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Hello,
Straight to the point, I might home rule that caster level is tied to your hit dice and not your class. I am bothered by the fact that non-casters can multi-class and prestige all over the place, but casters are afraid to most of the time because their caster level will suffer. My thought is simple, your caster level is based on your hit dice instead of your class level, because it is “caster” not “class” and as you advance as a character no matter what your class, you are a spell caster if you cast spells. This will not affect spells per day, spells know or anything else tied to the class.
My example:
Sorcerer level 4
Spells Known 6/3/1
Spells Per Day 6/3
• The sorcerer wants to rage, just because, so he takes:
Barbarian level 4
• Yay he can rage now, he wants to continue casting spells as a sorcerer so he jumps back
At this point normally he would be caster level 4 which puts him at a major loss in power.
My rule would mean his caster level is 8, he still casts 6/3 with 6/3/1 known.
Any familiar or bloodline powers do not advance or progress as they are tied to the Sorcerer class level.
The only reason I won’t do this is if someone here can point out to me any major game mechanics that would be broken or if there are any major loop holes that would rip the fabric of a game apart by creating a crazy over powered player. Personally I can’t think of anything like that.
Please note from a point of politeness:
Long time player, long time GM, I know the system and am asking for a different point of view, not a crash course on Pathfinder mechanics.
My example is just an example please don’t tell me to play a Bloodrager.
This is not for a specific player, myself, or NPC, I simply thought about the rules today and said “hmmm that seems kinda lame” and thought to potentially change it.
If it is kept balanced it could be fine, but Wizard 1, Fighter X would be pretty broken.
Some things to consider that exist in the current rules:
Magical Knack trait: +2 CL which helps for multiclassing spellcasters.
Variant Multiclassing with Barbarian would get them rage
Given the Magical Knack trait, it should at least be a feat per 4 CL.
Humorously enough, I just posted my own little houserule on the subject the other day about the effective caster level in effect. As for spell progression... that I think would quickly prove to be unbalancing. It would be a bit like allowing a character who had been a Rogue to continue to increase their sneak attack while not increasing levels in Rogue... but with even a greater impact. A Wizard especially is nothing more than an empty shell of a class with spellcasting.
The most obvious point was the one that Gallant Armor pointed out above... take a single token level of Wizard, then continue to raise in Fighter so you essentially become a defacto Eldritch Knight and kneecap the Magus class concept. Another example would be an Investigator with the Sleuth archetype that loses their alchemy (and thus their access to spells), but then takes a level of a spell casting class such as Wizard and gains superior spell casting as well as far more access to spells than he ever would had he stayed a regular Investigator.
It's not that I don't understand your plight... Pathfinder simply isn't built in such a way as to allow a character who's main strength to be a spellcasting class to take levels in another class without severely impeding their advancement. Of course, I'm not a fan of the Vancian magic system they use, but that's another argument all-together.
A controversial house rule our group uses (that I'm strongly on the fence about) is to have a character spend a feat to continue their spellcasting advancement. We came about this suggestion by an old 3.5 prestige class that allowed the character to advance in their spellcasting if one previously had spellcasting... but if not, they got a feat. It was argued that the opposite could be held true, and though that's what we play with I've seen it almost too effective at times.
Use the tables from Spheres of Power to assign Caster Level progression.
Levels in a casting class count as a full caster level, levels in a non-casting class count as 1/2 a caster level. So a wizard 10 would have CL 10, Wizard 5/Fighter 5 would have CL 7, and a Sorcerer 5/Wizard 5 would have CL 10/10 (but only the spells of a fifth level Sorcerer and a fifth level Wizard).
First off thank you for the replies.
Magical Knack works for 2 levels which is nice for a dip but not much more.
The Sorcerer/Barbarian was just a random caster/melee example.
I read your post, that is pretty funny both posts were made in such a short time frame.
I am missing how a level 1 Wizard then on going Fighter is going to be so powerful?
Please explain that to me if you can.
At first level you’re spells per day are
Zero: 3 per day
First: 1 per day
So yes as a level one Wizard you could over time learn every single first level spell in the game and if you were say a level 1 Wizard / 14 Fighter that would make you caster level 15. But you only have access to level 1 spells, which still take a standard action to cast, and aren’t all that powerful at level 15. You would still only have one first level spell per day maybe two if you had a high Int which doesn’t do much otherwise for a primary Fighter.
My idea is to increase the caster level based on HD not Class level, but that doesn’t affect their spells per day, spells known, or other class abilities.
