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(Forum moderators, please note : I am not advocating any of these systems, I am presenting an analysis of them, including the existing Psionics system – so I did not post this under “homebrew”, and I don’t think it belongs there, FWIW…)
I’ll be up-front about this : I hate the Vancian system of spellcasting! I prefer Psionics over Arcane or Divine spellcasters, and if I’m going to play one of the latter, it’ll be a Sorcerer or Oracle that doesn’t have to pick the spells they can cast each day. So I’ve been playing with and investigating point-based spellcasting systems for years. Here’s what I’ve discovered…
The basics of any point-based system is that each spell costs a certain number of “points” to cast, and the caster has a “mana pool” of daily points to use. Each time you cast a spell, you subtract the point cost of the spell from your pool, and you can’t cast anymore when your pool reaches 0. Typically your pool completely refreshes after a full night’s sleep.
My goal is to come up with a point-based system that uses all the standard spells “as-is”, including their level rating, in order to be as compatible with the existing system as possible.
Psionics
Let’s start with the Psion, the “archetype” of point-based casting in 3.5/PF. Their spell costs progress as
SL =1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Cost = 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17
To keep things simple (and as extreme as possible), I’m going to deal with 20th-level casters. At 20th level, an average psion with INT=10 has a mana pool of 343 (“power points”).
The problems of such a system are well known : instead of being limited to 4 9th-level spells as a Wizard would be, the psion is free to cast as many 9th-level spells (“powers”) as they want. How bad does it get? Well, an average psion could cast 343/17 = 21(!) 9th-level spells per day (granted, to the exclusion of many other potentially useful lower-level spells).
In addition, they have a virtually unlimited supply of 1st level spells : 343 1st-level spells per day (again, to the exclusion of everything else).
How about the often very useful (and sometimes game-breaking) mid-level spells? Picking 5th level spells as a representative, a 20th-level psion could cast 343/9 = 38 spells per day.
I’m going to use these three samples as a measure-of-quality to compare some different point-based systems :
A 20th level psion could cast 21 9th-level spells, 38 5th-level spells, or 343 1st-level spells.
However, one of the nice things about this system is that the difference between spell costs is constant between caster and spell levels, so 2 points basically represents 1 spell level. That means that metamagic feats, which make a spell “cost” more levels than it is, are easily implemented – a feat that costs N extra spell levels costs 2*N extra points.
“Total Spell Levels”
I’ve been experimenting in my group with a simple translation of the Psionics idea over to Arcane and Divine spellcasting (with the awkward name of Total Spell Levels), because all you do is multiply the number of spells per day by the level of the spell, add that all up, and there’s your “mana pool”.
For example, at 20th level a Wizard can cast 4 of every spell level, so their mana pool is :
4*1 + 4*2 + 4*3 + 4*4 + 4*5 + 4*6 + 4*7 + 4*8 + 4*9 = 180 points
And the cost of each spell is just its level.
This suffers from all the same problems as the Psionic system :
A 20th level caster could cast 20 9th-level spells, 36 5th-level spells, or 180 1st-level spells.
Well, at least they can’t cast as many 1st-level spells, but 180 is still outrageously high.
However, metamagic feats are easy to implement, since you just add the number of levels the feat boosts the spell by to the spell’s level, and subtract that total from your pool.
