Hey there all. It's pretty late where I am, but I've been up all night trying to sort out a problem that I've been working at for some months.
Simply put, I don't like How vancian magic boils down. There are a million different ways to set people on fire if you use 3rd party stuff ( which I use a lot of), but relatively little in the way of high level utility magic. Plus, if you take it to it's extremes, you get get into a whole world of issues like clerics irrigating the desert with create water spells, or the errant character with wish ruining economies.
I've tried numerous fixes. Initially since I disagreed with the idea of casters running out of 'magic juice' silly, I invented a system that required spell checks. The more you successfully cast in a short period of time, the more likely it was that you would fail. Fail hard enough and the spell backfired, usually in hilarious and/or deadly fashion.
This all seemed great until one of my characters discovered that he could just spam 'save or be knocked out' spell and zap any non-immune characters instantly. needless to say, a problem.
While this was going on I also created two or three other casting systems that worked right along side the first, but had a lot of randomness to offplay the resource that infinite magic could get. " Your spells known are a deck of cards, you 'draw' one new one each turn, and regain your spells by reshuffling the deck" , " Build a chain of spells based around a similar theme, roll some dice based on your level to determine what level of spell you cast. Sure, you might get a lvl 3 spell at lvl 1, but if you're very unlucky that meteor swarm you were planning to cast at 18 comes out as burning hands."
Needless to say, as my play testing party got up in levels, there grew to be more and more of a problem. the pure casters ended up relying on their ' easy KO' spells and while the characters with lesser spell casting didn't seem like much of an issue, I had to give out a small sigh every time one of my big threat monsters or key political npcs were taken out by a silently cast knockout spell or simply whisked out of existence by a bolt of hot plasma.
My real problem came when I ran a one shot this weekend and one of my players decided to play a blaster caster. Now, I know it's strange, but in 10 years of Dming and 4 with playing with a vary competent group, I've never had a blaster caster in my party. BOY WAS I SUPPRISED when he offhandedly tossed off a fireball and barbecued a room full of mooks. The next round: he lightning bolted the boss. The other people in the group were still getting into tactical positions and he had already ended the encounter. Needless to say there were some grumbles, and it got me thinking about Spellcasting systems again. Heck, I've even allowed a trickle of 'Book of nine swords' into my campaigns from time to time ( not the classes though, but that's a rant for another post) and I've never had a raw damage problem like this.
I'm not sure if many of you folks know about the 'Spheres of Power' system but it was on kickstarter a while ago. Simply put, it was a replacement for vancian magic that included a lot of neat ideas but removed the old spells in favor of talent tree like schools which improved in various ways as you invested points in them. There were a lot of other neat ideas in there that I'm interested in keeping, Like the DCs of all your spells being set by your ' caster level' a variable stat that scaled like a character's BAB, or how you got more ' talent points' by pinning on flaws to your caster like armor check failure, somatic components, or the need to shed blood.
My players were quite hesitant to switch to this new system when told about it, and I'm having second thoughts as well. I've decided to keep all the vancian spells in just as items. Even then however Players don't like the idea of giving a lot of their spellcasting versatility, just like I fret and worry about the ever increasing stockpile of encounter and game ending spells that's building up in each caster's back pocket.
This is why I'm asking for advice: I'm pretty much stuck at this point in time. I want to keep the utility that low level spells are so good at, your short range teleports, your Illusions, your useful buffs. Heck, I'm not even opposed to the low level damage dealing spells like shocking grasp, or even scorching ray, as they turn casters into the magical equivalent of the person in the squad with the grenade launcher: requiring a bit more skill for more pay off, and an appropriate amount of damage too.
My problem as my group climbs into higher and higher levels, those utility spells are going to go out the window in exchange for the biggest boom, or the thing that can just make their problem pop out of existence.
What say you good people? Is there any way I can give my spellcasters a steady diet of bread and butter without worrying about the growing cache of nukes in the wizard's back pocket?
Dotting. I'll get back to you with a comment tomorrow.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It sounds to me like you're just realizing that high-level magic is ridiculously powerful. It definitely is, and that's definitely a big problem with D&D 3.5 and with Pathfinder too. Low-level magic's got its crazy spells as well if you're players know what to look for, especially if they aren't concentrating on nukes.
In fact, since you say you like the low-level spells, I'm going to suggest something radical--magic is SO overwhelmingly more powerful than anything else that you can cut all spells of 6th level and higher out of the game entirely and Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards would still be both more powerful and far more versatile in the later character levels than Barbarians, Fighters, and Rogues. If you limit full casters to 5th level spells, its only fair to cut back the Bard to 4th level spells, and the Paladin and Ranger to 3rd level spells.
Now, to avoid making the game a lot less fun for Bards, Sorcerers, and Wizards especially you'll want to give them new class features and/or amp up their existing ones. Clerics could also use more significant class features in being cut to 5th level spells maximum (I'd recommend more domains and domain powers as one alternative). Interestingly, Druids should be completely fine with this nerf at all levels of play with no other changes, and Paladins and Rangers will barely notice the change (especially if you bump at least a few of their thematic 4th level spells down to 3rd level).
The only problem I foresee with this rather heavy-handed approach is that your players may despise losing out on all that power. Many players of spellcasters rejoice in the fact that they are so much more powerful than non-casters and would throw a fit if they were forced to play a game where they were more balanced against their non-casting party members. Even though they can still achieve crazy levels of power and versatility that non-casters can't possibly match just with their 5th level spells, these players could still feel entitled to their Mass Dominate Monsters and Miracles.