Another example would be a Wizard/Sorcerer combo:
Level 5 Wizard Spells:
Zero: 4 per day
First: 3 per day
Second: 2 per day
Third: 1 per day
Level 5 Sorcerer Spells:
Zero: - per day [6 known]
First: 6 per day [4 known]
Second: 4 per day [2 known]
Now this character would be Wizard 5 / Sorcerer 5 with a caster level of 10.
They would have two separate spell lists one for Wizard and one for Sorcerer.
As for the Spheres of Power idea, that’s interesting and could work. That paired with knack could get you up to 4 levels of a melee class without a problem. I like the idea of treating HD as caster levels over class levels because it gives casters the same freedom to swap out classes as non-casters without that huge limitation.
Hope for more feedback and ideas, so far I’ve yet to see anything that discourages me from making this a house rule. If anyone has an example of how a character might abuse this house rule to make a game breaking character please let me know how.
For PCs, HD and class levels are usually synonymous.
The only real problems I see with your system is that a Magus 2/Fighter 18 would be pretty strong. Also, it's kind of unfair for other classes who have level scaling abilities that they lose when they jump outside of their class.
This can easily be broken if someone can avoid taking levels in a caster class, and still get higher level spells. Then you can have someone with full BAB, and full casting abilities.
If a rogue multi-classes they known they will lose some sneak attack, just the same a sorcerer that multi-classes will lose some of their bloodline powers.
What would make a Magus 2/Fighter 18 stronger than a Fighter 20?
@Wraithstrike
Is there actually a way to do that though?
Cranston777 wrote: If a rogue multi-classes they known they will lose some sneak attack, just the same a sorcerer that multi-classes will lose some of their bloodline powers.
What would make a Magus 2/Fighter 18 stronger than a Fighter 20?
It's a matter of versatility. The 20th level Fighter is going to be limited to rather direct forms of combat (not fumbling around with magical items on this point), your usual sword & bow combo typically. The 2nd level Magus / 18th level Fighter if allowed to increase in their Magus spellcasting will only lose +1 BAB, a bonus feat, weapon mastery, and armor mastery... but will have no less than five 6th level spells to bear. Chain Lightning and Disintegrate can make for a bad day. Otherwise, he can do everything the 20th level Fighter can do as well (except as I mentioned before), and that's unbalancing.
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Guys, I believe everyone is missing what the OP is saying.
Your CL is 20, but your spell slots are the stuck. SO a lv 1 wizard fighter 19 or magus 2 fighter 18 is only using lv1 spells and only a few times a day. THey'd just be CL 20 lv1 spells.
Cranston777 wrote: What would make a Magus 2/Fighter 18 stronger than a Fighter 20?
20d6 Spellstrike's thrown in with their normal full-attacks.
Johnnycat93 wrote: Cranston777 wrote: What would make a Magus 2/Fighter 18 stronger than a Fighter 20?
20d6 Spellstrike's thrown in with their normal full-attacks. 20d6? Is he wielding rods of metamagic while casting Shocking Grasp and making a melee attack with Spellstrike? He only has a 1st level spell slot available to him, and he only has two hands (one which must be casting, one which must hold his weapon).
Then again, I'm not SUPER well versed on how Maguses play, so I may be silly.
Inlaa wrote: Johnnycat93 wrote: Cranston777 wrote: What would make a Magus 2/Fighter 18 stronger than a Fighter 20?
20d6 Spellstrike's thrown in with their normal full-attacks. 20d6? Is he wielding rods of metamagic while casting Shocking Grasp and making a melee attack with Spellstrike? He only has a 1st level spell slot available to him, and he only has two hands (one which must be casting, one which must hold his weapon).
Then again, I'm not SUPER well versed on how Maguses play, so I may be silly. Doesn't need a metamagic rod, you can do the whole thing using Sacred Geometry (lucky that the Fighter has Kn Engineering).
Without getting into the specifics, the two levels lost of Fighter ablities is giving him a handful of CL 20 to throw in with his attacks every turn. I'm not saying it's game breaking, but IMO is already better than just a Fighter 20 (which I think is the kind of comparisons the OP was looking for).
Sacred Geometry
(1)increases the casting time of a spell to full-round so you cannot use it with Magus spell combat and
(2)can only be used if you could possibly cast the effective spell level anyways. So you can not use it at all this way.
Also considering almost anything in existence other than a core rogue is better than a Fighter 20, that is not a bar anyone should worry about clearing.
Personally I do not think this or the Spheres of Power idea would break the game at all since you will always still be weaker than a Wizard 20. In fact might even be good for non-casters so they can dip magic classes and not suck even harder than they did before.
Quote: increases the casting time of a spell to full-round so you cannot use it with Magus spell combat and Quicken is a thing.
