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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3482296" data-attributes="member: 13966">K, separately.....First, basically I don't expect people to leave D&D just because they don't like part of it; but I also don't expect D&D to just be changed to suit some vocal minority's personal preference with the game, whereas most gamers aren't very vocal about their preferences, and/or won't generally agree with that individual's preference if the core game itself is changed to suit that preference in its next Edition.  Revision is good, but alienating a large chunk of the consumer base through excessive change is not.(a bit edited out) Personally, like the average gamer, I do not have barrels of cash to spend on reading half the selection at my local Borders.Secondly, I just wanted to present an alternative to what's been suggested by me and others around here, as something that might be a reasonable compromise for what D&D might become in its next incarnation.Retain the basic spellcasting mechanics and such.  Spell slots too.  But change the nature of spell slots a bit and assign each spell a Recharge Time.Each time a spell is cast, the slot used for it becomes unuseable for a while, but will be reuseable after a certain length of time.  This is the Recharge Time, and is based on the spell just cast.  A Fireball may have a long RT, being unavailable for an hour or more, but still castable a few times each day from the same slot.  Whereas a Detect Magic probably has a Recharge Time of only 5 rounds (30 seconds), so it only inconveniences you to cast it if there's a battle going on, but otherwise the slot will refresh itself in a matter of moments.  For example, I dunno what exact RTs should be assigned.  But for example, Teleport may have a Recharge Time of 8, 12, or 16 hours; so you only cast it once or twice a day from the same slot.  Whereas Magic Missile might have a Recharge Time of only 1 minute (10 rounds) or perhaps 10 minutes (100 rounds).  Feather Fall could, perhaps, have a Recharge Time of 1 round, on the other hand, or maybe it's too useful for that and should have an RT of 1 hour or 10 hours instead.You can still prepare a spell in multiple slots, or cast it from multiple slots if you're a spontaneous caster, as normal; that just means you can cast it more than once after each recharge period.  Example: you prepare Fireball in 3 slots, one of them Quickened; you cast a Quickened Fireball and a normal Fireball in the first round, then another normal Fireball in the second round, then you have to use other spells for a while.  After a few hours or whatever, your 3 Fireball spell slots will have Recharged and become available once more.The Recharge Time would begin to count down after the spell has finished casting and its duration has completed.  So a Fireball slot begins Recharging immediately after casting, since it is Instantaneous and has a short casting time; but an Identify slot doesn't begin to Recharge until after its 8-hour-long casting time (or whatever; I forget if 3.5 changed it, I think it did but I don't recall how much), and a Mage Armor slot doesn't begin to Recharge until after its entire duration of 1 hour/level or whatever has completed (or you've Dismissed it to end the duration early, or it's been dispelled prematurely).Also, metamagic effects and other stuff might increase the Recharge Time of any spell it is applied to.  For instance, Quicken Spell may add 4 hours (or 4 increments, or whatever) to the Recharge Time of any spell it is applied to.  If you go with increments, then for example, if Fireball were to have a normal Recharge Time of 8 hours, then a Quickened Fireball would have a modified Recharge Time of 12 hours.  This might also be a useful (or even a necessary) method of balancing metamagic a bit more while decreasing the number of levels it would increase the required spell slot by, or whatever.Spontaneous casters don't have to use the same spell slot to cast the same spell each time; if a Bard casts Charm Person with a particular spell slot, and if Charm Person has a Recharge Time of 16 hours (since it's a major, long-lasting utility spell), he or she doesn't have to use that same slot for another Charm Person; but he or she does have to wait for the Charm Person RT to finish before they can re-use that spell slot for anything.Prepared casters, on the other hand, retain the same spell (and metamagic, when applicable) applied to the same spell slot, until they prepare their spells anew on the next day.  So your Wizard prepares 3 Fireballs, one of which is Quickened; alrighty then, once he casts them and they finish Recharging after a while, they are once again 2 normal Fireballs prepared and 1 Quickened Fireball prepared.Reduce spell slots for each class, and simplify it a bit.  