Lackadaisical Leshy's page

I agree it feels arbritary, but the first time I looked at bounded casters I also felt it was arbritary that they lost their lower level spell slots, though with time I got used to it and I see it as normal.

That is an excellent point to be fair - we defenitely do get very used to the conceits of the games we play and the media we consume.

As of now I still can't quite envisage that sort of double taxation not feeling bad. Maybe at that point it would be cleaner to say you can cast these spells twice per day and for everyhting else you got a mana pool to do with as you please.

One important step when thinking as a designer is to come to peace with the notion that players will "nova" against bosses. It's totally fine for players to try to ration and prep to dump all their power into such a fight. The system does need to make sure it can handle that burst, but one must NOT gimp the whole system to attempt to make going nova difficult for players to do via design.

Of course a player going "nova" in a boss fight (or occasionally in a non-boss fight because why not) is not an issue, but if a system let's you cast your top level spells every encounter all day long that's not going nova, that's your base power level and the game will need to be balanced around that assumption.

My first tool for this is by making the baseline default spell power blast take 1 FP per spell, while the infinite version of spellcasting is 0 cost and communicated to be sub-par

I do think that is an interesting way to get players more comfortable spending FP. Although I can still see players get stuck in a scarcity mind set and then just having an extra miserable time when they are not sure about commiting FP, so would still be crucial to have the right size overall power pool and a solid recharage mechanic.

A 2nd important design support to help get players on board with spending little bits of FP instead of hoarding is that the diversity of tools that key into FP, such as metamagic primarily costing FP instead of actions.

I'm in two minds about this - really like it as a mechanism to onboard players into spending FP for incremental benefits but it would probably make the system overall more unwieldy to play and balance. Then again also opens the door to have some really interesting and powerful metamagic options (given they compete with heightening spells in the power budget).

Any time a caster is sitting at max FP while the party spends an hr spelunking to the next fight, that means that the caster wasted his chance to burn FP in the fight before. If every 10 min detour or mini investigation of a room passively recharges 1 FP, that alone does a huge bulk of the heavy lifting to encourage players to try to sit somewhere around 50 to 75% full of FP, instead of 100% FP.

Restated: Passive FP recharging means that how much FP you'll gain between fights for free becomes unpredictable, and players will be naturally incentivized to estimate and match that "free spend" even for low-danger fights.

Wouldn't caster players just want to chill till they are back to 100% (or maybe 90%) if they get back 1FP/10minutes? If that is the only way they get FP back and it is tied to say Exploration Activities to avoid the "let's just wait untill we are back at full charge" situation, I think it's more likely to make hesitant players paly more conservatively not less as they have no way of predicting how many FP they can reliably recharge before needing them again. I can see the background recharge encouraging spending FP on utility type spells during exploration though which is a really nice touch. Paired with a more reliable secondary recharge that could be a really good way to balance combat and utility spell cost. Though I can practically already hear various of my regular players shout - but surely that will have taken at leat 10 minutes so I should get an extra FP.

I think the most balanced way to implement a mana / magic points system in PF2e or an hyphothetic PF3e would be if the highest limited slots would still be limited to a certain number of casts per day.

That was my first thought too and I think you are completely right in principle. My only concern doing it that way round would be that I think two levels of restriction - ie you can only cast a spell twice but you also have to spend mana points to cast it - can feel really unfun and quite unfair even if it objectively isn't.

Purely anecdotal of course but I have watched a very good friend play a warlock in a 5e game for a over a year now. There are class features you can choose that give you an extra spell you can then cast once per day using one of your spell slots. He is consistently one of the most powerful characters in the game and still can't get away from the fact that it feels like he is paying for that spell twice (and honestly I don't blame him).

I've never really clicked with the idea of mana pool/points system - mostly because I can't get away from thinking that people would either

cast everything at the highest level possible or horde their points if they reset at the end of the day
or every caster would turn into a supercharged 5E Warlock if they reset like focus points do.

The former would I think potentially exacerbate sustainability issues and the later would be fun in the short term but would both flatten variety among casters and make balancing them with martial a pain (or lead to the power level of magic being dialled back overall to compensate which I suspect would feel disappointing to a lot of people).

Having said that I've spent the last hour or so mulling over how I would build a mana points based casting system that allows for caster to engage with it in different ways, gives players better choices when it comes to sustainability and still feels like something that could be balanced to play nicely with martials.

So here's my first draft:

- All spells come at a base rank that like cantrips today can be cast an infinite amount of times

- At the start of each day spell caster get a pool of mana points they can spend on heightening any of their spells as they cast them up to what we would now think of as the top rank of spell available to caster at a given level. (The more points you spend the higher the rank of that particular casting of a spell is)

- Mana points can be recovered much like focus points in a short amount of time outside combat. I would probably balance it so the maximum amount of mana points recoverable this way goes down throughout the day so we can maintain parity between casters and martials without dialling down the power of magic overall. Additionally I think I'd like to see this reward people who conserve mana points by letting them get back all or at least more of their original pool back this way. That way we would hopefully preserve some of the more considerate resource management that some people clearly value when playing casters. Regardless everyone gets all their mana points back at the start of the next day.

