 3rd level spells and making 4th level or higher magic into Ritual-Style spellslots.

But the OP's suggestion wouldn't just "Reduce" mages. It would eliminate them.

 

[ECMO3]

There are two types of people in this world:

1. Those who think there is too much spellcasting in 5e.
2. Those who are wrong, and probably like elves, bards, and elven bard.
3. The innumerate.

Given that I am not wrong, nor a lover of elves nor bards, I have often thought about how to reduce the amount of spellcasting in 5e. I have seen multiple proposals for doing the same (reducing the number of spellcasting class, getting rid of cantrips, and so on), but one thing I have never seen is the Lankhmar Solution.

For those of you not familiar with Lankhmar, it was the place of adventure for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in stories by Fritz Lieber. More importantly, and for our purposes, it was also a 1e Supplement- Lankhmar, City of Adventure. One of the primary advantages (or disadvantages) of this campaign setting is the way that it treated spellcasters. While there were various rules, the primary one that is of interest to me is the rules on spellcasting times. The restrictions reflected that spellcasters were rare and unusual, and that spellcasting was "less likely to influence the couse of a wild melee combat than in a normal campaign." L89.

Casting times changed, so that any segment (1/10 of a round, 6 seconds) was treated as a round, any round (one minute, 1/10 of a turn) as a turn, any turn (10 minutes) as an hour, and each hour as a day. They could have just made it x10, but this was AD&D, and nothing could be that simple!

Moreover, spell recovery was lengthened as well- after a spell was cast, a full week would have to pass before they could use the spell again, and then they would have to study their books for the usual amount of time to "re-learn" it (Vancian casting).

In reading this, I was struck by how this might be a possible solution if you wanted to partially de-magick 5e. While I have seen proposals before for changing the recovery time of spells (usually changing short rest to long rest and long rest to a week), I haven't seen any to change the casting time.

To be clear- changing the casting time, extending the casting time, would have a massive and deleterious effect on spellcasting within combat. It would make martial characters much more important for combat, and make spellcasting more of a utility and out-of-combat experience, with only limited uses for combat. The first major hurdle would be that 5e measures almost all casting times in terms of "one action" (or one reaction, or one bonus action). Spells that are measure in "real time" (minutes, hours) are the exception.

Because of this, I have the following preliminary ideas to make a low-magic, Lankhmarian campaign setting in 5e in terms of casting times:
1. All spells that are cast as bonus actions are eliminated.
2. All spells that are cast as a reaction are eliminated, EXCEPT for counterspell. That's it.
3. All spells that are cast as an "action" takes four rounds to cast; if the caster is hit at any point during the casting, they have to make a concentration check per usual to continue the casting.
4. All spells that have a time duration other than "action" take ten times the amount of time to cast. Augury takes 10 minutes. Scrying? 100 minutes. Raise Dead? 10 hours. Simulacrum? 5 days.

And that's my preliminary thoughts on the issue. What do you think? And by that, I don't mean, "I LOVE SPELLS! SPELLS ARE WICKED KEWL! YOU ARE A BAD BAD MAN FOR EVEN SUGGESTING THIS!"

I know I'm a bad, bad man. Just call me Leroy Brown. But I'm more interested in feedback as to whether you think that specific implementation would be successful at the goal of creating a campaign feel, in 5e, similar to that of the prior Lankhmar setting.

I think you should just play a no-magic campaign. Do monsters spells or spell-like abilities change too? This is a major debuff to a lich.

 

[ECMO3]

I like the cooldown idea from @Imaculata. I also like the idea of going back to the old "Initiative Count" timers to determine when spells go off after they've been cast.

But the OP's suggestion wouldn't just "Reduce" mages. It would eliminate them.

I think if you do that for spells you need to do it for weapons or other things as well using speed factors and such.

 

[ph0rk]

All this would accomplish, is make no one want to play a spellcaster.

I do believe that is the point.

 

[Imaculata]

I do believe that is the point.

If you don't want people to play a spellcaster, you can just ban all spellcasting classes.

Breaking the class balance is not the way to go, and making spell casters not fun to play, can also not be the goal.

 

[ph0rk]

If you don't want people to play a spellcaster, you can just ban all spellcasting classes.

Not really in 5e; there are far too many of them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not really in 5e; there are far too many of them.

One easy way to have lower magic game is to ban full casters. That' still a lot of classes banned, but also leaves a decent selection to choose from and allows having some magic. And you can still have the caster archetypes, your 'wizard' just is an artificer, your 'cleric' is a paladin and your 'druid' is a ranger.

 

[ph0rk]

One easy way to have lower magic game is to ban full casters. That' still a lot of classes banned, but also leaves a decent selection to choose from and allows having some magic. And you can still have the caster archetypes, your 'wizard' just is an artificer, your 'cleric' is a paladin and your 'druid' is a ranger.

Yeah, I did something similar back in 3e and it worked out fine. It would work even better in 5e because you really don't need a healer like you did in previous editions.

I'd be tempted to allow warlocks in such a setting, though, but I just like them and they have enough limits to not break the universe quite as badly.

With the cleanly stated caveat that magic is illegal and heresy and so on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's like saying my grandfather was in the military so I should join the miltary too. We're almost 50 years and 5 editions away from OD&D. The focus doesn't need to be on combat because the games earliest roots were in wargaming.

I was specifically responding to you saying it has become combat-focused. It started off combat-focused, remained combat-focused and is combat-focused to this day.

You can disagree with that focus -- I think we probably have something in common there -- but I don't think we can act like this focus is new or hasn't existed consistently throughout the life of the brand.

Otherwise, why are there rules for so many non-combat events? Why all the spells for boosting social skills or overcoming non-combat challenges? As it's written, D&D allows for a vast range of different challenges where spellcasters can shine. They don't need to also shine in the one area where martials shine, just because they might be bored for a few rounds.

Maybe. It's easy to test this. Get a copy of 1E and run it a few times and ask the players running spellcasters what they thought. Having played 1E, BD&D, 2E, 3E and 5E, I think there are good reasons why they changed things to how they are now, but I think it might be that one has to play with the older style of spellcasting to appreciate that.