I.E. Wizard gets 2 Primary Spell Slots at 1st-level plus a bonus Primary for high Int, Bard gets 1 Primary + 1 bonus Primary for high Cha;by 4th-level the Wizard has 2 Primary and 2 Secondary, plus bonus slots for high Int, while the Bard has 1 Primary and 2 Secondary plus bonus slots for high Cha, and the Ranger now gets 1 Primary + a bonus Primary Slot for high Wisdom perhaps;by 20th-level, Wizard has 3 Primary + 1 extra Primary for high Int, 4 Secondary + 1 extra Secondary for high Int, and 5 Tertiary + 1 extra Tertiary for high Int, while Bard has 3 Primary/3 Secondary/3 Tertiary plus the bonus slots for high Cha, and Ranger has 2 Primary/2 Secondary/2 Tertiary plus any bonus slots he might've gained for high Wis.  Frex.Bonus slots would be gained slower; say a 14+ in the key score gives 1 bonus Primary Slot; an 18+ gives 1 bonus Secondary Slot as well; a 22+ gives 1 bonus Tertiary Slot as well; a 26+ gives another 1 bonus Primary Slot in addition; etc.  Only the most learned of Wizards would have multiple bonus slots of all three types (Intelligence 34+, likely from level advancement + Tome or Wishes + Headband of Intellect), for example.  So even an archmage would likely have 18 spell slots or fewer; most would have more like 14-15.  Rangers, Bards, and such would usually have 7-12 slots at upper levels.Spell slots would all be divided into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.  These are different 'levels' of spell slot, but do not correspond directly with the spell levels.  You use Primary slots to cast your highest-level spells, but they could also be used to cast lower-level spells.  Secondary slots are used to cast your next-highest level of spells (i.e. a 5th-level Wizard uses Primaries to cast Lightning Bolt, and Secondaries to cast Acid Arrow), and can be used to cast lower-level spells when needed.  Tertiaries would be used to cast only lower-level spells (a 5th-level Wizard would use them to cast 1st-level spells).  Preferably 0-level spells would be gone, and covered simply enough by 1, 2, or 3 multipurpose spells of 1st-level (like the old Cantrip of 2nd Edition).Metamagic in that setup would, of course, have to change required-spell-slot-level less drastically.  Quicken Spell might increase the required level of spell slot by 2, and so may Maximize Spell and the like; Empower Spell may increase it by 1 instead, along with some other metamagics; while Extend Spell, Silent Spell, or whatnot may incur no increase in spell slot level.  But would still require the character to have access to spells at least 1 level higher (or maybe 2 levels higher?) than the level of the spell being Stilled, Silenced, Extended, or whatever.  And of course, multiple metamagic effects applied to the same spell would have a higher adjustment; Empower Spell + Enlarge Spell may increase the level of spell slot needed by 2, instead of just the 1 for Empowering; a combination of Still Spell + Silent Spell may increase the level of spell slot needed by 1, instead of 0; etc.This would be simple enough to adjudicate.  Each metamagic could have a value between 1/2 and 2; this would be how much it would increase the required level of spell slot needed, rounding down; so a Still Spell by itself, with a value of 1/2, would not increase the level of slot needed, but when combined with Empower, with a value of 1-1/2, it would require a spell slot 2 higher than normal.  Quicken Spell + Still Spell could be used despite having a combined value of 2-1/2, since this rounds down, but only if the caster has access to spells at least 5 higher than the level of the spell being metamagicked (for instance, to Quicken + Still a Magic Missile, they'd need access to at least 6th-level spells, as normal for 3E).  Casters still couldn't Quicken or whatever any earlier than in 3E, because they'd still need access to higher-level spells first, but the actual spell slots used would be much simpler.For lower-magic games there could be an optional rule to increase the base Recharge Time of spells by a goodly amount; for higher-magic games there could be an optional rule to reduce the base Recharge Time of spells by some amount.  And there you have your sorta-kinda-per-encounter system integrated with your kinda-Vancian-reasonably-traditional-D&Dish magic system.For standard games the Recharge Times may be so long that it is almost indistinguishable from older Editions of D&D; for high-magic games it may be really short on RTs so you have most of your spell slots available during each encounter; and for low-magic games you may have Recharge Times that are measured in days or whatnot, so you have mages carefully hoarding their spells since they won't be able to regain their spell slots or prepare new spells until after their previously-cast spells' Recharge Times have completed.It's not quite what I'd like, as I prefer the current D&D magic system, but I'm pretty big on compromises and getting along with folks.</blockquote>

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