I would honestly be kind of surprised if anyone has actually tried anything like this, since it's such a massive overhaul of the way magic works...
That being said: You're going to run into a few issues. If it costs feats to cast spells, then you're going to run into the problem of feat cost, and fighters are suddenly the world's greatest spellcasters. Also, can anyone take those feats? Could a 30 HD monster, with a CR of 15, take all of those feats, and have access to 9th level spells? (There's plenty of monsters with disproportionate HD to CR ratios.) How is caster level calculated? What about sorcerers? Clerics/Druids? Bards?
This house rule will require an entire overhaul of the entire system. I'm not sure you've even begun to think of everything that can happen. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't necessarily do it if you want to do it - I'm merely stating that, once this "house rule" is finished, you will not be playing Pathfinder. It'll be an entirely new RPG system altogether.
In the past (for a completely arcane party), I've done exactly the opposite: full Fighter BAB, feats, and Fort Saves while excluding the melee classes as NPC classes. That didn't take much work, but then again...opposites.
It would probably just be simpler to look up the Gestalt rules on the d20srd.
This - yes. In my experience (we went Gestalt pretty soon after Unearthed Arcana came out) a gestalt game ends up with almost everyone having some kind of caster ability. If you use Psionics it expands things quite a bit, too (you can manifest powers in full armor, for example.)
I'll agree. By far gestalt is the best way to handle this. What I'd do to build what you're asking for is to specify that one half of anyone's gestalt has to be an arcane caster.
I shudder at the idea of a monk/paladin smiting with a flurry of blows.
Sounds like a cool idea to try.
If you are still requiring a spell book, and Int high enough to cast the spell. Then i do not see the need for a feat tax for learning spells, if you want to treat the knowledge the same way as normal knowledge. At most, might require them to take Spell-Craft, and have at least 1 point per spell level in addition to the int requirement.
Still, many classes will have armor. So some player will try to cast throw the armor, while others will stop wearing armor, to rely more on there magic.
I'd rather gestalt everyone to a spells-known class rather than a memorization class. Oracle and Sorcerer would work great, I think.
I'd rather gestalt everyone to a spells-known class rather than a memorization class. Oracle and Sorcerer would work great, I think.
I agree with this idea
The campaign setting Midnight tries to do some of what I'm after, with anyone being capable of casting magic, but there being a specific class if you want to invest more effort into it.
That's the first thing that came to mind when you suggested requiring a feat for each level of spellcasting.
Or you could allow anyone to cast wizard spells. Same rules on spell book, learn spells, items needed, casting thro armor. etc.
Just let them gain wizard spell slots as they advance. For all classes.
The one thing i would change is, after 1st level.... they do not gain any New spells. All spells must be found, researched, or bought. And as GM, be Stingy about giving them out. Hard to find. Or Expensive to buy.
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If the wizard class if free tho, you need to give it to all monster and creatures as well.
Even creatures with an Int of 10 or below, should be able to us Zero-level spells. So watch out for the Acid-Splash from bunny's and blue-birds.
((To be honest the who 10+spell level is a rip on casters... if you drop it to just Int = Spell level, it opens up a lot of doors for animals to cast 1,2,or 3rd level spells... just an idea, most Hard-Core player will hate the idea ;P))
I would take a queue from the gestalt rules, and create a second experience table exclusive to spells using the wizard table. Then depending on how serious the character is, they can devote the experience needed to advance. This is the best way in my opinion to keep the method universal to all classes, in addition to mimicking point buy systems like GURPS where anyone can learn spells, or use the GURPS concept of knacks where a character can choose specific spells to become inherint, or in D20 terms, convert them to racial or natural spell casting. With the later, you may want to make it a percentage of total experience learned for a level to choose a specific spell.
I kinda like the idea of a campaign where everyone has some spell casting ability.
I would go with making everyone a gestalt sorcerer, then is someone wants to be a dedicated caster, they can take wizard with the other half of their gestalt.
As a secondary rule it, I would let the caster expend sorcerer spell per day to get extra casts of their memorized wizards spells.
I am not in favor of straight fighters casting spells.
Yes, anyone can summon fiends or abberations. Things go wrong and you get a horror story. Anyone can attempt surgury, but without training you won't help anyone. That one guy who got trapped while climbing and ended up cutting off his arm was an exception. He may have known something about butchering animals.
