Forward:
This is mostly a collection of half-formed ideas that came about as the result of my dissatisfaction of the d20 magic system and forming out-of-the-box connections during REM sleep.
As such, this will be incomplete and merely "food for thought." If anyone does decide to take these ideas and make a viable, complete system out of it, they are free to do so, just make sure to give me the credit I deserve and let me know. Call it some variation on the MIT License; I'm too lazy to figure out which license actually applies to anything I do, as I'm pretty much an open source kind of guy.
Chapters 1-3 are why I dislike the rules that currently exist. Chapters 4-6 will approach a possible alternative.
Chapter 1: Prepared casting sucks.
I hate wizards. Specifically, I hate playing wizards. There are 900+ spells, 112 of which are 1st level. At the pinnacle of your career you can prepare and cast five of them per day. Except you won't be casting them at enemies 'cause they're just going to resist; good job wasting a turn.
Or how about "conditionally useful" spells? Ones that you need three of to handle whatever situation it is, buuut you need four different spells to handle edge-case scenarios. Yeah, you could prepare one of each, but then when Situation A comes up, you can really only protect yourself. Or the fighter. But not everybody. Even though it's a 10 min/level spell, so you can cast it before combat.
So out of combat, you get to figure out which scenario is most likely going to occur for the next four to six encounters, which one of them is most likely to fox the entire party, and then finally dig through eight different source books (or massive online resource) finding the One Spell that will make the encounter not suck. And in combat you get to cast that One Spell that murders things like twice and then you get to sit on the loot cart because anything you could throw is Just Not Powerful Enough, due to the save DC being below the critical threshold and the GM's generally-good dice rolls (I've had several people tell met to prepare spells assuming that the opposition always makes their saving throw).
Combine this with magic's Single and Only feat tree: Metamagic. Glorious Metamagic. (Almost: there is Spell Focus, but there's a pretty limited selection here)
Oh wait. There's downsides to unlimited power. And those downsides are worse than a knife between the ribs.
Quicken! Turn your least valuable spell into....an action you perform along side something else. For the cost of your most valuable spell. Seems like a fair trade to me! Cloudkill or Quickend Magic Missile? Cloudkill any day, every day, forever. The only reason I'd ever quicken anything is with a metamagic rod.
Elemental! Pick any element you want, just slightly higher spell slot! Of all the +1 metamagics this is the ONE that should be +0. Why? Chain Lightning and Chains of Fire (the same spell, even noted in the description) are the same level, but do different elemental type. Chains of Ice? Nah, +1. You don't even get anything cool for it. Oh, and the save DC is based off the original spell, not the spell slot you actually used, so hey, you're blowing a 6th level spell to cast a 5th level spell with 5th level spell damage, 5th level spell DCs....
Sorcerers literally get the better end of the stick when it comes to arcane spellcasting:
1) You do the paperwork once.
2) You can cast more per day.
3) As long as you know a spell you can cast it a lot.
4) And you avoid metamagic like the plague, because spont-casting a metamagic spell means its a full-round action. Even through a metamagic rod (hope you picked up quickdraw!). Wasn't the increased spell level sufficient?
Chapter 2: Resisting Spells
Saves are good. I like saves. They give me, as the player, a level of agency that even though I'm a dumb meatbag of a fighter I can still resist being mind-controlled. Not well, but having the chance is good.
On the other hand, I really really hate Spell Resistance. In my hands it's utter garbage, as in order to mildly inconvenience an enemy spellcaster I need to spend 25% of my wealth by level to do it. And with feats like Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration--which, lets face it, any Wizard will either have or not need--not to mention the occasional item or spell that says "You know what, I don't like spell resistance today" (*cough Dweomer's Essence, Sure Casting *cough*) you basically wasted a large pile of money.