- To preserve some of the distinction between spontaneous and prepared casters you could do something like give spontaneous casters a larger mana pool and let prepared casters prepare a certain number of spells pre-heightened that they can then cast without at that rank spending less or no mana points. (Not claiming this preserves how they play today more that it gives them distinctly different ways of casting and engaging with spells which I personally really enjoy about casters in PF2E)

- You could then build on that basic system letting different classes interact with it in different ways. Reduced the size of the mana pool (and maybe available spells) but always get all of them when recharging throughout the day for 5E Warlock like casting, the option to have a specific spell available at a higher base level, reduce cost of heightening for spontaneous casters with certain class feats and give prepared casters the ability to push one of their pre-heightened spells beyond their normal top rank once a day.

I wonder how the wider gaming community feels about spell slots in Baldur’s Gate 3? The game is, by far, the best representation of what “mainstream” understanding of d20 games ends up looking like.

From my own limited experience interacting with BG3 communities online, I feel like people definitely don’t really care about with spell slots one way or the other, it’s mainly the already invested tabletop players who have strong opinions on the system. I will say that given that the fact that people seem to love Sorcerer, Paladin, and Warlock more than the rest of the magic using classes does potentially indicate that bespoke, narrowly themed abilities are more appealing to players than the versatility spell slots represent (and it’s not a power thing because spell slots are objectively pretty damn powerful). It’s just hard to draw that conclusion that it’s entirely possible people are just in love with the Charisma classes lol.

Speaking as someone who objectively spent too much time playing BG3 I think the popularity of Charisma based classes is probably at least partly due to them making you very good at intimidating, persuading and deceiving your way into and out of all kinds of trouble - a playstyle the game definitely encourages and rewards.

Thinking about what BG3 might be able to tell us about spell slots/attrition it might be worth to consider some of the following aspects (and I hope this isn't too off topic):

- By virtue of being a largely single player game spell slot attrition sort of is just party attrition - given you as the player control all party members equally in combat you are likely to either rest or switch out casters (except for your main character of course) once they have run out of slots. Any issues around martial players at a table not wanting to take a rest or the GM not giving you the chance to are non existent (I never encounter these in the TTRPG space either but others clearly have and that would definitely make caster attrition feel bad)

- Spells can be switched at will as long as you are out of combat (a fact I was completely unaware of all way through my first full playthrough as a bard - can't say I found that to be a bad experience though either). Obviously hugely increases versatility, theoretically really favours prepared casters. Wizard, Druid and Cleric being at the lower end of the popularity ranking might indicate that doesn't move the needle much - OR the fact that two of the earliest companions you find are a wizard and a cleric people might just avoid doubling up (not sure why the druid gets so little love they are really fun to play)

- Getting caster hirelings to cast all useful long term buffs on the party at camp so they can free up slots for combat spells or utility spells and buffs with shorter duration has become quite popular. Seems folks are gonna optimise even when they don't really need to if it means they'll get a few "free" spell slots for it. (This not meant to sound snarky by the way getting more of limited resource always feels great as a player)

- You will end up with more cash then you know what to do with so can stock up on potions and scrolls pretty liberally from relatively early on in the game (and we are talking high level spells here). I've been told that they are a very helpful addition to your parties power budget - can't comment personally as I am incapable of using consumables other than healing potions.

- Being a 5e derivative caster level overall is tuned very high (my personal favourite auto win button being Otto's Irresistible Dance) - great fun in a single player game not so fun at a TTRPG table. Probably related to that I found myself resting more often because the barbarian ran out of rages than because any of the casters ran out of spell slots. Casters with a few low level spells, cantrips and maybe even a scroll or two feels leaps and bounds ahead of the poor rageless barbarian.

I very much read it as the +1 circumstance bonus goes away once the albatross is attacked and dies. Although I have to admit rereading the spell just now that definitely is only implied rather than clearly stated.

The only reason I'm fairly certain the intention is for the +1 to go away after the albatross is killed is that if it doesn't the second part of the spell would be less likely to get triggered. Why would the target of the spell attack the albatross if the only effect is having to do a Will save and potentially incurring further penalties? (Obviously depends on whether the target knows the spell etc though it seems like a fairly recognisable spell if you have access to it)

Though even if my interpretation is correct, some clarifying language would be helpful as it definitely is not what the spell says strictly RAW.

Side note - I can't make up my mind whether the critical failure effect is meant to still end after the first Will save or last for a full hour. The former seems functionally the same as a failure and the latter would be incredibly powerful.