Variable-cost #1
Inspired by this thread, I started thinking about other alternatives. What if the point cost of a given spell varied by the caster level? For this example, it’s worth seeing the whole table of spell point costs :
Spell level
CL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 6 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 5 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 4 7 7 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 3 6 6 0 0 0 0 0 0
7 2 5 6 8 0 0 0 0 0
8 2 4 5 7 0 0 0 0 0
9 2 3 5 6 7 0 0 0 0
10 2 2 4 6 7 0 0 0 0
11 2 2 3 6 6 8 0 0 0
12 1 2 3 5 6 7 0 0 0
13 0 2 2 5 6 7 9 0 0
14 0 1 2 4 5 6 9 0 0
15 0 0 2 4 5 6 8 10 0
16 0 0 1 4 4 5 8 9 0
17 0 0 1 3 4 5 7 8 10
18 0 0 1 3 3 4 6 8 9
19 0 0 0 2 3 4 6 8 9
20 0 0 0 1 2 4 6 7 9
(forum formatting really messes with tables – try copy-and-pasting the table into NotePad)
And the mana pool progression needed to match the number of spells per day that a Wizard can cast is
CL = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Pool= 8 14 20 29 33 39 43 49 54 60 66 71 77 79 88 93 99 104 111 116
Notice that 1st-level spells start out being very costly to cast, but decrease as the caster’s level increases, until it gets to the point where they literally cost the caster nothing to cast.
This may seem odd, but by removing the cost of low-level spells from the pool, the pool is actually smaller at very high caster levels, thus preventing them from casting as many high-level spells per day. And really, if a Psion could cast 343 1st-level spells per day, or a Wizard in the Total Spell Levels system could cast 180 per day, what difference does if make if a Wizard in this system could cast an “infinite” number per day?
So this system is ranked as :
A 20th level caster could cast 12 9th-level spells, 58 5th-level spells, or an infinite number of 1st-level spells
It does allow the least number of 9th-level spells of all the systems, but also a LOT more mid-level spells, because at 20th level, the mid-level spells only cost a few points to cast.
And because the difference in cost between different-level spells varies by caster level, this system makes it very difficult to implement metamagic feats. How would you figure out how many points to charge for a feat that increases the spell level by 1?
Please note this is not the same system that the thread referenced above presents! That system has such an extremely small mana pool that a caster can barely cast one spell of every level, and then expects the caster to use up “mental fatigue” in order to cast more spells.
Variable-cost #2
Then I started thinking, it seems like it’s the difference in cost between low-level spells and hi-level spells that makes it possible to cast so many more low-level spells. So I tried a different approach, and ended up with this spell point cost table :
Spell Level
CL 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
1 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 8 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 7 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 7 6 6 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 7 6 5 0 0 0 0 0 0
7 6 6 5 6 0 0 0 0 0
8 5 6 5 6 0 0 0 0 0
9 5 5 5 6 8 0 0 0 0
10 5 5 4 6 7 0 0 0 0
11 5 5 4 6 6 6 0 0 0
12 5 5 4 5 6 6 0 0 0
13 4 5 4 5 6 6 6 0 0
14 4 5 4 5 5 6 6 0 0
15 4 5 4 5 5 5 6 6 0
16 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 0
17 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 7
18 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 7
19 3 3 3 4 4 4 6 8 9
20 3 3 3 3 4 4 6 7 9
The difference here is that for a 20th-level caster, casting a 1st-level spell costs 1/3 as much as casting a 9th-level spell instead of 1/9 as much. The mana pool progression looks like :
CL = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Pool= 8 17 25 33 42 50 58 66 75 83 91 100 108 116 125 133 141 149 158 166
As expected, because we have to include the now higher costs of low-level spells, the mana pool is bigger than it is for the first variable-cost system.
So this system is ranked as :
A 20th level caster could cast 18 9th-level spells, 41 5th-level spells, or 55 1st-level spells.
It does achieve the desired effect of reducing the number of 1st-level spells (but not to any realistic level), but still doesn’t significantly reduce the number of 9th-level spells that could be cast.
And again, because the difference in cost between different-level spells varies by caster level, this system makes it very difficult to implement metamagic feats.
Same-cost
Then I had an extreme idea – what if every spell of every level cost the same amount? What if every spell cost 1 point to cast?
Then the spell pool would just be equal to the total number of spells the caster could cast per day, or 4*9 = 36 for a 20th-level Wizard.
It turns out that this actually works the best of all for limiting the number of low-level spells, but it’s the worst of all for the high-level spells :
A 20th level caster could cast 36 9th-level spells, 36 5th-level spells, or 36 1st-level spells.
And metamagic feats, while do-able, effectively become very costly in this system.