A self trained caster would be like a tribal witch doctor. Summoning forces with little or no control. I guess if they scared every spirit in their hut, living or not, the evil spirits might leave. If they conjure fire it will flare out in a probably random direction. They could do a rain dance, but they could not turn it off when they had enough. Same with winds. You could have them make an intelligence check DC20+spell level. Failure means nothing happens. Now make a dex check DC20+spell level. Failure means it happens in a random place. Yes they could give a rock a shield spell. They could magic missle themselves.
This belongs in general discussion. I don't go there anymore for a reason.
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/offTopic/fightersCastingSpel ls&page=1
I don't see it as a Pathfinder setting at all.
He didn't ask if he could combine a fighter and spellcaster, or if he could have a fighter's sword cast a spell.
If the board mods agree with you, then they will ignore my flagging the OPs post as being in the wrong place. I've only flagged 2 posts ever so I feel strongly that these people are following me!
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Now, on topic: I have to agree with the gestalt crowd. It would be a much easier system to keep track of, and you don't have to do a ton of work to make it what you want it to be.
I do like the idea, though. I can't remember what it was (I've read a lot of books and sometimes they get confused in my head), but there was some setting/novel where everyone had some magic, regardless of their profession/background. So a smith might know some minor fire magic, or a maid may know some cleaning magic, stuff like that.
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How I would do this:
1. Limit the spells that this can be used with.
2. Use some sort of spell-point system. I think maybe the easiest would be that each day, a character has spell points equal to his character level, and each spell costs it's spell level in spell points to cast.
3. Aadd a cost for using the spells. Maybe casting a spell puts the caster in the exhausted status for 20 minutes after the casting. Maybe it gives ability damage. Each spell could have a different cost, or maybe the cost varies by level.
I'd just say anybody with an Int of at least 10 who buys a spellbook and copies some spells into it can cast cantrips. These are cantrips the old way though: Once you use them, they're gone until you rest. You start out with 2 level 0 spell slots, plus bonus spells per day for high intelligence.
Maybe they have to bond themselves to an object to do it right. These bonded objects wouldn't have to be masterwork and would offer none of the benefits of a wizard's bonded object, but you suffer all the penalties for not using one.
Then to do it better, you need to take feats. The first feat, Wizard of The First Circle, requires 1 rank in Knowledge (Arcana) and Int 11. It gives you 1 first level spell per day, but you also get access to any 1 first level bonus spells for high intelligence.
Each further feat gives you your first slot of the next spell level and an additional slot of every level before it, up to a maximum of four or five of any given level. Each successive feat would need another 1 point of intelligence and another 2 ranks of Knowledge (Arcana).
There might be another feat that makes your bonded object work properly and always count as masterwork, and a feat to specialise in an particular school of magic, getting and extra slot/level/day in exchange for using two slots for spells from your two restricted schools, just like a specialist wizard.
There could easily be equivalents for other classes: Let anybody with Int 10 or higher and 100gp to blow summon up a witch familiar without the familiar benefit or the new abilities as you level and they can cast witch cantrips, then start taking Witch of the Nth Circle feats. Let them pick a patron and add the patron spells to their list and give them an optional feat that upgrades their familiar to full power.
Cleric is pretty simple: Give them a prayerbook instead of a spellbook, Cleric of the Nth circle feats that need religion instead of arcana and a feat that gives them a domain (not including powers). Druid is the same as cleric, but with the druid list and feats that require knowledge nature.
Thoughts?
Another option.. might be.
Make Wizard the only class in game.
Up the skill points to 6 per level.
Give every wizard 1 feat per level.
And enjoy.
(my Outside the box answer)
Hmmm... Seems a little off, but could be good even so. What about making it less wizardy? Give it d8 hit die, 0.75 BAB and bard casting progression, plus some kind of class feature/feat/option/whatever that lets it use the higher level spells if it really wants them.
Also might be good to reward having scores other than intelligence a bit more if everyone's going to be some kind of wizard. Maybe base bonus spells off a different stat, or have the different schools base their save DCs off different stats.
You'd also have a much richer game if you made many more "specialisations" which can replace the universalist abilities with things that aren't anything much to do with magic at all.
How about this:
Say casting spells is just one feat. It works just like the sorcerer or wizard spell progression except you need to power magic externally. So you need magical energies to cast magic. You can obtain those energies from raw sources, living sources or existing magic items. So in theory you could kill someone and use their life force to cast a spell where the life force's level or CR would power up a spell up to specific level, might have to do up chart for that. You could also go like the defiling concept of Darksun where you kill an area off. You could sacrifice a magic items to power you spells and in rare find you could access raw magical energies.
You casting level would be based off of skill, spell craft would work. To convert the energies it would be a skill check.
This is just a concept off the top of my head and would need some work.