On the other side of things, everything a player is going to go up against has a spell resistance that actually exceeds it's CR (by which I mean, in order for a PC to reach the same Spell Resistance they'd need to be slaughtering the creature by the dozens in terms of comparative difficulty). For example:
Demon, Glabrezu. Spell Resistance 24 on a CR 13 creature. This is a monster that the party is expected to be facing at level 13. Spell resistance 19 (the best you can get) is a +5 bonus, on top of the +1 for the armor being magical. Which costs *drum roll* 36,000 GP or 25% (almost 26%) of your total wealth at level 13. Oh and your AC is going to take quite a hit for that, too...
If we actually wanted to hit that Spell Resistance of 24, we'd need a +7 equivalent enchantment (+7.5, actually). Which, if we could get it, would cost 64,000 + the suit of armor itself, for a grand total of 45.7% of the character's total wealth at 13th.
Hope the 30% chance to ignore a spell was worth all that money. Meanwhile the wizard is beating against a 55% chance and hating his life as half his spells just simply fail with no effect.
Chapter 4: Simple Fixes
The first idea I had in a dream was simply swapping the values that are currently used: Saves become a fixed DC more closely resembling the Caster Level Check, Spell Resistance becomes a more fluid what does and does not work value.
First:
Save DC is Caster Level + Casting Stat + N where N is some fixed value (5? ) such that all spells of all spell levels are equally difficult to avoid. Now that level 17 wizard is actually dangerous when he lobs a fireball at the party. Even the rogue with Improved Evasion goes "oh shit." Similarly the PC wizard doesn't feel like he's being useless when forced to use a lower-level spell in order to save the higher level one for something later.
Second:
Spell Resistance becomes Globe of Invulnerability....More or less. Rather than a d20+Level vs. DC, instead particularly powerful and magic-resistant monsters just ignore spells below a certain spell level. Our Glabrezu from earlier? Yeah, give it "immunity to level 4 and lower" spells instead of a 50-50 shot against any given spell. Ah ha, now the wizard has to use those precious high level spells, there's a reason to use Chain Lightning instead of Fireball, even though before their damage and saves were equivalent, but the shape was different: Fireball? The Glabrezu just don't give a damn.
Third:
Metamagic. As a result of changes 1 and 2, altering spell level is actually beneficial with no changes. A quickened Magic Missile will hit that Glabrezu, while a regular one won't. Icing on the cake, you still have a standard action to hit it with Chain Lightning.
A couple of the level increase numbers should probably get shuffled around, like Elemental. This shouldn't change a spell's level at all. Fireball, Iceball, Acidball. They're all the same spell, same potency, but they have different elemental damages. It actually makes the wizard more flexible to be able to change from one damage type to another without sacrificing raw power. Given the change to Spell Resistance this also makes sense: Acidball should not overcome any more SR than Fireball does.
But in general, the increased spell level is actually beneficial and the downsides for being awesome are worth living with, rather than it being a case-by-case basis (Spell X is great Maximized, Spell Y is great Extended, Spell Z is great Quickened, but X and Y suck Quickened while Z can't be Extended and Maximized is pretty terrible).
Chapter 5: Alterations to the Classes
This is the point at which the changes are more drastic, less thought out, and more prone to requiring even wider reaching changes. But I wish to share these ideas and present them as they are, under the assumption that the entire spell list gets deleted and rebuilt under a new set of guidelines that take the following changes into account, as existing spells have a high probability of either breaking the game or not working at all.
Overview:
Wizards are now Sorcerers.
Sorcerers are now Computer Programmers.
Or less succinctly (wizards):
A wizard only needs to prepare newly learned spells. This is his bleeding edge, his ability to try new stuff out, figure out what works, go back, refine, scrap, and alter his toolset before he commits them to memory. Whereupon he can draw upon the spells he knows instantly with no effort as many times as he desires until running out of juice.