Summary
So comparing the different systems side-by-side we have :
Psionics
A 20th level psion could cast 21 9th-level spells, 38 5th-level spells, or 343 1st-level spells.
“Total Spell Levels”
A 20th level caster could cast 20 9th-level spells, 36 5th-level spells, or 180 1st-level spells.
Variable-cost #1
A 20th level caster could cast 12 9th-level spells, 58 5th-level spells, or infintely-many 1st-level spells
Variable-cost #2
A 20th level caster could cast 18 9th-level spells, 41 5th-level spells, or 55 1st-level spells.
Same-cost
A 20th level caster could cast 36 9th-level spells, 36 5th-level spells, or 36 1st-level spells.
Conclusions
Bottom line, there doesn’t seem to be any good way for a point-based system to naturally limit the number of high-level spells a caster can cast per day, while still allowing them to cast a decent number of mid-level spells. And no matter what, a high-level caster will always be able to cast a very large number of low-level spells.
So it seems like to keep things really tightly balanced, defining exactly how many of what level spell a caster can cast each day is required. But, if you don’t have any power-gamers in your group, it may not be needed.
But if anyone knows of any other significantly different point-based systems, or this discussion inspires anyone to think of some other way to keep things balanced, I’d really like to know!
Or, if you’ve played or DM’d a very high-level Psion, how bad did it get, being able to cast many more high-powered spells each day?
Thanks, I'll look into that progression!
I knew about the Psionic augments, but since Arcane and Divine spell descriptions have "per caster level" built-in where appropriate, they don't need as big a mana pool to compensate.
To be honest, I wouldn't worry much about the system at level 20.
Any system is going to break down at the limits. I have rarely seen any single person happy with any system for any type of character at the max levels. I don't think you could ever get 2 people to agree on one.
Many people assume that you are approaching comic book super hero power at about level 6-8.
So a 20th level character is in the deity power realm.
Very few groups that I have known about actually play past about 15th level. Even then, you approaching the retirement point for the PC's.
So if you are entering the deity power realm is it really a problem if you can use a couple dozen supper powerful spells? I don't think so.
I would concentrate any analysis on the low and mid levels where most groups spend most of their play time.
I would never let the cost for any spell get to zero. "I am going to cast fireball 86,400 times a day until I've dried up Lake Superior."
Of the published systems, I prefer the current psionic system. If you were putting the spells into that system, I would remove the free "per level" power increase. They would have to pay more points to get that.
If I could get a group to agree, I would try out your systems. But I don't think my group would go with it.
Uh, Psionics is more balanced than core spellcasting. For starters your analysis doesn't take into account that Wizards get free scaling on their spells, which puts them leaps and bounds ahead of Psions who have to pay to upgrade.
If you are going to use the Psionc system and apply it to regular spell casting you have to remove the automatic scaling.
So Fireball for example gets locked at 5d6 damage unless you invest more points in it.
SSG put out an alternate Spell Point system where the costs were basically Spell level +1.
Their system however includes Arcane Resonance. The more you cast a specific spell the more expensive it gets. Prepared Casters suffer this more than Spontaneous ones.
A Wizard casting Fireball for example adds the Spell level each time he casts it.
1st Casting = 4 points
2nd casting = 7 points
3rd casting = 10 points
etc...
A Sorcerer however just adds 1 per extra casting
1st casting = 4 points
2nd casting = 5 points
3rd casting = 6 points
etc....
Another Option is 2nd Edition D&D's PO:Spells & Magic. Point set up was kind of all over the place but the nice thing about it was the variants that come with it.
Channeling where you had to draw the energy in before you could cast your spell
Defiling/Preserver where you rip the energy from living things
Witchcraft where you had a Tank of Spell Points that could only be refilled by making bargains with sinister things
Alienists where magic risks insanity
Ritualism where magic required you to get the attention of your gods with prayers and sacrifice.
...
Alienists where magic risks insanity
...
Personally, I loved this one.
