Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5744269" data-attributes="member: 58197">In 4E, almost every spell requires an attack roll, with 1 being an auto-miss and 20 being a crit, just like weapons. I have not observed that it makes magic more exciting or flavorful. It's just another die roll. They actually revised magic missile to make it auto-hit again; before that, it was a wizard's equivalent of bow and arrow.In terms of "hazard mechanics," I favor a corruption system. Every time you cast a big spell, you acquire some corruption points, probably with a random element and secretly tracked by the DM so you don't know exactly where you are. At certain corruption thresholds, you acquire various disadvantages and traits; push it far enough and you die or become an NPC monstrosity. Over time, you can "work off" your corruption, perhaps by gaining levels. (You may or may not be able to "work off" the disadvantages from passing thresholds.)With a system like this, you don't have to give up casting big spells, but you do have to pace yourself. The secret tracking and random rolls make it scary and unpredictable, but the threshold points give you fair warning when you're taking it too far; it's not like you're perfectly fine and then you cast one spell too many and turn into a slobbering demon. And it's good flavor too.Edit: Looks like <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/members/fanaelialae.html" target="_blank">Fanaelialae</a> beat me to it. The only quibble I'd have is that if the "work off your punishment" mechanic is on a per-day basis, you have a variant of the 15-minute adventuring day problem, where the wizard is always asking to chill in town for a week so she can pay down her Wyrd. That's why I favor a per-level basis instead.</blockquote>

Verification