Mechanically, the highest spellslot available to the wizard is prepared as it always has been. Take a guess at what you need, if it works, great. If it was lackluster, pick something else. If you ended up not needing it, replace it tomorrow. Any other slots can also be prepared if the player so desires, but any unprepared slots of lower level are spontaneously cast as per what we current call a sorcerer from the shortlist of known spells. Once learned these cannot be changed (except via retraining), but ideally these spells will be the handful that the Wizard will be casting over and over three to six times a day. The optional preparation lets a wizard cast spells he hasn't memorized (flexible across the whole arcane spectrum) at the expense of minute-to-minute flexibility. Didn't prepare Endure Elements and you just took a trip Up North to the Frigid Wastes? Look up the spell, write it down, expend your 1st level slots, protect the party. Sure, you won't be able to cast Magic Missile, but you wouldn't have been able to under the old rules either. You've lost nothing except a pile of guessing and paperwork.
Or less succinctly (sorcerers):
Note: this is less well defined than I'd like, but it should get the idea across.
Sorcerers instead get to know Spell Template Pieces that they can then use to construct spells on the fly that conform to the exact needs of the moment. They will not be able to do everything, but they will be very flexible with what they can do.
It works like this: every spell is made up of several components that are replicated and seen in every other spell. What we're doing is breaking the spell list into these components and letting the sorcerer own a small collection that he can then rearrange in any way he likes.
Example:
Our sorcerer has picked Fire as his element of choice, focusing on doing Fire spells really really well and as such all of his spells will be doing Fire damage (except where no damage is dealt). He wants to be a little flexible with his targetting so he's picked up Ray, Sphere, and Line. He can hit one person, everyone, or a group. Add a handful more components like this, of which "actual damage" will be one vs. other effects like fatigue (gee, is it hot in here or just me?), haste (moving at the speed of fire, yo!), and so on.
Another sorcerer decides that you know what, he wants to be able to hurt everything, elemental resists be damned. He picks up Ray as his focus, then Fire, Cold, and Positive Energy as his elements. He's stuck only hitting a single target from range, but as long as he knows what kind of enemy it is, he's got a spell that bypasses resistance/immunities if not outright hitting a weakness.
Then there would be some rules regarding what the resulting spell's special effects, damage, and spell level would be, which would be easy and fast to figure out (think of it like a set of cards, picking one from each group and summing three or four numbers). E.g. Ray spells are Caster Level +0 and Damage *2 (Single Target). Sphere Spells are Level +2, Damage *1 (AOE). Line Spells are Level +1, Damage *1 (AOE). Touch would be Damage *2, Level -1. And so on. (Element wouldn't effect this, just the resulting damage type, except for some, like Force or Sonic, on account of either having special rules or being notoriously hard to resist).
In this manner the "metamagic feats" simply become an additional component piece the sorcerer can add to his spells. He doesn't need to prepare, he just decides that right now he really needs Extended Spell, so he adds that effect and takes the resulting downside. Which now, no longer needs to be the same for ever metamagic spell. Maybe Extend is *2 Duration with increased Casting Time but Empower increases the Spell Level by 1 and reduces the save DC by 2 (net increase in damage, on average).
Given that I was asleep when this idea came upon me, it's not fully fleshed out mechanically--just a vague notion of what could be--and I know that at least one video game has done something like this before, its just not one I ever played.
Chapter 6: New Spell Lists
Given the changes to sorcerers, the spell list as we know it would have to be scrapped and rebuilt, taking into account what a sorcerer can do and building those spells under a similar set of rules (if not the exact same) such that the Wizard can do broadly speaking, the same thing. The wizard can then pick '[Elemental] Ball' and decide what element it does and learn that spell. The sorcerer gets to swap bits in and out if they match the bits he knows, while the wizard can learn specific results, regardless of how different they are from each other.
Thus we end up with two classes that fill the same role but radically different to play within an encounter, rather than different bookkeeping. Each class is flexible in its own way and each has its own limitations that can be partially mitigated (if desired) at higher levels, as more feats and access to spells/components come into play.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to read it all right now so I'll have to do that tomorrow, but I'd like to comment on the DC fix you proposed. Why not use the same DC progression as is used for many other abilities like alchemist bombs, witch hexes, etc? DC 10 + 1/2 caster level + casting stat
Unfortunately I didn't have time to read it all right now so I'll have to do that tomorrow, but I'd like to comment on the DC fix you proposed. Why not use the same DC progression as is used for many other abilities like alchemist bombs, witch hexes, etc? DC 10 + 1/2 caster level + casting stat
That's a thought. It's very close to the DC I wrote above, but yours might actually work better.