. . . please note : I am not advocating any of these systems, I am presenting an analysis of them, including the existing Psionics system – so I did not post this under “homebrew”, and I don’t think it belongs there, FWIW…) . . .
I suppose someone disagrees. :)
. . . Bottom line, there doesn’t seem to be any good way for a point-based system to naturally limit the number of high-level spells a caster can cast per day, while still allowing them to cast a decent number of mid-level spells. And no matter what, a high-level caster will always be able to cast a very large number of low-level spells. . .
As has been pointed out, if you make a character pay for scaling, like psionic do, then you just reduced the number of spell points available, and at the same time, made mid-level spells still useful at higher levels.
A near infinite amount of level one or level two spells... hhmmm... It makes me think of the warlock from 3.5. He had lots of stamina but no real versatility. Between stacking rules and how weak they are compared to higher level spells, I'm not sure that I see a real problem. An infinite amount of fox' cunning... if it mattered to a character, he'd already have an item that does the same, otherwise not so useful. Infinite lesser restorations or cure light wounds?... Still something that should be saved for out of combat but makes wands and scrolls of the like useless... It might even change the four encounter workday to encompass more. I'm not sure how badly that would mess with the system...
As to some sort of other limiting factor, maybe an arbitrary check based on the idea of (mental) fatigue? I've seen the like in Sword and Sorcery d20. Once you are down to half (one third, whatever) your spell points, you need to start making Fortitude saves based on the level of spell you are casting, with a slowly growing addition, like endurance checks. Fail a second one and go to exhausted. Fail a third and pass out/go unconscious. If a character somehow gains some sort of immunity to fatigue/exhaustion, leave a clause in the description that it doesn't affect spellcasting but might give them a bonus. Would that be a sufficiently limiting factor or would that just mean more casters would dump more stats for extra Constitution?
The nice thing about a spell point system is you can adapt the rules easily by adjusting how one gains Spell Points or what things modify the costs.
Take the Defiler/Preserver system as an example from 2E D&D
Under the original rules
Before a Wizard can cast a Spell he needs to gather the energy for it. A Preserver can gather 4+his level points in a round. A Defiler can draw 4+(2x his level) a round but he ravages the land around him creating a dead zone where vegetation can no longer grow. The radius of this devastation is equal to how many points the defiler draws.
Under the 2E system 4 points was enough for a 1st level spell (and a 9th level spell was 60 spell points), so we can adjust the point draw to other Spell point systems but using that as a bench mark.
Adapting the Psionic system where a 1st level spell is 1 point you could say Preservers draw 1+ half their level a round maybe.
Well this might be slightly off-topic, and I've expressed this before, but I always thought spell point systems would be perfect for Sorcerers, but I never thought it fit the bill for Wizards and Divine casters. I always thought it would be awesome if Wizards were either totally dependent on limited use items and spell reagents or used a skill check to cast, and an activation roll for Divines.
Both systems would depend more on roleplay than mechanics- a GM may have to pull certain reagents off a store shelf to curb a spell that would overpower a player in an area or leave the player a surplus of a specific one as a hint, and a divine would have penalties and bonuses applied to his activation roll based on the choices he has made in the story, but it would still be a rad system nonetheless.
Just my 2cp.
My two suggestions are the excellent system from Rogue Genius and the HypertextD20 system.
Couple of others
Miracles and Wonders is a alternate system for Divine casters. It's based around Clerics balancing Piety and Hubris. Instead of casting spells they literally Ask their God for Miracles. It's pretty much a "make a Wish" magic system with a long set of guidelines. With enough Piety you can ask you god to raze a city with fire and brimstone. Ask for too much and your Hubris goes through the roof and your God gives you a smack upside the head.
Elements of Magic is one I found out about on these forums. Lore Based Spell point system. Instead of Learning Spells you learn Lists (EX: Charm Humanoids or Evoke Fire) you can then make up any spell you want within the rules of that list. The more powerful the spell the more points it costs.
It's a very flexible system that is easily modified and adapted to fit your campaign and does address things like Spellbooks, Different sources of magical power and Mystic traditions.