Quote: can only be used if you could possibly cast the effective spell level anyways. So you can not use it at all this way. Spell level modifiers (metamagic master/wayang).
That not withstanding; Chill Touch also allows 20d6 of damage and 20 points of strength damage broken up over 20 attacks and even spamming Arcane Mark every round for an extra attack to make up for the lost attack from BAB.
Again, I'm not saying it's game breaking but is a distinct advantage for the Fighter (not something that is really a problem), and I think it qualifies as some kind of an exploit (even if its not a very good one).
I'm not really against the idea of simpler access to early casting. I do wonder, though, does it benefit one of the classes that suffer from HD -3 CL for their spells to jump in for a level somewhere else to get HD = CL?
Johnnycat93 wrote: Quote: increases the casting time of a spell to full-round so you cannot use it with Magus spell combat and Quicken is a thing. According to the rules of SG, quicken turns the casting time back to normal, so you are blowing 4 spell levels on just being able to use it and are already at 5th level. A full Magus 20 can only get a single free spell level out of it. You have to be a full caster with actual caster levels to use Sacred Geometry (although it then completely breaks the game in every way).
Johnnycat93 wrote: Quote: can only be used if you could possibly cast the effective spell level anyways. So you can not use it at all this way. Spell level modifiers (metamagic master/wayang).
Yes, those are the only way you can use metamagic without rods in this system if you have only level 1 spells.
Johnnycat93 wrote: That not withstanding; Chill Touch also allows 20d6 of damage and 20 points of strength damage broken up over 20 attacks and even spamming Arcane Mark every round for an extra attack to make up for the lost attack from BAB. For all its many, many faults, there's not really much of anything that can take 20 hits from a Fighter 20 and survive anyways. Worrying about 1d6 damage per hit from a spell you can cast two or three times per day is making a mountain out of a molehill. The fort save on chill touch probably never gets above 15 anyways, we are talking about level 1 spells.
Johnnycat93 wrote: I'm not really against the idea of simpler access to early casting. I do wonder, though, does it benefit one of the classes that suffer from HD -3 CL for their spells to jump in for a level somewhere else to get HD = CL?
Now that is a good question for OP to ponder. Does taking levels of those classes stick them back down, or do you let them have full CL? I honestly doubt it would even be that much of a boost, but it is harder to say.
Thank you all for the replies, and great feedback.
I get the where the concern for damage is coming from, as spell damage is based on caster level not class level. That is to say a Fireball does 1D6 per caster level to a maximum of 10D6, it has nothing to do with class level at that point. So IF a character went Wizard 5 / Fighter 5 they could cast Fireball once per day, doing 10D6 damage.
Now there are dice caps per spell level, a first level spell is capped at 5 dice, and so on. So a single dip into a caster class is going to net a max 5 dice spell which isn’t much to be worried about.
Sacred Geometry is a bust anyway, it has already been proven mathematically the feat is rigged.
I don’t have the link but someone wrote a lovely post about how if you have 14+ ranks in it they have a formula to make it work every single time with any level spell. It’s a fun idea but personally I don’t allow it in my games, that’s just me, then again this rule would just be for my games so I don’t see a problem there. Also I don’t want this to turn into a debate about Sacred Geometry.
Mostly what I see here are tradeoffs for X amount of levels to access X amount of spells that will actually be useful at your current level. That is what I want to see, I want to see players make use of the spells they put levels in for at any level. I think it opens a lot of doors for character builds, concepts and ideas that otherwise wouldn’t be worthwhile. They are possible but not worthwhile because the caster level of the character suffers too much over too many levels dipped.
Going to need an example about the HD-3 CL I don’t see it off the top of my head.
Out of all of the comments so far, I haven’t see anything that I would consider to be game breaking. Sure a Fighter can dip 2 levels into Magus for Spell Combat/Strike and add a 5D6 shocking grasp to his full attack action with a single one handed weapon. But he gives up using a 2H weapon, he gives up all the extra attacks from TWF, and he gives up Armor and Weapon Mastery. These are trades any character makes as levels are selected, and I’m ok with that.
I will continue to check in with this post moving forward but I’ve gotten my answer, I’m going to give it a go in my games. I’m not sure if anyone will even take advantage of it, but if any of my current or future players does I’ll report the success or failure of my home rule here.
Also I continue to keep my challenge open here, if you can build a character that is game breaking using my home brew rule here about caster level please post it. I would like to see what people come up with, if their caster level wasn’t limited by class level.
Caster level is tied to character level not class level, moving forward here.
I think I covered all the points brought up thus far, if I didn’t feel free to let me know.
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