I have neither the time or resources to run a proper playtest. But I didn't want the ideas I have to go to waste; if someone finds them Good and uses them, I'm happy. :)
Going to mock up some cards today if I get the time to really see what the sorcerer spell creation is like.
One thing I determined last night is that the spell can only have one kind of duration. It can't both linger (e.g. Wall of Fire) and afflict an ongoing condition (e.g. fatigue). It would get confusing as to how you'd apply the duration modifiers. The catch-all would be:
"Only one aspect of a spell can have a duration. All other durations that come up are instead set to 1 round and cannot be modified."
So you it create a wall of fire that also fatigues people and is Extended, then they get fatigued for 1 round after taking damage from the wall and the wall has its own (extended) duration.
You could always wait for Spheres of Power to come out.
You could always wait for Spheres of Power to come out.
Spheres of Power is pretty sweet, actually. I really want to do different and interesting campaigns with it.
Its funny. Only a little while ago a friend of mine said that I'd basically come up with Words of Power.
Either way, I think this conceptualization helped me solve a programming problem on a wholly unrelated topic.
this is basically the spell creation method in two world 2, no?
under their system I basically loved it.
basically they had 3 card levels and 3 card slots.
I think it should be more like the a point system where a sorc has a # of points per level to spend on spells, and ever 2 levels or so he can grab a new card. he starts with 1 type card, 1 transmission card, and 1 effect card.
to give an example of this.
first card level 1. he's a brand new sorc, he chose, Fire, Ray and damage as his cards.
he has 8 points to spend on spell creation, each card at this level applies 1 point.
he puts in 1 fire card making the card of fire type, he then puts in a single ray card to make it attack a single target at range, he then put's 2 damage cards in. the first makes the spell do damage, the second applied more damage. so he went from a 1d4 to a 1d6.
he can cast this spell to use 4 points of his 8, leaving him with another 4. or he could spend all of his points and make:
3 fire, 3 ray, 2 dmg. he's facing several fire elemental's unfortunately, so he put more fire cards down to ignore their resistance, say 2 points per additional card ignore their fire immunity, the 3 ray allows him to target 3 targets with his spell, and the 2 dmg still allows him 1d6 dmg.
several levels down, he has access to level to card slots.
he has the first level of his spell slots filled with the above for 8 points. he then put into his 2nd tier for the spell a debuff card, he doesn't add a transmission or effect card, so the effect is considered fire and it only effects those previously effected. A fire debuff combo applies fatigue to the target for 1 round. the second level multiplies on the first, and so this one card on the second level makes the spell cost 16 points. He applies another debuff card and now the spell fatigues for 1+1d3 rounds. etc.
This is how that system worked.
if you wanted to say make fire ball in this system you would set it up like this
level 1
fire, ray, null, 2 point(s)
Level 2
null, aoeX5, dmgX10, 16 point(s)
Level 3
Null, null, null, 1 point(s)
spell cost: 32(2X16X1)
my favorite spell in two worlds 2
Level 1
Necromancy, Ray, Summon (where ever it hits it created a skeleton), points 3
Level 2
null, ChainX 10, null, points 11
Level 3
null, Aoe, DmgX10, points 12
cost: 396
it literally just spammed skeletons and left death clouds every where.
note: this is why spell customization is broken. like seriously, two worlds 2 is best spell casting game ever if you want to just throw a single spell and watch chaos happen.
cost: 396
Isn't that like a 9th level spell equivalent? I'm not entirely sure, but there's no way that's a cheap spell. And if it is a 9th level spell, it might be doing a lot, but it's not over powered.