I was thinking of having a campaign in a world where magic actually takes physical effort to cast. I was wondering if there were any pre-established alternate campaign rules for making spells cost HP to cast in addition to spells/day or spell-slots. Maybe something similar to kineticists burn but less punishing early.
Obviously casters have it rough early game, but later on into the game they can almost break reality at will, twice, in the same amount of time it takes a fighter to swing his sword 3 times. If it takes a fighter 2 turns to kill something, the wizard could have disabled the entire enemy group twice over by then.
The problem is that a Wizard with 12 Con will have a max of 180 HP if he/she takes Toughness and gets 6HP every single level from rolling. So finding a universal formula for HP cost is challenging. If I make the HP cost last until the end of the day, the caster could experience critical consciousness failure like a Kineticist and just be out for 8 hours. If the HP loss can be healed then all it takes is a wand of CLW to remove the purpose of the system.
There is also a second approach, which is to allow spellcasters to cast spells even when they have used up all of their spell-slots except to make the cost be HP. If you combined this with reducing the number of spellslots a caster receives, even just by a total of 1, it will encourage them to go "nova" more often. Especially if you intentionally stretch your party's resources thin.
Anyway, I just wanted your thoughts on this. Obviously this might be a hated idea because it does hurt casters, and buffing martials would be preferable to nerfing casters. However, I've already done a lot of Martials in my game and I'm still not satisfied with the balance of power.
Sort of, 1d4+spell level is nothing though on the damage front. Especially since it can be healed without consequence, a familiar with a wand of CLW will take care of almost every single point of damage the Wizard inflicts upon themselves.
A good catch though, that would be a fun character to play but not an alteration the existing magic system.
A variation would be to damage Con instead. Each time you cast a spell, you lose 1 Con if you roll <= spell level (or twice that) on a d20. It comes back after a full night's rest and can't be restored before that. Now you can risk death to cast that one vital spell after a long day of casting.
A variation would be to damage Con instead. Each time you cast a spell, you lose 1 Con if you roll <= spell level (or twice that) on a d20. It comes back after a full night's rest and can't be restored before that. Now you can risk death to cast that one vital spell after a long day of casting.That would make for a lot of low level spells able to be cast per day wouldn't it?
I was assuming they still have the normal rules' spells/day or slots/day limitations in addition to whatever HP/Con-based stuff gets imposed on them. If this is to replace rather than augment then yeah, it's too lenient for low-level spells.
A variation would be to damage Con instead. Each time you cast a spell, you lose 1 Con if you roll <= spell level (or twice that) on a d20. It comes back after a full night's rest and can't be restored before that. Now you can risk death to cast that one vital spell after a long day of casting.
For reference, assuming cantrips never cause damage, a 20th level wizard with no extra spells from Int expects to take 9 points of Con total while expending every spell they have, or 18 if you compare d20 to twice spell level.
Assuming an Int of 18 (pt buy) + 2 (racial) + 5 (leveling up) + 6 (headband) = 31, he expects to lose another 3.45 pts of Con casting all his extra spells, for a total of 12.45, or +6.9 for a total of 24.9 if comparing to twice spell level.
ShroudedInLight, do you want a high-level wizard who casts all his spells to end up hurt, or near death?
Honestly, I'd like casters to be as banged up as martial characters when they walk out of a fight. Now obviously sometimes even casters take a whack or two from enemies, but other times it is one standard action and the fight is dangerously close to over.
Some of that obviously comes down to the luck of the dice and what kind of adventuring day your gaming group is using but lets assume that during ye standard adventuring day the group uses 80% of their resources and saves 20% in case of evening ambushes.
I'd rather not drop my casters by 18 Con, or 24 con. However 9-12 seems decent.
How would those calculations change if we were to increase their difficult to 2x spell level but add the primary casting stat into the roll?
How would those calculations change if we were to increase their difficult to 2x spell level but add the primary casting stat into the roll?
The same 20th level, Int 31 wizard takes an average of only 5.1 Con in casting every spell he has. That +10 is a huge boost; he doesn't even risk Con with 1st-5th level spells.
Comparing the d20 plus casting stat to triple spell level yields an average of 15 Con total for the same wizard if he exhausts 100% of his spells or 12 Con if he expends a randomly selected 80%.
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3.5 unearthed arcana has rules about using spell points. They incorporate a fatigue/exhaustion dynamic that might be helpful for you to develop a system. There's also the horror rules incorporating corruption and insanity.
Interesting, one last Question Fuzzy, Can you give me a best/worst case scenario for double and triple spell level?
I'm liking where this is going.
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Even with 9th-level spells the Int 31 guy isn't guaranteed to take Con, so his best case is 0 total.
Worst case, he takes:
(double spell level) 21 for 100%, 16.8 for 80%
(triple spell level) 33 for 100%, 26.4 for 80%.