... Miss it entirely (natural one) and you kill yourself.
I don't like this part. If you cast more than 15 tough spells over the course of you entire existence, you probably killed yourself.
(Forum moderators, please note : I am not advocating any of these systems, I am presenting an analysis of them, including the existing Psionics system – so I did not post this under “homebrew”, and I don’t think it belongs there, FWIW…)
I’ll be up-front about this : I hate the Vancian system of spellcasting! I prefer Psionics over Arcane or Divine spellcasters, and if I’m going to play one of the latter, it’ll be a Sorcerer or Oracle that doesn’t have to pick the spells they can cast each day. So I’ve been playing with and investigating point-based spellcasting systems for years. Here’s what I’ve discovered…
The basics of any point-based system is that each spell costs a certain number of “points” to cast, and the caster has a “mana pool” of daily points to use. Each time you cast a spell, you subtract the point cost of the spell from your pool, and you can’t cast anymore when your pool reaches 0. Typically your pool completely refreshes after a full night’s sleep.
My goal is to come up with a point-based system that uses all the standard spells “as-is”, including their level rating, in order to be as compatible with the existing system as possible.
Have you seen THIS MANA SYSTEM? It seems pretty balanced, simple, and seems to eliminating the common issues of most mana systems.
I don't think True Sorcery could kill you, not unless you took the feat that let you burn Hit Points for power.
Each Spell however has a Drain value depending on how powerful it is which inflicts non-lethal damage. You suffer the drain regardless of if you successfully cast the spell or not.
For example Fireball (R:60' AOE: 20' radius does 5d6 fire damage) Spellcraft DC 60
Lets say a 5th level spellcaster with a 12 Con and an 18 Int
He's got 3 Spellpower (Con Mod +2 at 5th level)
The spell drain is figured by dividing the DC by 5 and then rolling 1d8. Your current spellppower then reduces it.
So DC 60 Fire ball is 1d8+12 drain minus his current spellpower of 3.
As for casting the spell there are a lot of ways to improve the Spellcraft check. Just being a 5th level Spellcaster give +4, Spending a Point of Spell power would give +10 but increases the drain by another d8. At 5th level he could spend a max of 2 Power for +20. He can also Add Material Components, a Spell Foci, He could take extra time to cast it, He could have the Spell Focus feat, The Talent Focus Feat, etc...
Spellcraft 5 ranks+3 in class+ 4 int+4 for 5th level wizard +3 for Skill focus = 15
He's got a Foci for Create Fire (A Magic wand he created just for Create Fire Spells) so that gives +10
He adds some Bat Guano and phosphorous so +3
probably need to use those 2 points of spell power so another +20
going to need to roll 12+ to successfully cast the spell and the drain ends up being 3d8+12 - 1 (cause we spent 2 spell power on the fireball)
Even if he gets the spell off he's going to be pretty wiped out afterwards.
If he has the Reckless Caster feat you can apply the Drain as a bonus to the spellcraft test but if you do you can't reduce the Drain with spellpower. Or you can add triple the drain to the spellcraft check but the Drain become lethal damage and yeah you might kill yourself.
I have toyed with the following...
SL =1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Cost = 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Point pool is determined by the Casting Stat modifier.
The caster gains a number of MP (Magic Points) equal to his Modifier
(Magical enhancements to the stat do not adjust this number but increases by other means will).
At at 20th level (this worst case scenario assumes a +7 MP every level.)
We have 140 MP
This allows for a total of: (only calculating for maximum MP expenditure and highest levels of spells)
7 level 9 spells.
Or at the other end...
35 level 1 spells
This is a worst case scenario however...
More realistically what one would see in points is more along the line of the caster gaining:
5 MP for the first 7 levels (total MP: 35)
6 mp for the next 8 levels (total MP: 83)
and 7 MP for the remaining levels (total MP: 118)
Resulting in a maximum of 5 level 9 spells and 1 level 8 spell
Or
29 level 1 spells