Those cases are all very unlikely, though. With that many spells being cast he's not going to suffer far from the expected value. Without actually calculating the standard deviation I'd say you can be confident the outcome will be within 5 Con or so of the expected value.
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Keep in mind that the effect is non-linear in caster level. That is, a low-level caster expects to be inconvenienced, a high-level caster expects to be hosed. If you want to measure the inconvenience, I can crunch a couple of low/medium-level wizards if you give me level and Int.
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Thank you Fuzzy, that was exceedingly helpful.
I have to say that taking 33 Con sounds brutal, but I doubt anyone is going to fail 100% of their rolls. Given your average, I am thinking of going 3x spell level with the counter roll being 1d20+casting stat.
You're the best.
Give me a moment and I'll cobble together five character levels.
2: 18 Int
8: 22 Int
12: 25 Int
16: 28 Int
19: 31 Int
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The problem, Cree Dakota, is that Spell Level - Stat mod becomes 0 after a certain period of time and the goal is not to punish early game casters but to balance late game casters from just punishing down encounters.
Most casters have at least 16 in their main stat, so under the 3x Spell level system they never take Con damage from first level spells. Second level spells only take damage on a roll of 2 or lower for someone with a 16 Int. And while checks every spell could slow down combat, martial characters make d20 rolls every turn without slowing down combat.
You make a valid point with Con damage, I would need to avoid Con drain/damage or otherwise change it over to another stat.
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The problem, Cree Dakota, is that Spell Level - Stat mod becomes 0 after a certain period of time and the goal is not to punish early game casters but to balance late game casters from just punishing down encounters.
Most casters have at least 16 in their main stat, so under the 3x Spell level system they never take Con damage from first level spells. Second level spells only take damage on a roll of 2 or lower for someone with a 16 Int. And while checks every spell could slow down combat, martial characters make d20 rolls every turn without slowing down combat.
You make a valid point with Con damage, I would need to avoid Con drain/damage or otherwise change it over to another stat.
At higher levels you have a multitude of ways to avoid con damage. I am not seeing the point. You want casters to be damaged after a fight as much as the martials. Ok sure. Why not have inteligent enemies instead of making a whole subsystem?
Perhaps I should only institute the penalty on a successful spell though...punishing a caster for the opponent's shrugging off the spell is kind of rude.
Thank you Fuzzy, that was exceedingly helpful.
I have to say that taking 33 Con sounds brutal, but I doubt anyone is going to fail 100% of their rolls. Given your average, I am thinking of going 3x spell level with the counter roll being 1d20+casting stat.
You're the best.
Give me a moment and I'll cobble together five character levels.
2: 18 Int
8: 22 Int
12: 25 Int
16: 28 Int
19: 31 Int
Level 2, 18 Int, 2x spell level: 0.30 +- 0.53
Level 2, 18 Int, 3x spell level: 0.75 +- 0.81
Level 8, 22 Int, 2x spell level: 0.80 +- 0.88
Level 8, 22 int, 3x spell level: 2.55 +- 1.49
Level 12, 25 Int, 2x spell level: 1.90 +- 1.33
Level 12, 25 Int, 3x spell level: 5.55 +- 2.13
Level 16, 28 Int, 2x spell level: 3.40 +- 1.77
Level 16, 28 Int, 3x spell level: 10.05 +- 2.78
Level 19, 31 Int, 2x spell level: 4.40 +- 2.00
Level 19, 31 Int, 3x spell level: 13.45 +- 3.15
Level 20, 31 Int, 2x spell level: 5.10 += 2.15
Level 20, 31 Int, 3x spell level: 15.00 +- 3.28
Those are for casting 100% of spells, the numbers for 80% casting are just 80% of those averages and approximately the same error bars.
The error bars indicate how close to the average value you can reasonably expect an actual value to fall. In particular, X +- E will be between (X-E, X+E) ~68% of the time and between (X-2E, X+2E) ~90% of the time.
Perhaps I should only institute the penalty on a successful spell though...punishing a caster for the opponent's shrugging off the spell is kind of rude.
Doesn't seem any harsher to me than the loss of the spell [slot] itself.
Excellent, thank you Fuzzy. I'm going to save these over to my campaign document and talk these over with my players. I'll share the numbers and my concerns with them so they understand I'm not trying to murder them.
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My pleasure. I get a kick out of fiddling with numerical game systems.
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The OP should try to look at Midnight Setting. It's a 3.X setting where the big bad evil god won and forbid all arcane magic and all divine magic not coming from him.
So casters must remain hidden but another difference with standard 3.X is that the magic system is also quite different.
Casters can only cast normally a handful of spells per day. If they try to cast more, they suffer Con drain (so casting too much can kill you). This Con drain is special as it completely disappears after a good night of sleep.